An Affair to Remember: America's Brief Fling with the University as a Public Good

Abstract

American higher education rose to fame and fortune during the Cold War, when both student enrollments and funded research shot upward. Prior to World War II, the federal government showed little interest in universities and provided little support. The war spurred a large investment in defence‐based scientific research in universities, and the emergence of the Cold War expanded federal investment exponentially. Unlike a hot war, the Cold War offered an extended period of federally funded research public subsidy for expanding student enrollments. The result was the golden age of the American university. The good times continued for about 30 years and then began to go bad. The decline was triggered by the combination of a decline in the perceived Soviet threat and a taxpayer revolt against high public spending; both trends culminating with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. With no money and no enemy, the Cold War university fell as quickly as it arose. Instead of seeing the Cold War university as the norm, we need to think of it as the exception. What we are experiencing now in American higher education is a regression to the mean, in which, over the long haul, Americans have understood higher education to be a distinctly private good.

Sport management education in an era of global neoliberalism and corporate influence on higher education

“…Bill of Rights, which essentially allowed for those veterans to attend the university of their choice at little or no expense. By 1948, two million former service people were in college, doubling the student population of just a decade earlier (Labaree, 2016).…”

“…First, billions of dollars of government funding sustained university research in support of the war effort. Furthermore, there was a drastic need for educated individuals who could work in sectors that would help compete with the U.S.S.R.’s emerging technology and weapons development (Labaree, 2016). Additionally, the fight against communism included providing wide access to higher education as a propaganda mechanism against the perceived Soviet menace.…”

“…And we needed to provide educational opportunity for our own racial minorities and lower classes in order to show that our system is not only effective but also fair and equitable. This would be a powerful weapon in the effort to win over the third world with the attractions of the American Way (Labaree, 2016: 29)”.…”

Good Faith and Trustworthiness in University Governance

“…The notion that universities have detached from their historical moorings is an idealisation that ignores the actual history of universities. The state has always used universities for its own purposes, and vocational training has been a part of this (Jencks and Reisman, 1968;Kerr, 1963;Labarre, 2016;Niblett, 1974;Whitehead, 1929). As Readings (1996) points out, even Kant (1970) thought it the duty of the university to provide technicians for the state, and the duty of the state to intervene to ensure that those students maintained a focus on service to the state.…”

Special Issue Introduction: What is the Good University?

“…Okanagan School of Education, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia As higher education continues to internationalize, and as the state continues to disinvest from the funding of post-compulsory institutions, the question of how best to understand the educational mission of colleges and universities has become contentious. The post-WW2 expansion of higher education was driven by the view that it could serve as both a valuable gateway to upward social mobility and as public good (Labaree, 2016;Trow, 2007). As the public costs of higher education have appeared to outpace its economic return, however, public intellectuals, scholars, and policy-makers have endeavored to disentangle the values and aims of higher education from the economic policies that drove its rapid growth.…”