The Dartmouth College Case

The Dartmouth College case, its climactic decision coming amidst intellectual and institutional churnings in the formative years of American higher education, has been examined and reexamined far more for its constitutional than its educational meaning. The U.S. Supreme Court decision of 1819 is famous in constitutional law for its statements on private rights and corporation privileges. It is, perhaps, the most quoted decision of all, but for reasons that have nothing to do with education. Two great questions remain. What were the educational ideology and goals in the attempted reform of the Dartmouth charter? And what was the effect on the development of the supposed alternative of public higher education? Almost no attention has been given the first question, fundamental though it would seem; and the little attention given the second, with one notable exception,' has been based on questionable inference. A return to these educational questions seems overdue since a college was the centerpiece, the state was trying to change it, the court said what could not be done and intimated what could, and both the educational ideas espoused and the educational prohibitions imposed must have reverberated down through history for alert ears to hear. One's curiosity is also piqued by that little explained sentence in which one historian suggested that public higher education was thus held back fifty

Epistemology · Meaning (existential · Political science · Sociology · Academic Freedom and Politics · Philosophy

• The “Other Jeffersons” and the State University Idea

  Eldon L Johnson•The Journal of Higher Education•1987

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• Bringing educational fundraising back to Great Britain

  Eve Proper•Journal of Higher Education…•2009

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