I have found it useful to put some aspects of higher education into historical perspective; perhaps this very brief history will stimulate your thoughts, as well. Of course, I have omitted some landmarks and skewed this history to items central to dialogs I have had as a president…love to hear some of your thoughts!
- 859: Oldest
university, still operating, is the University of Karueein (Fez, Morocco)
- 1088: University of Bologna is the oldest in Europe. Libraries are acentral resource bringing scholars and students together.
- 1636: Harvard founded in US (private education)
- 1798: University of North Carolina (public
higher education)
- U. Virginia a latecomer in 1819
- 1862: Morrill Act establishes land grants. The act had been proposed before the Civil
War, but Southern States opposed it. The
act passed post-secession. I applaud the
vision of our Congress and President, many of whom had no college education yet
saw that education “for the sons of toil” in the “practical and liberal arts”
would help restore the country economically and socially. Note that two other extraordinary acts were
also passed in 1862: Railroad Act and
Homestead Act. Though both also had
negative impacts, especially on Native Americans…imagine investing the
equivalent of a trillion dollars in unproven infrastructure and envisioning
settlement of a largely unknown West while fighting a divisive, expensive,
bloody war literally in one’s backyard!
- Note that Engineering education was almost entirely at West Point prior to 1862…and that Land Grant universities would produce hundreds of thousands of engineers to assist the US industrial revolution.
- 1890: Second Morrill Act establishes many Historically Black Colleges and Universities to provide education to the children of former slaves.
- 1890’s: Americanized the “German Model” of graduate education, establishing PhD programs at universities like Johns Hopkins that resemble those operating today.
- 1906: NCAA founded as a response to horrific injuries in football-regulate or abolish the sport. Today, the NCAA oversees 480,000 student athletes and over $1 billion in revenue. College athletics is primarily a US phenomenon!
- 1919: Establishment of ACE (American Council on Education) to provide credit for prior learning to the flood of returning World War I veterans, probably the greatest mobilization and “upskilling” in the US to that point.
- 1944: GI Bill provides many financial benefits to returning servicemen, about 2,2 million of whom eventually attend college. One of the greatest
- 1945: The Atom Bomb serves as an example of American universities and intellectuals serving as the Arsenal of Democracy. A role they would continue through the Cold War
- 1950: National Science Foundation funded, 5 years after “Science: The Endless Frontier” is published by Vannevar Bush. Though the NIH was funded in the 1870’s, strong, organized support of research by the Federal Government is usually dated to founding of the NSF.
- 1960: California Master Plan for Higher Education developed creates a differentiated system of universities, state colleges, and community colleges
- 1960s: Great American research universities rise-Stanford, Harvard, Michigan, Illinois, Berkeley….
- 21st century: The United States and
the world look to universities for workforce development and innovation. Unfortunately, the US falls behind several
countries in educational attainment, with South Korea and Canada currently
leading the pack. China invests heavily
in both education and research, moving very rapidly from a nadir under Mao’s
People’s Revolution.
- We see a rise in distance education, with almost 30% of students taking at least one course online during their degree programs
- Rise of mega-universities, from the Open University in the United Kingdom to Arizona State University to the University of Phoenix
