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Title: The Changing Profile of College Access: The Truman Commission and Enrollment Patterns in the Postwar Era

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2007

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Abstract: The 1947 Presidents Commission on Higher Education, popularly known as the Truman Commission, offered a remarkable vision, one of an expansive, inclusive and diverse system of post secondary education in the United States. It appeared just as hundreds of thousands of former GIs poured onto the nations campuses, taking advantage of a little heralded program to provide tuition and other benefits to veterans of the recently concluded World War II. As it turned out, both of these events signaled the beginning of a remarkable period of expansion in higher education. The postwar years have been described as the third great period of growth in the history of American education, a development that took decades to unfold.1 While the Commission suggested that nearly half of the nations youth could benefit from collegiate education, it limited its projections to just thirteen years (to 1960). In fact, it took more than twice as long to approach such high levels of popular participation in higher education, and the most dramatic growth occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. In other respects, however, the Presidents commissioners projections for change in enrollment patterns look remarkably prescient in retrospect. Even if they missed the timing of college growth and the significant role women played in it, their report still managed to anticipate a very broad process of change. By 1980 the collegiate student population had come to embody much of...

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Authors: Kim, Dongbin; Rury, John L.

Periodical (Full): History of Education Quarterly

Issue: 3

Volume: 47

Pages: 302-327

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education, Other

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