"Unutterably Vicious and Evil": Resistance to Higher Education Reform, 1908–1930

• In Event: Reassessing the History of Education Policy, Reform, and Philanthropy

Abstract

In the first three decades of the 20th century, a powerful and well-funded cohort of reformers associated with philanthropic foundations and elite universities attempted to reshape the form and function of American higher education. They were largely unsuccessful, partially due to the "bottom-up" efforts of diffuse but effective opponents. This paper, based on extensive new archival research, examines the "counter-reformation" in higher education with a focus on six areas of resistance: religious partisans, proponents of local control, college professors, journalists, defenders of small colleges, and defenders of historically Black colleges. These groups, which often overlapped, maintained loosely organized campaigns that ended the reformers’ attempts to standardize and stratify the American higher education system.

Author

• Ethan W. Ris, University of Nevada - Reno