From 1870 to 1900 the number of American institutions of higher learning jumped from 563 to 977, and the percentage of 18- to 21-year-old students increased from 1.7 to 4.1. These colleges and universities fall into three categories: privately endowed universities offering graduate as well as undergraduate programs; a large number of small, usually church-sponsored, liberal arts colleges; and public-supported state universities and land-grant colleges (encouraged by the Morrill Act of 1862), as well as the unusual City College of New York, established in 1847. Public-supported institutions offered technical and liberal arts training.
Graduate training expanded from 1870 to 1900. Before 1870, Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School and Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School, as well as their schools of law and medicine, offered postgraduate training but few doctor of philosophy (Ph. D.) degrees. Aspiring American scholars went to Europe, especially Germany, for the Ph. D. until Johns Hopkins University, from its inception in 1876, emphasized graduate studies. Its president, Daniel CoiT Gilman, made research the “soul” of the university and strived to combine the strengths of a traditional liberal arts college with a graduate program designed not only to preserve knowledge but also to discover and apply scientific knowledge. The Hopkins medical school, established in 1893, applied Gilman’s concepts. Its outstanding faculty, high admission standards (open to women), affiliation with a teaching hospital, and sound financial footing made it the preeminent medical school in America in 1900.
During the last three decades of the 19th century, many American colleges and universities began offering their students a wide variety of majors and courses they could elect to meet degree requirements. This elective system was controversial. Charles William Eliot, Harvard’s president, argued that the changing American economy and society needed college graduates who had been free to choose their course of study. Yale’s president, Noah Porter, countered that while the elective system might benefit some earnest students, the vast majority were neither mature nor informed enough to make such crucial choices. He believed that a uniform college program should concentrate the attention of students on history, literature, and science before they began the pursuit of money through technical training. Porter also believed that the elective system would be costly, difficult to manage, and—by reducing common experiences—blur the identity of, and the camaraderie within, a college class. In 1885 James McCosh, the president of Princeton, took a moderate position combining Eliot’s flexibility and Porter’s rigidity. McCosh said the student should elect the college and major of his choice, but the faculty should determine the appropriate sequence of courses leading to a degree. All students at Princeton, whatever their major, had to study the trinity of language and literature, science, and philosophy.
Trends in higher education reflected the phenomenal growth of American agriculture and industry. The establishment of graduate programs, agricultural and mechanical colleges, and more flexible, practical curricula served the needs of a society organizing and reshaping itself. Despite the greater availability of higher learning in the late 19th century, only one out of 25 American youths attended college in 1900.
In particular it was difficult for Alrican Americans to obtain a higher education, although colleges such as Oberlin and Harvard did admit a few qualified students. Even where colleges did not discriminate, inferior segregated primary and secondary schools made it difficult for black Americans to meet entrance requirements. To train leaders and to promote economic well-being for African Americans, government and philanthropic organizations established institutions of higher learning. In 1868, under the auspices of the federal Freedmen’s Bureau, General Clinton Bowen Fisk set up a school in Nashville, Tennessee, to train African-American leaders, which evolved into Fisk University. The following year the Freedmen’s Bureau established a sister school in Washington, D. C., under the leadership of General O. O. Howard. Given its location, it continued to receive congressional support and, as Howard University, developed into the most prestigious black university. Hampton Institute, founded in 1868 by the American Missionary Society, was a nonsectarian, coeducational school headed by General Samuel C. Armstrong. It was an agricultural and normal school, stressing courses in farming and elementary education, but also gave practical instruction in business, home economics, and skilled trades. Its most distinguished alumnus was Booker T. Washington, who started Tuskegee Institute in 1881, which he developed into a major industrial-education school, while not neglecting the liberal arts. In the North some institutions for blacks, such as Cheyney University of Pennsylvania (1837) and Wilberforce University in Ohio (1856), had been established prior to the Civil War, but mostly they flowered in the Gilded Age.
Further reading: Laurence R. Veysey, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965).
—Harry Stein
World History
