In my last post, I reported a recent quantitative study that shows how university studies have gone from being a full-time endeavour from (at least) the 1920s through the 1960s, but have since increasingly become a part-time affair for the average student.
Another historical source is a book written in the 1980s by historian Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz (Campus Life: Undergraduate Cultures from the End of the Eighteenth Century to the Present [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987]). Horowitz argues that three distinct undergraduate cultures emerged at different points in the history of American universities. This book provides us with some useful insights into the relationships between students and professors in different eras, and the implication for student disengagement, that have implications for Canadian universities.
The first undergraduate culture emerged from the expansion of American universities during the 1800s, which depended on the ability of these schools to attract the children of nouveau riche parents whose wealth was derived from Southern plantations, mercantile trade, and Northern industrialism. Horowitz calls the culture that emerged through an accommodation of universities with the desires of these young students from affluent backgrounds the ‘collegiate culture.’ Before this time, those intending to become ministers dominated universities, and they took their studies very seriously. For the sake of sufficient enrolments, and thus their survival, universities of this era played into university attendance as a symbol of social privilege and as a way to help students sustain that privilege by making the appropriate contacts for a future career and marriage. The collegiate culture represented a level of academic engagement that was sufficient to keep both professors and parents happy, along with extra-curricular activities and entertainments sufficient to keep students happy. Student resistance to institutional academic norms tended to be implicit and kept outside of the classroom. Achievement among students varied mainly in terms of the academic abilities and interests that students brought with them to their undergraduate programmes, but the collegiate culture eschewed an obsession with high grades and pleasing professor’s demands for excellence.
The second culture, which Horowitz calls the ‘outsider culture’ represented those who attended university as a means of upward mobility, beginning in the early twentieth century. These students, who did not have the advantages afforded by wealthy parents, sought to compensate for this by forming close relationships with faculty members and using the university as a stepping-stone to a career at a higher level of status than that of their parents. Horowitz called these students ‘outsiders’ (to collegiate culture) because they embraced the institutional academic culture rather than eschewing it. Their attitudes and work habits were similar to those who attended because of clerical aspirations, but they quickly outnumbered the clerics-in-training as their ranks included women, minorities (including Jews), and veterans.
The third culture, the ‘rebel culture,’ also appeared on American campuses in the early twentieth century, and was created by students who valued intellectuality, bohemianism, and a general trade in radical ideas. Horowitz includes people like Walter Lippmann and Margaret Mead in this group of students. Although hard-working, these students were not concerned with grades so much as social justice, and could be as hedonist as the collegiate student, while wanting to play a role in university governance. However, Horowitz argues that the outsider culture eventually came to dominate American campuses as the importance of university credentials spread in terms of gaining access to professional schools and the business world.
Horowitz makes reference to several historically specific norms in these cultures that provide us with a sense of contrast with contemporary university life.
With respect to the norms concerning grades, in one era (the mid 1800s) cheating was considered to be acceptable if it was necessary for a student to stay in school, but it was done on the part of strong students to help weaker students who were at risk of failing. In fact, if a student refused to help a weaker student it was considered a sign of dishonour. Moreover, it was considered unacceptable for a good student to cheat to better his or her own grades.
The pressures that contributed to grade inflation apparently began in the 1920s as more students—outsiders—attended universities as an avenue of social mobility. Prior to this, simply passing a course of studies was normally considered sufficient to qualify for postgraduate or professional schools, or entry into the workplace. However, as enrolments increased so did competition for placements, and grades were increasingly used as a sorting mechanism. This grade-inflation pressure was renewed in the 1970s and 1980s, as more and more students were encouraged through government policies to attain university-level credentials as a means of occupational entry. Horowitz referred to these students as the ‘new outsiders’ and ‘grinds’ and she argues that they came to dominate undergraduate culture, competing with each other for high grades and degrading the sense of common community that had defined campus life in previous eras.
The history of engagement follows a similar pattern. The wealthy collegiate students of the 1800s engaged in a certain amount of distancing from the ‘good student’ role, maintaining an air of detachment from academic achievement. The ‘gentleman’s C’ is the legacy of this attitude. Later, the outsiders were distained as ‘brown nosers’ because of their hard work in pursuit of high grades.
Extrapolating from these historical trends, since the 1980s it appears that a new student culture has emerged, which we have referred to as a culture institutionalizing a norm of entitled disengagement. In no previous era did high levels of disengagement coincide with extreme pressure to attain high grades, as is the case in the current era. This historical evidence supports the argument that disengagement in conjunction with expectations for high grades—entitled disengagement—is a part of a rising tide best described as a culture of disengagement.
It thus appears that this culture of disengagement is coming to dominate many universities, pushing out the ‘outsider’ culture that Horowitz argues dominated universities of the mid-twentieth century. This latest historical development is traceable to circumstances unique to the present era of superficial calls for democratisation, where large numbers of unprepared students from all social classes have been funnelled into universities with the expectation that simply paying tuition and putting out a minimal effort will have a maximal payoff in terms of grade attainment and eventual occupational success. Unlike the past, where those seeking upward mobility did not take for granted their chances of success and therefore valued hard work, those with a sense of entitled disengagement apparently feel that the path has been opened for them and they simply have to follow it.