Publisher description

After World War II, returning veterans with GI Bill benefits ushered in an era of unprecedented growth that fundamentally altered the meaning, purpose, and structure of higher education. This volume explores the multifaceted and tumultuous transformation of American higher education that occurred between 1945 and 1970, while examining the changes in institutional forms, curricula, clientele, faculty, and governance. A wide range of well-known contributors cover topics such as the first public university to explicitly serve an urban population, the creation of modern day honors programs, how teachers’ colleges were repurposed as state colleges, the origins of faculty unionism and collective bargaining, and the dramatic student protests that forever changed higher education. This engaging text explores a critical moment in the history of higher education, signaling a shift in the meaning of a college education, the concept of who should and who could obtain access to college, and what should be taught.

Since the mid-twentieth century, the United States has seen a striking shift in the gender dynamics of higher educational attainment as women have come to earn college degrees at higher rates than men. Women have also made significant strides in terms of socioeconomic status and political engagement. What explains the progress that American women have made since the 1960s? While many point to the feminist movement as the critical turning point, this book makes the case that women's movement toward first class citizenship has been shaped not only by important societal changes, but also by the actions of lawmakers who used a combination of redistributive and regulatory higher education policies to enhance women's incorporation into their roles as American citizens. Examining the development and impact of the National Defense Education Act of 1958, the Higher Education Act of 1965, and Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments, Deondra Rose in Citizens By Degree argues that higher education policies represent a crucial-though largely overlooked-factor shaping the progress that women have made. By significantly expanding women's access to college, they helped to pave the way for women to surpass men as the recipients of bachelor's degrees, while also empowering them to become more economically independent, socially integrated, politically engaged members of the American citizenry. In addition to helping to bring into greater focus our understanding of how Southern Democrats shaped U.S. social policy development during the mid-twentieth century, Rose's analysis recognizes federal higher education policy as an indispensible component of the American welfare state.

This edited collection illustrates the way in which women’s experiences of academe could be both contextually diverse but historically and culturally similar. It looks at both the micro (individual women and universities) and macro-level (comparative analyses among regions and countries) within regional, national, trans-national, and international contexts. The contributors integrally advance knowledge about the university in history by exploring the intersections of the lived experiences of women students and professors, practices of co-education, and intellectual and academic cultures. They also raise important questions about the complementary and multidirectional flow and exchange of academic knowledge and information among gender groups across programmes, disciplines, and universities. Historical inquiry and interpretation serve as efficacious ways with which to understand contemporary events and discourses in higher education, and more broadly in community and society. This book will provide important historical contexts for current debates about the numerical dominance and significance of women in higher education, and the tensions embedded in the gendering of specific academic programs and disciplines, and university policies, missions, and mandates.

A masterful history of the postwar transformation of American higher education In the decades after World War II, as government and social support surged and enrollments exploded, the role of colleges and universities in American society changed dramatically. Roger Geiger provides an in-depth history of this remarkable transformation, taking readers from the GI Bill and the postwar expansion of higher education to the social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, desegregation and coeducation, and the ascendancy of the modern research university. He demonstrates how growth has been the defining feature of modern higher education, but how each generation since the war has pursued it for different reasons. Sweeping in scope and richly insightful, this groundbreaking book provides the context we need to understand the complex issues facing our colleges and universities today, from rising inequality and skyrocketing costs to deficiencies in student preparedness and lax educational standards.

Women, Education, and Agency 1600-2000 explores a range of topics on the history of women in eductational settings around the world, from the strategies of individuals seeking a personal education, to organized efforts of women to pursue broader feminist goals in an educational context.

This book explores women's organizations and their various educational contributions through local, state, and national networks from 1890 to 1960. Contributors investigate how women united to support and sustain education in both formal and informal settings, and examine various associations.

The American Educational History Journal is a peer?reviewed, national research journal devoted to the examination of educational topics using perspectives from a variety of disciplines. The editors of AEHJ encourage communication between scholars from numerous disciplines, nationalities, institutions, and backgrounds. Authors come from a variety of disciplines including political science, curriculum, history, philosophy, teacher education, and educational leadership. Acceptance for publication in AEHJ requires that each author present a well?articulated argument that deals substantively with questions of educational history.

An incisive, comparative study of the development of Post–World War II progressive politics in the United States, Britain, and France After the end of World War II, Britain, France, and the United States were faced with two very different choices: return to the civic order of pre-war normalcy or embark instead on a path of progressive transformation. In this ambitious and original work, Isser Woloch assesses the progressive agendas that crystalized in each of the three allied democracies, tracing their roots in the interwar decades, their development during wartime, the struggles to establish them after the war’s end, and the mixed outcome in each country. A fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Woloch is a highly regarded scholar who adds the United States to a discussion that is usually focused solely on Europe. His enlightening work successfully argues that the postwar moment deserves a more prominent place in the history of progressive politics.