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The Religious Origins of Educational Inequality: American Denominational Control of Higher Education in the Early 20th Century
- Source :
-
ProQuest LLC . 2024Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. - Publication Year :
- 2024
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Abstract
- It is widely recognized that religious groups played a key role in founding institutions of higher education before the early 20th century. However, until now, scholars have lacked the detailed data required to articulate how those denominations' early commitments to higher education shaped the system of colleges and universities we know today. This comparative-historical dissertation uses previously unexamined archival data from the 1916 "Census of Religious Bodies" and the 1923 "College Blue Book" to investigate how the social inequalities embedded within the American religious field had created a stratified system of private higher education by the early 20th century. It also shows how differences between schools affiliated with different denominations mattered in light of the contemporaneous trend toward disaffiliation and non-sectarianism. The motivating questions for this study are (1) Which religious denominations had successfully invested in higher education by the early 20th century, and which had not? (2) Which religious denominations promoted which kinds of higher education? And finally, (3) which religious denominations and schools formally disaffiliated from each other, and why? I find that the Protestant Establishment -- the handful of denominations associated with the English-speaking colonial elite -- had early advantages in founding colleges, equipping them with advantageous resources, and then disaffiliating them, effectively redefining their schools as the torchbearers for quality (secular) higher education. This study illuminates the enduring importance of religious denominations' historical involvement in important American institutions -- especially the ones that we think of today as being largely secular. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISBN :
- 979-83-8283-093-3
- ISSN :
- 3828-3093
- ISBNs :
- 979-83-8283-093-3
- Database :
- ERIC
- Journal :
- ProQuest LLC
- Publication Type :
- Dissertation/ Thesis
- Accession number :
- ED657223
- Document Type :
- Dissertations/Theses - Doctoral Dissertations