ABSTRACT
Since the Enlightenment, the university has been an intellectual commons, providing the institutional space for the development and debate of ideas. With the unprecedented wealth that accompanied industrialization and the advent of the Progressive Era, higher education's resources were also committed to public benefit. A hallmark of Progressivism was its opposition to political patronage that had metastasized due to immigration and urbanization. Prior to the security established by the welfare state, corrupt political machines exploited unemployed and poor immigrants who flooded American cities. Muckrakers' attempts to ferret out corruption contributed to some of the most comic moments in American history. Gradually, questions about the integrity of American colleges and universities surfaced during the postwar era. The absence of critical analysis of social work education is consistent with that of higher education as a whole; most research on social work education is rudimentary, conveniently evading any connection between faculty instruction and student performance.
