Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 59, number 4, summer, 1976

              The University and the Social Gospel: The Intellectual Origins of the ''Wisconsin Idea"
By J. David Hoeveler, Jr.
A
notable fact of American life in the late nineteenth century was the remarkable transformation of the American college and its emergence as the new university. As usually described, this metamorphosis derived from three major fac¬ tors: a new concern for practicality and utility in the colleges' curricular program; a demo¬ cratic effort to extend the benefits of education to a wider portion of the community and to repay the public by servicing its needs; and a new academic interest in research—that is, the advancement of knowledge instead of the mere passing-on of an acquired cultural tradition.* These three components were mutually re¬ inforcing, and, as integrated aspects of the so¬ cial role of the American university, they found their most famous statement in the "Wisconsin Idea," which received its fullest summarization during the administration of Charles R. Van Hise in the early twentieth century. The Wisconsin Idea pledged the University of Wisconsin to serve the state by applying its research to the solution of public problems, by training experts in the physical
Note: This essay is an expanded version of the From- kin Memorial Lecture, presented at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the tall of 1975. The author expresses his appreciation to the Fromkin Research and Lectureship Committee and the University of Wis¬ consin-Milwaukee Library for funds to support this project.
' The best general account of these trends is in Law¬ rence R. Veysey, The Emergence of the American University   (Chicago, 1965), 57-179.
and social sciences and joining their academic efforts to the public, administrative functions of the state, and by extending the work of the University, through its personnel and facili¬ ties, to the boundaries of the state.^
Particularly with respect to the social sciences, the University of Wisconsin truly did pioneer in merging the higher learning with public life. But the concept, and indeed the rhetoric, of service to the state was at this time becoming the norm of the state univer¬ sities everywhere in America, and outside Wisconsin was often more starkly utilitarian in its operations. Nonetheless, Wisconsin be¬ came the focus of national interest because it gave dramatic and concrete illustration to a new concept. Historians, like the public it¬ self, have long been interested in the Wis¬ consin Idea, and particularly in its reputation as a new experiment in politics associated with the governorship of Robert M. La Follette and in its network of affiliations with "the other end of State Street"—the University—in Madison. To this extent, however, they have neglected the origins of the Wisconsin Idea as it emerged within the changing intellectual milieu of nineteenth-century America. Those origins deserve emphasis, because a study of them suggests especially that the University of Wisconsin's special contribution was the conceptual as well as the practical elucidation of ideas generated by several individuals who served the institution in a critical period.
"Ibid., 107-109.
282