13.1.1: Education and Industrialization

 13.1.1: Education and Industrialization

 Let’s look at how the universal education that we take for granted came about. Industrialization and Mandatory Education In the early years of the United States, most people worked on farms, and there was no free public education. But by 1918, all U.S. states had mandatory education laws requiring children to attend school, usually until they completed the eighth grade or turned 16, whichever came first. Graduation from the eighth grade marked the end of education for most people. “Dropouts” at that time were students who did not complete grade school. It is no coincidence that universal education and industrialization occurred at the same time. The economy was changing from farm to factory, and as political and civic leaders observed this transformation, they recognized the need for an educated workforce. They also feared the influx of “foreign” values and looked at public education as a way to “Americanize” immigrants (Ramsey 2019).

A primary purpose of early public education was the “Americanization” of immigrants. This meant turning immigrants into Americans, that is, assimilating them into dominant values and orientations. This photo from 1926 was taken in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where 98 percent of the students were children of immigrants. SZ Photo/Scherl/The Image Works The Expansion of Education As industrialization increased, fewer people made their living from farming. Even more years of formal education then came to be regarded as essential to the well-being of society. As more and more students graduated from high school, the demand for a college education grew. Free education stopped with high school, however, and with the distance to the nearest college too far and the cost of tuition and lodging too great, few high school graduates were able to attend college. As discussed in the following Down-to-Earth Sociology, this predicament gave birth to community colleges. Down-to-Earth Sociology Community Colleges: Facing Old and New Challenges I attended a junior college in Oakland, California. From there, with fresh diploma in hand, I transferred to a senior college—a college in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that had no freshmen or sophomores. I didn’t realize that my experimental college matched the vision of some of the founders of the community college movement. In the early 1900s, they foresaw a system of local colleges that would be accessible to the average high school graduate—a system so extensive that it would be unnecessary for universities to offer courses at the freshman and sophomore levels (Handel 2013). A group with an equally strong opinion questioned whether preparing high school graduates for entry to 4-year colleges and universities should be the goal of junior colleges. They insisted that the purpose of junior colleges should be vocational preparation, to equip people for jobs such as electricians and other technicians. In some regions, where the proponents of transfer dominated, the admissions requirements for junior colleges were higher than those of Yale (Pedersen 2001). This debate was never won by either side, and you can still hear its echoes today (Bahr 2019). The name junior college also became a problem. Some felt that the word junior made their institution sound as though it weren’t quite a real college. A struggle to change the name ensued, and several decades ago, community college won out. The name change didn’t settle the debate about whether the purpose was preparing students to transfer to universities or training them for jobs, however. Community colleges continue to serve this dual purpose.

Community colleges have opened higher education to millions of students who would not otherwise have access to college because of cost or distance. Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision/Getty Images Community colleges have become such an essential part of the U.S. educational system that 6 million students, 31 percent of all undergraduates in the United States, are enrolled in them (Statistical Abstract 2019:Table 294). They have become the major source of the nation’s emergency medical technicians, firefighters, nurses, and police officers. Most students are nontraditional students: Many are age 25 or older, come from the working class, have jobs and children, and attend college part-time (J. C. Chen 2017). To help students transfer to 4-year colleges and universities, many community colleges and 4-year public and private universities are working closely together (Forbeset al. 2019). Some community colleges coordinate courses with universities, making sure they match the university’s title and numbering system, as well as its rigor of instruction and grading. Many offer honors programs that prepare talented students to transfer with ease into these schools. An emerging trend is for community colleges to become 4-year colleges without changing their names (Elfman 2016). Some are now granting work-related baccalaureate degrees in such areas as teaching, nursing, and public safety. This raises the question: Will these community colleges eventually develop into full 4-year colleges, perhaps even creating the need to establish 2-year community colleges to supplement them? Community colleges face continuing challenges. They must secure adequate funding in the face of limited resources, adjust to changing job markets, and maintain quality instruction and campus security. Other challenges include offering financial aid, remedial and online courses, and flex schedules. Then, too, there is the need to teach students for whom English is a second language and international students who struggle to adjust to American culture (Lau et al. 2019). There also are challenges of providing on-campus day care for parents and meeting the needs of veterans who have returned to campus (Caton 2019). Always, there is the need to stay current with the ever-changing technical specialties and computer sciences (Forbes et al. 2019). Laid over the specific situations is an urgency to increase graduation rates. One of the promising course of action is guided pathways: focused first-year orientation, helping students select end goals, more personalized advising, faculty mentoring, and closer monitoring of students’ progress (Wheeler 2019). For Your Consideration Do you think the primary goal of community colleges should be to train students for jobs or to prepare them to transfer to 4-year colleges and universities? Why? 419 The expansion of education marched hand in hand with the advance of industrialization, a pace it has continued during our postindustrial society. The pace has even picked up, and today 70 percent of high school graduates enter college (Statistical Abstract 2019:Table 292). As you can see from Figure 13.1, receiving a bachelor’s degree is now more than twice as common as completing high school used to be. 

Figure 13.1 Educational Achievement in the United States

NOTE: Americans 25 years and older. Asterisk indicates author’s estimate. College graduates are included in both categories (high school and higher, and college graduates). SOURCE: Based on National Center for Education Statistics 1991:Table 8; Statistical Abstract of the United States 2019:Table 255. The horizontal axis represents years and ranges from 1910 to 2020, in increments of 10. The vertical axis represents the percentage and ranges from 0 to 100, in increments of 10. The data are summarized approximately below: 1910: High school and higher, 11%; College graduates: 1%. 1920: High school and higher, 18%; College graduates: 2%. 1930: High school and higher, 19%; College graduates: 3%. 1940: High school and higher, 22%; College graduates: 4%. 1950: High school and higher, 34%; College graduates: 6%. 1960: High school and higher, 41%; College graduates: 9%. 1970: High school and higher, 51%; College graduates: 11%. 1980: High school and higher, 68%; College graduates: 16%. 1990: High school and higher, 77%; College graduates: 20%. 2000: High school and higher, 80%; College graduates: 23%. 2010: High school and higher, 87%; College graduates: 30%. 2020: High school and higher, 91%; College graduates: 32%. Note: For the year 2020 the numbers are author’s estimates. To place our own educational system in global perspective, let’s look at education in three countries at different levels of industrialization. This will help us see how education is related to a nation’s culture and its economy.