Among the social sciences, guidance is relatively young, having evolved out of the American social experience with its concern for the welfare of the individual. As an independent discipline, guidance is about seventy years old. However, the foundations for guidance are imbedded in the nation's historical past. Beginning with seventeenth-century New Englanders, who stressed religious and economic reasoning, a systematic approach to occupational selection began. By the close of the colonial period, the precedent of freedom of choice of vocation and educational opportunity was well established.

The purposes of the historical study are to describe Methodist education in Texas from 1840 to 1900; to find the reasons behind the proliferation of Methodist institutions after the Civil War and the problems involved in this development; to analyze centralization efforts after 1900 as a pattern of Methodist educational institutions emerged; to describe the evolution of Southern Methodist University as a regional college West of the Mississippi; to give brief descriptive overviews of the other six Methodist institutions in Texas; to describe the current status of Methodist higher education in Texas; to discuss Methodist higher education in Texas at the present and to project the possible future development of Methodist higher education in Texas.