The Academic Engineers, 1890–1920: Understanding a Cohort of Higher Education Reformers

• In Event: 35.034 - Educational Leaders and Architects of Knowledge: Progressive Education at Home and Abroad

Abstract

A closer examination of a previously-identified interlocked cohort of higher education reformers, who exercised considerable wealth and power to reshape the form and function of American higher education around the turn of the 20th century. This paper draws on both archival and secondary sources to create a group biography of the “academic engineers,” with a special focus on their tremendous social capital and their ideological underpinnings. This paper is presented here as a standalone project, but it will likely become a chapter in a future monograph.

Author

• Ethan W Ris, University of Nevada - Reno