Our History

Higher Education Abstracts was founded as College Student Personnel Abstracts in fall 1965 by the now dissolved College Student Personnel Institute. The Institute had its origins in the Pasadena Vocational Bureau and the Los Angeles Bureau of Vocational Service, both established by Winifred Hausam, in 1918 and 1923 respectively, as free vocational counseling and placement services for women. In 1930, the Information and Research Service was established as an adjunct to the two bureaus for the purpose of providing vocational information to high school and college students. College students soon became the focal point of the vocational services, the Information and Research Service evolving into an information and guidance clearinghouse for colleges and universities on the West Coast. In 1933, the three organizations were combined to form the Western Personnel Service, and the publications and services were primarily directed to the needs of deans of students and college counselors. By the 1940s, the interests of the service had expanded to include research and study in counseling and a training program for student personnel professionals, and the name was changed to the Western Personnel Institute.

The Institute was moved from Pasadena to Claremont in 1964, becoming the College Student Personnel Institute. When the Institute was dissolved in 1971, College Student Personnel Abstracts became a special program of The Claremont Graduate School. In 1984, the publication was expanded to cover all of the literature on higher education, and the name was changed to Higher Education Abstracts.

The Archives of the Western Personnel Institute and the College Student Personnel Institute are housed in the Special Collections department of Honnold Library of the Claremont Colleges. In addition to detailing the history of the Institutes, these documents provide an important record of the development of higher education as a field of study in the western U.S. The collection contains numerous research papers and essays on vocational and psychological counseling and higher education concerns as well as a vast number of clippings and articles about contemporary economic, political, artistic, and scientific occurrences that had a bearing on higher education.