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Professionalism, Higher Education, and American Culture: Burton J. Bledstein's The Culture of Professionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Extract

Burton Bledstein classed his book The Culture of Professionalism with the work of the giants in American academic history. He suggested that his theory of the culture of professionalism ranked in significance with Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis, Charles A. Beard's industrialization theories, and Perry Miller's analysis of Puritanism. Bledstein's fresh historical perspective on higher education and his skepticism regarding professional authority no doubt were shaped by his experiences at elite public and private institutions, the University of California at Los Angeles (B.A., 1959) and Princeton (Ph.D., 1967). He has spent his whole professional life at one public institution, the University of Illinois at Chicago, with brief interludes provided by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1972–73) and the University of Chicago (1977–78), the latter in recognition of his book.

Type
Retrospective
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 Bledstein, Burton J., The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York, 1976). The following book reviews and essays helped me to analyze the impact of Bledstein's book: Schudson, Michael, School Review 86 (Nov. 1977): 137–40; Kuklick, Henrika, Journal of American History 68 (June 1981): 152–53; Biebel, Charles D., “Higher Education and Old Professionalism,” History of Education Quarterly 17 (Fall 1977): 319–25; Scott, Donald M., “The Mystique of Professionalism,” Reviews in American History 6 (Sep. 1978): 299–305; Haskell, Thomas L., “Power to the Experts,” New York Review of Books, 13 Oct. 1977, 28–33; Veysey, Laurence, Academe 65 (Feb. 1979): 61–62; Blumin, Stuart M., “The Hypothesis of Middle-Class Formation in Nineteenth-Century America: A Critique and Some Proposals,” American Historical Review 90 (Apr. 1985): 299–338; and Melosh, Barbara, “‘Not Merely a Profession’: Nurses and Resistance to Professionalization,” American Behavioral Scientist 32 (July/Aug. 1989): 668–79.Google Scholar

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6 Ibid., 289.Google Scholar

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