History of the United States II / Unit 4 USH2 0475 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Schools for a Nation
The idea
Public education expanded enormously. Public school enrolment tripled, from seven million students in eighteen seventy to twenty-one million in nineteen twenty. High schools multiplied from about one hundred in eighteen sixty to more than six thousand in nineteen hundred. College enrolment rose from fifty thousand in eighteen seventy to over six hundred thousand by nineteen twenty, helped by the land-grant colleges of the Morrill Acts of eighteen sixty-two and eighteen ninety.
In practice
One hundred high schools becoming six thousand in forty years.
Where people slip
Women's colleges such as Mount Holyoke, Vassar, Smith and Wellesley opened alongside. The Yawp says the land-grant schools emphasised practical knowledge in science, engineering and agriculture. The growth was uneven: expensive private universities still served the elite, as the anchor notes, while land-grant colleges made higher education affordable for middle-class families.
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