The coordination of state institutions for higher education through supplementary curricular boards 1923

Front matter

3 eet tet

TAM

104097

Chapter I

THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE PROBLEM OF COORDINATION AND THE MEANS ADOPTED TO BRING IT ABOUT

I. INTRODUCTORY

In those states where higher education is essentially a public enterprise, it is of great importance that good will and cooperation should exist among the institutions engaged in the task. With the steadily increasing tax rate, the general popularity of higher education and the need for adding periodically new and expensive curricula, the public is vitally concerned in seeing that the state institutions are operated at a maximum of efficiency, with no serious duplications of function and no unnecessary and harmful rivalries. It is important that the place which each institution is to occupy and the policy which it is to pursue be determined in the light of the whole state problem of higher education; that each institution be strong, virile, and in a measure individualistic; and that cordial cooperation, harmony and good will shall characterize the relations among them in order to advance the cause of higher education and the public good.

The institutions, while now vitally interested, have not, in times past, seriously concerned themselves with these matters. Each institution, during its early years, has had pressing problems of its own to solve—fighting for a place in the state system, obtaining funds and students, maintaining academic and scholastic standards and developing the good-will and confidence of the people.

The first period in the development of state supported higher education—characterized by the struggle for existence—is about over in the states under consideration in this study, as well as in many others committed to public education of collegiate level. The state universities have an established place in the state systems. The place of the agricultural and mechanical arts colleges, whether as a part of the universities or as separate institutions, is no less secure. Normal schools are likewise regarded as absolutely necessary. A review of the constitutional and legislative provisions for these three types of institutions, presented in subsequent chapters, removes all doubts as to their permanence. The place junior colleges and teachers colleges are to occupy is not so clear, but there is no doubt that in a few years the function of each will have established itself firmly in the minds of the people. |

Higher educational institutions are now entering upon the second period of their existence—that of establishing working relationships with each other. The second period will be no less difficult than the first. The public is ready and impatient for coordination of effort, but, as a whole, the institutions are not. In many eases, the by-products of the early struggles are the very things which now make it difficult — for institutions to develop a conception of the underlying unity of the whole enterprise of higher education and of the necessity of dis- — covering ways and means to bring about mutual understanding.

The early struggles developed intense loyalties among students, many of whom now occupy high and important places in political and economic life. There is no doubt that the inconsistencies and inequalities of the powers of the various institutional governing boards, which are discussed later, are due, in part, to special legislation which alumi organizations have succeeded in having enacted. |

Community loyalty is another by-product, highly desirable in itself, but frequently an obstacle to coordination. A community profits greatly by the presence of a state educational institution, and this benefit increases as the institution grows. In those cases, at least where cities and towns have donated money, buildings, or lands to obtain an institution, there may be some justice in the point of view that the community has a real right to obtain profit. In spite of the equity of this contention, the result is unfortunate. It has led to the political manipulation of the state legislatures by community politiclans, resulting, many times, in obtaining for an institution more funds than it needed, and an unwarranted expansion of work.

The differences of opinion of long standing between members of faculties of various types of institutions as to the aims and purposes of education, the organization and content of curricula and methods of instruction constitute another obstacle to coordination. While the basic differences of opinions as to these matters reach far back into times past, they have been accentuated, rather than lessened, in this . country by our haphazard method of establishing institutions with Separate boards of control, thus making it difficult for instructors to meet in frequent conference and thereby discover at least some common beliefs and points of view.

Or

Il. THe CHARACTER OF CoNFLICTS BETWEEN INSTITUTIONS

In practically every state in the union where there is a state university, a ‘‘land-grant’’ college and state normal schools, relations among these institutions have not been codperative. In some states institutions have been indifferent to each other, and in other states open hostility has prevailed. As a means of revealing the general nature of the difficulties extracts from a number of reports of presidents, survey commissions and legislative committees have been selected for presentation from the mass of available material.

Conflicts Between Land-Grant Colleges and State Uniwversitres.— Following the passage of the Morrill Act, of 1862, and the establishment of the ‘‘land-grant’’ colleges, intense rivalry and bitterness of feeling existed between these colleges and the state universities, particularly in those states where the colleges were organized as separate institutions. That this rivalry is not confined to the past will become evident upon reading subsequent sections of this study.

The 1877 Report of the President of the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College (the ‘‘land-grant’’ college of Alabama, now known as the Polytechnic Institute) presents a vivid picture of the relations of this school to the state university about fifty years ago.

The. opening of the College for the present year has not been as flattering as that of the year previous. Several causes have conspired to produce this result. The action of the Board of Trustees of the University at their session in July last, in reducing the expenses at that Institution, and the activity of the individual members of the Board in securing patronage for it, have drawn a few of our students to Tuscaloosa. Board is furnished there at $11.00 per month and their tuition fees are appropriated to the boarding department. All other expenses have been reduced and they publish that $95.00 per term of four and one-half months will cover the whole expense of a student at the University. In addition, they have lowered the standard of graduation so as to enable a student to receive a diploma in a shorter time, and with attainment much inferior to what was required in former years. . . . The struggle for patronage between the different colleges of the state, now inaugurated by the University, must continue for years to come; at least until returning prosperity shall enable our people to fill with respectable numbers the halls of our institutions of learning.

In this contest, which we hae not desired, and which we have used every honorable means to divert, we are fully aware that the University has many advantages. She has a larger endowment, more and better buildings, more _ sightly grounds, a larger and more thriving community thoroughly devoted to her interests, and a larger faculty of instruction.. She is an old established institution. Her alumni are scattered all over the state and some of them are filling high positions in the learned professions, as well as in our state and national councils.

6 Coobrdination of State Institutions

On the other hand, the college is young. . . . Its birth was heralded by the press of the state with ill concealed sneers as to its aims and with predictions of failure. . . . Alabama stands alone in the unenviable attitude of a state that has furnished not a dollar to her Agricultural College. . . . Since the close of the Civil War the University has received large amounts, borrowed from the state to build the edifices destroyed by the Federal Army. : Every citizen of the state approves the liberality which the General Assembly has shown that institution. But is our College to have no share in the hbeneficience of our common mother? Are we to be orphaned and exiled, from the shelter and protection, and fostering care which the state of Alabama shows to her other children? If so, let us know it that we may prepare, as best we can, for the only career open to us.}

Difficulties of Land-Grant Colleges as Parts of State Unwersitrves.— The difficulties which land-grant colleges experienced in establishing themselves were not confined to those states in which they had separate corporate existence. In California, for example, where, from the beginning, the agricultural and mechanical arts college was an integral part of the state university, there were misunderstandings as to its purpose, serious doubts as to its place in the scheme of higher education, and resistance—both tangible and intangible—to overcome.

The Atlantic Monthly, commenting editorially on the California situation in its issue of July, 1874, voices the general skepticism of that day as to the land-grant college movement. This skepticism was based essentially upon the traditional conception of higher education. It is still present to a certain degree, and is still an obstacle to harmony and cooperation between land-grant colleges and other colleges for higher learning, even where all the colleges are located on one campus and under one board of control.

There has lately been an interesting discussion in California respecting the scope of university education, which is not yet closed.

At the very outset the question whether the state should maintain an agricultural school, or a university including an agricultural school, was discussed and determined in favor of the comprehensive plan.

With all these prospects [the reference is here to the large opportunities before the university] there is serious danger. The chief supporter of the university [referring to funds from the Morrill Act of 4862] may be its chief destroyer. . . . During the last winter a bald effort was made openly and persistently by the farmer’s granges of the state to persuade the legislature that an agricultural school and not a university should be the chief object of eare; that blacksmithing and carpentry as well as plowing should be taught; according to one of the popular phrases ‘to be the peers of the laborer in muscle and the peers of the scholar in mind.’ . . . The ery was that of the uninformed who wanted a good thing but who disregarded the experience of the other states, and called for methods which have elsewhere been abandoned as sterile. Underlying this was the feeling, sometimes uttered as a tenant, [sic] that the state should not only give an education, but like the national government at West Point, should provide the means of simultaneous support; or at least the university should give manual labor to all who wish it, and should keep the standards so low that those who have spent their vital forces in muscular exertion, should not be dismissed or disciplined because their cerebral action is feeble and confused. ‘We don’t want a Harvard or a Yale or an Oxford or a Berlin,’ was frequently said. . . . Many persons wonder why the friends of the university in California prefer state aid plus state interference rather than private generosity minus state interference.2

; Difficulties of a ‘‘Land-Grant’’ College Expanded Into a Unwwer-

sity.—In 1870 the State of Ohio established a College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, under the provisions of the Morrill Act. There were many years of earnest and spirited discussion as to whether the eurriculum should be limited to strictly technical fields or should include elements of a liberal higher education. The latter conception prevailed, thus laying the foundation for the institution now known as the University of Ohio. For at least twenty years, the agricultural interests of the state, represented by farmers, rural life journals and the state grange, subjected the institution to intense and bitter critieism, so that, at times, it seemed as though the original plan of a single institution would have to be abandoned. The correspondence, in 1887, between Professor Alexis Cope, of the University, and C. E. Thorne, editor of the Farm and Fireside, reveals the nature of the difficulties.

; Columbus, Ohio, March 10, 1887.

Mr. C. E. Thorne, Springfield, Ohio.

Dear Sir:—I have your pleasant letter of yesterday and especially note what you say about the agricultural courses at the University. Such courses are now undergoing revision by the faculty, who, I know would be grateful for any suggestions which would aid them in their difficult task.

I will take pleasure in laying such suggestions before the faculty.

ALEXIS COPE Farm and Fireside, Springfield, Ohio.

Alexis Cope, Esq.

Dear Sir:—In your favor yesterday you unintentionally do me a great injustice in intimating that we have criticized the management of the Ohio State University, without suggesting a practicable remedy. . . . The remedy has been repeatedly suggested in our columns, and its practicability has been demonstrated through thirty years of prosperity in one college and through twenty-three in another, where it has proven not only able to disarm the criticism which has worried the Ohio State University from its very beginning, but also to have such a mollifying influence upon state legislatures that they are ready not only to pile gift upon gift upon the magnificent Land Grant, but also to anticipate the wants of the College by voting support before it has been asked.

8 Coédrdination of State Institutions .

The remedy we have suggested is embodied in the State Agricultural College of Michigan and Kansas. . . . When the University gets ready to lop off the arts and philosophy departments altogether and cut off the present junior and senior years of the remaining courses, and to rearrange what is left into parallel courses of agriculture and the mechanic arts on the basis of constant association of manual and mental training, then you may expect the cordial support of the granges, agricultural conventions and legislature. I am aware that your Trustees and faculty will unanimously sneer at this proposition but Itell you the signs of the times are ominous today! The passage of the Terrel resolution (giving the funds from the Hatch Bill to the University Experiment station) for which the Farm and Fireside has earnestly worked and for which we get credit from the University for misrepresentation, unfairness, ‘‘scurrility,’’ and deliberate falsehood, will postpone the day.of reckoning for the present.

It is idle to talk of making the Ohio State University a success on its present plan. The Arts and Philosophy studies are good and useful branches of learning, but they are abundantly provided for in the other colleges of the state while we have but the one industrial college. To take our fund therefore and use it to compete with those other colleges that are languishing for want of support, while the Ohio State University is drawing away from them is neither more or less than a deliberate outrage.

The complaint of the University that the farmers do not patronize it because they are ignorant of its real work is simply peurile. The farmers patronize the agricultural colleges of Michigan, Kansas and Mississippi, and they would patronize a similar college in Ohio. The ignorance in this matter lies with the managers of the University and not with the farmers. The former have failed to comprehend the very first essentials of an industrial school, partly through ignorance, and partly through a determination not to see the patent facts before them in their ambition to establish a great University.3

Haphazard Development of State Institutions——The failure of the states to adopt a general plan for the establishment and development of publicly supported higher education is one of the most direct causes for lack of harmony at the present time. Chance development has been the rule rather than the exception. What is reported as true of Alabama applies to nearly all the other states.

The school system of Alabama has not developed by natural outward growth but rather by periodical acceleration, by adding to from time to time regardless of the effect on the schools as an organized whole. Whenever a new school has been brought into existence through legislative enactment, it has been provided with a board of its own. Many schools have come into existence on account of strong local influence and for no other reason, regardless of whether they really articulated in the established system or not.4

Duplication of Curricula.—Haphazard growth has led inevitably to duplication of curricula. While the duplication of many courses of instruction is generally recognized as absolutely necessary, the duplieation of curricula, particularly professional curricula, has been the cause of much trouble. The general issue may be illustrated by reference to the situation in engineering education. In most of the states in the group studied engineering curricula are offered by both the state university and the land-grant college. The United States Bureau of Education, in all of its studies of higher education, has dealt with this problem in detail, and has always held to the point of view expressed in the Alabama Report as follows:

The most serious problem lies in the existence of two state’ supported engineering schools. . . . The existence of two schools means division of the state’s effort, with a consequent loss—temporarily, at least—of efficiency. It means rivalry before the legislature for appropriations, competition for students, expensive duplication of high class men and equipment, institutional jealousy and misunderstanding, and all the wretched chapter of discord which is the present lot of nearly every state where similar conditions prevail. Escape from these conditions seems well-nigh impossible as long as the two schools have approximately equal support or may pretend to approximately equal standing. The only clean-cut solution appears to be the abandonment of engineering at one institution and the concentration at the other. . . . It may be noted that the officers and partisans of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute would favor this solution in Alabama, provided, of course, that engineering were concentrated at the institute, and that the officers and partisans of the University of Alabama would be equally ready for it, provided engineering were centered at the university.4a

Conflicts Among Normal Schools—bLack of harmony in professional fields has been by no means limited to engineering ; the competition between institutions engaged in the professional preparation of teachers has been quite as keen and unfriendly. Referring to the relations between the five state normal schools in Missouri, the Carnegie Foundation reports as follows:

In the absence of any coordinating authority, each school moves solely in its own interests. Its winnings from the legislature are in fairly direct proportion to the political influence exerted by the president or board members. Activity of this sort is incessant and skillfully directed, but that educational considerations play but a minor role in the apportionments is evidenced from the striking inequalities that exist. While the school at Cape Girardeau is luxuriously housed in a fine plant including four school buildings and two dormitories, Springfield with an annual enrollment of several hundred more students, has been obliged to endure years of excessive crowding in the single structure with which it started. It is a situation true to type, for in 1896 the same institution at Cape Girardeau, with an annual enrollment of three hundred and ten, secured an appropriation for building four separate halls for the exclusive use of as many literary societies, when the school at Warrensburg, enrolling annually over nine hundred students, was. unable to secure money enough to pay its teachers. A system that admits of such extremes is bad; the state is merely doling out funds in the dark where the personal or sectional pressure is greatest, and must continue to do so until it. concludes to entrust its biennial offering for the training of teachers to a single, central board, competent to make a rational distribution on the basis of proved educational requirements.5

Lack of Harmony Between Normal Schools and Universities.— The relations between the state university and the normal schools of Missouri are also described in this report as competitive, rather than cooperative.

The absence of material and educational codrdination of the normal schools among themselves is thus a serious and expensive defect. These same disadvantages are accentuated, however, in the active friction and lack of adjust- . ment between the five normal schools on the one hand and the state university on the other hand. The normal schools, although virtually identical in scope, are relatively non-competitive by reasons of their districting. The state’s one great center of higher education, on the other hand, almost from its inception, has exercised the function of preparing teachers—for years many elementary, of late mostly high school teachers and administrative officers. Between these two institutional groups competition is inevitable unless forestalled either by an adequate controlling organization or by voluntary coordination on the part of the responsible educational leaders. The former does not exist; the latter failed up to 1916. Even under the entente then arranged it exists only in minor though important respects; in all matters effecting the field or scope of operations the traditional autonomy prevails.5a

One Institution ‘‘ Pitted Against’? Another.—In some of the states there have been acute issues about so many points that the result is one institution virtually ‘‘pitted against’’ another. This is the situation in Oregon. Although expressed very briefly the report of a legislative committee of 1915 leaves no room for doubt as to its opinion:

There exists a feeling of jealousy between the University and the Agricultural College. There has been and still is, a tendency to duplicate each other’s work. We have taken trouble to question members of the faculty and students on this matter and we find a condition that is detrimental to both institutions. There seems to be little or no tendency to codperate in educational matters and we find a much less friendly feeling than exists between denominational institutions. We believe that the institutions and the taxpayers would be better off under one Board of Regents. This would eliminate all duplication and bring about a more friendly feeling and surely save the taxpayers’ money.é

Unwholesome Rivalries Even When Under One Board of Control.— As an indication that unwholesome rivalries may exist among the state institutions even when under the same board of control, the statement of a member of the State Board of Education of Montana may be _cited. This board has governed all of the higher educational institutions in Montana since 1909. The statement refers to the situation in Montana before the creation of the University of Montana, embracing all of the state institutions, and before the employment of a chancellor had been authorized. The same applies with equal force to other States, notably Kansas and Iowa.

Character of the Problem of Codrdination die

Those of us who have been close to the situation during these years, and upon whose hearts and shoulders higher education for the young men and women of Montana has rested heavily, have marked with growing uneasiness the unsatisfactory operation of the old plan. Recognizing that physical consolidation was both undesirable and impossible, we nevertheless saw in the plan pursued waste of resources, inefficiency of activities and constantly jealousy, friction, and unwholesome rivalries between the various institutions, and these undesirable features increased rather than decreased with the passing of the years. . . . Upon that occasion I stated to the audience (Charter Day at the University) that I had a dream of the time when the four institutions would be coordinating and cooperating units in the Greater University of Montana, when friction and unhealthy rivalry and foolish jealousy would be a thing of the past and a really great and efficient system of state education would take the place of the present unsatisfactory conditions.7

Factional Groups Within States.—Institutional rivalries have led to the splitting up of states into factions, one faction favoring one school and taking extreme measures to insure its welfare; another faction favoring another school and resorting to measures equally extreme—neither recognizing that the interests of the whole state and that the prosperity of all the schools is of paramount importance. The clearest expression of state division of this sort is found in the Carnegie Report describing the situation in Missouri.

Outside of the institutions themselves, educational and other interests in the state at large are interested to no slight extent by sympathy with one party or the other. Certain towns are practically closed to one school or another because of a superintendent drawn from an opposing institution; influential school board members, biased by trivial personal attachments—a child who has attended, a good speech, or a favor done by a representative— direct the patronage regardless of the merits of the applicants. The state superintendent of public schools, an officer who should make effective disposal of all the educational energies in the state, necessarily becomes more or less partisan. If, as in several cases, he be a man without college or university training, he feels himself largely out of sympathy with these institutions; if, on the other hand, he be a university man without normal school experience, he and his office are likely to be distrusted by the institutions with which he has most to do. Theoretically he is a Republican or a Democrat; actually he is pro-university or pro-normal school, or so considered; to control the ‘superintendency is therefore worth the effort of both sides.

Under the present conditions it is to the interest of each and every institution to push its claim before the legislature; this results in the maintenance of a sort of legislative lobby. It is not a long step from the legitimate presentation of the needs of an institution to the ‘‘log-rolling’’ that bases success on efforts of quite another nature, and it is declared by competent observers that the tendency to take this step is already strong in Missouri. To what extent this is true it is difficult to say, but with two sets of institutions sharply and increasingly competitive in an important field, there is the prospect that, as in some other states, the people and their representatives will gradually segregate into ‘‘pro-university’’ and ‘‘pro-normal school’’ groups, and that other legislation will be effected or determined by this division.5b

III. Means Apvoprep To Bring ABouT COORDINATION

It is evident from the pictures presented of situations existing in the states that the conflicts between the institutions have been of the most serious nature. None of the issues which have been set forth can be regarded as trivial. That situations such as these are intoler-. able to the people, who have created and supported schools to serve the state and not to embarrass and destroy each other, is evident from a brief review of some of the legislation which has been enacted in recent years. Though by no means inclusive of all the legal measures: passed to bring about coordination the summaries which follow are typical of what has been going on in the country as a whole.

In 1909 three states, Oregon, Iowa, and Montana, committed to state supported institutions for higher education, attempted to find a solution. In each instance the cause of higher education had been greatly injured, and the development of all the schools greatly re-. tarded, because of jealousies and open conflicts. The conditions in these states were practically identical. In all three the population was rather evenly distributed over the state rather than concentrated in a few centers. The dominant occupation was agriculture. Hach had a state university, a separate land-grant college and a state normal school, or, in the case of Oregon, schools. With the exeeption of Montana, where the state board of education governed, within certain limitations, the university and the normal college and had. certain powers over the two other schools, each of the institutions in the three states was governed by a separate board. In spite of the similarities in conditions, the measures enacted to bring about har-. mony were quite different. Oregon created a board of higher curri-. _ cula, to supplement, but not replace the boards of control for each institution. Iowa abolished the boards of all of the institutions and created a non-salaried board and a salaried finance committee to. govern them all. Montana created a new board to govern all the institutions, supplemented by a local executive committee for each.

The Oregon Solution—Board of Higher Curricula—The Oregon board of higher curricula, consisting of five non-salaried members: _ appointed by the governor, was charged with the duty of determining what courses of study or departments of instruction should not be dupleated in the higher educational institutions, and also of actually defining the course of study for each of the institutions.* Since the passage of this law thirteen years ago no changes have been made. This board is still in existence. The Oregon plan is an attempt to operate the institutions on a centralized and decentralized basis— centralized for curricula and edueational policy and decentralized for all else.

The Iowa Solution—Single Board and Finance Committee—The Iowa law provided that all the higher educational institutions should be under the control of a non-salaried board, called the state board of education. This board was authorized to appoint a finance committee of three members, each to receive a salary of $3500 per annum.® This plan of administration is still in effect but the board now has control of a numberof state institutions aside from those of strictly educational character. This plan represents complete centralization of eontrol by a lay board assisted by salaried experts to handle all financial matters.

The First Montana Solution—Single Board and Local Committees. -—The Montana plan of 1909, modified in certain important particulars in 1913, represented an effort to centralize the general control of all the institutions under one board, but to retain local interest through local executive committees. The government of all the schools was centered in a non-salaried board of eleven members appointed by the governor and called the State Board of Education. Provisions were made, also, for an executive board of three members for each of the institutions, a feature which had been in operation for many years, for some of the schools. Two of the members of each of the local boards were appointed by the governor and the third member, in each case, was the president of the institution. These boards were given such powers, other than financial, as the State Board of Education might wish to authorize.’°