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- Title
James Bartlett Edmonson and the Mid-Twentieth-Century Crusade against For-Profit Colleges: An Episode of Ignorance-Making in the United States.
- Authors
Angulo, A. J.
- Abstract
The nineteen-fifties -- a decade of civil rights litigation, Cold War intrigue, and red scare McCarthyism -- was also a period racked with controversies over for-profit colleges and universities (FPCUs) in the United States. This paper explores the work of James Bartlett Edmonson and his circle of mid-twentieth-century FPCU critics. Edmonson, a School of Education dean at the University of Michigan during the nineteen-fifties, became one of the most prominent voices against what he described as "shysters" and "sheepskinners" in proprietary higher education. His work exposing FPCU fraud, corruption, and predatory schemes at the national level won him allies at the National Education Association and the Federal Trade Commission. It also created powerful enemies among independent college associations, home study groups, and religiously affiliated institutions. This paper contributes to the literature by engaging with an underdeveloped episode in higher education history and by locating this case study within the emerging field of ignorance studies. Sources for this study were drawn from the James B. Edmonson Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; Research Division Collection, National Education Association, Gelman Library, George Washington University; and published primary source documents in state and national periodicals.
- Subjects
UNITED States; HIGHER education; FOR-profit universities &; colleges; FOR-profit schools; CORRUPTION; HISTORY of education
- Publication
Historical Studies in Education / Revue d'Histoire de l'Éducation, 2017, Vol 29, Issue 2, p1
- ISSN
0843-5057
- Publication type
Article