Colleges: For What Purposes?

Abstract

Y I OUCH, perhaps altogether too much, has been spoken and written in general terms as to what higher should accomplish for students and for society in which they are expected to serve. But these books and articles contain deplorably little regarding specific analyses and realistic evaluations of post-secondary education. Like great religions, endowed and publicly supported systems of American higher have developed largely on faiths, which are popular and philanthropic, as well as professional. Hence, it is natural that probably nine-tenths of all published papers on the purposes of college education are essentially aspirational. It is purpose of present paper to discuss some problems involved in a realistically functional analysis of practicable objectives of American post-secondary or, in widest use of word, collegiate education. Such an analysis seems especially important at this juncture because, in estimation of writer, attendance in American college is destined to increase for many years, at a rate from three to four times as great as rates of population increase. Many influential educational leaders hold inadequate and faulty theories regarding diversity of social uses to be served by multiplying varieties of higher education; and not a few of proposals now being actively considered by educational policy-makers toward improving procedures and results of such rest on untested and probably invalid assumptions. Of million or more young men and women now attending America's post-secondary or higher institutions of learning, what proportion have come or have been sent to prepare for higher vocations? What proportion have come with some actual love learning for its own sake? What proportion have been sent by parents who desire social prestige? And, what proportion have come to have a good time? How far does confusion of purposes in educational