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TheRevolution in American HigherEducation To produce the upheaval in the United States that changed andmodernized the domain of higher education from the mid 1860s to themid 1880s, three primary causes interacted. The emergence of ahalf dozen leaders in education provided the personal force that was needed. Moreover, an outcry for a fresher, more practical, and more advanced kind ofinstruction arose among the alumni and friends of nearly all of the oldcolleges and grew into a movement that overrode all conservativeopposition. The aggressive Young Yale movement appeared, demanding partial alumni control, a more liberal spirit, anda broader course of study. The graduates of Harvard collegesimultaneously rallied to relieve the colleges poverty and demand newenterprise. Education was pushing toward higher standards in the East bythrowing off church leadership everywhere, and in the West by finding a widerrange of studies and a new sense of public duty. The old style classical education received its most crushing blow in the citadel ofHarvard College, where Dr. Charles Eliot, a young captain ofthirty five, son of a former treasurer of Harvard, led theprogressive forces. Five revolutionary advances were made during the firstyears of Dr. Eliots administration. They were the elevation and amplificationof entrance requirements, the enlargement of the curriculumand the development of the elective system, the recognitionof graduate study in the liberal arts, the raising of professional training inlaw, medicine, and engineering to a postgraduate level, and thefostering of greater maturity in students life. Standards of admissionwere sharply advanced in 1872-1873 and 1876-1877. By the appointment of a dean to take charge of student affairs, and a wise handling of discipline, the undergraduates were led to regard themselves more asyoung gentlemen and less as young animals. One new course of study afteranother was opened up - science, music, the history of the fine arts, advancedSpanish, political economy, physics, classical philology, and internationallaw. | 
