Academic ‘Snow Queens’

We may have needed  a new model for more than 3 centuries. What’s the difference between this venture and the colonial colleges described in John Thelin’s book, “The History of American Higher Education” that later became known as Brown, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, William and Mary, and Princeton? There were ever present clear reminders of social class in these colonial colleges. Although tuition might be considered “reasonable” compared to today’s tuitions and the value of today’s dollar, only the very wealthy could even consider one year of college tuition. Other reminders included the fact that College roles listed students not alphabetically but by family rank, and the length of academic robes identified students’ social class. Thelin suggests that by 1750, although the colleges publically stated that their purpose was to educate students for the improvement of society and the church, the real purpose was to indentify, ratify, and perpetuate an elite class that would inherit postitions of influence.This real purpose was the purpose quoted to perspective wealthly donors that wanted to make sure their children would remain at the pinnicale of society. Colonial colleges were viewed as insurance policies guaranteeing that these favored young men would acquire not only literacy, but also a sense of leadership and service. Thelin suggests that the worldview of these favored young men is obvious in an extraction from a diary written by one of them: “I am an aristocrat. I love liberty. I hate equality.”

In 1940, as a fifteen year old son of an illegal hispanic working man, I was tentatively rejected as an applicant to the University of Pennsylvania. Through family connections, I was tested for admission and accepted, but it was then a men’s college in which one strove for no more than a “gentlemen’s D”. I certainly looked eighteen, but no one spoke to me for the entire year other than my astonishingly wonderful adviser, Dr.Cowan  of the philosophy and law schools. He gave me no limit to his time and thoughtful attention. Each class is somehow memorable even these many years later. 
 It was the Philadelphia weather that one year that drove me off to California where little up through and past the Phd ever seemed to matter  as much as that freshman year. I do believe that the education offered was wasted on those young men who seemed there just to impress each other with their astonishing clothes and family connections.  I’m probably wrong.  I  suspect that the GI Bill went a long way toward democratizing colleges but eliminating the “irrelevant humanities.”I don’t think that the colleges are the only place to teach the humanities.  Something like TV’s Archie Bunker carried a few steps further could go a long way to whetting appetites for the humanities.  I hope that some unemployed academics, through the media,may be driven to try their hands at showing the utility of the humanities in ethical choices or….. 

If Grayling et al. had the courage of their convictions, they would found an alternative university (or even just a university college) rather than a crammer. Eskort Bayan