MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY\u27S EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY PROGRAM: A CASE STUDY OF A COMPENSATORY EDUCATION PROGRAM IN HIGHER EDUCATION, 1968 - 1981 (WISCONSIN)

The objective of this study is to examine the history of one compensatory program which was implemented during the sixties and to discuss its evolution and its outcomes. In January of 1969, Marquette University established the Special Program for the Cultural Distinct Student (which in the fall of 1969 became the Educational Opportunity Program) to recruit and provide compensatory services to educationally and economically disadvantaged minority students who desired to attend the University. This marked the beginning of a minor but important investment of University resources to redress educational inequities for persons disadvantaged by historic patterns of discrimination and generations of poverty. This Program has today become a complex University unit which has incrementally folded its mission and activities into the purpose and shaping of the University. Fairly substantial progress towards achieving its goals caused the Program to be viewed by the mid-seventies as a model and, equally important, as a base for initiation of public policy proposals which further defined the nature of the federal responsibility in compensatory education within higher education. This study addresses seven questions: (1) How do key elements--Marquette University administrators, faculty and students--define the Educational Opportunity Program? (2) Do these same groups see the Educational Opportunity Program as tangential or central to the University mission, goals and objectives? (3) What are the basic operational assumptions governing the Program? Have these changed over time? (4) What are the key developments in the history of the Program? (5) What has been the impact of federal funding on the institutionalization of the Educational Opportunity Program at Marquette University? (6) What has been the Program\u27s role in developing concepts and approaches to compensatory education? (7) What directions and perspectives have grown out of the Educational Opportunity Program experiment? In sum, this work suggests that the Program has significantly intervened in the lives of 850 students. Equally important, it provides a clear and in-depth picture of the complex dynamics that undergird the Program\u27s interaction and relation to the University and to the formulation of federal education policy