(52,876 to 66,264)—numbers that would continue to increase through the 1980s (Deskins 20). Furthermore, federal measures such as Title IX (1972) were continuing to ease access for female students. For instance, although men still outnumbered women 61 percent to 39 percent in the student body at large, a majority of the 1977 freshman class at Penn State was female. Older students, or “returning adult students,” were also swelling the ranks: by 1976, learners over the age of 22 were the fastest growing segment in higher education, constituting 48 percent of the total national enrollment of 10 million (Munday 681). At the same time, administrators debated both the legality and the practicality of governmental measures to increase the numbers of previously underrepresented groups on campus. When places like Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, and Michigan faced threats from the federal government to withhold funding if they did not move more resolutely to increase enrollment of underrepresented groups, many in higher education lashed out against such “federal intrusion” (Brubacher and Rudy 79)8; but mostly universities moved to comply.
Demands for more accessible and professionally applicable higher education led to another trend in higher education in the 1970s: the increasing influence of community colleges, two-year junior colleges, and professional/technical schools, all of which brought higher education closer to increasing numbers of students. In a 1976 report, for example, the Pennsylvania Department of Education claimed that “both the number of community colleges and the increasing number of students at such colleges have constituted the greatest growth in post-secondary education in Pennsylvania” (i). Students at the community colleges either worked for associate degrees or transferred after two years to complete baccalaureate requirements: Temple University in Philadelphia was receiving over a thousand transfers a year in 1977, many from Philadelphia Community College (Pennsylvania Dept. of Education 6); and the Penn State system had grown to include 18 two-year campuses, many of whose students came to University Park from those Commonwealth Campuses to complete traditional undergraduate degrees.9 Proprietary schools and schools of technology grew even faster than community colleges during the 1970s. In Pennsylvania, for example, enrollment in proprietary and technical schools grew an astounding 184 percent from 1970 to 1979 (Pennsylvania Economy League 3).
Despite these increases in overall enrollment in the first half of the 1970s, many colleges and universities faced great economic challenges as they confronted inflation, rising energy costs, and a projected dearth in the number of college-age students (indeed, that anticipated dearth explains, as much as do the political forces left over from the 1960s, the willingness of colleges to reach out to under-represented groups and returning-adult students). Even as early as 1971, a survey of 41 institutions conducted by the Carnegie Commission found that 71 percent were either already in financial distress or were well on their way to it (Brubacher and Rudy 383). In Pennsylvania, for example, federal appropriations to higher education grew nearly 106 percent during the decade while state and local appropriations increased over 92 percent (Pennsylvania Economy League 3), but those increases could not keep pace with rising expenses. Costs for instruction rose nearly 110 percent, expenditures for operation and maintenance of university grounds and buildings climbed nearly 135 percent, and a Pennsylvania government struggling with hard economic times was reluctant to spend additional money on higher education. According to the Pennsylvania State Board of Education, the state ranked 20th—well above average—among the states in its per capita income, underutilized tax capacity, and level of employment but only 48th in terms of higher education appropriations as a percentage of state general revenue (45).
Many universities therefore were reducing faculty and staff; articles in higher education journals were regularly offering administrators advice on “Managing Faculty Reductions” (e.g., Alm, Erhle, and Webster 153). A study of 163 institutions conducted in 1975 found that from 1971–1974, 74 percent of private four-year institutions, 66 percent of public four-year institutions, and 41 percent of two-year institutions had undergone staff reductions (Alm, Erhle, and Webster 153). In 1973–74, the University of Wisconsin sent lay-off notices to 88 of its tenured faculty; Southern Illinois dismissed 104 faculty and staff members, 28 of them tenured (Brubacher and Rudy 384); and Michigan’s public universities, in the face of setbacks in the auto industry that reduced tax revenues sharply, were under similar duress. Several institutions even faced the possibility of closing. In response to these pressing economic conditions, faculty and staff stepped up efforts to protect their jobs by unionizing. By June 1974, faculty had selected collective bargaining agents on 338 campuses and had successfully unionized on 29 (Brubacher and Rudy 392). Colleges and universities sought to manage budget problems not only by reducing their faculties but also by increasing part-time positions and graduate assistantships. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, the five-year period from 1972 to 1977 saw a dramatic increase in the number of part-time faculty in higher education: in 1972, colleges and universities employed 3.17 fulltimers for every part-time faculty member; in 1977, the numbers had fallen to 1.26 fulltimers for every parttimer (Leslie, Kellams, and Gunne 23).
The panic over declining funds was exacerbated by frequent predictions of large enrollment drops—the general consensus was at least 15 percent—for the coming decade. According to the projections of the Pennsylvania Economy League, for instance, enrollments in higher education in Pennsylvania would drop 32.1 percent during the 1980s, with state-related institutions like Penn State losing close to 20 percent of their enrollment numbers (2–3). Another report issued by the Pennsylvania State Board of Education in 1978 suggested that, due to changes in the birth rate after 1960, “the number of college-aged youths 18–22 w[ould] drop by about 24 percent between 1975 and 1990” (43).
Economic conditions and projected declines in enrollment caused many potential students to reconsider the value of higher education. On the one hand, this convergence of crises resulted in a phenomenon known as “student consumerism.” To keep the customers coming, institutions of higher education had to please those customers. The Educational Record dedicated a series of articles in the Spring 1977 issue to “The Student Consumer Movement.” As their titles reveal, these articles explained how to maintain “Consumer Interest in Higher Education” (Hoy 180) and provided examples of how some institutions had been “Meeting Student Demands” (Moye 191). The Record also included a study of student views of good teaching, again reflecting the desire to please the students, who, the writers of the article claimed, “are the consumers of instruction” (Morstain and Gaff 300). Teacher training and “retraining” gained in popularity, again in response to the perceived changes brought about in the university by changing student populations and declining budgets, and “faculty development” became an academic buzzword. Jerry G. Gaff, Director of the Project for Institutional Renewal, boasted that, as of 1977, “a recent national survey estimated that approximately 50 percent of all institutions of higher education have a program or set of practices identified as faculty development” (Morstain and Gaff 299). Jon Wergin, Elizabeth Mason and Paul Munson, all involved at the time in educational planning and development at the Medical College of Virginia, directly linked faculty development emphases to the increasing call for public accountability and to the impact of student consumerism: “Faculty development is fast emerging as a priority in post-secondary education. Reasons for this surge of interest are numerous, but most center around traditionally nonacademic concerns. Demands from students and society are becoming increasingly strident for educational programs that are accountable to their needs” (289).
On the other hand, universities contemplated curricular changes in response to the economic situation and changed climate on campus. Humanities departments and colleges of liberal arts in particular faced immense challenges. With an unprecedented number of new students entering the academy, with the growing popularity of technical education, and with enrollments booming in community colleges and other two-year institutions, many in higher education worried about a decline in students’ appreciation of the value of a liberal arts education. In the Educational Record for Winter 1977, Edward Eddy (soon to become Provost at Penn State) forecasted a substantial decline in the fortunes of liberal arts education. According to Eddy, students in the 1970s were “less skilled and yet more pragmatic than their predecessors” (9). Students used to be concerned with “being better,” he lamented, but now they were just concerned with “being better off.” Eddy wasn’t alone in his beliefs. In a 1976 book, Geoffrey Wagner, a professor of English who taught basic writing at City College of New York (CUNY), called open admissions