Social Science Research and Higher Education

Abstract

What aspects of higher education are legitimate fields for social science research? The obvious answer is to be found in a listing of the perennial problems with which educators contend. These include rising enrollments, budget, physical facilities, salaries and quality of teaching personnel, public and alumni relations, and student performance and conduct. Special aspects of these rise to particular prominence from time to time in such issues as athletic policy, institutional in-fighting, and investigations of one sort or another. The fact must be faced, however, that institutions of higher learning are subject to the same dynamic processes as other human groupings. They are capable of continued growth and proliferation and make demands upon their environment for support beyond the willingness or capacity of the environment to meet such demands. The total situation is little different from the military about which Secretary Forrestal once made the remark that if it were in their capacities and the public...