The Peculiar Genesis of a Utopian College: Explaining an Anomaly

• In Event: 378 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session II
  In Refereed Roundtable: B. Table 04. Higher Education

Abstract

Before its doors even opened in 1971, a renowned educational leader had proclaimed an obscure state college in Minnesota to be “perhaps the most innovative institution of higher education in the United States.” Rejecting a causal explanation, this historical case study seeks to explain how possibly this utopian outcome could have happened. The narrative traces a series of actions that established this utopian college, particularly highlighting a successful process of acquiring and exercising power in turf wars at the state legislature and in the Byzantine politics of higher education’s bureaucracy. The plot’s denouement features one past and one future vice president of the United States intervening as midwives for the new college. The eventual establishment of the school led to an outcome that the state’s legislature and higher education bureaucracy had neither intended nor anticipated.

Author

• Monte Bute, Metropolitan State University