Higher education's perfect system? State planning for colleges and universities in Kentucky, 1930--1965

Higher Education's golden era, stretching from roughly after the First World War to the 1960s, has received much attention from scholars. Increases in student bodies, and funding sources led to the proliferation of different mission responsibilities for colleges and universities. During this era different institutional types with specific mission responsibilities began to emerge and solidify. One analysis of this era assumes that the division of mission between institutions was a rational function of planning bodies and oversight boards. Examples such as California, New York, or Massachusetts are often mentioned as examples for how a hierarchical higher educational system is constructed during the post World War II era.; This dissertation explores the supposed rational construction and coordination of public colleges and universities in light of higher education in Kentucky between 1930 and 1965. Specifically, it investigates mission change, expansion and solidification in four Kentucky institutions of various types---The University of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, Kentucky State University and Transylvania University. It also attempts to discover what level of coordination occurred between the individual institutions and the Kentucky's planning board, the Council for Public Higher Education. These two areas of focus are undertaken in order to lay out whether mission variations in individual institutions were in response to planning, politics, or both.; This study fords that Kentucky represents an important departure from both the rational model and the political compromise model (California) for constructing and planning higher educational systems. In Kentucky, institutional compromises did not culminate in an effective Master Plan. Rather, two 1960s era surveys of higher education in Kentucky reveal that the institutional ambition trumped coordination in the State. In Kentucky, a rational and planned system of higher education with different levels of higher education fulfilling specific mission responsibilities did not take root between 1930 and 1965. Politicians and institutions in Kentucky avoided constructing a system of institutions with clearly defined mission responsibilities, in favor of a system which allowed strong institutional leaders to build up individual campuses and universities. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...