Challenge to Higher Education

It seems to me very definite that just as high school girls are preparing their students better colleges have to prepare theirs better. And this throws the burden onto the graduate school. More and more of a poet in their junior and senior year doing work which is equivalent to what they have in graduate school. We have are discouraged to have boys go on to graduate school and report that the courses they're getting there are not sufficiently advanced. I'm sure this Merilee indicates that all of Education has got to be upgraded. This is one of the great challenges that we face in the in the next decade. I'd like to come back to the problem of personnel currently in the United States we're producing about 10000 Ph.D. use a year. It's out of this group of course and most of the college teachers come. But clearly 10000 Ph.D.s is not enough to provide what industry needs and what the government needs and what the educational institutions meet are in fact I as I recall the figure only about 4000 of these 10000 actually go into

teaching. What are we going to do about this problem. Are we going to train enough teachers to manage a doubling of enrollment in our colleges and universities. Could I make one suggestion Jim this about lies in our Yes in the basic sciences we do pretty well in that. I suspect the average time spent by the student beyond the baccalaureate level to get the Ph.D. is about four years. But in the social sciences and the humanities students take seven sometimes eight and nine years to get the Ph.D. I think that our graduate faculty is. Must give thought to how this whole process can be speeded up. Yes I think that I think it needs to be speeded up in science too. Doesn't that fairly simple though jam I mean you tend to find most of your assistantships let's say in the in the natural sciences so that the kids have got money enough to go ahead with their Ph.D. programs without spending too much time on the side of the humanities for

example out of many if you want fellowship spend if your assistantships and therefore what we need is a much more elaborate a finance program of fellowships for the graduate students in these areas where they can't get industrial or even federal government support. I think that's right I would agree with that. Yes this this is one way but done. Do you feel that we are going to be able to meet the rising standard that we all agree in this town having enough teachers a Ph.D. firstrate quality to do this in the next 10 years. Well I'm encouraged by the fact that. While doing the last five years our romance of ruckus have increased tremendously in the undergraduate classes the enrolments in the graduate program have increased at about double the rate and this seems to be an increasing number of people all the time going on to graduate school and I would simply hope that we would get a fair share of that group. There's bound to be let's say a four year lag as far as increasing enrollments are concerned and I very much hope that with this increasing rate of graduate study we're going to be

able to keep up. Yes but Mason We seem to find this is very spotty in some sciences and some professions a large fraction of the students go on to graduate work take chemistry for instance. I think about 30 percent of the BSA graduates go on to get doctors degrees in chemistry and mathematics a percentage I think it's around 9 percent in physics is around 6. But in the engineering professions as you've mentioned one mechanical engineering it's less than 1 percent. And yet we need teachers in mechanical engineering just as much as we need teachers in math and physics. But these ph is a mechanical engineer I guess I need to be a Ph.D. there I think. Good morning I'm really not going to show a face at this point I'd like to interrupt long enough to identify again everyone that's participating in this conference. Speaking from Amherst College is Dr. Calvin age Bunton its president speaking at Rutgers University's Dr. Mason Debbie Gross president of that

institution at University Park Pennsylvania is Dr. Eric gay Walker president of Pennsylvania State University and from Baltimore where hearing from Dr. Milton S. Eisenhower President of the Johns Hopkins University. Coming back now to our discussion I would like to suggest that we shift some of our attention to some of the problems of economics that are involved in this rapidly expanding educational system that we have at the present time and the reporter on the goals that was prepared down a couple of years ago by a presidential commission. These observations were made that we must expect that the annual public and private expenditure on far all education in the United States will approximate 40 billion dollars by 1970 double the 1060 figure. We should be making plans now to devote not 4 percent as we do today of our gross national product to education about 5 percent

higher education alone. We should be planning on expanding about one point nine percent of the gross national product. Compared with less than 1 percent in 1957 58. Well this simply summarizes the magnitude of the job that lies ahead in finding additional funds to take care of this expanding system system expanding not only in numbers but advancing in quality. But Eisenhower Have you any other comments to make as to how these funds are going to be found what their sources are going to be what our national policy is should be the relation to seeking to get a higher percentage of our national income going into education. Well of course quite obviously the problem is one thing for the public institutions and another for the private colleges universities. I think the people of the country must make up their minds what they considered to be most important to our society. We are spending in the United

States about a third of the total national income on public enterprises all the way from defense to police protection. I think we have to decide and I believe the public will decide that a greater share of this rather immense take of the total national income that now goes into public purse is must go to education. Only this way can we keep the nation morally intellectually economically and even militarily strong. So I believe that so far as the tax supported institutions are concerned that these resources will be forthcoming. The private institutions of course must persuade individuals corporations foundations that they also merit the same type of increase in

support if they are to keep up quality and redeem their responsibility. We've just done a spectacular job and demonstrating what can be done here. Yes we have nearly tripled the average annual giving to Johns Hopkins and I'm delighted to see this being done at many other private institutions I think the future so far as this question of finance is concerned is rather rosy. And you speak in terms of the private institutions. Yes indeed. Do you feel and perhaps some others have comments to make on this that an increasing amount of the funds that the private institution expects to get will have to come from corporations as well as foundations and individuals. Do you anticipate that the corporate former supporters might work. Are you asking me this Jim. Yes. Yes I think that that more industries are taking the view that they must

support at least a selected number of the private institutions. I do believe that this poses a another problem however we have in this country of course many very distinguished private institutions we have some average ones and then we have some. That did not measure up to quality and I think that we all find that corporations are we going to begin to be more selective while at the same time providing a higher total gifts than they have in the past I'd like to know how Dr. Plympton feels about this. Well I wish I was in your position Dr. Eisenhower III and V you we're just starting on a large capital fun campaigning and I'm of course you know highly a nervous state nonetheless. I'm just devoting the end of one and I have equally nervous. Well I think some degree of anxiety and tension has a physiologically good effect but I'm sure I'm

sure that corporations are going to be interested in supporting if you will oh selected number more than before because I think a corporation ourselves can see that a dollar which goes to Washington and comes back doesn't quite look like a dollar anymore. And it may be only 50 cents or 40 cents and I'm very impressed by the rise in corporate giving. From 1950 to 1960 and I do hope it will continue and I substantiate that point by reporting that MIT and its current 2nd century fund has so far received something approximating 16 million dollars from. On corporate contributions to me I comment on this too I was speaking from a public university point of view. I think that all of us who. Depended to have a large degree upon legislatures Nippon Public Understanding know how tremendously important it is that we keep our present diversified system of

private and public colleges and that is to our best interest in the public universities that we should have strong private colleges and universities and that we ought to work together. However I do want to make sure that there. Is not any misunderstanding about this. There are great state universities of this country on the whole depended upon tax support that say to a much lower percentage of their operations than most people understand in New Jersey at the present moment out of a 40 million dollar overall budget only about 90 million dollars come from the state are less than 50 percent. The rest of us get in gifts and grants from corporations from the federal government from foundations as well as a tuition rate which obviously being a public university ought to be kept as low as possible. I think the point that isn't clearly understood that the great public institutions have a diverse source of funds and they must depend upon.

But do you want to comment upon the outlook as you see it for institutions of the kind that you are ahead of. Finding the means to it to meet the challenge that lies ahead. I would talk to me. Maybe I'm growing up. Yes I remember very optimistic indeed we found the last 10 to 15 years as there's been an increasing demand for higher education from the. Young boys and girls of the state and of course also from their parents. But there's been a tremendously broadened basis of understanding of what the university is trying to do and what it can mean to the whole social and political economy of the state and we have been encouraged very much by the support in the legislature in the support of organizations throughout the state of New Jersey. We do have a problem in New Jersey at the moment in that we have neither an income tax goes to the sales tax I believe if one of the two states the United States that doesn't have either one of those. And so we're kind of short of funds but we are being denied our fair share of the funds of the another get very soon our support will be greater and we are getting our share I think also of interest and support

from foundations or corporations or from private individuals. I wonder if Rutgers isn't rather unique in this respect I'd like to have Eric Walker. I don't think the situation's changed at Penn State remarkably since I left and I know that when I was there a very high percentage of the funds at Penn State came from the state and federal governments. And Rick would you would you comment. Well I can make my figures come out any way I want. If I talk about my total budget about 32 percent of it comes from a state to actually 20 million dollars out of some 60 million dollars per year. And of course we work very hard to get the state to increase this amount of money. I think there's one argument that we have that we don't use often enough. We always talk about the students who want to get into our colleges and universities. I think a state university ought to tell the people of the state that

education is good business. And this argument isn't very hard to make. You talk about the number of unemployed there are far fewer are unemployed college graduates than there are students without any college training. You can say that college education is worth one hundred fifty thousand dollars during a man's life time. And you can point out that he's going to pay higher taxes and therefore the state gets a return on its investment. And you could also point out to the students the alumni that because they got a college education they earn more and therefore they ought to pay more to their own colleges and universities. So there are arguments that we can use Mason. Oh yes good every day. At the present time and there are. Bills that have passed in the Congress one bill having been passed by the Senate and one passed by the House to provide financial aid on the part of the federal government to higher education. Does

anyone want to comment on their feelings about the importance of the final bill coming out of Congress that does provide student aid for example as well as loans and grants for the ling buildings by our institutions of higher learning. Doctor I was on our own have you any strong convictions about this kind of federal support. The present time. Well I would most certainly like to see the federal government provide a matching program of grants for bricks and mortar and equipment. I'm not so sure about federal scholarships for some field. Many of my colleagues for example concerned about the medical situation that we're talking about a while ago are very much in favor of federal scholarships for medical students. I'm afraid that this might be that final step that would lead the nation into socialized medicine which I oppose and I'm afraid in

other words that if the public has the view that it is financing the cost of medical education that it will then say why aren't we entitled to free medical service through the tax route. So to answer your question yes I'm very much in favor of the provision for helping us build buildings and get the equipment. But I have doubts about the scholarship program. I don't this does not extend to the loan plans. No no no no made of it loans to repay that's fine. Yes. And I judge that you do not feel happy about a direct subsidy for our medical schools in the part of the federal government. I want to hear a map so that well perhaps someone else will take that into this. This gets us into a rather difficult problem that I'm not sure that I can state my view briefly. But of course we are all now receiving rather massive AIDS or medical research. The consequence is that our programs are becoming unbalanced

as between education patient care research and service. Hence I'm sort of driven into the position feeling that to restore a balance the federal government probably should amend the law so that some of the aid now available for research could be used for educational purposes. But I would still hope that we would not have to have outright scholarships for medical students. President GROSS Do you want to comment on this. Well I speak from the point of view of the city of New Jersey where we have a very generous undergraduate scholarship program. And I think that at the present moment we have need for loan funds but that we don't have need necessarily for more scholarship funds for undergraduates. But I come back to the point that I made early on that I think our greatest. Need for the area of financial aid is for graduate fellowships. And I think perhaps there's a better case to be made for federal aid here because in a state university the great bulk of your undergraduate

students are residents of that state and will continue to remain in that state you know graduate students tend to come to university because of the specialties offered. They all the equipment that you have are the professors and they do by no means follow the same kind of geographical limitation that the undergraduates do. Now therefore perhaps it's a little bit harder to sell a program of graduate fellowships to a state legislature. But it certainly is a desperate need and possibly this might be an area in which the federal government can make a maximum contribution. May I address a question to the heads of the two private institutions on this bidding this evening. We hear many times the proposal that the tuition fees of our private institutions should be higher enough to cover the total cost of education in general. Of course tuition covers only about half the cost of education. Do you feel that we're going to be forced to step two isn't up until it covers a substantially greater percentage of the total cost and that this is good social policy. Doesn't move would you

comment on this. Yes our two Asian hair at our most does not begin to cover the cost of educating a boy. It's about 30 to 35 percent of the cost on and we are also rather happy that our two ration is among the lowest and the group of eastern seaboard colleges. We also feel it is rather important to keep it low. About 35 percent of our boys are on scholarship and it looks as though the very poor boys could get a college education nowadays our right to the very rich boys have always been able to if they weren't lazy. But we're concerned about the middle group. A group of people who perhaps have as their fathers a vice presidents and some banker may have several children and they may all arrive at college about the same time to assume a high tuition can make it absolutely impossible for them to have a college education. Now if you are an assistant vice president a bank you would

be laughed right out of the scholarship office if you asked for a scholarship and it might be awkward for you to be very successful in using some of the available loan funds. These people in this Miracle seem to us to be extremely valuable and important and worthwhile resources and very important potentials for the future. We were there for as long as possible. I hope we could keep our tuition down to allow these people to get an education. Right well I would agree with what has just been said. And yet I think it is an average of all that a good many of the private institutions will continue to increase tuition. This is certainly been the record of the last 10 years. Yes and Hopkins in the in the last 15 we have doubled tuition and it's will now be sixteen hundred dollars a year. I notice that some institutions in the east have already gone to seven thousand nine hundred and I would

predict that within two or three years that $2000 per year per student will not be unusual. That's right and still this will only be a portion of the cost of educating the student. This is especially true of course at the junior and senior level of the undergraduate program and more especially at the graduate level. Would anyone here support the the point of view of the tuition ought to be increased so that it covers 100 percent of the cost of the college undergraduate education. I think this would be wrong. I think that Dr. Plympton has made the case against that. Thought here speaking from a state university again I would say that I think that it has got to remain a place for the philosophy of public education extending through the levels of public higher education that must be available for all classes of our economic society. Tuition at the lowest possible rate.

I think Penn State and down because of I want to run an I'm happy race to see who can charge the highest tuition among the land grant colleges and I think we're both I'm happy that we're winning aren't we Mason. Happier thought $400 as well I might as well tell 13:00 So Johns Hopkins is a little ahead. I'm afraid that my own institution has the annuity of a position of standing at 17:00 beginning next fall. I'd like to turn to several other aspects of the current educational scene. First by asking Eric Walker if he will give us a brief report on some studies he's been participating in as a member of the family of the president Symes advisory committee that has to do with the supply of technical personnel in the years ahead. Dr Walker Yes I'd be glad to. We've been looking into the problem of the economic growth of the country and that this can be plotted with some degree of assurance and problems as we can tell how many doctors we're

going to need how many engineers how many physicists and so on. And then the problem is can we get the numbers that we're going to need. Well to take the engineers the group that I know best as I said before we're turning out about 38 or 40 thousand a year. And the projections say that we ought to be turning out 80000 a year. Now this is quite apart from the fact that the Russians turn out three times as many as we do. But if you look at the thing coldly and the objective light I don't think we're going to get 80000 engineers a year because of these two factors I mentioned earlier where increasing the the requirements for the fresh one. We're making the course tougher and fewer students therefore want to go into the course. Also some of these things like medicine I think Dr. Plympton said Engineering don't have the glamour of the science curriculum.

The physicists the Space Age type of thing but some of the studies have and so it seems to me that we've got to find new ways of using people. And this might be the one of the biggest problems it's not for be educated to solve it but as for industry to solve and then we'll have to find ways of supplying the people that industry doesn't. Good enough but I take it you and you take a reasonably optimistic view about what we can do about meeting the apparent shortage as we talk so much of an ass and I think we can add the technicians the time lag isn't very long two or three years we could double or triple the supply of technicians if we put together the schools. If we could get the teachers and if we can convince the students they ought to go into the sort of education and I think we can. It will be much harder to increase the number of doctors candidate. And here we really

need to increase by a factor of three four or five. This is because our kind of engineering and science that we do is getting awfully complex is done by teams not by individuals. And we need more of the scientist engineer type that are only developed through a doctoral program. But I think we can get these if we put a big push on but there won't be much opportunity for another eight or 10 years just because that there is that time lag in producing a doctor's candidate. I'd like to go back and pick up a striking statement that President Eisenhower made about post-doctoral study as he has seen it as his own university. This is a new phenomenon in American higher education. The fact that increasing numbers of students continue on past Ph.D. degrees in order to get research experience further to mature their professional competence. Not Eisenhower how are we going to finance this kind of study.

This is something that I think we have not yet solved at least in some institutions I know we haven't stopped. Well of course at the present time as you know Jim the federal government is giving enormous assistance and financing at this particular level in certain fields I don't. Yes let me use biology as an example. We have about 50 candidates for the Ph.D. degree in biology. But we have 35 and soon will have 50 post doctoral students who will be with us for about three years beyond the doctorate. They will then go. Most of them the record shows as associate professors of biology in the other universities. Now they're mostly on the NSF and am I age grants the same thing are true courses true in medicine chemistry to some extent in engineering and physics. In the social sciences and the

humanities where post-doctoral study is also increasing rather because Oldring rate care of any assistance has to come from private foundations. I am going to to some extent from industry which gives us fellowships as well and happily I think our time is coming to an end here and that we are going to have to close our discussion. May I simply say that as I have listened as interlocutor here I have had the feeling of great optimism being expressed by our participants about the ability of our diverse and growing and flexible system of education meeting the challenges ahead. We really do have the resources and the millions and the motivation to strengthen our institutions to serve the increasingly complex problems of our society. Gentleman I'd like to thank you for your participation this evening and thank the educational radio network for making such an intercity discussion possible. Thank you and Goodnight goodnight.

You have heard another demonstration program of the educational radio networks intercity conference capability experiments with this technique are supported by a grant from the U.S. Office of Education. Tonight's discussion. The challenge to higher education just like you brought together five distinguished leaders in American education each speaking at or near his own institution. Waking from W am afk radio at Amherst College in the Amherst Massachusetts to lead Dr. Calvin Paige Plimpton president of them first colleges in Cherry Hill New Jersey with Dr. Mason W. Gross president of Rutgers the State University through the courtesy of the Cherry Hill game from WDF am at University Park Pennsylvania. The president of Pennsylvania State University Dr. Eric a walker and from his office at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Dr. Milton S. Eisenhower President of Johns Hopkins moderating tonight's discussion from the WGBH

studios in Boston. Dr James R. Kilian Jr. chairman of the corporation at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A transcript of this evening's discussion is available upon request. Send twenty five cents to the station to which you are to in order to WGBH Af-Am Cambridge 42 Massachusetts. This program made available to the National Association of educational broadcasters by the educational radio network was produced by WGBH FM in Boston this is the N.A. E B Radio Network.