Legislation enacted to provide financial assistance to students, states, and schools and so ensure a supply of people
trained to meet future national defense needs.
In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik
into space, spurring Congress to pass the National Defense
Education Act of 1958. The bill, introduced by Senator Lister
Hill and Representative Carl Elliott, both Alabama Democrats, was an education bill framed as a measure to improve
national defense. The act states, “The Congress hereby finds
and declares that the security of the Nation requires the
fullest development of the mental resources and technical
skills of its young men and women. The present emergency
demands that additional and more adequate educational opportunity be made available.” Twenty-four Republicans voted
for the expansive bill, although they had voted against similar legislation previously, before the Sputnik launch.
The act included provisions for the creation of the first
federal student loan programs, as well as fellowships for graduate education in the sciences and engineering and increased
federal assistance for teacher education. The act also called
for the federal government to fund capital improvements at
institutions of higher education, primarily the construction
and renovation of science laboratories and buildings for expanded schools of education. Congress made money available for curriculum development in the sciences, mathematics, and foreign languages.
Public education benefited from additional money available to grade schools and high schools to improve science,
mathematics, and foreign language instruction. The bill also
expanded guidance, counseling, and testing in high schools.
Although the act provided funding for kindergarten through
twelfth grade education, its greatest influence was on higher
education. Some observers argue that the National Defense
Education Act, which is still in force, surpassed all other legislation for American higher education since the 1862 Morrill Land Grant Act.
—John David Rausch Jr.
References
Clowse, Barbara Barksdale. Brainpower for the Cold War:
The Sputnik Crisis and National Defense Education Act of
1958. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981.