Grad - Schrum

Abstract

The President’s Commission on Higher Education appointed by Harry Truman—which published its report, Higher Education for American Democracy, in 1947-48—made the first major U.S. government pronouncement on the goals of higher education. In so doing, the Commission took one side in a larger debate over the philosophical presuppositions of democracy and their implications for education. Several national educational organizations took the opposite position and led a dissent. The Commission and its dissenters agreed on the need to promote democracy, but they disagreed sharply on what democracy meant and how to promote it via higher education. The Commission believed that democracy was an end in itself, that it required no religious or metaphysical foundations, and that state-controlled institutions of higher education with curricula centered on social problems were essential for strengthening it. The opposing position maintained that democracy was a means to other ends, that it required religious and metaphysical foundations, and that privately-controlled institutions of higher learning with humanistically-oriented liberal arts curricula were essential for strengthening it. These debates struck at fundamental issues regarding the respective places of state and private institutions in the American constitutional system and in furthering American democracy.