Perspectives on the History of Higher Education

Volume 26, 2007

Roger L. Geiger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351500012
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This volume of Perspectives opens with two contrasting perspectives on the purpose of higher education at the dawning of the university age-perspectives that continue to define the debate today. A. J. Angulo recreates the controversy surrounding the founding and early years of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Whether presented as an alternative to or a repudiation of the prevailing classical liberal education, MIT was rejected as inherently inferior by college defenders. George Levesque offers a penetrating reappraisal of Yale president Noah Porter (1870-1886). Known almost solely for his role as a college defender, Porter is revealed as a vigorous scholar who became fixated with preserving the strengths of Yale College. As these matters were vigorously debated during these years, Porter's position was superseded by more powerful forces.

Noah Porter Revisited

George Levesque

This article reexamines the educational leadership of Noah Porter (1811-1892), moral philosopher and president of Yale College from 1871 to 1886. During an age of tremendous expansion in higher education, Porter resisted the rise of the new research university, claiming that an eager embrace of its ideals would corrupt undergraduate education. Many of Porter’s contemporaries criticized his administration, and historians since have disparaged his leadership, but I offer a different interpretation. I argue that he was not a simple-minded reactionary, uncritically committed to tradition, but a principled and selective conservative. He did not endorse everything old or reject everything new; rather, he sought to apply long-established ethical and pedagogical principles to a rapidly changing culture. He may have misunderstood some of the challenges of his time, but I argue that he correctly anticipated the enduring tensions that have accompanied the emergence and growth of the modern university.

Introduction

Few figures were more prominent in American higher education in the second half of the nineteenth century than Noah Porter (1811-1892). He was one of the leading moral philosophers of his era and an American pioneer in the modern study of psychology. He published over two hundred articles and twenty books, including several college textbooks that were widely used throughout the country. He was at the forefront of American graduate education and supervised one of the first Ph.D. dissertations in the United States.¹ For over twenty-five years, he was the general editor of Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language and produced the first edition of its International Dictionary. Most notably, he served as president of Yale College for fifteen years, from 1871 to 1886, when it was one of the largest colleges in the country with arguably the greatest national influence.²

Despite Porter’s prominence in his day, he is an obscure figure in ours. Few scholars have devoted significant attention to him, and though many general histories of higher education mention Porter in passing, they provide few details about the man or his ideas. Moreover, the brief accounts that we do have of Porter are strikingly one-dimensional and unfavorable. As Yale historian George Pierson once commented on the state of Porter scholarship, “so much has been said against Porter that it is not easy to return to the mood of his times and do justice to the man or his policies.”³

Pierson himself did little to repair Porter’s reputation. In his two-volume, 1500-page history of Yale from 1871 to 1937, which begins with Porter’s presidency, Pierson devotes only eight pages to Porter, whose role in the narrative is merely to demonstrate how far Yale would progress in the next sixty years.⁴ The most memorable part of Pierson’s brief account is, fittingly, a footnote citing a legendary conversation a few years after Porter’s death between John D. Rockefeller and Anson Phelps Stokes, the longtime Secretary of Yale. Rockefeller noted the disparity between the endowments at Harvard and Yale and asked Stokes to explain the difference. Stokes replied simply: “Noah Porter writ large.”⁵ The statement served as a summary of Porter’s presidency, and opinions of him have scarcely improved since.

Given Porter’s distinguished career, why have so many of his successors disregarded him, and why have so many historians ignored him? If he failed as an educational leader, what happened? If he was misunderstood, why? Why has it been so hard, in Pierson’s words, to “do justice to the man or his policies”?

At least one answer is historical accident. Porter was a conservative president during a period of great change in American higher education. Although he was an accomplished scholar and supported some aspects of the rise of the modern university, he was essentially a traditional-ist and strongly defended classical collegiate education, especially to the degree that it transmitted Hellenistic ideals and Christian virtues. Caught between a generation of charismatic college presidents in the early decades of the nineteenth century and entrepreneurial university leaders at the end of the century—that is, between the age of the college and the age of the university—Porter fades unremarkably into the background. As Yale historian Brooks Mather Kelley comments wistfully, “Porter’s presidency cannot be viewed without a feeling of sadness: sadness that for fifteen years of a period of enormous change in America’s colleges and universities, Yale was run by a man who was opposed to change; sadness for Porter, who was the wrong man at the wrong time.”⁶

Another reason for the neglect and one-dimensional portrait of Porter is historiographical. The modern historical study of higher education accelerated during the 1950s and 1960s, just as the American research university had risen to unforeseen heights and inherited even higher expectations. Post-war exuberance had faded into Cold War fears, and American universities, bursting with new students and benefiting from increased government funding, were recruited to protect not only American culture but also, it seemed, world civilization. As custodians of timeless truths and centers for scientific research, universities were critical allies in the march of progress. University expansion was virtually synonymous with freedom and democracy, and whatever or whoever opposed the rise of the research university stood on the wrong side of history.

In light of this epic battle, it is not surprising that Porter’s criticisms of the modern university were not favorably reported. At a time when empirical data reigned supreme, the quantitative results of Porter’s presidency failed to impress. When Porter took office in 1871, Yale was the leading center of graduate education in the United States, having granted the first Ph.D. in the United States ten years earlier. During Porter’s fifteen-year presidency, however, enrollment in Yale’s graduate school and the number of doctoral degrees conferred remained static and even declined in some years.⁷ Instead of building its reputation and expanding its programs, Yale seemingly ceded its leadership to an upstart university, Johns Hopkins (founded only in 1876), as the “premier Ph.D. mill” in the country.⁸ If the production of doctoral degrees served as the benchmark of scholarly reputation, Yale had lost its competitive edge, and it naturally followed that Porter was to blame. The interpretation of Porter that emerged was that he was, at best, a well-intentioned but old-fashioned leader; at worst, he was to blame for all that was wrong with Yale and the emblem of what was generally wrong with traditional colleges.⁹ Consequently, Porter has been largely forgotten or dismissed as a failure. He is, in short, not only lost in history, but also one of the losers in history.

In the last few decades, however, a new generation of historians has provided a more complex account of the history of higher education.¹⁰ They recognized that the new research universities played a critically important role in the evolution of American higher education, and that the historians who wrote about them set new standards in the field of educational history, but they argued that the standard narratives told only part of the story. Several scholars, for example, have demonstrated that many of the antebellum colleges were not elitist institutions, but were instead deeply engaged in the local and practical needs of their communities.¹¹ Others have argued that some of the college leaders who defended the classical curriculum did so on grounds other than tradition, expediency, or economy.¹² In short, these revisionist historians demonstrated that traditional colleges were remarkably resilient and successfully met needs that the new universities either ignored or were incapable of serving.¹³

Despite the significant contributions of these historians, however, the picture is still far from complete. Many of their conclusions emerged from relatively narrow studies of small colleges that the traditional narratives had largely neglected or dismissed. The revisionists emphasized the innovative ways that these colleges responded to surrounding needs and remained vital institutions, but with few exceptions they did not reconsider what took place at the larger urban universities. They consequently overlooked some of the educational leaders at larger institutions, like Porter, who recognized the strengths and weaknesses of the traditional colleges and the emerging university. As Roger Geiger has noted, many of the revisionists were relatively silent about some of the ways that colleges failed to address real problems that historians such as Hofstadter, Metzger, and Veysey “may have overemphasized but did not wholly invent.”¹⁴ Even in light of revisionist scholarship, therefore, Porter remains largely unknown and widely misunderstood.¹⁵

So the question remains: why did Porter resist the rise of the modern research university during an age of great university expansion? He was a very active scholar and one of the founding faculty members of Yale’s graduate school, the first of its kind in the country. When he became president, Yale was one of the largest and wealthiest colleges in the country, a leader in science and graduate education, and well-poised to lead the nation as a research university. Yet he criticized much of the ethos of the modern university and held firmly to many traditional values of the college system for undergraduate education. Why?

The standard answer is that Porter was a simple-minded reactionary, inflexibly wedded to old ways and unable to consider new ideas. I argue, however, that he was a principled and selective conservative, critically connected to the world around him. He vigorously defended traditional collegiate education and opposed some of the tendencies of modern universities, but he neither embraced all that was old nor rejected all that was new. Rather, he sought to engage the world around him by applying enduring ethical and pedagogical principles to a rapidly changing culture. He was no simple-minded conserver of tradition but a thoughtful and reflective leader who addressed the moral challenges of his times.

A more nuanced interpretation of Porter emerges if we consider his ideas and public leadership within both a broad historical context and a specific personal narrative. Porter was the son of a Puritan preacher and a conservative Congregationalist minister before he began his professional career as a philosopher, professor, and college president. For him, the pursuit of knowledge was like the worship of God: it leads to the joy and awe of encountering the Creator of all things. But if it was a sacred activity, it was also a dangerous activity; like false religion, false knowledge is idolatrous and self-destructive. Education was serious business for Porter, and his concerns about modern trends in American higher education reflected his much greater and more comprehensive concerns about modernity and society at large. We cannot understand Porter’s ideas apart from the broader cultural traditions he inherited and engaged; nor can we understand his leadership apart from the distinctive institutions, relationships, convictions, and conflicts that shaped his thinking and personality across a lifetime.¹⁶

Early Education and Pastoral Training

Religion and education were profoundly important and interdependent in Porter’s life from a very early age. He descended from a long line of Connecticut ministers and civic leaders, and his ancestors were among the first generation of Puritan English Dissenters who ventured to the new world in the 1630s. His father, Noah Porter Sr., was a Yale graduate (Class of 1803) and a well-known minister. As was common for New England ministers, often the best-educated citizens of their town, Porter Sr. maintained an extensive collection of books, including theological works, classical authors, and contemporary political and philosophical writings. The Porter parsonage was therefore a frequent gathering place for conversation on a variety of topics and a common destination for distinguished visitors.¹⁷ In typical Puritan fashion, lessons from home, church, and school had continually intersected and overlapped in Porter’s childhood, and by the time he was ready to go to Yale, he had already benefited from many profound educational opportunities. He had also come to view the world around him, in all its complex beauty, as the harmonious and creative expression of an infinitely powerful God. Such harmony presumed a hierarchy, a proper order of things. God was sovereign, and he governed his universe through human deputies—such as parents, pastors, and teachers—whose authority was trustworthy and benevolent, however imperfect. Grounded in these convictions, sixteen-year-old Noah Porter left for college in New Haven. He did so knowing that he was not so much leaving home as entering the influence of an allied authority: Mother Yale.

The New Haven and Yale that welcomed Porter in October 1827 had grown significantly since his father’s day only thirty years earlier, but the course of study that Porter followed was largely the same as that followed by generations of Yale students before him. The curriculum for the first three years was devoted to foundational studies (classical languages, ancient literature, and mathematics) and the senior year to metaphysical studies (theology and ethics). By the 1820s, the faculty had admitted a few “modern” subjects, such as English grammar, geography, and modern languages, and they now included a broader range of natural science, but these courses constituted a very small part of the curriculum, or were offered only as electives.

This stable and seemingly timeless routine could not, however, hide the financial and curricular crisis that was erupting on campus just as Porter arrived. Despite Yale’s size and other successes, the college was nearly bankrupt. The Yale Corporation—the college’s board of trustees—had invested heavily in the Eagle Bank of New Haven, which collapsed in 1825. The impact on Yale was devastating. In addition to lost endowment, the college forfeited $21,000 in operating expenses, leaving the college with $1,800 in cash and debts that exceeded $19,000.^18...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• The Initial Reception of MIT, 1860s-1880s
• Noah Porter Revisited
• For Education and Employment: The American Federation of Teachers and Academic Freedom, 1926-1941
• Conservatism Goes to College: The Role of Philanthropic Foundations in the Rise of Conservative Student Networks
• Nicholas Murray Butler, James McKeen Cattell, and the Educational Review: Footnote to a Famous Feud
• Selected Recent Dissertations in the History of Higher Education
• Contributors