Beyond the University by Michael S. Roth

Author:Michael S. Roth
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300175516
Publisher: Yale University Press

The model of the specialized university in which advanced research and professional work was grafted onto a broad undergraduate course of study dominated by electives would eventually become the standard for much of American higher education. But in the second half of the nineteenth century there were other institutional experiments that would have important reverberations throughout the twentieth century and beyond. Although religion receded in importance in most elite schools in the Northeast, dozens of denominational colleges did spring up in other parts of the country. Religiously oriented institutions developed their own versions of what should count as liberal learning. In addition, the Morrill Act, signed into law in 1862 and augmented in 1890, facilitated the creation of well-funded universities in various parts of the country in order “to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts.” These state-run land-grant colleges and universities were to provide a utilitarian education, though “without excluding other scientific and classical studies.” Thus, American universities, unlike their European counterparts, attempted to place vocational learners side by side with those studying traditional academic subjects. But even those supporting utilitarian studies within universities added that they aimed “to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.”25 In America, liberal education was not completely segregated from agriculture and the mechanical arts because of the insistence that liberal learning benefited the individual and society regardless of one's occupation. At least that has been the case until recently.

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