Colleges in the Early 1900’s Essay

Submitted By ktisch0728
Words: 720
Pages: 3

Paper on Bok pages 1-83

As late as 1940, fewer than 1 in 20 adults had a Bachelor’s degree. It is only in the last fifty years or so that going on to obtain a Bachelor’s, Master’s, and/or a Doctorate became popular. The early colleges focused on providing classes such as philosophy, moral ethics, and classical texts studies. In the mid to late 1800’s, colleges started to provide many more science related classes to increase the amount of people that went to college. Many of these newly reformed colleges modeled colleges in Germany that were mainly focused on science and obtaining a doctorate degree. It goes to show that even before the advancement of technology, countries across the world from each other could still greatly affect each other. Colleges in the early 1900’s started to become less strict and more focused on the interests of the individual. Before this, colleges required students to abide by very specific rules relating to academics and their morals/behavior. Also, almost every college was religiously based, which explained the moral standards that students were required to abide by. The purpose of the early colleges was to instill mental discipline into their students, not to prepare them for a career. After some time, colleges were allowing students to choose every class that they took rather than require a specific curriculum that corresponded with a certain degree. This did not work for long because students were haphazardly taking classes that did not directionally point to any specific degree. Eventually a middle ground was created where students had core classes that they had to take and choose the rest of their classes. This is usually called a Liberal Arts education. It is a mix between gaining knowledge and vocational skills. I chose a Liberal Arts education so that I wouldn’t just be focusing on one area of study but I would learn about many areas of study and be able to apply them to my major and minors. I think that blank has provided me with a satisfactory education thus far but I do wish that I did not have to take every class that is included in their core because some of them are in no way pertinent to my future career. I am hoping that they will still come in handy someday. Bok seems to be focused on the how professors are teaching students and how the university strives to educate its students. I feel that the university blank bases their goals for its students in its mission statement. After studying for almost four years at the University of Blank I feel like I can honestly say that I have noticed that the university tries to uphold these values in their education. I have also found that