French Influence in American Institutions of Higher Learning, 1784-1825

Abstract

DURING A PERIOD of several decades before and after the American Revolution, France played an influential if not formative role in numerous attempts to create a new American higher learning. After independence, the English college model, dominant for well over a century, no longer inspired or satisfied a small but influential group who demanded republican form and content in higher education as in government. It was to France, the protector of the revolution, that these leading Americans looked for a continuation of inspiration and example in their attempts to found institutions of higher education befitting, to use Seymour Lipset's term, the first new nation. The story of French influence has received small attention from educational historians, especially in contrast to the extensive study invested in English and German educational influence. Perhaps the reason for this situation-in addition to the rank order of influence-is because of the several types of attempted borrowing involved. French influence was inspirational, philosophical and concerned the importation of ideas in a cultural-political context. It represented a brief yet intense symbiotic ideological embrace. Also, the political nature of the French contribution made it highly vulnerable to changes in time and space. It did not leave general types of institutions as did the English