Higher education's caste system

College Student Journal, March, 2004 by Ron Iannone

The author discusses in this article the history of present caste system in higher education. He shows how the public's perception of this caste system is based on image and not usually on the quality of teaching and curriculum in colleges and universities. Finally, he discusses a model for accessibility to higher education and how higher education could be more democratic than it is now especially for so-called unprepared students.

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If we look back through the history of higher education in this country, it is quite evident that we have a well-defined caste system with certain schools at the top of the heap and others at the bottom. In short, Shore (1992) points out that all American universities are not created equal (p. 55). What makes one university seem to be better than another is extremely complicated and there very often is little or no agreement as to which university or college is superior to another. The prestige of a school may or may not reflect the quality of the institution's resources or faculty. Further, Shore (1992) points out that prestige can nevertheless play a greater role than any other factor in establishing the public perspective of the institution, and thereby has a direct input on the respect and influence it is accorded. Similarly, choices by parents to send their children are based mostly on the public perception of the top schools. In fact, Holme (2002) found out that K-12 schools parents surmised a great deal about a school's quality by the status of its students and what other parents say. I also believe this is also true about higher education choices that prestige and status concerns are far more salient to them than a school's curriculum and instructional quality.

Historically, Shore (1992) points out that there was little evidence that medieval universities possessed what today we would call overall institutional prestige. The universities were important, but for the most part, only important for the most powerful. We find that surprisingly in medieval society teachers went from one university to another, depending on the need. And whatever prestige there was it was associated with the scholars and teachers at the university This view of the university's prestige remained dominant for centuries down to the Reformation. This began to change as England began to become more powerful and schools such as Oxford and Cambridge were no longer set by the prestige of the scholars but by uppity gentleman types. Shore states:

   ... the religious debates that had
   convulsed these universities in the
   previous century were to a large
   degree replaced with a preoccupation
   with cockfights, plays and social
   activities. Some of the dons resident
   at Oxford were no better than
   their students. Contemporary
   reports describe drunkenness as a
   vice common to both students and
   professors (p. 57).

However, the recognition of the higher status of Oxford and Cambridge was given an added esteem by the expansion of middle classes who saw in these ancient and educated universities a better life for their sons. Even though the actual structures of the larger American universities have been mostly influenced by the German model of scholarship, the symbols of the English universities also influenced us. They especially influenced the Ivy League schools. Ivy comes from the ivy growing on the venerable buildings of the early colonial schools. Ivy colleges and universities are Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, Pennsylvania, Brown, and Dartmouth (Shore, 1992, p. 59). The public's perception of these institutions comes from the size of their endowment and what important people had graduated from these schools. As mentioned earlier, the public's perception of these schools is based on image and not usually on the quality of teaching and curriculum. The major criteria the public uses is the number of so-called leisure class attending and the limited number of students admitted on a yearly basis. For many of these ivy schools their earlier curriculum was based on the study of the classics as they centered on preparations of ministers. Page Smith (1990) calls this early orientation of the universities the Classical Christian Consciousness era.

However, the change in the spirit of these institutions was influenced by 18th century Enlightenment. Smith (1990) called this era the Secular Democratic Consciousness. One of the greatest advocates, Thomas Jefferson, offered proposals for reconstructing the traditional curriculum of the College of William and Mary, which were of a more secular and practical as well as less classical emphasis. He suggested the study of ethics, law, history, mathematics, medicine, natural history and ancient and modern languages. In short, this was Jefferson's ideal of higher education to be an instrument of preparation for leadership in public service in place of preparation for the ministry and its classical scholarship curriculum. He also wanted other lower tier colleges to prepare people in the mechanical and agricultural areas. Jefferson believed in an aristocracy of higher education whereby a college like the University of Virginia would prepare the public policy leaders and the state universities would be for the common people. See Figure 1. More specifically, we have the Ivy schools at the top followed by smaller private and privileged schools like Vassar, Hunter, Swarthmore, and then at third tier we have the large public and private schools like Stanford, MIT, and University of Virginia. I like to think of this as first tier institutions of the caste system. The second tier institutions are Big Ten schools which have their own rankings with University of Michigan at the top followed by Northwestern University and others such as University of Wisconsin and University of Minnesota. Finally, you have the 3rd tier and they are state universities, state teachers colleges and two-year schools like junior colleges and community colleges.