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The Admission and Assimilation of Minority Students at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900–1970

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Marcia G. Synnott*
Affiliation:
University of South Carolina

Extract

Access to higher education was and is an essential factor in the economic and social mobility of minority groups within the United States. Prominent among the groups to take advantage of educational opportunities were Catholics and Jews, the children and grandchildren of the Irish immigration of the mid-19th century and of the “New Immigration” from eastern and southern Europe at the century's end. Today, however, other groups — blacks, Hispanic-Americans, Indians, and Orientals — are knocking on the door of admissions offices at colleges, universities, and professional schools. It is still too soon to assess their rate of educational mobility and determine whether it will parallel or even exceed that of Jews and Catholics. The role of quotas, both discriminatory and benign, have played a crucial role in retarding and encouraging the educational mobility of both the earlier and contemporary aspirants to advanced degrees. In studying this area of educational and social history, the focus has been limited, at least for the time being, to elite private institutions, to the so-called Big Three of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Although admission and assimilation at these colleges would be more difficult than at most public institutions, once attained, success would be noteworthy and could help to open doors elsewhere.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 1979 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

For further documentation and elucidation of this topic, consult my overall study, The Half-Opened Door: Discrimination and Admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900–1970 (Westport, Connecticut, 1979).

1 The core of this article is based upon my dissertation: “A Social History of Admissions Policies At Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900–1930” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1974). See Pierson, George W., The Education of American Leaders, Comparative Contributions of U.S. Colleges and Universities, Praeger Special Studies in U.S. Economic and Social Development (New York, 1969), pp. xix–xxi, 240–51.Google Scholar

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17 Hurlbut, to Warren, , Oct. 16, 1907, see n. 16.Google Scholar

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20 [Henry, Bayard] to Thompson, Henry Burling, July 13, 1907, Papers of Woodrow Wilson , edited by Link, Arthur S. et al., 17: 1907–1908 (Princeton, N.J., 1974), pp. 305, 303–06; Bragdon, Henry Wilkinson, Woodrow Wilson: The Academic Years (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), pp. 408–09; Sigmund, Paul, “Princeton in Crisis and Change,” Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 5, no. 2 (March 1973): 37, 34–41.Google Scholar

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23 Harvard University News Office, For Release, June 10, 1975, “Text of remarks delivered by John Kenneth Galbraith, Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University on Harvard Class Day, June 11, 1975,” 10 pp.Google Scholar

24 Brown, Francis J., Reeves, Floyd W., Anliot, Richard A., editors, Discriminations in Higher Education: A Report of the Midwest Educators Conference in Chicago, Illinois, November, 3–4, 1950, Sponsored by the Midwest Committee on Discriminations in Higher Education and the Committee on Discriminations in Higher Education of the American Council on Education, American Council on Education Studies, Series 1 — Reports of Committees and Conferences, vol. 15, no. 50 (Washington, D.C., August, 1951), pp. 11–22, 35–39. See also Freeman Butts, R., Cremin, Lawrence A., A History of Education in American Culture (New York, 1953), pp. 522–23.Google Scholar

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26 Lipset, Seymour Martin and Riesman, David, Education and Politics at Harvard, Two Essays Prepared for The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education (New York, 1975), pp. 179–80, 307–08; “A Survey of Princeton Freshmen,” PAW, 71, no. 17 (Feb. 23, 1971), 6–9; Wolf, Rabbi Arnold Jacob, “Jewish Experience Is Vividly Present at Yale,”' Yale Alumni Magazine, 36 (Jan. 1973): 14–15; and Singer, Mark, “God and Mentsch at Yale,” Moment, 1 (Av/Elul 5735, July/August 1975): 27–31.Google Scholar

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