This Day in Education History (Ike Signs Act for Sputnik-Spurred Student Loans)

September 2, 1958—President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the National Defense Education Act (NDEA), the second major piece of legislation passed by Congress following mass hysteria over the Soviet launching of their satellite Sputnik. 

Voters do not know what they’re getting when they elect a President simply by reading party platforms—and few instances demonstrate that more than American education policy. 

Two of the major developments in the federal approach to education occurred under Republican presidents ostensibly concerned with budget control. One was the “Nation at Risk” report, issued under Ronald Reagan 25 years ago; the other was NDEA.

(What about the No Child Left Behind Act, a significant element of George W. Bush’s domestic agenda? Please notice a key phrase in the last paragraph: Republican Presidents ostensibly concerned about budget control. As conservative Republicans of a certain stripe, such as Peggy Noonan and Christopher Buckley, will gladly tell you, the current President Bush is not at all concerned about clamping down on the budget, pointing to his unwillingness to wield his veto power as a weapon against out-of-control spending, not to mention involvement in a foreign war whose purposes they question.) 

Eisenhower’s lack of eloquence led many intellectuals to downgrade his brainpower, particularly in relation to his two-time opponent, Adlai Stevenson. Over time, however, historians came to see that this was an error, and his reputation has been growing slowly but measurably since then. 

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning ...the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age, Walter A. McDougall summarizes in a compelling way why the President was slow to embark on a pell-mell “space race” with the Soviets—and why he had a better sense of the long-range implications of defense-induced spending than his critics:

“He feared the economic and moral consequences of a headlong technology and prestige race with the Soviets; he feared the political and social consequences of vastly increased federal powers in education, science, and the economy; he feared, as expressed in his Farewell Address, the assumption of inordinate power and influence by a ‘military-industrial complex’ and a ‘scientific-technological elite.’” 

That resolution didn’t stand a chance—not after a second, larger Soviet satellite launched almost a month after Sputnik (this flight was termed Muttnik by smart-aleck American headline writers—the kind I love!—because of the presence of a canine aboard); and especially not after Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson recognized the political plum that had fallen into his hands. 

With his eyes set firmly on the White House, LBJ conducted the Senate’s Preparedness Investigation Subcommittee (i.e., the Johnson Subcommittee) with a flair for publicity and a talent for apocalyptic hyperbole: “Control of space means control of the world,” he warned, pointing to what the “masters of infinity” could command—controlling the earth’s weather, causing drought and flood, changing the tides, changing temperate climates to frigid. 

(Until I got to that last phrase, I thought I was reading an early draft of Al Gore’s Powerpoint lecture-as-documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.) 

So Ike’s attempt to rein in the budget went Ka-Sput-nik, the victim of worsening relations with the U.S.S.R. 

On July 29, buffeted by charges that the Soviets had pulled ahead in the space race, he signed the National Air and Space Act of 1958, creating NASA, the agency that has overseen space exploration since then. 

In the past, conservatives had viewed education expenditures as best suited to local rather than federal control. Ike had had no trouble selling another major bit of domestic legislation as defense-related: the Interstate Highway System. (He’d been convinced of the value of roads in moving vast armies while being driven on autobahns on his way to conquering Nazi Germany). 

But education was another matter .

Though pressures to spend on education had been mounting since 1943, when President Roosevelt’s Commission on Higher Education set a goal of having one-third of Americans graduate from four-year colleges, Sputnik provided the most surefire means of passing legislation: the perception of a crisis.

NDEA opened the floodgates to the current role of American educational policy: 

* a student loan program to increase of the flow of talent into science, mathematics, and foreign language careers; 

* a “National Defense Fellowship” for entering a college teaching career; and 

* Programs to increase pre-college teacher training.