Newsgroups: bit.listserv.edpolyan
Date:         Thu, 16 Apr 1992 10:08:37 EDT
              <EDPOLYAN@ASUACAD.BITNET>
From:         TFGREEN@SUVM.BITNET
Subject:      Univ. Credit for Life Expr.

 Harold Mitzel observes:

   >  It might be useful to examine the historical record of
   >admissions to higher education under the G.I. Bill for the years 1946-
   >1955 in U.S.A.  My impression is that admissions were more open for
   >these veterans than for others.  As a social policy instrument it
   >provided a "great leap forward" for the country in productivity.  There
   >may even be instances where academic credit was given for military
   >service experiences.
 =======================================================================

      I do not know everything that went on during that period, but I
was in a position to observe some of these points at the time and studied
them rather thoroughly more recently.
      One must keep in mind that in 1946 and into the 1950s, less than
half of the relevant age-cohort completed high school, only about half
of them went to college each year, and only about half of them completed
a four-year program within the next five years.  There was not really
any pressure on admissions.  At the University of Nebraska, for example
the standard, for admission, was simply a high school diploma and
in many cases that was waived as it had been waived in many instances
for the twenty years or so just before.  Housing was the problem,
and getting enough teachers to handle the return of veterans.
But anyone suggesting that veterans should be favored at the point
of admissions, would probably have been dranw and quartered.  That
would have been a thoroughly unacceptable idea.
     On the other hand, professors were delighted to have students
of greater experience, many of whom had developed interests and
skills that made them outstanding students.  But again, the idea
that anyone might get college credit for these virtues was, and
for some of us remains, a distinctly odd idea.  The idea that
anyone should get college credit for being alive (I am assuming
being alive, i.e., lively, involves learning a lot) still seems
to me something that represents not a shift in admissions
policy, but a huge transformation in the nature and rationale
for going to school.
     An illustration:  I recall in the mid-forties a conversation
my father had with a prominent neighbor in Lincoln, Nebraska, a
lawyer, as I recall.  He asked my father "What is Tom going to
do next year."  "He's going to college to study music," was the
reply.  "Well, that's nice.  It will set him aside and give him
a special status.  Just be sure that he does it in a hurry so
as to get on with other things that really matter."  Then, in
the late sixties, I recall being asked to do a paper at APA on
the concept of "relevance."  The idea, when I started was that
going to college wasn't particularly relevant to anything, but
it was a good thing to do.  Whereas later the idea was that
because the college experience wasn't particularly relevant,
therefore something was wrong with the college experience.
That "relevance" because relevant, was what changed.  And that
constituted an enormous transformation which carried with it
the idea that "getting credit" for what I have done was
important.
     All of this has little to do with the success of the GI
bill, by all criteria the most successful experiment in social
policy, except perhaps the invention of Social Security, that
we have ever had.  But my point is to see that what is really
important about this policy was its consequences for the entire
culture of higher education.  It changed from being one thing
into being something else altogether, something in which, for
the first time these issues of admissions become important.

     ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
     +  THOMAS F. GREEN (TFGREEN@SUVM.BITNET)                   +
     +    263 Huntington Hall Syracuse University               +
     +    Syracuse Univ. Syracuse, NY  13244    (315) 443-9080  +
     +    Box 100 Pompey, NY  13138             (315) 677-9935  +
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