American Higher Ed Never Figured Out Its Purpose

"A young man, not quite 18, entered Williams College in the fall of 1869. His study plans for the next four years were made for him. As Edward A. Birge wrote in The Atlantic 40 years later, in 1909, "The college offered a simple, homogeneous course of study," which each student was bound to follow. It began with classical languages and extended to history, mathematics, and lectures in the basic sciences."

"Eliot was at the start of a 40-year tenure dedicated to making higher education's training more practical, its gains more tangible. Students, he believed, needed more than culture; they needed the foundations for a career. As he'd written in The Atlantic earlier in 1869, it was the institution's job to "convert the boy of fair abilities and intentions into an observant, judicious man," ready to "rise rapidly through the grades of employment.""

A young man entered Williams College in the fall of 1869 and followed a prescribed, homogeneous curriculum centered on classical languages, history, mathematics, and basic sciences. The program emphasized composition and rhetoric, including handwritten essays and public orations, and aimed at intangible intellectual gains and cultural formation rather than vocational training. About 110 miles east, Charles W. Eliot became Harvard's youngest president in 1869 and spent forty years reshaping higher education toward practicality and career preparation. Eliot sought to convert capable youths into observant, judicious men prepared for rapid advancement in employment. The modern American university emerged from tensions among cultural formation, work preparation, and academic research, producing a hybrid institution with unresolved priorities.

Read at The Atlantic