The 1920s and 1930s were interesting decades in the United States. WWI had just ended and the society was in the process of changing its eras and beginning a new chapter in its history. The 1920s in the United States is referred to as the Roaring Twenties. The reason for this is because of the “roaring” prosperity during this time period. The businesses and culture were booming in this era. The 1930s in the United States is referred to as the Great Depression.
The reason it is called this is because of the economic hardship that the United States faced as a whole nation because of the fact that the stock market had rashed. Even though these decades are completely different realms of the spectrum they impacted the United States. One aspect that they affected tremendously was colleges. Before this time, higher education wasn’t perceived in the United States as the place to gain experience and get a job. These decades however helped shape and influence the change of cultural perception of higher education which lead to growth and expansion of colleges across the nation.
This essay will contain scholarly articles about colleges and feature college yearbooks from Marshall University located in Huntington, WV to help howcase the changes of cultural perception that occurred during this time. At the beginning of the 1920s, Marshall University began going through a cultural perception change of what type of college it wanted to be which lead it turn into a four-year college. Before this time, Marshall University was a 2- year teacher college that only teachers who were in training went to.
Mainly one group of people started off this cultural perception change that quickly began to take off and it was scientists, scholars, and institutional leaders. They saw college as promotion of knowledge and began trying to create nstitutions for people to go to (Oleson 13). As people began to see this process taking place several colleges across the nation followed along suit. This process is seen in the Marshall University 1921 Mirabilla. In this yearbook, there is a senior class history section.
In the class history section, a senior discusses how their class is different from any other class because they are the first students to graduate with a degree from Marshall. The senior continues to go on by talking about the different organizations that the seniors have been part of such as being in WW1, Christianity services, and the Y. M. C. A. The senior after explaining the organizations that they have been part of challenges the underclassmen to be part of even more organizations then they were (Marshall College, “Mirabilia, 1921”).
This section of the yearbook shows how much of an accomplishment and privilege it was for these individuals to be part of a four-year college and were honored to be part of its new legacy. The cultural perception of colleges before the 1920s was very different than it was in the mid-1920s and 1930s. Before this, colleges were known as places that only the wealthy attended. As late as 1913 fewer than one in twenty young persons attended college, an even the most prestigious universities were scrambling to fill their classes, drawing students almost exclusively from their regions” (Levine 16-17).
This helps explain why Marshall was a 2 year teacher college instead of a four year college. There was enough people in the area that wanted to attend college to create it into an institution that was meant for everyone to attend. The general public didn’t start participating in higher education until scientists, scholars, and institutional leaders began promoting knowledge as the ew rise of success and encouraged everyone to look towards education. When this happened the number of Americans undergraduates rose significantly.
It went from approximately 52,300 in 1870 to 156,800 in 1890, 237,600 in 1900, and 597,900 in 1920. Marshall University saw this rise in population and had in 1921, 1267 students enrolled which was highest record in history at Marshall. This population continued to increase every year after because people began to believe that college and receiving higher education was the way to succeed and achieve their dreams in the professions that they wanted (Oleson 18-9). Since cultural perception began changing in society the federal government took this as an opportunity to put their own input in.
They asked for more natural and social sciences due to the fact of the growing problems of science and the technologically advances they were in the making (Oleson 19). This request caused Marshall University to create more and new courses. In 1924-1925 they stated expanding their courses and programs. They added pharmacy, pre engineering, and Pre Law. Many students at Marshall University were excited to go to the new courses that had been added because they knew of the new job ppunitroies that were coming available due to the fact that society was going into the direction of science and technology.
This caused a steady raise every year in these courses (Marshall College, “Mirabilia, 1925”). As Marshall University’s population and departments began growing due to the overwhelming change of perception, Marshall started expanding its buildings to accommodate these needs. Prior to 1924, there was only one building that students were taught in and that was Old Main. Several pictures in the yearbooks during this time showed different angles of old main and people walking towards it. There was no other building for students to go to (Marshall College, “Mirabilia, 1921”).
The reason for this was before the 1920s Marshall didn’t have a huge population of students or have an array of courses therefore there wasn’t a need for more than one building. However, when the 1920s started the population rose to the point that they had to build other buildings. They began building more dormitories to allow students to stay close to campus. They also built new buildings for the courses that they were offering. Since they were offering different courses, students needed the ability to research and ind books that they needed for their homework and classes.
This caused Marshall to build a brand new library called the James E. Morrow Library (Dailey). The cultural perception began to change so much that for the first time in Marshall history in 1926 students began participating tremendously. In the 1926 yearbook, there is a change in how students think college should be like. The freshman class lead this change by exceeding well academically but also participating in athletics. They were showing that college is meant to be a place to learn but also a place to experience new things. They started having a ot of school spirit and because of this they had parades before every sporting events.
This caused Marshall University to build the Fairfield Stadium (Marshall College, “Mirabilia, 1921”). The growth and expansion of Marshall University in the 1920s-1930s was due to the cultural perception of colleges changing during these decades. People did not see it as a place that only the wealthy attended anymore. They now saw it as a place that anyone could potentially go to, to receive higher education and get a degree. Even higher ranked people were trying to help push for a change in how education was perceived in the United States.
This had a great influence and impact on Marshall working hard on improving their college when it came to creating new buildings, creating new departments/courses and working on expanding the number of students that they had in their programs. Marshall went from a two-year teacher college that only had one building, to a four-year college that had increasing amount of students, departments, and buildings within a two decades. Without the popularity and cultural perception that was evolving during this time that Marshall would not have been able to prosper the way it had during these eras.
