Jim Henson of Muppets fame graduated in 1960 from the University of Maryland with a BS in Home Economics. What would a Bachelors of Science in Home Economics entail in its course of study? Would a man studying for such a degree in the 1950s be particularly transgressive?

Thank you to /u/voyeur324/ who kindly remembered I have a thing for Home Ec and PM’d this to me.This is an interesting question and there’s some stuff to unpack!

So you (inclusive you and not just for /u/Kochevnik81 here), assuming you dear reader are a Westerner of an age around 45 to 20, probably have a firm idea of what Home Economics was and why it’s dumb and shitty and dead now, and are puzzled by this little college factoid about Jim Henson, master craftsman and comedian. Maybe you sewed a pillowcase in junior high, maybe you made some flat muffins, and decided this is a fluff class for dumb girls who can’t hack real college-prep high school classes. And maybe you’re right (there is an academic book in this position) for 2020, but for 1950, well, it was probably not quite what you think.

As most large colleges now have their course catalogs digitized and online, the core question of “what did Jim Henson actually have available to study” is trivial to answer with beautiful primary sources. For those who do not mainline university archives, a course catalog was (is, these are still made but usually digital now) a yearly-published document outlining for the good of the university all classes with descriptions, all official courses of study, and usually a good deal of information about fees and what not. (Don’t look at that part too long or you’ll throw up.) Here we find the course catalog for 1956, when he would have entered assuming he was a diligent student who got out in 4 years, College of Home Economics starts page 445.

As a quick read-over of the catalog shows, there was a decent amount of diversity inside “Home Economics” at that time, it was typically a College within a University (as it is here in Maryland), or at least a very large department at smaller schools. Saying you got a degree in Home Ec is like saying you got a degree in Engineering or Liberal Arts - you need to be more specific. And when I first saw the question, I immediately thought, I wonder if that guy actually did a textiles degree… And if you look at page 450, there is a major for Textiles, and it outlines pretty closely their course of study, which would begin to differ from the general students around year 2. A textile degree would teach you knowledge of fabrics, their construction and behavior (knits vs wovens, synthetics vs naturals), pattern drafting (hard as hell), and of course, how to actually physically sew. There are still degrees in textiles at some universities with Home Ec heritage, but they now typically hide under an art school or the theater department. I am not Henson’s next of kin so I can’t request his transcript (but fun info for genies, you can request your dead grandpa’s grades if you have the rights!) so I don’t actually know what he studied, but I think if you were a person interested in puppetry, Textiles would have been a very smart choice. They also offer more general “practical art” (crafts) degrees, which also would have been a suitable choice… and you may notice, they outline different rules of study for men and women, which is WILD and we will come back to.

So was Henson a transgressive dude for his major? I’d say no, but let’s break it down. If you were going into Home Ec in America in 1956, you had 4 main career paths open to you. The first, and the one you are all thinking, is the notorious MRS Degree: you are a woman from a Good Family going to college for your personal edification/man-hunting expedition and will use all knowledge you gain in this degree for the glory of yourself as well as your future husband and children. (As an aside, because I love asides, other degrees were also often MRS like Music and Fine Art but no one seems to hold it against them.) The second, very common: you are a woman who intends to be a teacher and you will teach Home Ec at the high school level. 1956 U of Maryland has a major just for you in partnership with the College of Ed. The third, you plan to be a business woman. Businesses hired home economists for jobs, the most famous is food marketing. Your favorite gloopy holiday vegetable dish was invented by a home economist to sell green beans. Mary Berry, of Great British Bake Off, was a home economist who worked for as gas company helping to sell gas stoves. (She’s British but we also had these in America.) Home Economist was one of the easiest ways to get yourself into a decent ranking position in the business world as a woman at the time. People with textile degrees could go into business, for making and marketing fashion or home goods (like bedsheets and towels). The fourth, you intend to go into a government beaurocrat position. In 1956, the USDA still had a bureau of home economics; they were disbanded in 1962 though. They largely worked on nutrition and child development. Home Ec outreach also happened at the state level.

From Cornell (a very large and good Home Ec school) in 1956 pp28-29: 16.67% of grads went into business, 12% into institution management (which overlaps with business), 42.35% into education, 7.4% into government. Cornell is the cream of the home ec crop though, so probably not super representative of all college grads, but it gives you the idea - there’s money in these majors!

So, back to men in home ec. As you can see, some of these career options are pretty respectable to a boy in 1956. Textiles also wouldn't have been taught anywhere else in a university at the time, so it's either Home Ec, or no sewing machine for you. I think U of Maryland College of Home Ec was specifically courting men! If we go back to the course catalog for 1956, remember they had separate courses of study for men in 2 majors, for Practical Art and Crafts. The men, frankly, get out easier - they are excused from “the girly stuff” of foods and home management, and get to sub in marketing and creative writing. This would be, like, super illegal now, but it was 1956 and we didn’t even have the civil rights act, just a lawless wasteland of segregation in education. Compare to Cornell of the same year linked above, who use exclusively she/her pronouns to describe students, and make no mention of men in their course catalog. U of Maryland is carefully gender neutral in describing students. I would say U of Maryland’s home ec offerings are actually a little slim compared to their competition. They do not offer child development (at least maybe they escaped this messed up practice I guess), they do not offer interior design. They are however very strong in the practical arts and textiles, and I think some clever administrator cooked up a way to get their enrollment up -- let’s poach boys from other places and let them out of the classes they don’t like. I know I’ve been thinking Responsibility Centered Management budgeting in university administration too long, but this move probably bought them a few more years of survival!

Henson got this degree at an interesting time in Home Ec history - he is both at the field’s peak in terms of numbers, and in terms of employment for graduates and respect and public knowledge of the field, but he’s also at the start of the field’s decline. Home Ec in the 50s is attracting a higher volume of women who just want to get a college degree, and a lot less women who intend to go into business, and this starts dragging the rigor of the programs down. This can be exemplified by the Battle for Chemistry: students don’t like chemistry because it’s hard, administrators like it on the rolls because it is an important underpinning for everything else, food, textiles, etc., but slowly students win out and chemistry starts leaving home economics. Cornell in 1956 still required a lot of chemistry to graduate, 30 hours of “basic sciences” total. (Again, Cornell is probably #1 best school for home ec and you get what you applied for, an academic ass-kicking.) U of Maryland does not directly require chemistry, and only requires 6 hours of science, but does warn you chemistry is required for certain advanced courses in foods, nutrition and textiles. But the fact that you can get out of this college with a BS in Home Ec without balancing a single chemical equation? That would shame many older home economists, and is a symptom of the coming death spiral as the degree starts to mean less and less.

If you are interested, a very good pop history book on Home Ec came out last year: The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live. Well worth your time, includes content about racism which is hard to find in Home Ec history, and available in ebook! Has really good coverage of the birth of the movement as well as the death spiral period.