The Rise of University Science and Research
in the Twentieth Century
by James Passarelli
An important and understudied subject that is crucial to understanding the history of suburban America and the prevalence of the corporate campus is the rise of the university sciences that began in the early twentieth century. The topic is all the more pertinent to this broader project, given its focus on the development of the corporate campus, and specifically Fordham’s Westchester campus, which has served as both corporate and university campus. One can divide the increasing influence and importance of science into two general historical periods: the period beginning with the onset of World War I and the post-World War II period.[1] Both periods are part of a roughly six-decade continuum during which scientific prestige steadily increased, but there exists one important distinction between them. While private interests mainly dominated the former, the latter was colored by a drastic increase in governmental support.[2] Dramatic shifts in both the reorganization of higher education priorities and curricula and the federal government’s increased involvement in research endeavors contributed to the rapid development of corporate campuses on the urban periphery in the post-war period.
1914-1945
The early twentieth century saw a number of shifts in the organization of higher education in the United States; none was more powerful than the increasing weight given to what are commonly referred to as the “hard sciences,” namely physics and computer sciences.[3] As technologically advanced weaponry proved to be an ever more deciding factor in the outcome of World War I, United States corporations established a link between higher education and the war effort. The magnitude of military events highlighted the roles of non-combatants; meanwhile, away from the war effort, corporations increasingly depended on engineers and scientists to invent and improve new products. Scientists and engineers associated with universities in turn looked to corporate research for supplementary income, and sometimes as a source of further creative freedom. University administrators, meanwhile, excitedly welcomed the onslaught of private patronage, attempting to cultivate relationships that were sure to bring monetary benefits to their institutions.[4]
Though the decades leading up to World War II saw far greater private interest in the recruitment of scientists and funding of universities, a number of government initiatives laid the groundwork for a symbiosis that would truly burgeon in the decades after the war. These included the establishment of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and the 1914 Smith-Lever Act, which helped fund agricultural research at land-grant universities.[5] Two decades later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms further intensified the government’s role in private and public education.[6] Most top private universities resisted government funding, fearing a loss of control within the institution and an eternal debt to the federal government. Many of those who feared government involvement, however, were more accepting of business funding, stressing what one scholar called the “production of knowledge over education of students.”[7] Private universities could not hold out for long, however, and the next world war would spell further ties between the federal government and the universities, both public and private.
Post-World War II
Even more than its predecessor, World War II linked science with national strength, and faith in the hard sciences permeated American culture. The 1950s saw both an increase in prestige for scientists and fervent public interest in popular science publications like National Geographic and Science.[8] Meanwhile, as the Cold War proved to be more cultural than military, although the two were always closely intertwined, scientists’ role in the Russian-American stand-off became central in two ways: symbolically, as the future of American cultural and educational dominance; and practically, in directly competitive endeavors like the space race. New masters and PhD programs in the sciences began springing up all over the country in the first two decades of the Cold War, and universities also had to fight continued competition from corporations as they attempted to lure the top intellects from university settings.[9]
At the same time, however, the government began to offer financial support in unprecedented ways. The postwar years saw a steady increase in government funding of higher education; in 1960 alone, colleges and universities accepted $1 billion in federal government aid for scientific research alone, which accounted for 75% of their research budgets, not counting funds dedicated to university-controlled government research centers.[10] And while these vast amounts of aid put the government at the forefront of educational patronage, the budding educational-industrial complex found continued support in the form of industrial sponsors. Between 1944 and 1947, seventy colleges and universities established industry-sponsored research institutes or reorganized already established ones to accommodate new corporate support.[11]
Both private and public support of new research institutions contributed to the growth of what scholar William Ranklin has called the “the flexible knowledge economy.” Ranklin sees post-war corporate laboratories as reflecting a rapidly changing notion of knowledge production as a “pragmatic social theory,” which both was informed by and contributed to the university research model. In establishing corporate labs under the purview of newly prestigious scientists, “the goal was not to establish control but to foster appropriate forms of creativity; in the ideal laboratory the interests of scientists and science managers would be the same.” Thus, the mixture of academic and corporate mentalities provided for a novel view of a creatively free yet systematic hotbed for practical scientific knowledge.[12] Government and private sponsorship provided much-needed capital for the minds behind these ideal new scientific arenas to thrive, and it rocketed scientists and engineers into a new role of corporate leadership, scattering the top scientific minds from university campus to government and corporate campuses throughout the country.
Notes:
[1] I refrain from using the term “interwar period” here because the period in question also encompasses the years of World War I and World War II.
[2] Rebecca S. Lowen, Creating the Cold War University, Berkley, 1997, 1-11.
[3] For a detailed account of some of these changes, see Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University, Cambridge, 1972.
[4] Lowen, Creating the Cold War University, 22-3.
[5] Kerr, Uses of the University, 52.
[6] David Freund, “Marketing the Free Market: State Intervention and the Politics of Prosperity in Metropolitan America,” The New Suburban History, Chicago, 2006, 14-5.
[7] Lowen, Creating the Cold War University, 22-36. Quote from page 23.
[8] Margaret Pugh O’Mara, . “Uncovering the City in the Suburb: Cold War Politics, Scientific Elites, and High-Tech Spaces” in The New Suburban History, 67.
[9] Ibid. 66.
[10] Kerr, The Uses, 53-4.
[11] Lowen, Creating the Cold War University, 98.
[12] William J. Ranklin, “The Epistemology of the Suburbs: Knowledge, Production, and Corporate Laboratory Design,” Critical Inquiry, v. 36, no. 4 (Summer, 2010), 771-806. Quotes from page 774.
An important and understudied subject that is crucial to understanding the history of suburban America and the prevalence of the corporate campus is the rise of the university sciences that began in the early twentieth century. The topic is all the more pertinent to this broader project, given its focus on the development of the corporate campus, and specifically Fordham’s Westchester campus, which has served as both corporate and university campus. One can divide the increasing influence and importance of science into two general historical periods: the period beginning with the onset of World War I and the post-World War II period.[1] Both periods are part of a roughly six-decade continuum during which scientific prestige steadily increased, but there exists one important distinction between them. While private interests mainly dominated the former, the latter was colored by a drastic increase in governmental support.[2] Dramatic shifts in both the reorganization of higher education priorities and curricula and the federal government’s increased involvement in research endeavors contributed to the rapid development of corporate campuses on the urban periphery in the post-war period.
1914-1945
The early twentieth century saw a number of shifts in the organization of higher education in the United States; none was more powerful than the increasing weight given to what are commonly referred to as the “hard sciences,” namely physics and computer sciences.[3] As technologically advanced weaponry proved to be an ever more deciding factor in the outcome of World War I, United States corporations established a link between higher education and the war effort. The magnitude of military events highlighted the roles of non-combatants; meanwhile, away from the war effort, corporations increasingly depended on engineers and scientists to invent and improve new products. Scientists and engineers associated with universities in turn looked to corporate research for supplementary income, and sometimes as a source of further creative freedom. University administrators, meanwhile, excitedly welcomed the onslaught of private patronage, attempting to cultivate relationships that were sure to bring monetary benefits to their institutions.[4]
Though the decades leading up to World War II saw far greater private interest in the recruitment of scientists and funding of universities, a number of government initiatives laid the groundwork for a symbiosis that would truly burgeon in the decades after the war. These included the establishment of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and the 1914 Smith-Lever Act, which helped fund agricultural research at land-grant universities.[5] Two decades later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms further intensified the government’s role in private and public education.[6] Most top private universities resisted government funding, fearing a loss of control within the institution and an eternal debt to the federal government. Many of those who feared government involvement, however, were more accepting of business funding, stressing what one scholar called the “production of knowledge over education of students.”[7] Private universities could not hold out for long, however, and the next world war would spell further ties between the federal government and the universities, both public and private.
Post-World War II
Even more than its predecessor, World War II linked science with national strength, and faith in the hard sciences permeated American culture. The 1950s saw both an increase in prestige for scientists and fervent public interest in popular science publications like National Geographic and Science.[8] Meanwhile, as the Cold War proved to be more cultural than military, although the two were always closely intertwined, scientists’ role in the Russian-American stand-off became central in two ways: symbolically, as the future of American cultural and educational dominance; and practically, in directly competitive endeavors like the space race. New masters and PhD programs in the sciences began springing up all over the country in the first two decades of the Cold War, and universities also had to fight continued competition from corporations as they attempted to lure the top intellects from university settings.[9]
At the same time, however, the government began to offer financial support in unprecedented ways. The postwar years saw a steady increase in government funding of higher education; in 1960 alone, colleges and universities accepted $1 billion in federal government aid for scientific research alone, which accounted for 75% of their research budgets, not counting funds dedicated to university-controlled government research centers.[10] And while these vast amounts of aid put the government at the forefront of educational patronage, the budding educational-industrial complex found continued support in the form of industrial sponsors. Between 1944 and 1947, seventy colleges and universities established industry-sponsored research institutes or reorganized already established ones to accommodate new corporate support.[11]
Both private and public support of new research institutions contributed to the growth of what scholar William Ranklin has called the “the flexible knowledge economy.” Ranklin sees post-war corporate laboratories as reflecting a rapidly changing notion of knowledge production as a “pragmatic social theory,” which both was informed by and contributed to the university research model. In establishing corporate labs under the purview of newly prestigious scientists, “the goal was not to establish control but to foster appropriate forms of creativity; in the ideal laboratory the interests of scientists and science managers would be the same.” Thus, the mixture of academic and corporate mentalities provided for a novel view of a creatively free yet systematic hotbed for practical scientific knowledge.[12] Government and private sponsorship provided much-needed capital for the minds behind these ideal new scientific arenas to thrive, and it rocketed scientists and engineers into a new role of corporate leadership, scattering the top scientific minds from university campus to government and corporate campuses throughout the country.
Notes:
[1] I refrain from using the term “interwar period” here because the period in question also encompasses the years of World War I and World War II.
[2] Rebecca S. Lowen, Creating the Cold War University, Berkley, 1997, 1-11.
[3] For a detailed account of some of these changes, see Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University, Cambridge, 1972.
[4] Lowen, Creating the Cold War University, 22-3.
[5] Kerr, Uses of the University, 52.
[6] David Freund, “Marketing the Free Market: State Intervention and the Politics of Prosperity in Metropolitan America,” The New Suburban History, Chicago, 2006, 14-5.
[7] Lowen, Creating the Cold War University, 22-36. Quote from page 23.
[8] Margaret Pugh O’Mara, . “Uncovering the City in the Suburb: Cold War Politics, Scientific Elites, and High-Tech Spaces” in The New Suburban History, 67.
[9] Ibid. 66.
[10] Kerr, The Uses, 53-4.
[11] Lowen, Creating the Cold War University, 98.
[12] William J. Ranklin, “The Epistemology of the Suburbs: Knowledge, Production, and Corporate Laboratory Design,” Critical Inquiry, v. 36, no. 4 (Summer, 2010), 771-806. Quotes from page 774.