Higher Education Policy as a Wartime Measure: A Historiographical Review

• In Event: The Evolution of Higher Education in the Post-WWII United States

Abstract

The United States government has frequently executed major policy changes during armed conflict, and those changes have included the expansion of educational opportunity. This historiographical paper reviews a wide array of literature examining the intersection of federal higher education policy and the exigencies of wartime. Specifically, we seek to understand how scholars – both historians and other social scientists who closely consider historical phenomena – have interpreted federal programs that were legislated during conflicts ranging from the Civil War through the post-9/11 “War on Terror.”

Author

• Ethan W. Ris, University of Nevada - Reno