From Normal Schools to Full Universities: Historical Policy Diffusion of Institutional Names in the US

• In Event: Policy Change and Reform in Higher Education: Historical, Regional, and Legal Perspectives

Proposal

Relevance
Normal colleges, institutions that train teachers, have had a long global history. They first appeared in France following the French Revolution, surviving today as the elite Ecole Normale (Judge et al., 1994). This "Normal" model spread globally to places like China, Taiwan, and the Philippines (Lefty et al, 2020). The US had a robust "normal" college sector, but the history has largely been forgotten because these institutions changed their names and expanded beyond teacher training. In accordance with the Higher Education SIG mission, this research connects the US history of normal colleges to the broader discourse of these institutions that still survive around the world. The research highlights the ever-changing sector, from its early stages to massification, and into the new "Digital Society"—contextualizing the CIES 2025 theme to longer higher education historical trends.

Theory/ Contexts
The expansion of normal colleges aligns with the global expansion of higher education, as massification of education has been a key tool of national development (Meyer et al. 1992). As more children entered schools, sectors needed more teachers to teach these students; hence, there was a global ballooning of normal colleges for teacher training (Judge et al., 1994). In the US, post-World War II saw the expansion of higher education through the GI Bill, women's empowerment, and the civil rights movement—all of which included former normal colleges (Ogren, 2005).
The global expansion of higher education did not happen in a vacuum. Policy studies have witnessed the diffusion of various policies through the Lazy-S curve (Watts, 2003). This formation appears as the slow growth phase begins, attracting early adaptors, which are followed by an explosive phase of wide adoption, and closes with a burnout phase that includes late adopters or laggers (Steiner-Khamsi, 2016). The Lazy-S curve has been identified within policy borrowing and lending studies from across the world (see Lao, 2015; Eta & Mngo, 2021; Morais de Sa e Silva, 2017).

Inquiry
This research uses historical policy analysis to explore the evolution of the former normal colleges' names in the US. It builds from work by Ogren (2005) to create an original dataset of 191 public normal colleges, tracking their establishment and name changes from 1839 to 2023. See an example below:
Normal School of Arizona (1886) -> State Teachers College (1925) -> Arizona State College (1945) -> Arizona State University (1958).
The analysis models Steiner-Khamsi's (2016) policy borrowing and lending scholarship to consider diffusion—identifying early adopters, explosive phase, and laggards along the Lazy-S curve. Four distinct eras were identified in the data: Normal College Era, Teachers College Era, the College Era, and the University Era.

Findings
First, the Normal College Era occurred when normal schools were officially founded, beginning in 1839 in Massachusetts, with what eventually became Framingham State University and running until 1927, with what became Montana State University-Billings and New Jersey City University opened as the last ‘normal’ colleges. This era peaked in the 1910s with 161 'normal' institutions opening before its decline. The mean year normal colleges opened was 1890, with a standard deviation of 19.6 years.
As the word 'normal' fell out of fashion, these intuitions dropped the descriptor and added 'teacher'. This Teachers College Era ran from 1887 to 1962. Teachers Colleges peaked in the 1930s, with 112 such institutions. The mean year in which "Teachers" was added to an institution's name was 1928, with a standard deviation of 9.6 years. The final conversion to "teachers" happened in 1962 with what became University of Maine at Fort Kent.

The next era was the College Era, in which both Teachers and Normal disappeared. The mean year to drop Normal was 1931 while dropping Teacher was in 1953. The last 'normal' institution and 'teachers' college were only two years apart: University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff in 1972 and Emporia State University in 1974. At the same time as the transition from ‘normal’ to ‘teachers’, institutions began to upgrade themselves to colleges (rather than 'school' or 'institution'). The mean year 'college' was added was in 1928, with the latest year in 1983, and a standard deviation of 16.5 years. This era peaked in the 1940s with 167 such ‘colleges’ of any naming variety.
Finally, the University Era has been defined as dropping college and adding ‘university’ to the institutional name. While the first institution in the dataset to use ‘university’ dates back to 1857, the peak of the era is the 2020s with 184 such universities. The mean year in which institutions changed to ‘university’ was 1973, with the widest standard deviation of any era at 22.2 years and counting, as the latest institution to upgrade to ‘university’ only happened in 2022 with two universities in West Virginia.

Contribution
In terms of policy diffusion, each of these eras saw specific patterns of adoption that varied by region. Innovators in the Normal Era were Northeast states like Massachusetts and New York, with Western and Southern states adopting these institutions later. For the College Era, early adopters were Southern states, often in relation to converting historically black institutions to colleges. Finally, the University Era saw New York and Ohio as innovators in the 1930s and 1940s. The explosive phase of this era occurred from the 1950s until the 1970s, with late adaptors in New England, Mountain West, and Pacific regions as laggards from the 1980s onwards.

The sector is at the forefront of a new era with the "Digital Society", changing economics, and shifting demographics. Online providers have eaten into smaller and rural college recruitment pools, including a portion of the former normal institutions, leading to closures or mergers. For instance, Pennsylvania could be labeled an early adopter of this potential Merger Era with the recent merging of three former normal institutions into PennWest University. Looking at the diffusion of mergers in this "Digital Society" should be the next stage of research on the former normal institutions, along with connecting these US trends to the state of normal institutions around the world.

References removed in accordance with CIES guidelines.

Author

• Ryan Allen, Soka University of America