Higher education and its various institutional configurations in the United States has grown and changed alongside social, economic, political, and cultural demands, resulting in the creation of varied institution types that represent specific national agendas and the greater historical context. From 1946 to 2016 higher education was called to educate more citizens to save democracy, train workers to adapt to changing market demands, create commodities demanded by a knowledge-based economy, and prepare future leaders in an interconnected, increasingly globalized, world community (Palmadessa, 2017b). The historical limits of this study are vital to the primary focus of this study: 1946 represents the year the Truman Commission issued its report, Higher Education for American Democracy, in which the presidential agenda to increase access to higher education to save American idealism included an increase in the number of community colleges to meet the influx of students; 2016 marks the final year of President Obamaâs administration. The research question I seek to answer in this study is, from 1946 to 2016, how do presidential agendasâ varied expectations of four- and two-year public institutions reflect a greater social disparity among graduates of the respective institution types?
Policy initiatives and presidential agendas from 1946 to 2016 that promote access to higher education are ultimately positive changes and goals. However, in these agendas and initiatives, there is a reproduction of ideological practices that ultimately perpetuate inequality and the tertiary structure of American higher education. The prescribed variations of their role in the United States as defined by presidential agendas and initiatives (Palmadessa, 2017b) represent that inequality. To understand how presidential administrations and initiatives call upon tertiary higher education to respond to national needs differently based upon their position in the hierarchy of institutions and thus reproduce social inequality, I approach the analysis of presidential speeches and initiatives from a human capitalist, economic competition, and conflict lens, and critically analyze the text using methods of critical discourse analysis (CDA ).
Review of the Literature
Higher educationâs purpose and relationship to the nation-state has changed and developed over the course of the institutionâs history, particularly in relation to developments in the nation as a whole (Palmadessa, 2017b). As states formed after the Revolution, universities were formed to teach patriots to be leaders (Geiger, 2005). During the formative years of the nineteenth century, the United States expanded and consolidated power, just as the universities were expanded and consolidated (Duryea, 2000). With the dawn of the Second Industrial Revolution after the Civil War, land-grant colleges were founded; at the turn of the twentieth century to the period of the Great War, curriculums were vocationalized to support industrial and agricultural growth in the United States. Although these developments and transformations in both American society and higher education profoundly impacted the future of higher education, none were as great as those following the Second World War (Geiger, 2005).
Universities in Twentieth-Century America
The most tumultuous period in higher education history was the period following the Second World War to the 1970s. There were unprecedented demands for enrollment (Geiger, 2005) as well as great debate over the proper direction of higher education: to maintain an academic haven, become a tool for economic growth, or to be a means for social transformation (Newson & Buchbinder, 1988; Schugurensky, 2006). After the Servicemanâs Readjustment Act of 1944 (GI Bill) passed, enrollment surged and institutions adapted to meet the demand for not simply physical space but programs that the students desired. These programs ultimately benefitted the post-War nation, supporting many technological advancements made during the war and bringing the social issues that emerged to the forefront of concern. In the 1950s, however, there was a slight decline in enrollment, only to be recovered when the baby boom generation reached college age in the 1960s (Geiger, 2005; Thelin, 2011).
The 1960s saw dramatic changes on college campuses as the nation was engulfed in the Cold War. After Sputnik in 1957, the federal government bolstered financial support for research in higher education through the National Defense Education Act of 1958 to maintain status as a leader in technology. Although federal support for research in universities was welcomed and needed, the students of the 1960s did not agree that this was in fact a benefit to the social institution. Rather, the students of the 1960s called for socially oriented research, research that offered a means to an end to social injustices in the United States and abroad. Efforts were made by the nation to support access through the Higher Education Act of 1965 that provided need-based funding for students, but this only addressed one issue. The students demanded that research agendas and subsequent funding changed as they argued that supporting technological dominance was not wholly beneficial to society; higher education and the national government responded, albeit not in the favor of the students (Geiger, 2005).
As enrollment patterns changed and students became vocal about their wishes for the purpose and future of higher education, debates ensued within the halls of academe as to the appropriate course for the future of the institutionâa debate that was well underway in the post-War era and continued to the later decades of the twentieth century, coming to a pivotal transformation in the 1990s. The themes of academic haven, economic growth, and social transformation as missions of the university were favored and contested by scholars across the second half of the twentieth century (Schugurensky, 2006).
The academic haven was supported by scholars who were critical of the changes in higher education to meet external demands as they âargued that the academic and moral integrity of Western higher education was being eroded by the pursuit of utilitarian aims, by the politicization of knowledge, by massive expansion, and by the lowering of standardsâ (Schugurensky, 2006, p. 303). To alleviate or save the university from such a fate, scholars called for increased autonomy and support of academic freedom to assist the university in avoiding external pressures. Critics suggested raising standards, lowering enrollments, eliminating vocational educational programs, and ceasing community involvement to address this issue (Schugurensky, 2006; see also Bloom, 1987; DâSouza, 1991; Hutchins, 1944).
The second vision, universities serving for economic growth, was inspired by early human capital theory (Schultz, 1961). In this version of purpose, the university is to focus on technical programs to support knowledge industries. To meet this demand, universities must increase enrollment, work with industry, add more vocational programs, and implement business practices in governance and functions of the institution (Schugurensky, 2006).
Finally, the third competing vision synonymous with the calls set forth by students in the late 1960s and early 1970s is that of the university as a tool for social transformation. Supporters, influenced by works such as those by Freire (1967, 1970) and Illich (1971), argued that âuniversities have an obligation to contribute not only to the equalization of educational opportunities but also to collective projects that promote social and environmental justice and ultimately alter existing social, economic, and political relationshipsâ (Schugurensky, 2006, p. 303). For this goal to be attained, students needed to be subjects not objects of learning, and the âgulf between mental and manual work (and thereby the stratified social relations that derive from the division of labor) and the integration of theoretical and practical knowledgeâ must be reduced through a focus on socially relevant research that would lead to social transformation (Schugurensky, 2006, p. 304).
These competing visions from the 1940s to the 1980s were not simply a discussion; these ideas influenced actors within the universities to work toward one of the proposed goals, thus establishing values and missions for the universities. These values and missions were then realized in social practices, materializing their impact through human agency. Even as impactful as each of the competing visions was over the course of 40 years, by the 1980s a fourth vision emerged, that of the service university. The service university is an enterprise that comprises entrepreneurial academics crafting commodifiable knowledge. Throughout the 1980s it was debated as to whether or not this was a positive or negative position for universities; by the 1990s, it was overwhelmingly publicly considered the appropriate vision for universities in the United States (Schugurensky, 2006).
As a result of the emergence of the service university in the 1980s, and the support of academic capitalism as a means to fund higher education, the entrepreneurial university of the 1990s was established (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997). Although this transition to academic capitalist efforts were state supported, and often institutionally supported, this description of the university only partially addresses the transformative issues facing higher education as it prepared for the twenty-first century (Schugurensky, 2006).
The University and Am...