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college rankings exposed
TM
www.petersons.com
America has become the higher education nation. It's not just for the
rich or the brightest. It's no longer even just for the middle class and
slightly above average. It's for everyone. We're starting to take this fact
for granted, but it's worth remembering. Anyone who wants to go to
college will be admitted somewhere. And for those who rejected college
when they were eighteen, endless opportunities still exist for weekend,
part-time or online study at any age. Lifelong learning, once a slogan, has
become a reality.
This shift from an elite to mass system of higher education has done
far more than change the number of students applying to colleges and
universities every fall. It's also changing the structure and purpose of
higher education. The old collegiate system was highly structured, and
for much of the nation's history, focused on a classical curriculum. If
you went to Harvard 100 years ago, your choices for study were very
limited. Then, students were not necessarily being trained for a particu-
lar job, but were being trained to be scholars and gentlemen (and even-
tually ladies).
Even a cursory review of history shows that this idealized image of
collegiate life was rarely reflected in reality. Then, like today, sober-minded
intellectuals were the exception, not the rule. Students drank heavily, broke
the rules, did as little as possible to get by, and drove their teachers crazy.
Legend has it that one poor nineteenth-century professor was forced to
chase a student across campus in pursuit of a stolen turkey. But even if
rhetoric failed to match reality, there was agreement about what higher
education was theoretically about--character development, moral devel-
opment, and social grooming in preparation for a life of influence and
leadership.
As more Americans completed high school and were invited to enter
college, the system began to shift to embrace the masses. Over the course
of the last century and, especially, over the last few decades, doors have
been opened to women, minorities, adults, and retirees. The path has led
