The Ivory Tower: The Colonial College and Today

My father recently watched The Informant (www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR-YaikU_x4), and I think it changed his life. My father finished high school, went right into the military, got married, had kids, and started working full time. He took some night classes, but he never had the time or money to complete a degree. He worked blue collar jobs his entire career to put us through college; higher education was not optional for his kids: all three of us have a Masters (or two), and my brother has a PhD. All of his life, my father has believed that he was not as intelligent as someone with a college degree. Until The Informant.
If you have not read the book (www.randomhouse.com/crown/features/informant/informant.php) or seen the movie, they are the true story of Archer Daniels Midland (www.adm.com) during a corrupt period of the 1990s. All of the key players had Masters or even Doctorates. When my father finished watching the movie, he said, “I always though people with degrees were so much smarter than me, but those were some of the stupidest people I have ever seen.” I am not joking when I tell you, he has not been the same since.
During our readings this semester, I have often thought about that conversation with my dad. From many, many conversations with him over my lifetime, I have come to believe that he was a victim in many ways of the “elite educators” mentioned so many times in our readings. As a youth, he was led to believe that as the child of immigrants or blue collar workers or whatever that he did not have the “right stuff” for college. My brother-in-law, who was diagnosed as dyslexic in his 30s, was treated much the same way in high school because he was not “book smart”. Now almost 40, my brother-in-law is ready to finally get that Bachelors degree - but only because he has made sense of his own learning style.
We all know that higher education’s significance, purpose and process varies dramatically from person to person. I was shocked to see in our readings that this has been recognized since the 1700s! For many people - like my dad - higher education is some type of unachievable, romantic ideal. For those like my brother-in-law, the ways of learning promoted in universities simply do not match personal styles. For immigrants or international students, college is a place to become acclimated to a new culture, which sometimes is not entirely welcoming. For job changers, those who have been laid off or those whose livelihood has disappeared, it is a place to return (sometimes fearfully) after a few years or decades off and start a new career. Still others need to stay certified or up-to-day on modern technologies in order to keep their current jobs. Many of us – including many in this program – need part-time or distance options since our families or our finances or our home’s location is not compatible with full-time or on-campus learning.
According to our readings, none of this is new: all of these scenarios existed in the 1800s and 1900s, some even in the 1700s. Like my dad, few people in the 1800s could afford the tuition or the time off work to pursue a degree (Useful Knowledge, pg 229). Students – some probably like my brother-in-law – turned to correspondence school so as not to be “embarrassed by their race, gender, ignorance or inability to speak fluent English (Useful Knowledge, pg 236). “Americanization classes” grew significantly in the early and mid-1900s (Useful Knowledge, pg 254), just as there are not enough ESL classes today. In the late 1800s and into the 1900s, vocational education that treated education as a supplement to work helped large number of working adults to earn larger salaries and be promoted (Job Improvement, pg 258-261).
So - with so many and so varied reasons for sitting in a college classroom from the 1700s until today - why is it that my father’s “ivory tower” perception of higher education persists? One of my favorite sections of the readings is page 256 of The American College and University where a University of Missouri trustee says “…the main purpose (of higher education) is to develop the social and mental nature of the students,” to which a state agriculture board member quips “That is good, but what are they to do about hog cholera?” This section perfectly highlights a conflict repeated throughout the readings: academics promoting the “prestige” of higher education against the interests, income level, and time commitment of the common person (as well as lawmakers and donors). Cornell’s president ignored the school’s namesake’s belief in “university-connected factories” (Useful Knowledge, pg 229). Deans at law schools ignored the successes of their universities’ extension programs and pursued the practices of the “elite law schools” (Job Improvement, pg 269). Business school educators wanted to make the program more theoretical and scientific so that it would be viewed as “proper” and “a learned profession” (Job Improvement, pg 273-274). At the same time Joseph Wharton had funded that school to create not theoretical businessmen, but men who were aware of their social responsibilities (Job Improvement, pg 270). Engineering school extension programs were disliked by engineering faculty because the work was not perceived as “college grade” (Job Improvement, pg 282), although Calvin Woodward at O’Fallon Polytechic was shocked by his engineering students inability to use basic tools (Useful Knowledge, pg 230).
Each day, even today, I watch my fellow higher education administrators actively pursuing goals that are in the interest of “prestige” but do not align with student needs. The program with which I am affiliated has 1500 students. Well over fifty percent of the students work full-time and go to school in the evenings. One hundred percent of the students take an evening class at some point during their degree so that they can squeeze in another class or an internship during the daytime hours. Students have been demanding Saturday classes for years to further increase the programs flexibility for full-time workers. Our alumni tell us constantly how much they appreciated the evening program’s flexibility, since it allowed them to get a degree without quitting their well-paying job (which many would not have been able to do).
You can probably guess where I am going with this, and you can probably guess which classes the School is adding and which classes are being decreased. That’s right. There have not been Saturday classes added in my three years at this School. There are few on-line and hybrid classes. The full-time program options are being increased, which decreases the number of evening classes that professors are available to teach. And why? Prestige. A full-time program in this field is considered more desirable among peer schools. Not more prestigious among students, but more prestigious among the Deans, Associate Deans, and faculty of other schools.


References
Kett, J. (1994). From Useful Knowledge to Job Improvement, 1870-1930. In The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties: From Self-Improvement to Adult Education in America, 1750-1990 (pp 223-256). Stanford University Press.
Kett, J. (1994). Higher Education and the Challenge of Job Improvement. In The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties: From Self-Improvement to Adult Education in America, 1750-1990 (pp 257-290). Stanford University Press.
Rudolph, F. (1990). Dawning of A New Era. In The American college and university: A history (pp 241-263). Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.