PROBLEMS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Increased Enrollment

Late in the 1940s administrators determined that schools needed larger facilities to accommodate increased enrollments. Of course, higher enrollment figures meant the need for additional faculty, but there was no money budgeted with which to pay them, and there simply were not enough qualified individuals to fill the demand. Further burdening the system was the diminishing funding for endowments, as fewer gifts were given to the schools because of increasing taxes. By the end of 1949 the number of grants for research began to increase with the money coming from government and industry, mostly in the sciences, but this was the only bright spot concerning funding for higher education.

COLLEGE MADE FASTER

In June 1941 a group of American colleges announced a plan to give students a college education in three years so that students could be graduated before the draft age of twenty-one. The presidents of these schools, which included the Ivy League, felt that this initiative was needed since so many of the students would be called away or drafted before finishing their requirements for graduation. Since there were few deferments for men, administrators realized that few of the veterans would want to return to school because of their age after serving in the war. Ironically, many did under the GI Bill.

In November 1942 the National Education Association suggested that bright young men might skip from junior high into college, thus earning both high-school diplomas and college credits simultaneously. The suggestion was modified one month later by Edmund Ezra Day, the president of Cornell University, when he announced a plan through which bright male high schoolers would be allowed to advance into college during their senior high-school year and earn both high-school diplomas and freshman college credits at the same time. The purpose of the plan, he said, was to "give young men a 'toe hold' in college before they enter military service.…If we don't do this, college education for the duration is the privilege of the women and the 4-F men."

Government Scholarships and Fellowships

Federal scholarships for undergraduate students and fellowships for graduate students were recommended in late 1947 and early 1948 by President Harry S Truman's Commission on Higher Education. Guy E. Snavely, executive director of the Association of American Colleges, protested the proposed fellowships because he believed, as did others, that they would lead to federal control of higher education. Further, he felt that funding college education for all set a poor precedent when, he argued, it is obvious that certain people have higher scholastic aptitudes than others. It seemed clear to him and others that not everyone needs or is capable of attaining a college education. The United States must have people for a variety of roles, their argument ran, if the country is to run smoothly. Not all can be white-collar workers; some have to be blue-collar laborers willing and able to do manual work.

The Business of Making Money

To solve their financial difficulties some colleges and universities purposefully turned their halls into businesses, with the goal of bringing in as many student dollars as possible. This also encouraged abuse of the tax-exempt status of educational institutions. Various colleges and universities became involved in moneymaking ventures such as cattle ranches, farms, and stores, often blatantly defying a 1938 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that established taxes on any university's commercial ventures.

THIRD-WORLD SERVICE

Taking note of the rising tide of nationalism in the world, in 1944 Fisk University's white president, Thomas Elsa Jones, argued that African Americans had an important role to play as American envoys to the new independent states sure to emerge after World War II. Paraphrasing Horace Greeley's famous advice to young men, he said, "For effective living in a world community, the Negro has the dual advantage of being an American and a person who has pigment in his skin.…His identification with members of darker races should be advantageous. For the Negro, the slogan should be 'Go south, east, and west.'"

Sources:

H. Warren Button and Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr., History of Education and Culture in America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1989);

Joel Spring, The American School: 1642-1985 (New York: Longman, 1986).