From the Liberal to the Practical Arts in American Colleges and Universities: Organizational Analysis and Curricular Change.
17 Mar 2005-The Journal of Higher Education (The Ohio State University Press)-Vol. 76, Iss: 2, pp 151-180
TL;DR: The most important changes in American higher education over the last 30 years have been the gradual shrinking of the old arts and sciences core of undergraduate education and the expansion of occupational and professional programs.
Abstract: One of the most important changes in American higher education over the last 30 years has been the gradual shrinking of the old arts and sciences core of undergraduate education and the expansion of occupational and professional programs. Occupational fields have accounted for approximately 60% of bachelors’ degrees in recent years, up from 45% in the 1960s, and hundreds of institutions now award 80% or more of their degrees in these fields (Brint, 2001) The arts and sciences originated historically for the pursuit of knowledge “for its own sake” and, simultaneously, as the educational foundation for youths preparing to occupy positions of power and influence in society. They include the basic fields of science and scholarship, such as chemistry, economics, history, literature, mathematics, philosophy, and political science. By contrast, programs in occupational fields are designed to educate students for jobs—in business, education, engineering, nursing, public administration, and many others. These applied programs are often housed in their own professional schools or colleges distinct from colleges of arts and sciences. In this paper, we will sometimes refer to these programs collectively as the “practical arts,” a term
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TL;DR: The declining importance of parents' background and the decoupling of educational and occupational plans, in addition to a strong and significant effect of cohort on educational expectations, suggest that the expectation of four-year college attainment is indeed becoming the norm.
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors apply a neo-institutional perspective to the analysis and critique of underlying developed country trends in public sector university corporatisation and commercialisation, and reveal an underlying neoliberal political and economic agenda that has laid the foundations for the profound transformation that has reconfigured universities' governance, missions, core values and the roles of their academics.
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TL;DR: This article found that high socioeconomic status (SES) students are more likely to choose A&S fields than are low-SES students, and that vocational majors are employed at higher paying jobs than are A &S majors 4 years after college graduation.
Abstract: Curricula in U.S. colleges and universities have historically evolved around two ideal types: arts and science fields (A&S), and vocational fields. Using the National Educational Longitudinal Study, 1992–1994, we find that high socioeconomic status (SES) students are more likely to choose A&S fields than are low-SES students. The Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study, 1993–1997, shows that vocational majors are employed at higher paying jobs than are A&S majors 4 years after college graduation, while arts and science majors are more likely to enroll in graduate school during these years. We conclude that these distinct educational trajectories reinforce the relationship between parents' and their children's social class.
247 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that vocationalism is now deeply embedded in American higher education and that reforms need to focus on ways to integrate vocational purposes with broader civic, intellectual, and moral goals.
Abstract: At the beginning of the twenty-first century, a widely circulated Education Gospel has achieved worldwide influence. Communicating the good word about education, the Gospel's essential vision goes something like this: The Knowledge Revolution (or the Information Society, or the Communications Revolution, or the High-Tech revolution) has changed the nature of work, shifting away from occupations rooted in industrial production to occupations associated with knowledge and information. This transformation has both increased the skills required for new occupations and updated the three R's, driving work skills in the direction of "higher-order" skills including communications skills, problem solving, and reasoning--the "skills of the twenty-first century." Obtaining these skills normally requires formal schooling and training past the high-school level so that some college--though not necessarily a baccalaureate degree--will be necessary for the jobs of the future, a position that we and others label "College for All." The pace of change means that individuals are likely to find their specific work skills becoming obsolete. They must keep up with advances in technology and expect to change their employment often as firms and industries compete globally, adopt new technologies and new forms of work organization, and individuals must be able to engage in "life-long" learning. And, because no country wants to lose out in the global marketplace, every country is under pressure to increase its commitments to its educational system. (1) In American higher education, the Education Gospel has led to a dramatic expansion of access and to a greater emphasis on vocational purposes. As higher education became a mass institution in the last half of the twentieth century, it simultaneously exalted its public purposes--benefits to the nation's economy, protection of the national defense, the creation of new knowledge, and the promise of equality of educational opportunity--and its private benefits in giving individuals access to income and professional status. Increasingly, the latter has come to dominate. Higher education is now the clearest embodiment of the American dream of getting ahead, especially getting ahead through one's own labor (Lazerson, 1998). In this essay, we show how higher education converted to occupational education--called professional education to distinguish it from lower-level vocational training. The vocationalization process has always had dissenters, those who complain that the dominant focus on vocational goals undermines education's moral, civic, and intellectual purposes, a point of view that we suggest has become marginalized over time. More active forms of dissent, we argue, have come from those concerned about the inequities built into vocationalism, the differentiation of higher education institutions by occupational purposes with inequitably provided resources. A different kind of debate has occurred around what constitutes a genuine professional education, one that is inextricably linked to the vocationalism of formal schooling. We conclude the essay by arguing that vocationalism is now so deeply embedded in American higher education that it cannot be wished away and that reforms need to focus on ways to integrate vocational purposes with broader civic, intellectual, and moral goals. From Moral to Vocational Purposes America's colleges and universities did not begin as vocational institutions, at least not in the way we currently use the term. Instead there existed a deeply held conviction that the classical liberal arts were essential to prepare moral, civic, and intellectual public leaders who followed professional careers. (2) Interest in using college for explicitly vocational purposes began to be evident in the early and mid-nineteenth century, with the founding of West Point (1802), Rensellaer Polytechnic (1824), and some agricultural colleges in the 1850s. Passage by the U. …
200 citations
TL;DR: It is suggested that the structure of majors and their linkages to professional training and careers may combine with gender differences in educational goals to influence the persisting gender gap in STEM fields.
175 citations
Cites methods from "From the Liberal to the Practical A..."
...Nevertheless, this type of analysis is highly sensitive to the classificatory scheme adopted, and the scheme appears to differ, for example, from that used by Hudson and Shafer (2004) and Brint et al. (2005)....
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References
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5,312 citations
20 Jul 2000
TL;DR: The relation of the society outside organizations to the internal life of organizations is discussed in this article, where the authors focus on the effects of organizational variables on the surrounding social environment, including groups, institutions, laws, population characteristics, and sets of social relations that form the environment of the organization.
Abstract: The general topic of this chapter is the relation of the society outside organizations to the internal life of organizations Part of the specific topics have to do with the effect of society on organizations, and part of them concern the effects of organizational variables on the surrounding social environment I intend to interpret the term “social structure” in the title in a very general sense, to include groups, institutions, laws, population characteristics, and sets of social relations that form the environment of the organization That is, I interpret “social structure” to mean any variables which are stable characteristics of the society outside the organization By an “organization” I mean a set of stable social relations deliberately created, with the explicit intention of continuously accomplishing some specific goals or purposes These goals or purposes are generally functions performed for some larger structure For example, armies have the goal of winning possible military engagements The fulfillment of this goal is a function performed for the larger political structure, which has functional requirements of defense and conquest I exclude from organizations many types of groups which have multiple purposes (or which perform multiple functions for larger systems, whether these are anyone's purposes or not), such as families, geographical communities, ethnic groups, or total societies 1 also exclude social arrangements built up on the spur of the moment to achieve some specific short-run purpose For instance, I will not consider a campaign committee for some political candidate as an “organization,” although a political party would definitely meet the criterion of continuous functioning and relatively specific purposes
5,017 citations
"From the Liberal to the Practical A..." refers background in this paper
...Organizational sociologists since Stinchcombe (1965) have noted the constraining force of the institutional designs at the time of their foundings....
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Book•
01 Jan 1998
TL;DR: The Warwick Way: Transformation in an English Research University as discussed by the authors and the Twente Response: Construction of a Dutch Entrepreneurial University are two of the most cited examples of such transformations.
Abstract: Chapter and section headings: List of Tables. Acknowledgments. Introduction. Pathways of Transformation. Entrepreneurial Pathways of University Transformation. Case Studies of European Innovative Universities. The Warwick Way: Transformation in an English Research University. The Twente Response: Construction of a Dutch Entrepreneurial University. The Strathclyde Phenomenon: Organizational Assertion of Useful Learning in Scotland. The Chalmers Thrust: Entrepreneurial Autonomy in the Swedish University System. The Joensuu Reform: Piloting Decentralized Control in Finnish Universities. University Transformation. The Problem of University Transformation. References. Index.
2,575 citations
"From the Liberal to the Practical A..." refers background in this paper
...…other sectors argue that colleges and universities have little choice but to adapt to the job-related interests of today’s students, and in any event this adaptation allows higher education to contribute more effectively than it once did to the economic life of the country (see, e.g., Clark, 1998)....
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TL;DR: Clark identifies the basic elements common to all such systems, and proceeds to thematic comparisons among a number of countries as mentioned in this paper, and concludes that they can be classified into three broad categories.
Abstract: How can we compare national systems of higher education, since their organization varies from country to country? Clark identifies the basic elements common to all such systems, and proceeds to thematic comparisons among a number of countries.
1,921 citations