John R. Thelin

In 1982, a study group commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching prefaced its report on campus governance with the
observation, "There remains in the control of higher education an inherent
tension. Colleges and universities are expected to respond to the needs of society
of which they are a part -- while also being free to carry on, without undue
interference, their essential work." ¹ To university presidents who at that time
faced double pressures of increased government regulations and decreased fed-
eral funding for research and student financial aid, this characterization was
painfully accurate.

In contrast, historians of higher education found the Carnegie Foundation's
statement to be an intriguing hypothesis but a premature conclusion, leading
them to ask, "Has this pairing of institutional autonomy and responsibility
to 'meet societal needs' always existed? If so, has it always been characterized
by tension? Were there periods when it was a source of harmony?" Hence,
although the Carnegie Foundation report dealt with institutional governance
of the 1980s, its side effect was to raise essential questions about the historical
context of higher education in American culture.

The questions surface because historians resist attributing present conditions
to the past and do not assume that there must be a fixed, one-to-one
correspondence between school and society. As Lawrence Stone argued in his
1971 may, "The Ninnyversity?," a university might have been in accord with
the national culture at one time, while in another decade in conflict with its
surrounding political environment. ² Furthermore, conflicts between university
and society have shown markedly different configurations: an intellectually
"radical" campus in one era may be reactionary in another. Absence of state
involvement in higher education might eliminate a threat of coercion, but equally

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