Higher Ed History The “Forced” Flexibility of Higher Education’s Target Populations 07/03/202507/10/2025 I wrote this to show how adaptable higher education has been to new populations of potential students over the past 150 years. Hopefully you can see how even when external…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Residential Colleges in the U.S. Are Less than 100 years Old! 12/26/202412/26/2024 Taken from A Collegiate Way of Living, by Mark B. Ryan Merton of Oxford Perhaps the earliest permanent residential college, still extant, was Merton of Oxford, founded in 1264 by…
Higher Ed History HEd History – College in the 1700s – Harvard & Yale 12/25/202412/25/2024 Taken from A Collegiate Way of Living by Mark B. Ryan "The two colonial colleges of New England were founded by a very specific and peculiar religious sect, British protestant…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Baylor University for One Woman From 1858-1860 12/25/202412/25/2024 Sallie McNeill A Woman’s Higher Education in Antebellum Texas, Rebecca Sharpless in Texas Women: Their Histories, Their Lives "In December 1858, eighteen-year-old Sallie McNeill and her thirteen classmates received diplomas…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Football Violence has been an Issue for >100 Years 12/22/2024 Taken from Oriard, M. (2014). Chronicle of a (Football) Death Foretold: The Imminent Demise of a National Pastime?. International Journal of the History of Sport, 31(1-2), 120-133. Michael Oriard, was…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Paying College Athletes to Play at the Root of College Football 12/22/2024 Taken from Oriard, M. (2014). Chronicle of a (Football) Death Foretold: The Imminent Demise of a National Pastime?. International Journal of the History of Sport, 31(1-2), 120-133. Michael Oriard, was…
Higher Ed History… HEd History – Black Colleges and College Life in early 20th Century 03/13/202403/13/2024 At that time, "it was standard practice to exclude the black colleges from the national media, whether major newspapers or other publications about college life. For example, the anthologies of…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Universities Borrowed Real Babies to Learn Childrearing 03/12/202403/12/2024 "If you studied home economics in the early twentieth century, you may have played with, burped, and changed a real, live baby—one borrowed from social services and put to work as a…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Maintaining the Aristocracy, Starting Student Affairs & Alumni Affairs 03/01/2024 "During the 1920s two alumni of New England colleges attempted to persuade college presidents to limit the size of entering freshmen classes. They explained the plan: "It may be said…
Higher Ed History HEd History – World War I and Colleges 03/01/202403/02/2024 Camp Carnegie at Carnegie Tech (today, Carnegie Mellon University) "Student participation in the military was especially strong on the East Coast. At Harvard and Yale, for example, enrollments dropped by…
Higher Ed History Changes in Majors at Yale over 120 Years 02/25/2024 I found a document, published in 1983 by George Pierson, of almost every conceivable piece of data Yale might have tracked from 1701 until 1976. His reasons for selecting Yale,…
Higher Ed History HEd History – What We Didn’t Know about the Creation of Land-Grant Colleges 02/18/2024 Fascinating piece by Tristan Ahtone and Robert Lee about where the land for the creation of land-grant colleges came from. It was double this length - I cut it down the…
Higher Ed History HEd History – The Early Days of the University of Virginia 01/07/202401/07/2024 "The University of Virginia, "Mister Jefferson's University," stood out as a model and marvel of planning, in both its educational mission and its architecture. Its greatness is in large measure…
Higher Ed History HEd History – First Ever Ranking of Universities? 01/06/2024 "Between 1880 and 1890 only a handful of institutions in the United States had legitimate claim to being a "real university." Apart from the 5 below, the list of serious…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Fun Facts About 12 of U. of Virginia’s Current Buildings 01/03/2024 1824, November While construction is underway on the Rotunda, Jefferson and Madison hold an event there for the Marquis de Lafayette. Varsity Hall today 1857-1858 UVA’s first infirmary (now named…
Higher Ed History HEd History – “College and the Poor Boy” The Atlantic, 1933 12/30/202301/14/2024 By Russell T. Sharpe. The following exerpts I found most interesting. The bolding is text I am particularly highlighting. "The American college is not operated for profit. It has always…
Higher Ed History HEd History – “Identify & Ratify” the Elite through “In Loco Parentis” 12/30/202312/30/2023 In the colonial colleges, "young men attending college were going to be wealthy and powerful whether they went to college or not. The colonial college was an insurance policy guaranteeing…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Using a Credit Hour as a Gauge to Efficiency 12/28/2023 1910 Report "One is struck in any such study of collegiate conditions with the absence of any gauge of efficiency which even remotely resembles, for instance, profits in an industrial…
Higher Ed History HEd History – ACC Targets UVA for Expansion But UVA Leaders Resist 12/28/202312/28/2023 "Seventy years ago, before conference realignment was all the rage, UVA was the Atlantic Coast Conference’s first expansion target. On Oct. 9, 1953, the Board of Visitors met to consider…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Colonial Colleges’ Efforts to “Educate” Native Americans 12/28/202301/06/2024 "The education of Native Americans, including their conversion to Christianity, had great appeal to donors in England. The problem was that such experiments were usually disastrous, and most enterprising college…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Academic & Industrial Efficiency 12/28/202312/28/2023 A REPORT TO THE CARNEGIE FOUNDATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF TEACHING BY MORRIS LLEWELLYN COOKE, M.E., 1910 As someone who reads about and tries to improve the lack of efficiency…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Graduating College Not nearly as Important in Colonial Days 12/17/202312/28/2023 U. of Texas graduates in 1894 - UT now has ~10,000/graduates/year "One peculiar characteristic of the colonial colleges is that there was little emphasis on completing degrees. Many students matriculated…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Yale’s Namesake Considered Overrated Philanthropist 12/16/202312/28/2023 Yale in 1786, some of Elihu's gift went to pay for the 2nd building at the school. "Donors during the Colonial College era were often focused on one of two…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Medical Schools Were Not What We Thought 12/16/202312/28/2023 Did you know that diploma mills existed over 100 years ago? They were often medical colleges - of which many were for-profit! "A favorite form of diploma mills was the…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Why There Are So Many Memorial Stadiums 12/14/202303/02/2024 Hundreds of universities were given money after WWI and WWII to build new football stadiums to honor fallen alumni from these wars. I did a quick Google search of university…
Higher Ed History HEd History – A Jewish Student in the 1950s 12/14/202312/28/2023 1987 New Yorker piece by Philip Roth, who was a famous author at that time, about college life in the 1950s. I was particularly interested in his description of how…
Higher Ed History HEd History – SMU 1958 Yearbook 12/14/202312/28/2023 My daughter and I were at a half price book store in November 2022 and I found several old college yearbooks that I purchased for $5 each. Now you get…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Rationale for Eating Clubs 12/14/202301/06/2024 If you have heard about the Eating Clubs at Princeton and other elite colleges, their reputation is often similar to the power of fraternities and sororities to group students off-campus…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Ranking Students by their Socio-Econonic Status 12/14/202301/06/2024 Did you know that in America's higher education history, colonial colleges listed students and had them dress in order of their socio-economic status. "Although the social composition of the collegiate…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Harvard, Yale, & Princeton Each Quite Different 12/14/202312/30/2023 Harvard too liberal for Yale which was too liberal for Princeton... Did you know that Yale was started because Harvard was considered too liberal? And then Princeton was started because…
Higher Ed History HEd History – College Presidents Have Always been Fundraisers 12/14/202312/28/2023 Scholars of higher ed like to bemoan the role of university president becoming Fundraiser-in-Chief. We often mention data indicating the high percentage of time college presidents time spend on fundraising.…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Oberlin 1st to Coeducate & 1st Black Women Graduate! 12/13/202301/06/2024 "Oberlin College would gain fame for its double commitment to coeducation according both to gender and to race. From 1836 to 1894, women students were under the direction of the Ladies'…
Higher Ed History HEd History – The Harvard of the South – Transylvania University 12/13/202301/06/2024 Few people realize that Transylvania University was the greatest college of the South for many decades. John Thelin reminds us of this in his History of American Higher Education book. "Located in…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Early Women’s Colleges 12/12/202312/28/2023 "There is no record of a woman of the colonial period of higher education (1636-1764) having received a degree. In contrast, between 1800 and 1860 at least fourteen institutions enrolled…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Scotland, Not England – the Real Model for American HIgher Education 12/12/202312/28/2023 Did you think that early American colleges were designed based on the English model? I did. I was wrong. The leadership of American colleges is actually based on the Scottish…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Taking Leadership of Student Social Institutions 12/12/202301/06/2024 As someone who has worked in student affairs for almost 30 years, I can tell you that series of steps below about student initiative in college life is a common…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Universities Named after Slaveowners 02/11/202312/29/2023 Barnard College Baylor University Brown University Clemson University Franklin Pierce University Furman University George Mason University George Washington University Gordon State College James Madison University Jefferson College Jefferson College…
Deep Thoughts on Higher Ed and Life 