Introduction Higher education curriculum and practice responds to cultural, historical, political, and social events. Moreover, the curriculum in higher education institutions is purpose-driven, reflecting the educational theories and philosophies that guide the school’s mission and vision. Some institutions of higher learning aim for a competency-based curriculum, while others develop more subject-oriented or liberal arts-based curricula. Private and public schools may also respond differently to external or environmental pressures and influences. Whereas American higher education institutions had been directly influenced by their counterparts in Western Europe and Britain, more recent generations of American college and university students have received an education that is more specifically American in terms of content, tone, and pedagogy.

Contemporary social priorities and needs also affect higher education curriculum and priorities. Gender equality, racial parity, and other social justice issues can become especially important not just to campus life and the administrative environment, but to curriculum as well. Curricular choices can be driven by student interest, demographics, and demand, or by the professors. Visiting professors can add nuance to a staid curriculum, while tenured professors offer core content that defines the characteristic political philosophies of the school. In fact, social justice impacts administrative level decisions in higher education, including decisions related to hiring and retaining faculty and staff. Deans and other educational leaders in institutes of higher learning can have a strong bearing on curricular decisions, even shaping departmental practices and structures.

Funding may also impact curriculum development, and most notably highlight the potential conflicts of interest in privately funded colleges. Changes to curriculum can be driven from the ground up, led by professors, or from the top down, driven by deans and administrators. The political climate in higher education is also collectively shaped through scholarly and professional organizations and coalitions. It is also important to note the role that admissions policies and programs have on higher education curriculum. Admissions decisions can be politically and socially motivated, such as to increase the diversity of the student body along lines of gender, race, and class. The shift in population demographics and the increasing number of international students accessing American higher education also impacts curriculum and pedagogy, as well as administrative decisions. Access to funding through student loans, grants, and scholarship programs also helps to diversify the student body, which in turn stimulates changes in curricular content. Technology and the growth of online learning opportunities also have a strong bearing on curriculum development and higher educational practices.

Potential future issues in education are in fact as much related to student demographics and demands as they are to administrative choices and school policies. Technology may also shape the curricula of the future in colleges and universities. The job market and international labor market issues may also inspire changes to higher education curriculum, and not just in vocation-focused institutions. Globalization has also increased the flow of students in international programs. Even liberal arts colleges and universities change their curriculum in response to the changing needs of the global economy, as well as to changing political philosophies. The future of higher education may reveal a stronger cleavage between vocational and liberal arts schools, and it may also reveal the growing need for more government-assisted tuition programs to promote social justice and improve the American economy.

Higher Education in Colonial America

England’s historic universities like Oxford and Cambridge provided the foundation and model for the earliest institutes of higher learning in the New World. Cambridge, Massachusetts and Harvard University were overtly and directly modeled after its Old World counterpart. Then Harvard went on to be “the great prototype for all the later colleges of North America,” (Brubacher & Rudy, 2004, p. 3). Yale and Princeton followed suit, as did the College of William and Mary, which were more influenced by Oxford down to their “Oxford-bred faculty,” (Brubacher & Rudy, 2004, p. 4). As with their Old World counterparts, the New World colleges and universities were religious institutions at their heart. Puritan Christianity therefore heavily influenced the curriculum of higher education. The curriculum veered little from that of a seminary school.

Within a few generations of their establishment, though, colonialists recognized that it would be impossible to perfectly mimic the curricular and pedagogical models of Oxford and Cambridge. Even as Enlightenment philosophies infiltrated the curricula, American colleges and universities remained religious. Still, the social and cultural environment, politics, and even the physical environment in the New World required unique approaches to curriculum design and development. The colleges and universities of the New...

Whereas faculty and staff would have originally consisted of first or second generation settlers, after independence institutions of higher learning became more quintessentially American.
American independence made it apparent that the American system of higher education, while owing its foundation to Britain, needed to respond to the unique demands and needs of settlers. Those demands included appealing to religious and cultural plurality. Higher education curricula needed to remain relevant to diverse settlers with differential needs. Furthermore, the Revolution directly affected universities and colleges. Their administrators and faculty inevitably revealed their political leanings, and the war often impacted the schools. Some universities became philosophical battlegrounds for revolutionary values, while others were physical battlegrounds. As Lucas (2006) also points out, the American Revolution caused the colonial colleges like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to become “embroiled in the turmoil,” partly because of the cleavages that emerged between revolutionary and loyalist allegiances of some faculty and staff (p. 112). Therefore, the first significant historical event that impacted today’s American higher education curriculum was the Revolution.

Diversity in Early American Higher Education

Another one of the most important historical or social situations that impacted the curriculum of today was the diversity of the American population. The population of the United States became increasingly diverse from the 19th century onwards. Even in colonial times, settlers hailed from different religious, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. However, universities remained Protestant in character and curricular content well into the nineteenth century. Cambridge and Oxford curricula, Protestant in nature, still infiltrated the curricula of Harvard and Yale. Thus, American institutions of higher learning retained theological curricula and passed on the tradition of a religiously motivated curriculum to Harvard, Yale, and other colonial universities. In spite of the relative homogeneity of Protestant institutions, student bodies and faculty in the colonies were becoming more diverse than in the New World.

The rise of Enlightenment philosophy and secular values also helped to reshape the curriculum of higher education away from its religious foundations and towards the current liberal arts model. By the late 1700s, colonial colleges and universities were teaching the natural sciences, mathematics, modern languages, literature, and a wealth of other subjects to promote both depth and breadth of knowledge (Lucas, 2006). Although it is hard to imagine a college curriculum today without math and science, the introduction of science and math into higher education was a huge leap from the curricula of colonial schools. Colonial schools did not just serve as proxy seminary schools but also as institutions that instructed students in the classics of the Greco-Roman tradition. The “liberal arts” curriculum was in fact defined by its being mainly about the literature and philosophies of classical Greece and Rome. In this way, colonial and early American colleges and universities differed little from their counterparts in Britain since Medieval times. Many of the Founding Fathers like Jefferson and Franklin had, however, advocated heavily toward a broader liberal arts curriculum that included history, politics, government, and modern languages as well as math and science (Brubacher & Rudy, 2004, p. 14). By the middle of the 19th century, math and science were mainstay subjects even in liberal arts schools. The fundamental purpose of higher education was changing in America, reflecting but also promoting social change.

Social Justice, Gender, and Race

Diversity would later make the next two most important historical developments in higher education in America: the integration of people of color and women into the student body and faculty. Throughout most of American history, women were systematically excluded from higher education. “Serious scholarship, it was widely believed, lay beyond female capabilities,” (Lucas, 2006, p. 122). The first American college to become coeducational was Oberlin in 1833. By 1841, Oberlin had graduated the first three females in the Bachelor of Arts program, the exact same course of studies and curriculum the male graduates received (Lucas, 2006, p. 122). Oberlin also “freely admitted people of color of both sexes,” making it easily the most progressive American college of the 19th century (Lucas, 2006, p. 122). Blacks, like women, were generally excluded from institutions of higher education. Diversity drew attention to the dichotomies in American society, between the egalitarian social values and the outmoded hierarchical ones that were entrenched in Old World views of higher education. Higher education was long considered an elite tradition, perpetuating social hierarchies. American values called into question the elitist nature of university education.

Socio-economic class diversity also changed the American college and university curriculum. Whereas colleges…