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The Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) database based on the American Freshmen Survey provides data for use in making marketing and management decisions in colleges and universities. This paper describes an operational cooperative model for managing and exploiting the data that CIRP makes available. The paper also offers an example of the substantive insights that can be derived from such cooperation. Additional sections: (1) provide a description of a project for sharing CIRP data among the members of an existing consortium, the institutions that are involved in the effort, and the student data in the resulting database; (2) discuss the scales used in the study constructed from the CIRP measures of social and political values and the creation of a general index of liberalism; (3) examine the differences among and within institutions on this index; (4) explore the characteristics of institutions that appear to contribute to differences in the social/political orientations of their freshmen classes; and (5) provide summary observations and suggestions for further research. Analysis suggested that various institutional characteristics and student academic orientations (i.e., intended major) are associated with measurable differences on an index of social/political liberalism. (GLR)

In this study, student liberalism is examined longitudinally to determine whether it changes as the result of being exposed to different educational environments. The effect of college on liberalism and the relative efficacy of different measures of the college environment are also addressed. The main focus is on the effect of student peers. Data were drawn from the 1983 Cooperative Institutional Research Program survey sponsored by the American Council on Education and the University of California at Los Angeles Higher Education Research Institute. Results indicate that the effect that college has upon liberalism appears to be due to socialization effects. Effects commonly attributed to the educational process may in fact be due to social forces that exist outside of college, suggesting that many of the findings related to affective student outcomes may need to be reexamined. While it is possible that changes in liberalism are due to cognitive or psychodynamic changes in students, these results indicate that involvement in different social systems affects liberalism differently. Colleges may not directly affect student values, yet bring students of different values together. Instead of developing and promoting values among students, colleges may simply serve as forums that reinforce generally held social values. Researchers may need to try to integrate more proximal measures of student experiences. By relying on structural characteristics to measure the college environment, they are adopting an imprecise frame of reference for interpretation. It is concluded that while college promotes liberalism, the effect is neither large nor universal, and college may now have a moderating rather than liberalizing effect. Contains 28 references. (SM)

The papers of this proceedings are presented in three parts. The four papers in part 1, "Issues in 20th Century American Education", discuss the women graduates of Oberlin College, 1836-1860, the Americanization of art museums, the business community's response to government's support of the labor movement, and the response of liberalism to the educational depression as seen through the publications of "Nation" and the "New Republic". The titles are: (1) "Conflict of Roles: Evangelism and Feminism a Twentieth Century Perspective?" (R. S. Saslaw); (2) "John Cotton Dana, The Newark Museum and the Arts in American Society" (A. S. Schnee); (3) "The National Association of Manufacturers and the Free Enterprise Campaign in the Schools, 1929-1949" (C. A. Moore); and (4) "The Assault on the Schoolhouse: Liberal Responses to the Educational Depression" (J. M. Wallace). The three papers in part 2, "Educational Developments in 19th Century American Education", present the moral instruction found in a children's magazine, the debate about the purpose of industrial education, and the growth of colleges in Massachusetts. Part 2's titles are: (1) "The Magazine as Educator: Mary Mapes Dodge and 'St. Nicholas'" (L. B. Fuller); (2) "Book and Platform Over Anvil and Hoe: Horace Mann Bond and the Place of Industrial Education in the Black College Curriculum" (W. J. Urban); and (3) "The Colleges and the State in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts" (A. Tachikawa). In Part 3, "Studies in European Educational Ideologies", two papers cover Italian education prior to fascism and under fascism, and the third paper gives insights into Homeric educational philosophy. The titles for Part 3 are: (1) "Bottai and Fascist Educational Policy, 1936-1943" (A. De Grand); (2) "Education in Liberal Italy: Prelude to Fascism?" (F. J. Coppa); and, (3) "An Alternative Approach to Homer's 'Iliad'" (R. H. Beck). The proceedings and the business meeting's minutes are included. (DJC)