U.S. HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE POSTWAR ERA:
EXPANSION AND GROWTH

By Theodore J. Marchese

Social mobility -- the intrinsic opportunity Americans possess to advance in their lives -- is an underlying value in United States society. Nowhere, perhaps, is this more evident than in terms of the acquisition of knowledge. This snapshot, by a veteran observer, of post-secondary education in the second half of the 20th century, clearly reflects its evolution and expansion, as well as the manner in which institutions like colleges and universities swiftly respond and adapt to changing social and economic needs. Following this article is a brief consideration of The Essence of the Educated Person. A third piece briefly outlines The Accreditation Process by non-governmental peer bodies for higher education and by state and local authorities for primary and secondary education.





Roughly a half-century ago, at the beginning of the post-World War II era, the United States already claimed a well-developed system of higher education, with 1.5 million students enrolled on some 1,700 campuses across the country.



It was a system with its own history. It encompassed universities that combined, under one roof, English-style undergraduate colleges with German-style graduate and research faculties. It had ended the hegemony of the classics by admitting practical studies such as agriculture and engineering to the curriculum in the 1860s, and coursework in business, health, and numerous other fields during the first four decades of this century. It had invented the course and credit-hour system in the 1890s as a means of encouraging transfer between institutions, and accrediting associations -- run by the colleges themselves -- to assure quality. And by the early decades of this century, the system had developed faculties to rival in intellect the best in the older European universities.



It should be noted that like their older counterparts, the newer American universities, even in 1945, were elitist, male, white and relatively aloof from society. Yet however uneven or parochial they were, these were the institutions that had educated for the nation the likes of Presidents Thomas Jefferson, John and John Quincy Adams, Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt; poet Walt Whitman and novelist Henry James; pioneer education theoretician John Dewey and social activist Jane Addams; and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., leader of the African American civil rights movement.



In the five decades since World War II, America rebuilt and greatly expanded participation in its system of higher education, by a stunning factor of 10, in an effort to make educational opportunity more open and accessible, fairer and more relevant. Government and industry came to see higher education as an investment in an educated workforce that would propel the nation to new levels of economic well-being and national security. Individuals came to see higher education as an indispensable investment in their own futures, as a route to social mobility and personal fulfillment. The combined result was a system that in 50 years ballooned from 1.5 to 15 million students, resulting in the world's first example of "mass" higher education. In the process, to accommodate this great change in scale, entirely new ways had to be found to govern colleges, finance campuses and students, and assure quality and accountability.



Postwar Foundations



Three events around the end of World War II set the stage for this growth.



In 1944, the U.S. (federal) Government enacted the G.I. Bill, which promised the nation's military men and women that at war's end, Washington would pay for them to attend college or a trade school. Millions of returning veterans, few of whom would have otherwise so aspired, chose to pursue higher education, flooding enrollments well into the 1950s. These mature, motivated young adults did well on campus, graduated into a host of occupations and professions, and became such a model of success that the very idea of college attendance, and its benefits, took on new salience for Americans.



The second milestone development came in 1947. Noting the impressive academic achievements of the veterans already enrolled, a presidentially appointed commission proposed to President Harry S Truman the startling recommendation that not one-tenth but fully one-third of all youth should attend college -- and that it would be in the nation's best economic and social interests to provide the necessary opportunities. In the years just after the war, therefore, the experiential and conceptual underpinnings for expansion were set firmly in place.



The third significant item was a widely-read report issued in 1945 by Vannevar Bush, head of the respected U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development. Bush, a physicist and dean at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had mobilized wartime efforts to bring to battle radar, penicillin and a host of new weapons systems -- most notably the atomic bomb. Acknowledging that so many of these successes derived from a foundation of basic research, Bush created the vision of science, in his words, as an "endless frontier" for the nation, investment in which would bring untold dividends in national security and social advancement.



Out of the war effort came a whole generation of top scientists committed to national security work, men (and some women) who moved back and forth between government service, national laboratories and the campus. In 1950, the U.S. Congress chartered the National Science Foundation and charged it with promoting research and development and the education of scientists. Fed by Cold War fears, U.S. Government-sponsored university research soon became quite a significant venture, with federal expenditures exceeding $1 billion by 1950. In subsequent years, public and private expenditures for university-based contract research -- peer reviewed and competitively awarded, as Vannevar Bush had urged -- rose to $21 billion by 1996, doubtless with many benefits to the United States, but also to the great advancement of science itself within the university, and to the roughly 100 institutions of higher learning that garnered 95 percent of these federal funds.



The Booming Sixties



In the 1960s, the higher education system underwent intense expansion and development. The immediate cause was the arrival at college doors of the "baby boom" generation -- the heightened numbers of 18-to-22-year-olds born in the aftermath of World War II. These young men and women, often the sons and daughters of G.I. Bill beneficiaries, had lofty educational aspirations. As a result, between 1960 and 1970, college enrollments jumped from 3.6 to 8 million students, with aggregate expenditures rising from $5.8 to $21.5 billion. To accommodate this enrollment rise, existing universities and four-year colleges grew in size, helped by federal construction loans and high capital investment by the sponsoring states.



The most noteworthy development of the decade, however, was the emergence of a distinctive new institutional form, the comprehensive community college. "Junior" colleges, offering the first two years of instruction for students intending to transfer to baccalaureate (four-year) institutions, had been a fixture since the early 1900s. In the early 1960s, a new vision for such an institution -- explicit community-relatedness, open-door admissions, and high status for vocational-technical studies -- emerged. Soon, every community wanted its own "democracy's college," as community colleges came to be known. In the course of the decade, new community colleges opened for business at the rate of one per week -- a total of 500 in ten years. Enrollments soared from 453,000 students to 2.2 million. Equally important was the fact that although two-thirds of the earlier enrollments were in programs designed for transfer to a four-year program, by the 1970s, 80 percent of all community college students were in shorter-term programs -- preparing to be engineering technicians, health care workers, law enforcement officers, among dozens of occupations. If a community needed trained workers for a new plant, adult basic education, certificate programs for day-care workers, or English-language training for recent immigrants, its community college was there to respond.



The great expansion of existing institutions, combined with the creation of new ones, raised needs at the state level for new mechanisms of planning, governance and finance. As a result, in the 1960s, many states created high-level boards to govern or coordinate their burgeoning systems, with the role of overseeing a planned growth of public-sector higher education. A notable and influential model was California's 1960 Master Plan, designed by Clark Kerr [president emeritus, University of California]. It specified that the top 12 percent of all California secondary school graduates would be guaranteed admission to the prestigious University of California -- which grew or built nine campuses statewide to accommodate these numbers. The plan also stipulated that the top 30 percent would be guaranteed admission to a campus of the California State University, which eventually grew to 22 campuses; and that every secondary school graduate would be guaranteed enrollment at a local community college (106 of which were eventually developed). To assure access for all students, public-college fees were to be kept as low as possible, with the state funding most of the costs of four-year university attendance. Community colleges, with their more frugal budgets, were financed one-third by the state, one-third by the sponsoring community and one-third from student fees.



Students and Markets



Through the mid-1940s, Washington's role in higher education was restricted mostly to data gathering. Education at all levels, many believed, was a matter reserved to the states by the Constitution; federal support would bring unwanted "intrusion" if not "control." But after World War II, with national security interests coming to the foreground, support for university-level research increased. In the late 1950s, after the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik space probe, national defense was invoked as a reason to support the training of engineers, scientists, foreign-language specialists and various building programs.



In the 1960s and 1970s, a consensus emerged that special-purpose federal programs should be curtailed in favor of federal aid to students themselves, in support of the national commitment to equality of access without regard to accidents of birth. The Higher Education Act of 1965 and supplementary Education Amendments of 1972 created today's system of student financial aid. It combines grants, work opportunities and loans to help full-time students meet the tuition and living costs of college attendance.



Significantly, the amount of aid for which a student qualifies was determined both by family income and the costs of the college of the student's choice. In other words, a young man or woman from a lower-income household might receive $2,000 to attend a public institution (a state university), and $10,000 to enroll in a private institution. The aim of this provision was to "level the playing field" between public and private higher education and provide every student with access both to the system in general and specifically to the college of one's choice. Additional broadening enactments in the late 1960s and 1970s forbade any college receiving U.S. Government allocations to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, national origin or handicap.



The 1972 amendments went one step further to place a distinctive mark on American higher education. It awarded financial aid to the student, not the institution. In effect, all colleges, public or private, would have to compete for their enrollments. The hope was that a new, student-driven "market" for higher education services would compel schools to focus more on student needs. As enrollment growth continued through the 1970s, the effects of this change were initially small. But in the 1980s, as the size of the college-age population began to decline (the beginning of the post-baby-boom era), all types of colleges had to learn how to market themselves, simply to maintain their enrollments. In the years that followed, through today, highly-qualified students might receive literally hundreds of recruitment contacts when enrollment season begins, and even earlier.



Over time, then, the "postsecondary" marketplace was remade. A relative handful of prestigious universities and colleges, many of them private, assumed commanding niches that allowed them to admit just a small fraction (10-20 percent) of the able students applying. In another test of this resulting stratification, the top 30 colleges in the United States today enroll 80 percent of the minority students in the country with standard aptitude test scores of 1,200 or above (out of a possible 1,600). At the opposite end of the market, marked by lower tuitions and near-open-door admission, a score of aggressive, entrepreneurial universities have sprung up. The newest, the University of Phoenix (Arizona), enrolls an astonishing total of 40,000 students at some two dozen sites across the American West.



Taking Stock



To foreign visitors, a remarkable feature of American higher education is the degree to which it is market-driven and free of central direction. Indeed, all institutions, large or small, public or private, compete with one another for faculty and administrative talent, research and foundation grants, legislative appropriations and alumni support, and -- overall -- public approbation and approval. In addition, larger institutions compete with one another through high-visibility athletic programs.



At the same time, U.S. institutions tend to be relatively dynamic and responsive to economic and social changes, at least as reflected by markets. Even without centralized manpower training, the supply and demand for such trained professionals as engineers, physicians and educators has remained roughly in balance. On the disappointing side, most observers sense that an enhanced responsiveness to students hasn't translated into fundamental improvements in the quality of undergraduate education itself. Nor will markets by themselves always reward a college's attention to deeper values, such as a broad-based curriculum or foreign language study.



That said, the system's overall record of accomplishment remains impressive. If an original goal was to provide equal access, it has been substantially achieved. Women, one-fourth of all enrollments in 1950, represent 55 percent of the student population at present. Today's enrollment of African-Americans (10 percent), Hispanic-Americans (7 percent), Asian-Americans (6 percent), and Native Americans (1 percent) approaches their percentages in the general population. Overall, 77 percent of all 18-year-olds finish high school, and two-thirds of this group proceed to college.



Additionally, among two- and four-year public campuses, adult, part-time enrollments are now in the millions and account for over 40 percent of total enrollments. On many campuses, the median age is 25 to 30. Today, thanks in part to degree-completion programs for people in their 30s and 40s, fully a fourth of the U.S. adult population holds a college degree.



Perspectives



Visitors to these shores notice several other distinctive aspects of U.S. higher education.

One is its sheer scale and cost. Fifteen million students attend some 3,700 postsecondary institutions, ranging from a few hundred students to 50,000 at state universities in Ohio and Minnesota. Aggregate expenditures for higher education now exceed $200 billion a year -- a mind-boggling 2.4 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), compared, for example, with the 0.9 percent of GDP expended in the United Kingdom. Of the $200 billion, about half represents the allocation of public money, the other half income from tuition and fees, sale of services, endowments, and voluntary giving (this last category alone totaled $14 billion in 1995-96). A typical large research university (with a teaching hospital attached) has an annual operating budget of $2.5 billion, enrolls 35,000 students, employs 4,000 faculty members and 10,000 support staff, raises $150 million a year from private donors and boasts an endowment of over $1 billion. The average public four-year campus charges $3,000 a year in tuition and the average private college charges $13,000 a year -- with roughly half the students at each type of institution receiving financial aid.



The huge tuition differential between public and independent higher education particularly puzzles foreign visitors. How can the more expensive private sector institution survive? The tuition difference arises, of course, because the private college does not enjoy direct public support. In fact, however, to the student from a middle- or low-income family, the tuition differential may all but disappear through financial aid (with perhaps a larger loan to repay upon graduation). Still, the bargain of public higher education, and its availability in virtually every community, has brought to it most of the enrollment gains of the past decades: Public colleges enrolled half of all students in 1945, and 78 percent today.



Is the private sector doomed? Not at all. Private colleges prosper by offering distinctive curricula, more inviting campus environments, and (often) the prestige of their degrees. Many continue their appeal to founding constituencies, religious or ethnic. Private higher education tends to be more innovative, entrepreneurial and values-driven, and serves as a creative balance to state-controlled higher education.



Another uncommon feature of the American college, both private and public, is the character of undergraduate studies. In the course of four years of study, the average student will devote about a third of the time to studies in a "major" (economics, physics, business, and so on); one third to elective and supporting courses; and -- mostly in the first two years -- one-third to general education. The last of these represents the university's historic commitment to produce graduates who will study broadly; appreciate science, philosophy and the arts; learn the habits of democracy; and develop higher abilities to write, find and use information, think critically and work with others.



Since much of a college's general education program is prescribed for the student, it inevitably raises questions of values. Faculties engage in endless debate as to what should be taught and learned. Some hold out for a canon of Western classics; others argue for the inclusion of multicultural topics and voices. All the while, with the flood of new, often less-well-prepared entrants into college and increased student job-mindedness, it becomes more of a challenge for schools to maintain student (and sometimes faculty) enthusiasm for a broad base of electives. And so various innovations have been employed in teaching, curricula and technology to engage students and help them succeed.



Statistically, as the century winds down, U.S. institutions of higher learning annually award about 540,000 associate (two-year) degrees, 1.1 million bachelor's (four-year) degrees, 400,000 master's degrees, 76,000 professional degrees (in law, medicine, and other fields) and 45,000 doctorates. Among Ph.D.s, the biological and physical sciences, mathematics and engineering predominate; at leading universities, as many as 50 percent of candidates for those degrees are from outside the United States. Within graduate schools overall, the growth area is at the master's level. A constant heightening of labor-market and student expectations has led to significant increases in master's-level studies in business, education and the health professions.



Across all levels of American higher education, the 1990s have witnessed an explosion in deployment of information technologies. Most campuses, and indeed several entire state systems, are "wired up." Entire libraries are on-line; technology expenditures totaled $16 billion in the 1980s, and the figure is expected to have doubled in this decade. On dozens of campuses, every student and faculty member now has his or her own computer (and often a web page); in 35 percent of all classes, professors and students communicate by electronic mail (via computer). The effects of all this on modes of instruction and on the character of student and faculty work are being intensely scrutinized.



One final development is a consequence of this technological revolution: a huge growth in distance education. Ninety percent of all U.S. institutions with enrollments of 10,000 or more now offer courses on-line. Coming on-line, too, are a number of brand new "virtual" universities, the best-known of which, the Western Governors University, begins operations across 11 states in January 1998. Technology, even as it remakes the classroom, seems poised to remake the postsecondary marketplace, too.



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Theodore J. Marchese is vice president of the American Association for Higher Education and executive editor of Change magazine. E-mail address: [email protected].

U.S. Society & Values
U.S.I.A. Electronic Journal, Vol. 2, No. 4, December 1997