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Authors: Tom Brokaw
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working the police beat or covering the school board, city hall, or state legislature.
“Taking any economics courses?” I’ll ask. “Or accounting or computer science or biology? How about writing?” The eagerness of my new young friends often turns to unease. “What is he talking about?” they seem to be thinking. “I want to be Diane Sawyer or Matt Lauer, not some wonk.”
I was equally frustrated when a bright young African American student who won state honors at a Mississippi high school science fair announced he would be a marketing major when he enrolled at Boston University. He stuck to his plans despite my gentle efforts at dissuasion, and he graduated with honors in marketing. I am sure he’ll be a success. It’s his life, after all, but does America need another marketing executive rather than another scientist?
THE PAST
In the nineteenth century, a little remembered Vermont politician inspired a federal program that became one of the most important and enduring contributions to the development of modern America. It was the establishment of land grant colleges, the inspiration of Justin Smith Morrill, a Vermont congressman and later senator, who correctly surmised that the young nation needed a network of institutions to promote agricultural education, the mechanical arts, and military tactics, three pillars of nineteenth-century America. Now there is at least one land grant school in every state.
The needs of our society have, of course, changed over time.
A half century ago, when I was preparing to leave for college, I’m not sure anyone in our family even knew what that meant, exactly. Neither one of my parents had attended college, nor had any immediate relatives. Our high school had no organized college counseling program. In my graduating class, maybe half planned to attend college.
The University of Iowa was my only choice, and as an out-of-state student my total costs for the year were around two thousand dollars, including room, board, books, maybe a beer or two (okay—maybe more), and a modest but presentable wardrobe. Mother and Dad had saved for this big moment, and they sent me off with all their working-class hopes to be realized. I had a good public school education in the social and physical sciences.
I had saved a couple of hundred dollars on my own for the first year and enrolled in general liberal arts courses, thinking maybe I’d go to law school at some point.
Meredith’s parents were both college graduates and so there was some family tradition, but this was 1958 and young women were not often encouraged to prepare for demanding careers, nor did their parents have the same expectations for them as they did for the young men of our time. Two of our brightest high school friends, both male, were recruited by Harvard with generous financial assistance. Meredith and three or four other young women should have been candidates for Wellesley or Smith or one of the other so-called Seven Sisters, but as she remembers, it never came up.
To the astonishment of her daughters today, Meredith made her entire college wardrobe at her Singer sewing machine. She was a skilled seamstress, and frugality was encouraged in her family. In her first year she attended a small women’s junior college in Missouri. When she was crowned Miss South Dakota in 1959, she qualified for a scholarship to an in-state school, so she transferred to the University of South Dakota.
As Meredith puts it, her dad thought she’d go to college and get a “Mrs.” degree.
Fortunately for me, that worked out, but I’ve often thought about how unfair it was that she and several other young women didn’t have a crack at an elite institution. For most of us at that time, I suppose, the goal was to get an education, get married—often right after graduation—then get an advanced degree or a job and start a family. This was 1962, and the future seemed to be an exciting challenge for our generation, with a new,
“Taking any economics courses?” I’ll ask. “Or accounting or computer science or biology? How about writing?” The eagerness of my new young friends often turns to unease. “What is he talking about?” they seem to be thinking. “I want to be Diane Sawyer or Matt Lauer, not some wonk.”
I was equally frustrated when a bright young African American student who won state honors at a Mississippi high school science fair announced he would be a marketing major when he enrolled at Boston University. He stuck to his plans despite my gentle efforts at dissuasion, and he graduated with honors in marketing. I am sure he’ll be a success. It’s his life, after all, but does America need another marketing executive rather than another scientist?
THE PAST
In the nineteenth century, a little remembered Vermont politician inspired a federal program that became one of the most important and enduring contributions to the development of modern America. It was the establishment of land grant colleges, the inspiration of Justin Smith Morrill, a Vermont congressman and later senator, who correctly surmised that the young nation needed a network of institutions to promote agricultural education, the mechanical arts, and military tactics, three pillars of nineteenth-century America. Now there is at least one land grant school in every state.
The needs of our society have, of course, changed over time.
A half century ago, when I was preparing to leave for college, I’m not sure anyone in our family even knew what that meant, exactly. Neither one of my parents had attended college, nor had any immediate relatives. Our high school had no organized college counseling program. In my graduating class, maybe half planned to attend college.
The University of Iowa was my only choice, and as an out-of-state student my total costs for the year were around two thousand dollars, including room, board, books, maybe a beer or two (okay—maybe more), and a modest but presentable wardrobe. Mother and Dad had saved for this big moment, and they sent me off with all their working-class hopes to be realized. I had a good public school education in the social and physical sciences.
I had saved a couple of hundred dollars on my own for the first year and enrolled in general liberal arts courses, thinking maybe I’d go to law school at some point.
Meredith’s parents were both college graduates and so there was some family tradition, but this was 1958 and young women were not often encouraged to prepare for demanding careers, nor did their parents have the same expectations for them as they did for the young men of our time. Two of our brightest high school friends, both male, were recruited by Harvard with generous financial assistance. Meredith and three or four other young women should have been candidates for Wellesley or Smith or one of the other so-called Seven Sisters, but as she remembers, it never came up.
To the astonishment of her daughters today, Meredith made her entire college wardrobe at her Singer sewing machine. She was a skilled seamstress, and frugality was encouraged in her family. In her first year she attended a small women’s junior college in Missouri. When she was crowned Miss South Dakota in 1959, she qualified for a scholarship to an in-state school, so she transferred to the University of South Dakota.
As Meredith puts it, her dad thought she’d go to college and get a “Mrs.” degree.
Fortunately for me, that worked out, but I’ve often thought about how unfair it was that she and several other young women didn’t have a crack at an elite institution. For most of us at that time, I suppose, the goal was to get an education, get married—often right after graduation—then get an advanced degree or a job and start a family. This was 1962, and the future seemed to be an exciting challenge for our generation, with a new,
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