<> <> Any community where there's a big university is very <> much a company town, with all that that implies. <> <> -- <> -- <> <> Michael J. Smith <> mjs at smithbowen.net <>
the NYS university system was built out in certain towns and villages for political reasons. Where there was a populace that needed controlling, they doled out funds to transform some former teachers' college into one of the uni hubs. I'm guessing it's similar in other states.
As Brint and Karabel show in Diverted Dream, the entire community college system was similarly built out to pacify radicalized workers who were demanding educations in the progressive era. Not vocational education; they were demanding liberal arts educations, wanting the same educations as people who attended private universities. (There was, at one time, a more radical union movement that saw a broad liberal arts education as part of a liberatory project; it was killed by the CIO) Alas, the leaders of private universities - Harvard, Yale, Brown, Stanford, etc. -- got together, fretting over the masses of barbarians at the gate. they had the temerity to demand to be let in, in this democracy after all.
Whatever would they do, if the workers wanted to learn stuff? So, right quick, they built a community college system to funnel people into vocational educations and divert them from the dream of a little cultcha after hunting and fishing in the morning.
I suspect that state university systems in all states, the one built out during the cold war, had a similar impetus. In fact, funny enough, I had an opportunity to watch Best Years of Our Lives, which makes clear that much of the effort was put into building out universities in order to funnel people into schools so they weren't on the job market, making the unemployment rate go up.
anyhoo. I'm going to go fondle my Stickley furniture now. It finally arrived.