The Business of Education: Home Study at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin in the 1920s and 1930s

Abstract

Background Correspondence schools abounded in early 20th-century America. Several hundred for-profit vendors drew the vast majority of the annual enrollments, which peaked at one half million in the mid-1920s. Dozens of well-known universities created home study departments to expand their “extension” work. The handful of good studies of the origins of distance education falls short of what we need to understand this popular alternative to traditional schooling. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study In 1930, Abraham Flexner ridiculed home study at Columbia, and, to a lesser extent, Wisconsin and Chicago. His denunciation of the mercenary spirit of home study reverberates in contemporary discussions of the entrepreneurial aspirations of American universities. This article places the business practices of home study at Columbia and Wisconsin alongside the work of proprietary schools to see if Flexner's criticisms were accurate. Research Design The article compares the advertising, sales, and collection practices of Columbia, Wisconsin, and the for-profit outfits in the 1920s and 1930s. The archival sources for Columbia and Wisconsin include annual reports, financial statements, letters to and from the directors of home study, and other documents. For the private schools, the verbatim transcripts of the annual meetings of their trade association are especially valuable. Conclusions Flexner's critique is misleading. Columbia avoided the excesses that swelled the income and marred the reputations of many for-profit schools. Wisconsin did even more to distance itself from the proprietary firms. The article ends with ruminations on the options available to universities when they undertake work in a field dominated by the private sector.