Deans of Men and the Shaping of Modern College Culture

226 Pages·2010·1.463 MB·English

by  Robert Schwartz (auth.)

Deans of Men and the Shaping of
Modern College Culture
HIGHER EDUCATION & SOCIETY
Series Editors:
Roger L. Geiger, Distinguished Professor of Education, Pennsylvania State
University
Katherine Reynolds Chaddock, Professor of Higher Education Admini -
stration, University of South Carolina
This series explores the diverse intellectual dimensions, social themes, cul-
tural contexts, and pressing political issues related to higher education. From
the history of higher ed. to heated contemporary debates, topics in this field
range from issues in equity, matriculation, class representation, and current
educational Federal Acts, to concerns with gender and pedagogy, new media
and technology, and the challenges of globalization. In this way, the se-
ries aims to highlight theories, historical developments, and contemporary
endeavors that prompt critical thought and reflective action in how higher
education is conceptualized and practiced in and beyond the United States.
Liberal Education for a Land of Colleges: Yale’s “Reports” of 1828
By David B. Potts
Deans of Men and the Shaping of Modern College Culture
By Robert Schwartz
Deans of Men and the
Shaping of Modern
College Culture
Robert Schwartz
DEANS OF MEN AND THE SHAPING OF MODERN COLLEGE CULTURE
Copyright © Robert Schwartz, 2010.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-62258-6
All rights reserved.
First published in 2010 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-38420-4 ISBN 978-0-230-11464-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230114647
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schwartz, Robert, 1950 Dec. 30–
Deans of men and the shaping of modern college culture / Robert
Schwartz.
p. cm.—(Higher education & society)

1. Deans (Education) 2. College department heads. 3. Universities
and colleges—Administration. I. Title.
LB2341.S316 2010
378.1(cid:2)11—dc22 2010020953
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: November 2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Images vii
1 The Rise and Demise of Deans of Men:
A Historical Perspective 1
2 The Pioneer: Thomas Arkle Clark, Dean of Deans 21
3 The Paternalists 47
4 The Academics: Early Deans in the Liberal Arts Colleges 79
5 Francis F. Bradshaw: A Southern Student
Personnel Pioneer 97
6 A Modern Dean: Fred Turner 113
7 A Brief Treatise on the Deans of Women 141
8 The Demise of the Deans of Men and the Rise
of the Deans of Students 175
9 A Retrospective Epilogue 189
Notes 199
Index 221
This page intentionally left blank
Images
Cover: Reprinted from secretarial notes: Nineteenth Annual Conference
of the National Association of Deans and Advisors of Men, with permis-
sion of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators,
Inc., www.NASPA.org.
Image 1 Thomas Arkle Clark, Professor of English
(1893–99) and dean of undergraduates (1901–1909) and
men (1909–31) 21
Image 2 Scott Goodnight 47
Image 3 Francis F. Bradshaw, Dean at the University of
North Carolina-Chapel Hill from the early 1920s
through the 1940s 97
Image 4 Fred Turner 113
1
The Rise and Demise of
Deans of Men: A Historical
Perspective
I
n the late 1800s, in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states, industri-
alization was expanding, dependence on farming as a primary vocation
was ebbing, and education was emerging as a new route to success.
Not surprisingly, college enrollments began to climb upward. Eager
young men and an increasing number of young women saw college as
a means to opportunity and success. At the same time, greater access
to a college education was encouraged by a steady increase in the
number of colleges. Public colleges and universities expanded quickly
after the Civil War.
Beginning in the 1860s, the opportunity to attend college in
America expanded geometrically in a relatively short time. As more
colleges were built, offering more students the chance to go to col-
lege, dreams of a life free from the drudgery of farming and other
physical labors spread rapidly among the younger generation of the
late 1800s.1 By the end of the 19th century, a new view of the future
was clear. A college degree promised a better life.
The expansion was due in large part to federal money made avail-
able via the Morrill Act of 1862, which allowed states to sell federal
land and use the money to construct state colleges. By 1890, a second
Morrill Act expanded the law to include additional agricultural and
mechanical institutions for the education of the newly freed slaves in
the post Civil War era.2
Justin Morrill had originally intended his bill to expand the science
of agriculture. Initially, agriculture was a primary feature of these
public universities. But many universities quickly expanded their
offerings far beyond agriculture. In 1870, President Charles Eliot of
Harvard introduced the elective system, and colleges and universities
2 Deans of Men and Modern College Culture
soon offered students choices in class offerings that made a higher
education more attractive than it had ever been before.3
The genius of Eliot’s move to the elective system was not in giv-
ing greater choice to enrolled students but in the marketing of a
college education for the recruitment of prospective students in the
future. College had thus far been viewed as years of drudgery—
recitation, memorization, and close supervision by faculty in often
rural, cloistered, single-sex institutions. Several years spent learning
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and other “dead” languages appealed to few
young men of the time. But as the promise of the elective system
grew beyond Harvard, the allure of a new kind of higher education
provided a powerful incentive for new students.
Beyond the public institutions created by the Morrill Acts and the
freedom of choosing one’s courses, huge infusions of capital from
wealthy industrialists such as Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Stanford, and
Rockefeller expanded the number of private colleges at the same
time. In pre-colonial America, private colleges had first been founded
by a disparate collection of religious groups to provide an unend-
ing supply of denominational ministers to advance each of the vari-
ous churches and to expand religious training in the New World.
However, after the Revolutionary War, the federal Supreme Court
had ruled for Dartmouth College in 1816 and established the right of
“eleemosynary” institutions such as private colleges to exist without
the threat of takeover by the states. Both an immediate and long-term
consequence of the Court’s decision was the proliferation of private
colleges.4 Both public and private higher education spread across the
country in concert with the westward migration throughout the 19th
century.
As enrollments increased, so did the demand for more adminis-
tration, especially for administrators who could oversee the rapidly
growing student presence on campus. Prior to the Civil War, the
small, “old time” colleges, as Rudolph called them, had found stu-
dent supervision a relatively straightforward matter.5 In small, rural
settings, moral strictures and the drudgery of college life—reading
and reciting Latin and Greek, attending to the quadrivium and triv-
ium of the curriculum—limited the attraction of college. College
presidents and a handful of faculty were able to manage the small
groups of young men. Colleges were seen as extensions of boarding
schools, with meals prepared under the supervision of the president’s
wife, minimal free time, and few extracurricular activities.6
But in the late 1800s, college presidents and faculty found them-
selves overwhelmed by students and underwhelmed by piety. As the