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This article illustrates the evolution of the concept of student development in the higher education and student affairs literature. The current status of this concept is presented in a framework of 14 propositions as an agenda for scholars and practitioners in the field.
From the early Colonial colleges to the current era of the multiversity, American higher education has concerned itself with the development of individual students for positions of societal leadership and influence. In the "age of the college" (Hofstadter, 1955), a period from the first institutions in America until just prior to the Civil War, preparation of the "gentleman scholar" was compelled by a vision of character development emphasizing command of the classics and refinement of civilized graces. With the inception of modem behavioral sciences in the subsequent "age of the university" (Metzger, 1955), a vision of human development emerged that focused on complex, measurable traits and systems of thought, emotions, motivations. and capacities, presumed to culminate in an integrated state of maturity. The human personality was seen as a function of numerous underlying dimensions that manifested themselves in a variety of observable behaviors and actions. This view was given further credence in the growth of the occupational aptitude assessment movement following the First World War as concepts of human personality traits were applied to the selection and training of personnel in industry and the vocational advisement of students on the college campus. It is this latter vision of development, grounded in the study of human psychology and sociology, that has persisted into the last decade of the Twentieth Century. Over the last 50 years in particular, this vision has been proffered in the academy by professionals in student affairs under the rubric of "student development."
What are the philosophical and educational roots of this vision? What are the implications of its knowledge base for the design and practice of education, both in and out of the classroom, in our American system of higher learning? These questions are addressed in a sequence of five articles. First, I identify what I believe to be some of the foundations of student development in the form of a very brief historical outline of two principal educational movements of the Twentieth Century; I then summarize the...