American University System without WWs

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Deleted member 1487

If the World Wars never happen which started the outflow of European capital and brains to the US, what would that do to the US university system? The US really only managed to catch up to and exceed the Europeans after WW2 when the best minds in Europe fled the Nazis and aftermath of the war, upgrading both the British and US universities by their addition to the faculty. However if the Germans and all other stayed at home and continued to make their universities the hubs of science and other fields would the US system ever be world class or would the Europeans just keep their lead?
 
The trend was merely (vastly) accelerated and dramatized by the Wars. The flow was already happening before the war. It would be slower and less complete but I still think you'd see the Nobel Prizes and such move to the USA. We have a lot of money, industry and people. Even if Europeans never came in, our Universities would be world-class (and would attract foreigners anyway). The American scale is just so much vaster then any other nation at the time.
 

Deleted member 1487

The trend was merely (vastly) accelerated and dramatized by the Wars. The flow was already happening before the war. It would be slower and less complete but I still think you'd see the Nobel Prizes and such move to the USA. We have a lot of money, industry and people. Even if Europeans never came in, our Universities would be world-class (and would attract foreigners anyway). The American scale is just so much vaster then any other nation at the time.
But in a TL without the vast outflows of capital and the increase in wealth of the European states, especially as trade barriers broke down, they would also have tremendous wealth themselves and be able to compete economically. Plus the US did not invest in the sciences pre-WW1 like they did during and after WW2 the way the Europeans were moving pre-WW1 with state funded institutes. I'm not saying the US wouldn't move in that direction eventually, but that gives the Europeans, especially given their need to fund military advancements, a huge advantage going into the mid-century in 'Big Science'.
 
With your POD there's a lot more to consider than just brain-drain. The world wars practically invented modern education in the US, from kindergarten to post-doc.

But focusing specifically on universities, something as simple as accreditation or subject matter wasn't standardized until the government started handing out the first education benefits to WWI vets and decided they didn't want to throw money away on "useless degrees."

Without the wars, taxes would remain in the basement, with no public investment and with the rich heaping their donations on a few ivory towered institutions like Harvard and Princeton.

Education would remain a private good rather than a public good for decades longer without the world wars to jog the nation out of its complacency. Private enterprise would lead the way rather than the government, and so progress would occur on a much smaller scale in fits and starts, with dramatic duplication of effort and many steps in the wrong direction.

Progress would occur in incubators like Bell Labs and other such places driven by market outcomes, where half-trained scientists would follow the apprentice model for much longer in their careers.
 

Deleted member 1487

With your POD there's a lot more to consider than just brain-drain. The world wars practically invented modern education in the US, from kindergarten to post-doc.

But focusing specifically on universities, something as simple as accreditation or subject matter wasn't standardized until the government started handing out the first education benefits to WWI vets and decided they didn't want to throw money away on "useless degrees."

Without the wars, taxes would remain in the basement, with no public investment and with the rich heaping their donations on a few ivory towered institutions like Harvard and Princeton.

Education would remain a private good rather than a public good for decades longer without the world wars to jog the nation out of its complacency. Private enterprise would lead the way rather than the government, and so progress would occur on a much smaller scale in fits and starts, with dramatic duplication of effort and many steps in the wrong direction.

Progress would occur in incubators like Bell Labs and other such places driven by market outcomes, where half-trained scientists would follow the apprentice model for much longer in their careers.

Not necessarily, WW1 also wrecked the progressive movement and crushed the Socialists allowing the reforms that Wilson implemented to be largely repealed by the GOP after the war. Wilson lowered tariffs and started the path down the progressive reform movement and the US was on the road to universal healthcare while the Socialist party was becoming a legitimate 3rd party until the Espionage Act was used to break them up and then post war massive deregulation happened and the Roaring 20's turned into the Great Depression. Plus German wouldn't collapse as the most popular foreign language in the US and the march to English hegemony in the world wouldn't start.
 
I agree with Expat on this. The biggest influx WWII had on American universities was the GI bill that allowed returning soldiers to get a college, even university degree. Einstein and Walter Gropius might have influenced post-war America in some way, but the real work came from 1000 unnamed math teachers in community college.
 

Deleted member 1487

I agree with Expat on this. The biggest influx WWII had on American universities was the GI bill that allowed returning soldiers to get a college, even university degree. Einstein and Walter Gropius might have influenced post-war America in some way, but the real work came from 1000 unnamed math teachers in community college.
So you don't think the Socialist movement would have gained steam without WW1?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histo...sition_to_World_War_I_and_the_First_Red_Scare
 
You might have a point about socialism, but I don't see any positive factors to elevate it, even if you remove its biggest obstacles.

Moderate alternatives to socialist labor were already more popular and more powerful in the US before the war. If the socialists pushed harder, employers would've given more ground to the AFL and the like, making the moderates look more successful and the socialists look more violent and unreasonable.

Things probably would've improved slowly, and certain trends would've advanced without the wars- unemployment benefits, social security, probably healthcare, as you say, and even a certain amount of environmentalism (the Dust Bowl was inevitable).

I just don't know where you get leverage for education reform in that package of working-class rights.
 

Deleted member 1487

You might have a point about socialism, but I don't see any positive factors to elevate it, even if you remove its biggest obstacles.

Moderate alternatives to socialist labor were already more popular and more powerful in the US before the war. If the socialists pushed harder, employers would've given more ground to the AFL and the like, making the moderates look more successful and the socialists look more violent and unreasonable.

Things probably would've improved slowly, and certain trends would've advanced without the wars- unemployment benefits, social security, probably healthcare, as you say, and even a certain amount of environmentalism (the Dust Bowl was inevitable).

I just don't know where you get leverage for education reform in that package of working-class rights.

Education reform would be part of an overall liberal agenda that is pushed as people get more class educated and the lack of existence of a USSR driving the insane Red Scares and lack of WWs pushing the nationalism that killed the liberal movement for a generation (and then again during the Cold War) takes away the barriers to the general march of progress in the US. It happens over a longer period of time as part of a progressive whole with Wilson making his own contributions in the teens. As it was Wilson was pushing the liberalization of trade by reducing tariffs, so that alone has interesting effects on globalization.
 
No GI Bill of Rights. Far fewer lower and middle income people have the financial ability (or even believe they have the right) to attend college and get a university degree. Far fewer people go to university...poorer or less academically-inclined people attend trade schools or go straight into trades. Private colleges remain more prevalent and the State University systems are much smaller...certainly no megaversities with 33-40,000 students. I suspect the public universities would also be more exclusive regarding academic status when granting admissions. The whole WW2 generation that benefitted from the GI Bill in OTL might not value higher education or expect that they or their children will go to college.
 
Education reform would be part of an overall liberal agenda that is pushed as people get more class educated and the lack of existence of a USSR driving the insane Red Scares and lack of WWs pushing the nationalism that killed the liberal movement for a generation (and then again during the Cold War) takes away the barriers to the general march of progress in the US.

Again, I don't disagree that the barriers are removed. I'm just wondering where the positive pressure comes from and how forceful it is.

As people have stated, the GI Bill led to mass-education because it was suddenly an option. It was a benefit for fighting and an effort to keep veterans out of trouble (speaking of, no wave of gangsterism in the 1920s, but I digress.) But even though education benefits were offered, nobody really thought mass education was a necessary thing.

Even in the 1950s when modern public education models were set up, it was thought that no more than 10-20% of high school students actually needed to go to college. And it wasn't until the economic turmoil of the 1970s and 80s that experts started touting a college education as a necessary thing for the majority of American workers.

So it was only through the "fluke" of conscription and massive expansion of the military that large numbers of Americans went to college mid-century, not because anyone was pushing for it. It was a byproduct.

The debates among progressives earlier in the century were focused on *how* to teach people, at every level, not on who should go. Progressives would've wanted the best-qualified 10% of the country to go to college, not the richest 10%, not the best-qualified 50%, and certainly not everybody.
 

Deleted member 1487

So Expat, the Europeans maintain their lead via their universal education systems and greater funding for science? The SPD ends up making higher education a greater right in Germany than there is in the US ITTL?
 
So Expat, the Europeans maintain their lead via their universal education systems and greater funding for science? The SPD ends up making higher education a greater right in Germany than there is in the US ITTL?

I would reckon so, unless something causes the US to take a different direction.

There's still the effect of capitalism, which had American companies head-hunting in Europe before the wars. There's favorable geography, working class immigration keeping wages low (compared to Europe), ability and desire of private investment to turn ideas into reality on a scale Europe often couldn't match. So the US would likely continue to compete with Europe for some time as a land of innovation. But it would continue to be borrowed innovation.

And as your initial post speculates, the number of people willing to emigrate purely for financial reasons is going to be smaller if Europe doesn't take a hit on the prosperity front.
 

jahenders

Banned
The other huge impact was a the GI bill which led to a huge number of new college attendees at around the same time, many of them from more "blue collar" backgrounds than the previous average US college student.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
It's hardly the only measure, but Americans had won

If the World Wars never happen which started the outflow of European capital and brains to the US, what would that do to the US university system? The US really only managed to catch up to and exceed the Europeans after WW2 when the best minds in Europe fled the Nazis and aftermath of the war, upgrading both the British and US universities by their addition to the faculty. However if the Germans and all other stayed at home and continued to make their universities the hubs of science and other fields would the US system ever be world class or would the Europeans just keep their lead?

It's hardly the only measure, but Americans (as in US citizens) had won 13 Nobels in the sciences by 1939, ranging from AA Michelson in 1907 to Ernest Lawrence in 1939 (both Physics); the others included Richards (Chemistry), Millikan (P), Compton (P), Langmuir (C), Morgan (Physiology/Medicine), Whipple (PM), Murphy (PM), Minot (PM), Urey (C), Anderson (P), and Davisson (P).

There were 35 Germans in the same period, but several of those winners were born outside of Germany, and ended up there for various practical reasons - Kuhn and Lenard were both born in Austria, for example, and Ostwald in Russia.

Britain had 22 (including several born overseas), France had 17 (Marie Curie won twice), and so on.

It's also worth mentioning that "Big Science" and US federal support for research universities was hardly unknown in the Nineteenth Century; the National Academy of Sciences was founded in 1863, and the Morrill acts of 1862 and 1890 led to federal support for such minor institutions as Rutgers (founded 1766), MIT (1861), and Cornell (1865), as well as campuses of the universities of California, Illinois, and Wisconsin, Purdue, Iowa State, Kansas State, Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State, Texas A&M, Virginia Tech, and many others.

There is also the reality that minor universities such as Princeton, Harvard, Yale, etc, as well as Caltech (founded as such 1910), Rennsalear, etc. all predated WW I, by (in the case of the Ivies) centuries...

Along with the Nobel, there's also the Copley, awarded by the Royal Society, which was first awarded to an American, the mathematician Josiah Willard Gibbs, (Yale, PHd, 1863) in 1901; Gibbs had won the Rumford from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (founded in 1780!) in 1880... along with such minor lights as Michelson, Edison, Hale, AH and KT Compton, Shapley, and a few others.

My point being, that given the realities of the world economy by (say) 19143 (Bairoch via Kennedy) the following rankings in terms of total industrial potential (UK in 1900 being 100):

US - 298.1
GE - 137.7
GB - 127.2
RE - 76.6
FE - 57.3
AH - 40.7
JE - 25.1
IE - 22.5

It is worth noting the US had surpassed the UK in the same measure in 1900, 127.8 vis a vis 100...

My point being, it will take more than the absence of the world wars to reverse the US climb to superpower state, economically, militarily, and technologically.

Best,
 
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Deleted member 1487

I didn't say reverse, but given the lead of the European states in organization and how the wars really developed the US into what it is today in all of those categories, perhaps not really ever reaching those heights without the WWs and Europe remaining competitive due to structural issues in the US never being worked out, how would the US university system stack up over the years if they remained a privilege that the upper middle class and up had access to while the rest of the US did not? If they didn't get the influx of great European minds that helped develop US universities would they ever become what they are today? Would the US even be the primary destination of international students looking to do research if European universities retained and enhanced their standings?
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Who do you think the land grant colleges were designed for?

I didn't say reverse, but given the lead of the European states in organization and how the wars really developed the US into what it is today in all of those categories, perhaps not really ever reaching those heights without the WWs and Europe remaining competitive due to structural issues in the US never being worked out, how would the US university system stack up over the years if they remained a privilege that the upper middle class and up had access to while the rest of the US did not? If they didn't get the influx of great European minds that helped develop US universities would they ever become what they are today? Would the US even be the primary destination of international students looking to do research if European universities retained and enhanced their standings?

Who do you think the land grant colleges were designed for?

These are not the Ivies - these are (generally) public (state-run) universities designed to serve as what we call R1s today.

Best,
 
Who do you think the land grant colleges were designed for?

These are not the Ivies - these are (generally) public (state-run) universities designed to serve as what we call R1s today.

Best,

It's true, the land grants filled a needed gap, expanding college from something 2% of the population could hope to achieve to something 8-10% of the population could hope to achieve. Later, thanks to the expansions of the 20th century, their capacity increased hand over fist.

These institutions remained quite small, for the most part, until after the wave of mass enrollments encouraged by federal spending thanks to the internationalized outlook brought about by the world wars. Not *all* of them remained small, as growth was encouraged at a state level.

(It's funny, I probably walked by 30 land grant university deans not ten minutes ago...there's a reception happening in the lobby of my office building.)
 

TFSmith121

Banned
And if one is looking at what would be regarded as R1s today, I don't

It's true, the land grants filled a needed gap, expanding college from something 2% of the population could hope to achieve to something 8-10% of the population could hope to achieve. Later, thanks to the expansions of the 20th century, their capacity increased hand over fist.

These institutions remained quite small, for the most part, until after the wave of mass enrollments encouraged by federal spending thanks to the internationalized outlook brought about by the world wars. Not *all* of them remained small, as growth was encouraged at a state level.

(It's funny, I probably walked by 30 land grant university deans not ten minutes ago...there's a reception happening in the lobby of my office building.)

Actually, by 1910, it was about 3 percent (p66):

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf

But if one is looking at what would be regarded as R1s today, I don't think the percentages would be significantly higher in Germany, Britain, or France, would they?

If one is merely looking at percentages (or raw numbers) of the population attending post-secondary, I'd think the US was ahead of the Europeans, honestly, given the lack of "public" universities in the UK and the population differentials between the four nations.

One also has to consider institutions like West Point and Annapolis, which although not accredited as universities at the time essentially functioned as such, with four-year-long courses of study; Sandhurst and St. Cyr were not comparable. Then there are the publicly-supported state normal schools in the US, state "military" schools outside the Morrill system (Citadel, VMI, Norwich, etc), and etc - basically, although the world wars certainly are one reason why the US higher education system has developed as it has in the past half-century, they are far from being the only reason, and its entirely possible a similar public emphasis would have come about absent the Twentieth Century conflicts.

Free public schools and the Morrill Act are prime examples of US public policy - at least in the free states - regarding education.

Best,
 
Oh god, I would imagine the UK was abysmally behind from the little I've read (which is admittedly very little.) Is it true there were only 10-20 unies in the entire country by 1900?

You mentioned accreditation and that's a big example of something that only really came about because of federal spending on servicemembers. While the concept existed before WWI, associations were miniscule, as were the benefits of the practice.

Directly as a result of giving the first education stipends to exiting servicemembers, the federal government decided they wouldn't just hand the money to any fly-by-night school; there would have to be standards.

I think the real deficit we're dancing around here between the US and other countries is the difficulty of convincing the US government that ANYTHING is a public good, or more importantly, a public necessity. That's been our struggle since the First Continental Congress, at the latest. The 20th century granted a large measure of relief from that burden, and that's largely thanks to the two World Wars.

Meanwhile European countries don't seem to have this problem. Whether it's egalitarian brotherhood or controlling paternalism, everyone seems to agree that the people must be taken care of.
 
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