Higher Education

Institutions of higher education in American cities form the base of each city's pyramid of intellectual life. Most early American higher education institutions (HEIs), however, were established outside of cities because their founders believed in the agrarian myth: The countryside provides the venue for moral excellence. Although a city would grow around it, even Harvard University (1736) was originally placed in a village setting. Some exceptions include King's College of New York City (1754, now Columbia University), William and Mary (1693, in Williamsburg, VA), and the College of Philadelphia (1740, now University of Pennsylvania). Despite the pervasiveness of the agrarian myth, a few founders believed the countryside to be more depraved than the city. What follows is a chronological look at HEIs' ever-growing connection with America's cities.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the engagement of HEIs with cities increased rapidly. This relationship depended on the changing nature of the American city, civic leadership, and the institution's sense of service to setting. Between the Civil War and 1900, HEIs became more involved in the problems and possibilities of urban life. Although the agrarian myth drove the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 and their resultant agriculture-oriented, land-grant institutions, higher education began to slowly adapt to the needs of an industrial society. The source of this response was the perceived need for an intellectual class to educate the poor, workers, and immigrants. This new class could also fill the growing ranks of civil and commercial middle managers. Institutions responded by becoming more specialized and professionalized, embracing the elective system, and creating graduate and professional programs according to German university ideals. American universities generally adopted commercial-vocational rather than religious-vocational ideals, but they also came to house and respect intellectuals.

The Progressive Era imperative to condescend, as well as to maintain civic and moral virtue, also inspired the growing ranks of higher education faculty. Important objects of their largesse were poor denizens of urban areas. For instance, in 1897, a young Columbia University faculty member, Charles Sprague Smith, professor of modern languages and foreign literature, formed the People's Institute in cooperation with New York City's Cooper Union. Smith's moral urge arose from his distress over the plight of poor immigrants living in Columbia's Morningside Heights neighborhood. Others also responded to immigrants' needs. As the number of Catholic immigrants increased, Jesuits founded HEIs in major cities, such as Boston College, St. Ignatius College in Chicago (later Loyola University), Fordham in New York City, St. Louis University, and Georgetown in Washington, D.C.

At the turn of the century, Progressive Era students and faculty of HEIs applied their virtue and intellectual capabilities to various aspects of civic life. What is known generally in education history as the Wisconsin Idea involved a move by some institutions toward becoming more a part of the cities where they were located. The settlement house, an extension of urban HEIs that provided social services in poor neighborhoods, represented the sentiment of the era. New York's College Settlement was first in the movement, formed in 1889. In Chicago, three settlement houses were formed by Northwestern University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Chicago. All were operated by students.

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