What Does Higher Education Have to Learn from World War II?
William G. Tierney
University of Southern California
Over the last century, every societal upheaval has influenced academic life in the United States. The Great Recession of 2008 forced painful belt-tightening. The attacks on 9/11 changed how colleges and universities employ campus security. The Vietnam War created a politically charged climate on campuses.
Of all the societal events since World War II, the pandemic has impacted higher education the most. Campuses have shut down, teaching and learning has been transformed, and budgets have been devastated. An understanding of how higher education as a system responded to World War II compared to today’s pandemic is useful in order to identify the path forward.
After World War II, American higher education rapidly expanded and became an engine of opportunity and a model for the world. The GI Bill enabled enlisted men and women to access the funds necessary to attend college; it also was a windfall for colleges and universities financially hammered by the war. In addition, federal, state and foundation funding for research grew exponentially, in large part because of the impressive research that universities carried out throughout the war.
Colleges and universities, for their part, enacted many changes in response to the war. Many institutions like the University of Maryland speeded up learning so that students could graduate in three years and enlist. Summer vacations were compressed into a handful of weeks. A full academic term occurred in the summer. Students began classes the summer before freshmen year to accelerate graduation.
Some institutions drastically changed their curriculum to meet the country’s pressing needs. “Education will make no significant contribution to democracy,” Columbia University Professor Thomas Briggs said, “if it continues to teach the traditional curriculum.” Other institutions, such as Princeton University, offered a full panoply of courses and training geared toward military recruits.
Robert Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, offered the government the research infrastructure of the university after Pearl Harbor. The overall emphasis of higher education was nicely summarized by James Conant, President of Harvard. He said in 1941, “…each one of us stands ready to do his part in insuring that a speedy and complete victory is ours. To this end, I pledge all the resources of Harvard University.” One outcome was that by the fall of 1942 3,000 armed forces personnel were taking classes at Harvard.
Historian and author John Thelin has observed that, in World War II, “Colleges and universities were very good partners” with the government, and that “…the military and federal bureaucracy were just amazed at how responsive and resourceful the scientists and other professors were.” Indeed, the work that academic researchers undertook during the war in part led to the creation of agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
In short, higher education was a public good, as the public saw concrete ways that higher education was working to support the country during a world war.
Telling Differences
Some similarities of response, of course, exist with academe’s attempts to deal with the coronavirus. Some institutions have shortened the academic calendar to minimize infection. Many research universities have been involved in understanding the virus and how to fight it. Faculty members, so often perceived and portrayed as stubbornly against change, have rapidly restructured teaching and learning during the pandemic.
What is most telling, however, are the differences between World War II and today. One obvious difference is that the war transformed campuses into hubs of activity, whereas campuses have been largely deserted during the virus, especially as the advent of digital technologies has made teaching from a distance possible today.
Even with the stimulus funding from the Biden Administration, we in higher ed are also unlikely to see a GI Bill or other federal,]state and foundation funding support academe after the pandemic, including research funding. [NOTE]But aren’t colleges getting a big infusion from the new federal stimulus package? https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/03/22/how-will-colleges-spend-their-stimulus-cash
Or is most of that going to students and for COVID oriented projects?[NOTE] Nor will we probably experience a dramatic increase in college-going once the pandemic is over. Indeed, we could see a decrease in student-going at some institutions such as community colleges. Further, international student tuition dollars — many institutions’ cash cow — are likely to decrease.
Perhaps the most significant difference, however, is between the stance higher education took then and the one it has taken today — and the resultant public perception of academe. To be sure, we have seen fine examples of postsecondary institutions aggressively taking on additional tasks and working to overcome the virus. The University of California at Davis, for instance, has transformed its campus into a testing center not only for its constituents but also for the entire region.
The public’s perception, however, is not that of postsecondary institutions vitally engaged in fighting the pandemic in a way that academe helped fight World War II. The overwhelming sense one gets from academe is that of self-interest — some would say survival — rather than the public good.
Everyone will agree that financial shortcomings, especially for smaller regional private and public institutions, is deeply worrisome. And yet what prevented more public colleges and universities from becoming a cohesive network of testing and vaccination centers? The federal testing and distribution system is a patchwork quilt of stadiums, churches, libraries, and pharmacies all vying to get supplies — and offering different instructions. Many more of our public two and four-year institutions could have taken leadership for distribution for the citizenry in a systematic and organized manner.
Again, many campuses during the pandemic have been largely empty. The country faces a critical crisis of homelessness. What prevented more of our urban public and private institutions from offering to fill empty campus beds to help those most at risk?
For over a generation, higher education and the larger public has been in a non-harmonious duet. Colleges and universities have asked for increased resources, and legislatures in turn have reduced resources. A public good, logically, is funded by the public.
In California’s vaunted Master Plan of the 1950s, for example, the belief was that tuition was free for those who desired a postsecondary education. The assumption was that what took place on a campus served the larger public. Logically, when a crisis such as a war happened, institutions turned to focus intensively on serving the public. The result was that higher education and society were tightly interwoven, and the citizenry had an overwhelmingly positive perception of academe.
Today, however, higher education is largely a bystander to the challenges that confront society, and we are reaping what we have sown. Most institutions are simply struggling to keep their institutions afloat. If the public were asked how important postsecondary institutions are in fighting COVID, the public would not understand the question. Higher education is a spectator, rather than a participant.
Leaders with a Tin Cup
What might we learn, then, from the stance of higher education during World War II?
The decrease in public funding has reduced the ethos that used to define academic life. Campuses are too busy trying to manage their own affairs without taking on the added responsibility that confronts society. If there is a common theme that one hears from higher education today it is that they are short of funds. Rather than Conant assuring society that everyone in academe will “do [their] part,” we have leaders with a tin cup in desperate search of revenue.
Thus, higher education is no longer well-positioned to rise to the occasion that society demands. As inward-looking organizations, we always have been tempted to focus on issues of concern to us rather than to society. The 21st century, however, demands the opposite.
Before the Civil War, about 700 colleges had gone out of business. One explanation might be what we will say as some of our current institutions will do so as well: there’s simply not enough money to support these institutions. Another way to think about 19th-century closures is that those institutions were no longer responsive to the needs of those they purported to serve.
To be responsive, as academe was during World War II, higher education needs to be more service-oriented. I appreciate that thoughtful critiques of life’s great problems frequently require objective observers who analyze from a distance. At other times, such as when a pandemic strikes the world, rather than insularity and distance, it’s time for all of us in higher education to become centrally involved with the great struggles of the day. In serving others better, we enhance our contributions to those who access higher education and will attract the resources needed to continue our work. A reinvestment in the public good requires that the good first invest more in the public.
William G. Tierney is University Professor Emeritus at the University of Southern California and author of Get Real: 49 Challenges Confronting Higher Education (SUNY)
