| The saga of Tiffin University, an institution more than 118 years old, has never been written. Located in Tiffin, Ohio since its inception in 1888; it called three different locations its home. From its founding as a for-profit Commercial College at Heidelberg College, to its slow, but dramatic transformation into a successful independent university, the history of Tiffin University is a series of exceptional events that add to the historiography of higher education.;This history is an historical analysis of the creation and evolution of Tiffin University from 1888 to 1939. Historiography, the method of emphasizing a hybrid of qualitative and quantitative research techniques, was used. An historical analysis of written documents, quantitative records, oral sources and relics come together in narrative form bringing new insights into the historical foundations of the institution. John Thelin's horizontal institutional history model also provided a conceptual framework and guided the research.;During its first thirty years, Tiffin University was affiliated with Heidelberg College, as a financially independent and separate division or college, known as the Commercial College. It taught business courses typically found in the popular commercial colleges of the day. After breaking with Heidelberg College in 1917, the institution was moved to a downtown Tiffin building by Franklin J. Miller and Alfred M. Reichard, two remarkable educational entrepreneurs. Miller and Reichard successfully operated it as for-profit Tiffin Business University from 1917--1939. Together they developed a collegiate environment that reflected a great measure of sophistication and effected quick, forceful curriculum changes. Tiffin Business University's offerings would be dramatically altered, going from offering diplomas to Bachelor's degrees, in one decade. It became non-profit Tiffin University in 1939.;This institutional history connects us to the history and culture of America through an examination of the economic, social and educational events of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Such events include the university movement, local boosterism, the commercial college movement, the prowess of spirited educational entrepreneurs, and forces of war, depression and rapid industrial expansion. The continued historic educational conflict between the practical arts and liberal arts provides an interesting backdrop to this history. |
