The multiversity today; We Pay For It

For eight hundred years Western societies of turn to universities for the teaching discovery and preservation of advanced knowledge. From small beginnings in Bologna and Paris men have built giant educational complexes to serve not only students but governments industries and the general public as well. The huge American Multiversity are the subject for this series Multiversity today. The programs were produced in the studios of WRAL the University of Illinois Broadcasting Service. Dennis Corrigan is your host for today's program about what's going on inside the Multiversity today. Oh. Well diversity is a multi-purpose institution requiring a multi-million dollar budget to maintain its operations and fulfill its obligations. Where do the millions come from that pay for the teachers administrators nonacademic employees buildings and land

required by today's Multiversity is. Directly or indirectly the money comes from you and me citizen. We pay for the earth. Most though not all Multiversity is our own and operated by states. This includes the State University of New York with its fifty nine campuses. The University of California with the campuses in Berkeley Los Angeles and other communities. University of Illinois in its three kapa says Indiana University of the University of Wisconsin and others these Multiversity have received major portions of their funds from the state legislature. Thus through taxes citizens pay for their Multiversity In addition many citizens support their public universities through gifts. Ticket purchases and conference features students and their parents further support the universities through the

payment of tuition and fees. How much does the individual taxpayer contribute to his Multiversity this varies considerably from state to state and due to varying taxes within a state from individual to individual. But as an example in 1966 67. About seven and one half cents of each. Illinois state tax dollar went to operate the University of Illinois for ten dollars and eighty seven cents for each person in the state. What does a citizen receive in return for this money. The major benefit is higher education. Mrs. Robert Fisk of Arlington Heights Illinois put it this way during our visit to the press column. It's really outstanding that way as a student I see this in the bill and I can go to it when I get really first rate education for peanuts compared to what it costs in a private school. This primary benefit is not the only one however Multiversity is provide many

other services for the public. Again these vary from diversity to Multiversity not only because the institutions and their traditions differ but also because the needs of the citizens differ from state to state. Most land grant multi-verse a day's work directly with the United States Department of Agriculture to provide the benefits of a state Cooperative Extension Service. This Service seeks to help both the urban and rural citizen with information on such problems as spam Lee budgets lawn care. How to get clean clothes and how to plant corn and raise cattle for the farmer. Then lust for the family that buys food. This service has been particularly valuable. Byron Jones farms near Saybrook Illinois. Mr. Jones commented on the agricultural extension services during a discussion in his home.

Why definitely the. Agricultural Extension Program that we have is of help to a local farmer. All of us need to know about the new research being carried on in the only way that we can obtain this information if we don't. Our own label Let's say I have a personal contact with the researchers. Is the hard stance and program. Throughout. The area. Citizens receive direct benefits for Multiversity and many other ways to take health services. Many Multiversity owned and operated hospitals trained physicians Dr Christian Barnard who performed the first human heart transplant studied at one such institution. The medical school at the University of Minnesota Multiversity

medical schools are usually a part of a medical center that also carries on research research in such areas as surgical techniques public health heart disease tissue transplant Pediatrics geriatrics busy therapy and shock. However in this appeal the public is perhaps most directly affected by Multiversity Medical Center public services and long press work worth of Illinois does the citizens of the state. I can they have an example. A friend of mine who didn't attend the University of Illinois. Has using a recipe online to to raise her son has a heart condition and she brought him to the universe to go I research hospital for one operation. And also she belongs to the US home bureau which is sponsored by universal No. Home bureau that Mrs. press mention represents one form of extension that is taking the services of the university to the people. There are many others.

Do you want information about early American sailing ships. Are you interested in Good King Wenceslas. Do you need a floor plan of the cathedral of whom you're Multiversity libraries can help Multiversity operate high schools grade schools and preschool programs they offer counseling services correspondence courses and short courses on such topics as police practices firefighting business English reading and marketing problems. There are sports clinics safety clinics special institutes a multiverse that they must be large to fulfill these responsibilities and still carry on the primary functions of teaching and research. Yet the size that makes these benefits possible is often strongly criticized. Some regard our giant universities as little more than one more symptom of an era of big government big business and big institutions. They don't like them. They don't trust them and perhaps they are just a little afraid of that. But

this is not a universal feeling. Many citizens are proud of their Multiversity and its growth. Finally just to be expected. I mean I have no I don't think it's horrible that students lost or anything like that I think it's it's a sign of growth. Very good. John Strohm is a prominent American editor. He's a member of the University of Illinois a class of 35 and has sense to maintain a strong relationship with his university as an alumnus a citizen and a parent. As we talked with John and Lillian Stroman their home he discussed the changes he has seen in one multi versity. Well I doubt that Eleanor and 30000 students seems as big to my kids in school there today as Illinois and 9000 students was to me in the early 30s. When I came off the farm down in the horse wheat bottoms of the Wabasha Illinois had 9000 students. We had the world's greatest

college band and I played in it. That's what John Philip Sousa called it. We had the world's greatest college newspaper and I was editor of it. But that description I think was thought up by the airline I staff and not Joseph Pulitzer. Today of course 30000 students different campus different university. And I think better more opportunities I think for more people. For example I think Ellen law is a best in the country and offering opportunities in that to the handicap they the famous gives kids kids in wheelchairs go to his class play football basketball. If you ever feel sorry for yourself that you really ought to see these handicapped kids. Illinois has a great art gallery that day and as a beginner Rollman of foreign students and rather there is one thing we have to learn do. Live with people we've got to know because. No matter how many benefits come with growth the process does not pain us

and usually opposed by some citizens. Two of the most direct effects of public Multiversity growth are often unpopular increase taxes and land acquisition. The increased costs and thus higher taxes are regular Islay and understandably opposed by people on fixed incomes and young middle income groups trying to stretch their budgets to cover the cost of homes and children. Land acquisition brings up the question of the rights of the state versus the rights of the individual or group of individuals. The University of Illinois had a year long court battle ending in the United States Supreme Court before it could begin construction of its Chicago Circle campus. And what was the Harrison hall stat area of Chicago. Columbia University in New York City is currently involved in a similar situation like controversy over the construction of a university gymnasium in a park serving Harlem touched on the recent student protest at Columbia. While we're on the

subject of student protests we'd like to point out some secondary results of these activities. The reactions of the public. Mrs press is one of many citizens who find these demonstrations distasteful and comprehensible. But I read a lot. We did have a schism to the Daily Online I last year and we read about students protesting almost everything from the food in the union to two hours and they say I can't understand it because I'm only 25 to one. But when I was an undergraduate as I say I had no complaint along those lines. This is as I say there's a certain amount discipline to be expected in education I don't see how it can be our university can operate without it. Of course I did sense and I was I major in English and you'll find there are some unusual art in English seems to draw all these unusual people. But I mean I took a bath I washed my hair I went to football games I had dates and I did my required work. And I suppose nowadays that would really make me an

eyeball. I mean this seemed to me to be the normal way of acting. Or in intellectual or something I suppose as horrible as that. I know there must be some students left like that don't mention that Chicago Tribune article on the University of Illinois. It was last year when we interviewed some students saying that they were going to drop out because they didn't feel the University of Illinois had an intellectual climate because of the Mickey Mouse things they were required to do. And the students were they were flunking out because they weren't doing you know why work and the way of the article read as Saturn is if all the smart ones flunked out and all the idiots went on to get their degrees are all the ones that weren't intellectual enough to realize they're wasting their time. And it's incredible to me. It really made me angry because I think it's someone true if people don't have enough discipline they can do the things that are required of them. But they certainly can't be very interested in their education or sometimes their students. I think they expect the

professors to excite them every single minute. And that that just doesn't happen even in the most intellectual climate just has to be so normal life goes on you can expect to be excited every minute by some earth shaking discovery. I don't know what the students expect now I sure I sure don't have any answers along those lines. Johnstone feels that student protesters should try to do something positive for their cause it's. My feeling on this is if they feel strongly about racial problems let them volunteer for useful work in the ghettos. If they don't like our foreign policy then let them volunteer for the Peace Corps or something like that. My daughter volunteered for the teachers corps and was in that for you for a year. If they think all politicians are corrupt then let them go into politics seriously. As many of this generation students are doing and they're making their mark in there and then I think

they're making a real dent in this relationship between adults and young people. I believe that the most students think of adults as old folk music but I think that some of us are old fogeys. Maybe but I think also we have a we've captured we've had the experience of being 20 as well as 40 or 50 and. Therefore I think we have some experience to pass on. I just feel that it would be more worthwhile for the guy who wants to march let me march with let's march on something that is positive. Let's let's use his talents and I'm sure that everyone has talents. Let's use them to build this better society that they dream about. They've got it in their hands. They they've got something to contribute to it and they should.

Lillian Straw had these comment Shawn university student while John was talking I was thinking about this because I heard from China. We were discussing it was a seminar. China before and under the communists. And this speaker pointed out that the Chinese children. Have always looked in awe at their parents have powered in the footsteps of their parents and their grandparents and therefore have not progressed as far. As the American who rather cuts the apron strings when they get 16 forges ahead. So I think that parents have to. Think about that a case like that if a child just follows in his footsteps there is no progress. And I've been very happy with Sheryl when she started at Illinois two years ago. She was homesick she admits that now the first couple months and found it difficult. But after being there a year she's forced out to Europe on her own now is studying at Hull University in England and right now she's in Rome at spring vacation over

there and is doing Europe completely on her own. She has certainly matured by having two years I don't know I. Student demonstrations tend to alienate the general public and the local community a community that may already be disenchanted by loud motorcycles sloppy or funny clothes water fights traffic jams and arrest reports in the newspaper. In many ways this town and gown problem is as old as universities themselves and as we mentioned during the first programme in the series it may even have helped bring about the first steps in the formal development of universities. This division between town and university affects not only students but faculty as well. Professors must occasionally face the charge of living in an ivory tower away from the so-called real world. How do they react to this citizen complaint.

Dr D E. Alexander professor of plant pathology at the University of Illinois I answered this question. Is the university and I are in part two they have to be I be taught it means to me that insulated from opinion. Now this is pretty hard to imagine that a university that's viable and shifting as science shifts and changes is really insulated and is isolated from the real world in the real world. To a physicist it is electromagnetic properties of a particular nucleus. This is the real world to him and the conditions in an orphan may not be the real world so he may be really concerned about one thing and not the other. And this is this is called Universe specialization. Well I find that I should spend most of my effort not in politics and not discussing things that I'm really not competent about although I have opinions out as a private citizen.

I should confine most of my energies and expertise in those areas in which I really may excel. I think perhaps I do excel I'm a little egotistical now but to be an expert on Vietnam for example. I sometimes think I'm an expert on Latin America and I've been there and lived there for a year and a half and I've been there many times. Yet I really am out of order. I really don't really I'm not competent to judge what the political scheme and legitimacy of Melanie's government in Peru is. I have opinions but I am competent to judge exactly what the problems are in producing food and brew have solutions for it. Egotistical enough to believe that we really can do something about it. And I think as a as a citizen the world we ought to we ought to express our opinions on these things. But to be so decided about areas outside one's expertise or his own specialities. Is dangerous. So a scientist a good scientist should and should confine himself pretty much to what he knows most

about except a private citizen. I could be a Democrat or Republican you know. And still be a geneticist I would say. You're. Most Multiversity leaders are aware and sometimes painfully aware of these problems and efforts are being made to bring the university into closer contact with the citizens. A non academic hiring practices are being revised to make it easier for minority groups and the hardcore unemployed to find Multiversity jobs. Public relations personnel are making greater efforts to reach individual citizens and inform them about their institutions multi-verse cities are setting up programs to aid local poverty programs Head Start programs in counseling and tutoring services. Just as the agricultural extension services first set out to wade farmers urban Multiversity these are attempting to develop comparable programs designed for

city residents. Howard W. Clemente a member and past president of the University of Illinois board of trustees discussed one such program. I didn't go I think. Urban universities today is rapidly growing to be a better understanding and involvement in some of our most obvious urban problems. For example we have very high hopes for our new Chicago campus as a center of this kind of activity. Everyone is familiar with the tremendous contribution that the land grant universities have made in the field of agriculture for example. We hope that there will be a comparable contribution possible in the field of urban problems by an institution such as the Chicago Circle campus.

I don't mean to limit the contribution to this campus itself as far as the university is concerned but obviously its physical location makes it almost a laboratory in itself for the Study of many of our current problems. This is a possible go at I think most everyone is giving very serious consideration to it. The moment we have our Center for Urban Studies set up bad University on my Chicago campus we've had many beginnings in this area in terms of enter into situational cooperation with the Chicago Board of Education with other universities in the Chicago area and with the administration and the City of Chicago itself and the

mayor of the city is very anxious to have the university move in this direction. I think everyone concerned with the future of the city feels that this is one possible area in which the university can make a very great and substantial contribution. Interestingly enough not only does the university serve in this area in a way comparable to the way it has served the state in agriculture but the very existence in many ways. An urban campus is also involved in this kind of problem. There's no question but what the life and character of the urban centers is going to

have a very substantial influence on the life and character of a campus and university with a campus that is located within that kind of age and environment. So it's a it's a matter of self-interest as well as a matter of service to the entire state and the urban centers of the state for the university to get into this kind of activity and to have as one of its goals a contribution in this area of urban problems. Oh Multiversity regardless of their location are concerned about their relationships with one particular group of citizens the parents of its students on small campuses. Parents often have a chance to meet and discuss problems with top university administrators and faculty on a Multiversity campus involving say 50000 parents and several thousand administrators and faculty. It's

difficult to get these groups of people together. The results are usually printed news sheets mass receptions and special days Mother's Days dad stays and the like. We ask John strawman about this problem. Well I think it's desirable to have a very close relationship but it's not easy. We live in a very frantic pace in this complex society of ours. It's not easy to type parents to anything. We make attempts I think it Dad's Day and Mother's Day. I think these are fine but I think they're likely to be pretty superficial. I believe we ought to work harder at it. I have to take the daily ally and I of course because my son's executive editor but reading it lets me see the university from the students you point. I might add this last year I was invited to Purdue University to be on their own master's program. This was a great experience for me. Each year they invite a dozen outstanding successful man in business or religion or arts or

education or journalism. All fields the own masters teach classes they hold seminars they have bull sessions and fraternities and sororities. They submit to give and take questions. I think it's a tremendously rewarding experience all around. I would like I think we need more of this I'd like to see Illinois put in such a program. I'd like to see more adults whether they're parents or not. Get back to the university for a day or a few games and something besides football. I think the university has a tremendous lot to good to adults and to our adult society and I think the more we can interweave this the better. Every citizen through federal and state taxes contributes to his Multiversity

everyone. What do we receive for our money. The primary and much needed benefits of education for our citizens and the results of research and hundreds of secondary benefits information available experts special education programs special extension programs help for our poverty employment and social problems. Have you sent a son or daughter to college planted crops crossed a bridge gone to a movie read a newspaper listened to a radio station received medical treatment. Then you as a private citizen have benefited from what's going on inside the Multiversity today. During the past half hour you have heard the AIDS program in a series about what's going

on inside the Multiversity today. Next week at this time we'll explore the relationships between governments and Multiversity is on those grounds and come tracks. Your host for today's program was Denis Corrigan The music was performed by the University of Illinois somebody's Orchestra under the direction of Charles Delaney. The program was produced and directed by Louise Geissler is in the studios of WRAL the University of Illinois Broadcasting Service. This program was distributed by the national educational radio network.