File talk:USCHorseshoe1872.jpg
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The representation of the University of South Carolina in 1872 reveals much about the marginal role of public higher education after the Civil War within an economy that was still predominately agricultural in its base and without any great demand for individuals with specialized skills that only a university or large college could provide. The viewer is struck by the university's size or, more accurately, lack thereof. This reflects the absence of any clear role for universities across the nation, not merely in South Carolina, before their credentials became the sine qua non of access to positions of any consequence in American society. Only with the nation's urbanization, as noted by the 1910 Census Bureau report, and industrialization did conditions result in a significant growth in the absolute number of occupations that required university credentials as a prerequisite for employment. (One such occupation, that of a high school teacher, reflects the impetus for growth in college and university enrollment. While common school teachers were not required to hold a baccalaureate prior to the 1930s, high school teachers were expected to hold a B.A. The rapid multiplication of high schools toward the close of the 19th century provided colleges and universities with a level of demand that spurred their growth, which was further spurred by the decision of some medical colleges to require a Bachelor's degree as a prerequisite and law schools to require a minimum of two years of undergraduate education, after which a student would transfer to a university's law school and complete his, or her, final two years for a Bachelor's in Law, or LLB, degree.)
The etching reveals other factors about the mid-19th century university that document its significant difference from the university of the early 20th century. First, rather than any visible athletic fields, one sees only a marching field where the male students were required to fulfill the military training mandated by the Morrill Act. The lack of the opportunity to expend their energy through inter-collegiate sports is one of the explanations offered for the continuation of periodic student disturbances. Also, the etching reveals what would appear to be a chapel to the lower right of the campus, something would not expect in a public institution, but reflects the failure of higher education to have yet drawn a bright white line between church and state. Last, while there are what appear to be dormitories and classrooms, there is no apparent match for the modern-day student center. What would become the center of the student extra-curriculum had yet to establish itself on the American university campus, reflecting the narrow conception of higher education common to the period. Last, most of the buildings have been built in close proximity and of wood. Before the emergence of the modern college and university, built primarily of stone, concrete and brick, these institutions were the frequent victim of fire and several would close as a consequence. Likely the most damaging fire, from the perspective of the historian, was the fire that destroyed much of William and Mary in the early 19th century and took with it the records that could have given us a far better and more balanced understanding of the colonial colleges.
