Abstract

This paper considers federal leaders’ changing expectations of American higher education in the immediate post-World War II era. In this short time, American colleges and universities transitioned from being an important means to preserve democratic idealism to the institution responsible for failure in the Space Race. The specific limits of this analysis are the publication of the Truman Commission Report, «Higher Education for American Democracy» (1947) and the National Defense Education Act (1958). These federal initiatives are the result of political leaders’ expectations for institutions of higher learning in the United States in the wake of international conflict and challenge; the discourse utilized in the planning, negotiating, and writing of these federal texts provide a point of entry to understand how the idealized democratic institution, called upon to save and preserve democracy, became the scapegoat for national loss.