Campus Life: Undergraduate Cultures from the End of the Eighteenth Century to the Present

by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz

"Based on subtle, imaginative readings of autobiographies, memoirs, fiction and secondary sources, [ Campus Life ] tells the story of the changing mentalities of American undergraduates over two centuries."—Michael Moffatt, New York Times Book Review

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Academic, Cultural Studies, Historical, School

348 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz is professor of history and American Studies at Smith College.

Reviews

[Phoebe Sargeant · Rating 2 out of 5]

I commend this book on being the first of its kind. And that is about where my positive remarks for this book will end. As a crucial text in a seminar I took called "College Life in American History," this book was foundational in crafting a history of college life as a subculture in the broader, and newer field of American social history. Horowitz tracks the changes of how students interact with each other and their academic spaces over 200 years of history, and readers can find a tangible timeline of how campus life transformed from elite boys blowing up residence halls to a coed obsession with GPA. However, I also find that Horowitz fails to prove many of her points and shoves her historical analysis into confusing organizational systems. To be fair, this book was published in 1987, the height of Neo-liberalism (which she is clearly pushing against), and the accepted standards in the field of history have become more specific, but I constantly found this book's attempt at history infuriating. To give a few examples to emphasize my point, Horowitz's lack of primary sources, and using said primary sources to underpin her arguments is obvious. More often than not, Horowitz points to works of fiction, mainly novels, to demonstrate her point about College Subculture. While this is a fine practice many historians rely on, it is flimsy at best to rely on novels to make accurate historical points. In addition, Horowitz will also introduce historical evidence in an argument that will directly disprove her previous point. In the chapter "College Men: The War Between Students and Faculty," she argues that many upper-class men buck against the college system, caring little about grades and academic honors, never once pointing to a specific example. However, when she does introduce an individual historical figure, Teddy Roosevelt, who is of the upper crust, she spends two pages explaining how he does not fit the mold of the rambunctious college man. This specific example is indicative of many of the problems that plague this book, horrible organization and a distinct lack of specific historical evidence. Finally, Horowitz fails to connect this history to the larger subtext of American history. I understand that she wanted to expand upon college life as its own culture, but I simply don't think it can be done. She constantly makes small references to the outside world without explaining their significance to the changing college environment, or in some instances, never explaining what they mean in general. For example, her categorization of students and her inability to explain what the GI bill was and how it lead students to campus. I have more instances of the confusing nature of this book, but I think my comments above provide a sample size of the numerous grievances I have about this book.

[Matt Ely · Rating 4 out of 5]

The real strength of a text like this is in developing a conceptual framework. The author spends the bulk of the book identifying how her framework would apply in different historical eras.

Basically, it's about how student attitudes toward a few factors determine broad "classes" of students over time. For example, do students see themselves as being definitionally opposed to campus authority or deferential to it? Do they prioritize the curriculum or the extracurriculum? Do they see college as a time of transformation or a time to reaffirm what preceded it? When confronted with the political structures of the institution, do they respond by affirming norms, being indifferent to them, or opposing them? If they oppose them, do they do so for causes internal to the education experience or based on external political movements?

The way students respond to these kinds of questions sort students into three broad classes: insiders, outsiders, and rebels. Horowitz then goes to great lengths demonstrating how those classes are subdivided and evolve over time.

While the text is a few decades old, there will doubtless be flashes of recognition for any interested reader. This serves a great starting point for jumping into how students claim their identities on campus and how the replicate/revise the behavioral patterns of their predecessors.

[Alex Cruse · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fine but I definitely would have preferred to read something, I don't know, not published before I was born regarding the history of higher education.

As a reader, you can draw clear connections between the undergraduates of yesteryear and those of today which is practical for a Higher Education program. It would have been a slightly more engaging and equitable read had it not seemed primarily focused on the white narrative.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a charming and ambitious book. The author has assembled a two hundred and eighty year history of the student view of college through the examination of collegiate novels and memoirs of people who have written about their college days. The portrait of the mix of students that have existed in some form for almost all of that time - the insiders oblivious to learning, the outsiders hitting the books, and the rebels trying to define themselves intellectually and sociology over their college years - is enlightening. The assemblage of books used to paint this story - while certainly not exhausting; I thought of autobiographies she missed as I read this book - is interesting, a mix of the famous and semi-famous.

Horowitz notes that the rise in serious study in college life of the late 19th/early 18th centuries came about because the new workplace demanded that people have a new knowledge base. The level of seriousness rose again with the post WWII years and the inclusion of older military veterans in the student mix. She rightly identifies the transition of the outsiders from the poor students of old who viewed professors as mentors to today's generally well-healed group who have more of an antagonistic relationship with the professorate.

Sprinkled throughout this book is a wonderful assemblage of photos of students through the ages culled from university archives across the country. This book isn't designed to be read widely. But for academics and students who want to know what student life was about way back when, this is a fun read free of political correctness.

[Tiny Pants · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, which is a wide-ranging history of undergraduate cultures in the United States the 1800s through the early 1980s. Horowitz's main argument is basically that we have monolithic views of college life because certain segments of the undergraduate population -- most often the mainstream, extracurricular-oriented, white, middle-class Protestant students she alternately calls college men and women and organized [i.e. Greek:] students -- tend to monopolize public attention at any particular time. Horowitz combines archival research with data from memoirs and other personal artifacts of both the prominent and unknowns to present the varieties of student cultures through two centuries. She focuses mainly on three groups: college men and women, outsiders, and rebels. Outsiders are non-traditional groups attending college (beginning with poor religious men and later expanding into women, non-whites, and non-Christians) who tend to be school-oriented, while rebels are usually drawn from traditional college-attending groups but interested in reshaping the college experience. Though the typologies she has created present problems at some times (and can veer into stereotype), for the most part they provide a useful framework. The weakest parts of the book are those that focus on times closest to the present, when Horowitz relies more on her own impressions and experiences as a professor than on archival data.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Horowitz's book provides an essential view of student life in place of the "house histories", policy studies, legal histories, and so forth that often provide the common texts in the field of studying higher education. While Horowitz readily acknowledges that legal decisions, social mores, and the like impacted college, her goal readily seems to be on studying and evaluating what the students actively engaged in - not solely within the classroom, but outside of it.

As she is attempting to review almost 200 years of educational information, the undertaking is ambitious - the undergraduate students within that time period encountered numerous issues - flu outbreaks, desegregation, coeducation in both academics, groups, and residence, and a host of numerous other things that fill the scope between these areas. While the text does leave somethings needing more coverage, Horowitz provides ample references to sociological and psychological studies to review and her bibliography of works cited for this text are equally informative and worthy of review.

For anyone engaged in the study of education, history, or student life, this should be considered essential and engaging reading as many of the historical protests and student responses she covers in some detail are reflected in student concerns and protests of the modern area as well.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author doesn't hind her feelings towards some organizations or her opinions of college life and students. That being said, it made it hard to really get to the facts and see how the history of college life has progressed over the years.