A historical and philosophical perspective on the external degree

The impact of the external degree movement on American higher education has been and still is viewed by many authorities as a radical departure from traditional patterns of American higher education. Close examination of the historical evolution of American higher education, however, reveals that the external degree movement represents a logical and predictable development in the ongoing quest to integrate democratic ideals into educational practices. Viewed from this perspective, the external degree becomes one of many tributaries in the stream of innovations characterizing the history and philosophy of American higher education. One way to understand the meaning of the external degree movement is to reconstruct the chain of events, ideas, and notions leading to its birth. Three prominent philosophies have characterized the evolution of higher education in America: it has moved from an age of aristocracy, when higher education served an elite class; to an age of meritocracy, when ability became the basis for participation in colleges and universities; to modern higher education's search for egalitarian ideals of education for all. ' The passing of each era has been marked by establishment of new types of institutions and new curricular patterns, reflecting new ideas about the nature of man, society, and the role of education in human and societal development. These changes constitute the historical and philosophical foundations of the external degree movement. Early American higher education was modeled on the aristocratic traditions of Cambridge and Oxford and shaped by the religious context within which it developed. Colleges such as Harvard (1636), William and Mary (1693), Yale (1701), Princeton (1746) and Dartmouth (1769) were founded within a period of American history when religion dominated American life. Each colonial college established prior to the Revolutionary War related in some way to one or more

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  Open Access•Clifford I Johnson, Glenn A Vergason et al.•Journal of Teacher Education•1986

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