ABSTRACT
Higher education in the United States was nearly two hundred years old before any considerable number of educators took occasion to give explicit statement to its underlying philosophy. Up to this time its philosophy had been largely implicit. And even afterward it tended to be piecemeal rather than comprehensive. Certainly no one projected higher-education programs based on systematic academic philosophies of the day. At first men theorized about that phase of higher education known as liberal education. The concern in liberal studies was largely with what kind of individual to form. The basic idea seemed to be to make a man first and if that was done successfully then one could turn with confidence to his education as a professional man, a captain of industry or commerce, a statesman, and the like. Later this order seemed to be reversed; liberal education came to be subordinated to research and research to public service. When this occurred the theory of higher education focused more on the nature of knowledge and whether public service tended to distort it.
