The development of American higher education in the nineteenth century

¶ … Timeline

Intercollegiate Sports

Intercollegiate sports characterized by lawlessness, use of athletes past the college levels. College contests turned to commercial spectacles hence the need for structured approach to intercollegiate sports.

saw the formation of the baseball association.

there was the first intercollegiate tennis.

this year saw the inception of American Football.

there was the first Women's collegiate game. This was also the year of the first college basketball game.

there was the first intercollegiate competition

there was expression of maturing collegiate sports. Intercollegiate sports became more pronounced especially in the Northeast and Harvard constructed a spectator facility considered one of the best in that time.

1914 -- saw the construction of a 70,000 capacity spectator facility in Yale (State University, 2014).

Women and Coeducation

The education of women in the schools and the colleges was an issue that was highly controversial with some colleges giving preference to the males and expressly indicating that the colleges are for males, though most did not expressly indicate that women were forbidden from studying in the school. By 1870s, most of the high schools were coeducational but there were more activities that saw a shift in the education system further n (Thelin, J.R., 2011).

1880s -- in the early years of 1880s there were expressed preference for male teachers with the fear that the female teachers in the coeducational institutions were feminizing their classes.

1890 -- this year saw the increase in the enrollment of high school aged children to a high of 51.4% from 6.7%.

1900 -- there were 50% of women enrolment in the business and commercial courses in high schools.

1908 -- American Home Economics pushed for the provision of home economics education for all girls.

1911 -- saw commencement of sex segregation in schools that fizzled out in 1915

1918 -- saw the National Women's Trade Union League, having been formed in 1903, hold a conference that empathized on educational equity and the need for each student, regardless of the gender, to access the co-education in all the trades hence the female students would have the same access as their male counterparts (University of Michigan, 2014).

The "Collegiate Ideal" and Black Colleges

1878 The Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute began admitting Native Americans.

1881 -- Foster helped in the establishment of the Negro Normal School in Tuskegee, and was authorized to operate separately from the state of Alabama.

1887 -- there was establishment of Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University and was a State Normal College for Colored Students. This was Florida's land grand institution for African -- Americans.

1890- there was the passing of the Morrill Act that provided for the access to education by everyone, even if it was in separate but equal institutions.

1896 -- the Plessy V. Fergusson established separate-but-equal public facility that had an effect on how higher education taught African-Americans and also henceforth how the institutions for the African-Americans were created.

1906 -- there was formation f the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity which as a Black Greek -- letter founded in Cornel University to help form brotherhood that would see the African-Americans and the minorities have a better say in matters academics.

1910 -- There was establishment of North Carolina College for Negroes.

World War I and the Colleges

1914 -- by this time, there were numerous students in college. The WWI as it progressed saw many of them volunteer for war in the year 1914, there was also a good number of staff members.

1914 to 1918 -- This period saw the most important contribution from students being the invention of the scientific advances that were made in the war (Imperial College London, 2007).