Southern Higher Education Research Articles

Religion and Higher Education in the American South: Introduction to the Special Issue

This is an introduction to the special issue on religion and higher education in the American South. This special issue features five research articles and a book review that provide telling details about the role religion has played and continues to play in Southern higher education.

Estimation of optimum supply of shared cars based on personal travel behaviors in condition of minimum energy consumption

This study developed a method to determine the optimum supply of shared cars according to personal travel behaviors in the condition of minimum energy consumption. We applied the method in Southern Higher Education Zone (SHEZ) of Ningbo based on the survey data of personal travel behaviors in the region. Solutions in the case of minimum energy consumption encourage more shared-car trips, less private-car trips, and mass-transit trips. Total of 111 kJ of energy could be saved by each student from the actual case to minimum energy case. In SHEZ, 76 shared cars are recommended to provide an optimal supply of shared cars compared to 87 shared cars in reality. According to the findings, two policy implications are put forward from the aspects of supply and demand. First, to make an efficient supply, companies should focus on the distribution of shared cars according to the temporal and spatial distribution of usage, rather than only number of vehicles. Meanwhile, it is important to increase the usage of shared cars through policies, such as campaigns that raise residents’ awareness of car sharing as a green, flexible, and all-distance travel option for both workdays and holidays, and countermeasures that promote the usage of shared cars by key groups such as non-car owners. This study not only provides a method to estimate the optimum supply from viewpoint of minimum energy consumption, but also provide policy implications to guide the behaviors of both companies and users to improve the efficient usage of shared cars in Ningbo real case.

“A company of gentlemen”: confederate veterans and southern universities

ABSTRACT Between 1911 and 1914, four major Southern public universities – the University of North Carolina, the University of Virginia, the University of Georgia, and the University of Alabama – conferred honorary degrees upon former students who had abandoned their studies to join the Confederate military. Some 400 Confederate veterans received this tribute a half century after their enlistment, during a critical moment in the development of Lost Cause commemoration, of Southern Progressivism, and of Southern higher education. This essay explores how the decision to honour former Confederates at these four state universities not only reflected the desire to recognize the patriotic sacrifices of aged Confederate veterans, but also helped to solidify a political order based on white supremacy and Progressive social reform.

The Young Lions: Confederate Cadets at War (review)

Reviewed by: The Young Lions: Confederate Cadets at War Keith E. Gibson The Young Lions: Confederate Cadets at War. By James Lee Conrad. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004. ISBN 1-57003-575-X. Maps. Photographs. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. ix, 198. $16.95. Assessing the military and educational role played by the four major military colleges of the Confederacy which remained active throughout the Civil War is a challenge, historically speaking. The destruction of their campuses often means records are fragmented or destroyed, leaving plenty of opportunity for legends of youthful exploits to take the place of fact. The purpose of Jim Conrad's The Young Lions is to, as he puts it, "scrape away some of the romantic varnish" and give the reader a reasoned, contextual view of the role played by the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), Georgia Military Institute (GMI), The Citadel, and the University of Alabama during the Civil War. Conrad's well researched and tightly written narrative provides a clear picture of the Southern cadet's dual and torn existence of academic pursuit punctuated with periods of active field service. Conrad provides a brief antebellum history of the four colleges as well as a description of the wartime routine. All four of the military colleges examined by Conrad stayed under state control for the duration of the war. All of them would see their daily routine interrupted as Northern forces moved into their communities. All four would engage the enemy. Collectively, the military schools would lose thirty cadets during field service—VMI losing ten cadets in one engagement. Three of the campuses would be burned or severely damaged before the end of the war. [End Page 844] The desirability of turning to the Southern military schools to secure officers for the Confederate army was apparent to President Davis and the Confederate Congress, yet the ability of the schools to meet their charge was hampered in a number of ways by the national government. Conrad effectively argues that the four schools he examined provided vital leadership to the Southern armies in spite of an environment curiously complicated by Confederate regulations. For example: fearing the military schools would become a haven for draft dodgers, the corps of the military schools were not exempt from conscription. Although the Confederate government did not insist upon inducting the student bodies of the state-owned schools—which would have effectively closed their doors—it did not create a special category of service for the state cadets, thus leaving them in a legal limbo. The Confederacy would never realize its early war intention of creating a national military academy—a "West Point of the South." Perhaps seeking to avoid alienating sensitive state leadership, Jefferson Davis refused to officially designate any of the schools as the Confederate Military Academy. Instead, the Confederate Congress established an unsatisfactory system of "Confederate States Cadets" who were appointed to company positions in the field—a sort of on the job training where mistakes quickly became fatal disasters. Beyond the service of their alumni, Conrad points out that the greatest assistance rendered to the Confederate effort by the four military colleges is found in the use of their cadets as drill instructors in the early months of conflict. VMI cadets alone trained an estimated 15,000 raw recruits over a three-month period in 1861. With the exception of the VMI cadets' participation in the Battle of New Market, cadets never altered the outcome of any battle in which they served. James Conrad's The Young Lions is a balanced and informative examination of a neglected aspect of Confederate military preparedness and Southern higher education. It is a sound addition to the Southern studies bookshelf. Keith E. Gibson Virginia Military Institute Lexington, Virginia Copyright © 2005 Society for Military History

The Enduring State of Segregation in Southern Higher Education

The Enduring State of Segregation in Southern Higher Education

Media Inertia in Reporting on Southern Higher Education Desegregation Cases

Media Inertia in Reporting on Southern Higher Education Desegregation Cases

Southern Education in Transition: William Waugh Smith, the Carnegie Foundation, and the Methodist Church

The South has long represented a distinct and enduring subculture in American society. Its uniqueness stems in part from the overwhelming strength of evangelical Protestantism in the region, a monolithic religious presence unmatched elsewhere in the United States, save in Utah.' At the turn of the twentieth century, the pervasive influence of the Methodist and Baptist denominations was even more pronounced than it is today.2 The intense religiosity of southern society and culture contributed significantly to the failure of southern higher education to conform to the pattern of change characteristic of other regions after the Civil War. Elsewhere, secular ideals of utility and research displaced the older educational values of piety and mental discipline and outdistanced the rival conception of liberal culture, and universities eclipsed colleges in importance. In contrast, colleges continued to dominate education in the South, and the higher learning there adhered to a different philosophy, liberal Christian education, a distinctive amalgam which remained committed to the central importance of religious and moral principles.3 Nevertheless, various secular forces were challenging the hegemony of the church in southern higher education. The Methodists in particular

In Search of a Direction: Southern Higher Education after the Civil War

THE SOUTH did not share in the enormous expansion of American higher education in the years following the Civil War. Nationally, higher education enrollments grew over five-fold in the decades following the War. In 1870 there were 62,000 students in colleges, universities, professional, normal and teacher colleges in the United States. By 1890 the total higher education enrollment was 157,000 and by 1910 had risen to 355,000.1 Multipurpose institutions with programs characteristic of the leading twentieth-century universities began to appear in the East, West and Midwest. No such development was evident in the nineteenth-century South where colleges struggled to remain alive. Left virtually destitute by the War and lacking students, buildings and assets, college leaders clung more to romantic dreams and were unable to share in the bold expansion experienced by other regions.

Southern Higher Education and the Civil War

Southern Higher Education and the Civil War

Racial Integration in Southern Higher Education

Racial Integration in Southern Higher Education

The Law and Segregation in Southern Higher Education: A Chronology

The Law and Segregation in Southern Higher Education: A Chronology

College Education without High-School Graduation

IN THE autumn of 1934 the University of Louisville admitted from Louisville high schools thirteen students who had completed only three years of the regular four-year program of studies. In the spring of 1938 these students were graduated from the College, and one of the first landmarks in experimental research in southern higher education was firmly set. For these students were admitted for pursuance of the regular college curriculums under an experimental plan undertaken with special permission of the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. The purpose of the experiment was to promote for superior students a better articulation between high school and college. It was hoped that these students would be challenged earlier to greater intellectual efforts in a more stimulating environment than might be provided for them in high school. As far as the University of Louisville was directly concerned, the plan was consistent with its College-wide policy of placing academic advancement on an achievement, rather than on a credit-earning, basis-a plan which has been entirely successful. Most of the difficulties experienced have resulted from inability to interest enough students, so that the annual quota of twenty-five students allowed by the Southern Association has never been reached. From the first year, 1934, to 1938, thirty-five students were enrolled although a total of one hundred would have been allowed. Failure to enrol the full quota has not been entirely due to the fact that the methods of selection have been too strict but more to the fact that students and parents have been afraid of the undertaking.