The reader's almanac; 2

It's time for the readers all men to act with one by our originally broadcast over station WNYC New York and distributed by national educational radio. The readers Allman act is America's oldest consecutive book program. Here now is Mr. Bauer. It is only going to clear to any clear eyed observer that the College of the University of today is in trouble and many kinds of trouble really and not merely from its students who are intransigent truculent intent. It sometimes seems on breaking up the educational institution from within just for destruction sake. But is rather more likely that the higher education in this country has been coasting along on its past reputation with very little thought being given by those in charge of its policies and its relation to the real world. The old ways have been sufficient for so long that through it the man charged with the responsibility for keeping higher education relevant and useful. For doing the thinking and planning ahead which any institution must carry out. I have been aware that they're behind the development of our time since there are student

demands not requests for changes in design and purpose and education that are sometimes totally confounding to those in charge of meeting the future before it actually is upon these institutions. There are riots and. So I mean going on on campuses many administrators do not have the slightest idea why they are occurring now under sponsor this general situation educators are having to blister themselves and do some serious thinking about the nature of education and institution in which it takes place as a help to that general and I want to draw attention to a book recently published by Della court press. Which brings together the best and most advanced thought and planning for the present and the future of education which is seen as our most important concern. There's a book called significantly campus Nineteen eighty eight. It is edited by an outstanding educator and administrator album See Yorick. Who has a wide and deep understanding of what is

stirring in higher education today. And brings that knowledge to bear on the task of providing the stimulus to advance thinking on the problems and changing concepts in education posts for educators who are looking ahead to 1980 and beyond. I want to set a bit doctor Europe is president of the Academy for educational development. He's been the president of the State University of New York as well as executive director of the Ford Foundation's education program. Has also been an acting president of Stanford University and chairman of the Stanford Research Institute. And at present he is chairman of the US National Commission for good Nesco clearly is a man deeply concerned with education and unafraid to face the manifold problems of the future. I want to go to a guy I'm interested in what is apparently a target date in your title. Nineteen eighty. Is that about the earliest that you and others who think as you do about higher education can envision a major portion of the reforms

needed coming about. Why have you chosen one hundred eighty. Well that's a very good question. We chose 1980 primarily because students who will be in college in 1080 are already here. They're in school at the present time and exact it's only 12 years from now that 1980 is upon us so we can predict the number we will have in colleges and universities. The second reason of course is that by 1980 our college and university enrollments will be about double what they were in 1965 when we started working on this book so we're thinking about having to meet a challenge here by doubling the enrollment of colleges and universities. Something must happen as we can't foresee in the next 12 to 15 years building up your plants colleges and universities throughout the country equivalent to that which we've built in our

entire history. That's a pregnant Kerry statement isn't it. Missing it so something had to happen. Yes yes I can see that so it is it's really critical at that that you're not you know 8:00 you know I've been reading through the list of contributors as well as their essays of course and what they contributed to this anthology. Imus is a very impressive list you have indeed function well as an editor and getting these people to write for you. I do want to ask you this were at least some of those essay written specifically for this book. I asked because this compilation of material does not have the appearance of a collection of random journalism on a single topic. Most of the essays were written specifically for the book. They essay by John Gardner former SEC secretary of Health Education and Welfare. It was a speech that he had delivered earlier and had presented it one of the National Association meetings in

education. We chose it because it provided an agenda of problems that. But colleges and universities had to think through in the period ahead. And we selected for that reason another by Professor Errol Smith who was a speech that he made before the American Council on Education which really rocked that meeting. Yes I'd imagine. And the one by Jenks and respond was really developed out of their recent book. But aside from these essays the rest of them were all written specifically for. This volume that suggests a great deal it seems to me about about this book that it is not merely a response to a crisis sinking in a crisis situation. It is to be sure of that. But there is an urgency in every one of these essays and many of them it seemed to me as I was reading without doing too much investigation to see whether or not they had

been published before. I had a feeling that they were written for this book and I'm glad to know that that was true. Well let me ask you to respond to that this is not crisis thinking in a crisis situation or would you say that it is I'm sure there is urgency in every essay. But are we in a crisis in education planning for the future. No I wouldn't say it's a crisis so I think you put it very well when you say that there's an urgency about the problems during the next 10 to 15 years. We've got to do something about it. And I think the students at the present time are are helping us. We have to do something about yes yes we do have lead time and then I believe that's the phrase is used in industry for time enough but little despair. And industry in it's looking ahead and reading the future. It is the model that you and your authors are using for want higher education has to

do or I assume it is. Would that be true it has. Has industry in its thinking ahead and anticipating crises that make up a given education the model for the planning that has to be done in education. Yes industry has had to plan ahead from year to year in order to stay alive. Otherwise competition would have thrown a corporation out of business. You say Would you take the automobile industry for example. Well they're planning ahead 12 15 years at the present time. They know essentially the direction in which they're going to move to Cali. This is new for colleges and universities. In fact an associate of mine in the Ford Foundation Sidney Rigdon who contributed one of the chapters in this book published through the Ford Foundation a little bulletin titled I needed a 10 year college budget.

Well that was printed and distributed in 1961. At that time as far as we knew there wasn't a single college or university in the United States that had a 10 year plan. Today in terms of our estimates there must be about 400 colleges and universities in all matters happened in the last seven or eight years. The colleges are getting the message you know they were getting to him. Yeah definitely. What is the chief problem that higher education faces I wondered as I was reading through your book is that the number of people who are going to be involved in going to college in 1980 that will be better bring on problems just by itself of course. But will those problems of numbers be central. No our problems and problems in higher education really grow out of the fact that we are following lines of instruction that were developed centuries ago. We

haven't adapted to the new situation. I can give you one illustration of that. Take the matter of class size which we think is so exceedingly important. We build our class room so they can accommodate 25 or or 30 students who sit well some years ago I was interested in where that formula came from. So I began raising questions. One day I was at the University of Michigan and I raised the question when the Dean said he wasn't sure of this but he thought it was recorded in the Talmud. Well I couldn't wait to get at a good Talmudic scholar. So from Ann Arbor I call good president Samuel built of the Yeshiva University here in New York City. And I ask him whether it was true that this teacher student ratio was recorded in the Talmud. And he said yes and he sent me in a telegram the exact quotation

as it was written recorded in the Talmud and the middle of the third century which read there should be one teacher for 25 students. If more than 25 students should be in the system. So you did this. This is our basic problem. Sorry that's a long time for one idea to be dominant isn't it. And this formula was laid down by the rabbis as a good method of instruction. Before we had any other means of communication outside word of mouth and now we have all these other means of communication and essentially education is a process of communication certain and yet we have ignored all the facilities we have to communicate to present time. I think that our basic problem in college and university grew out of the fact that we have frozen up be.

Now is a higher education circa 1980 to be different in kind or purpose or the numbers of people that we reach. Are we faced with the need to upgrade our colleges and universities or to change them structurally. Well I think we're going to have to change them on all fronts. In terms of our facilities our Potomac these have to be much more flexible if they're going to accommodate the facilities we have for KMI communicating better to students than we have in the Pat. Furthermore we have to change our curriculum. We can't any longer afford and we will be able to afford less in the period ahead. And arrangement whereby each professor develops his own courses none we perpetuate those courses even after the professors lept the institution he devises new courses. Then he goes on. We keep

his courses in the book and then we get somebody else who also develops new courses. Yes I recognized just what you're talking about there right now. Shirley let me ask you what is the relationship between the student protests that almost every major university is undergoing these days and the education which 1980 will see are peripheral to the problems that you're concerned with in your book. Or are there students. By some kind of divination maybe putting their fingers upon some of the problems that they know are going to come about in the next. By 1980 let's say. I think the protests the students are central to the problems of colleges and universities. I think they are forcing a rethinking of the whole program there. Their statement that what they're studying isn't really relevant. It's something we need to take into consideration. Their statement that professors adult

in the classroom. So all of us who have gone through colleges and universities in the past recognize that we had many dull Professor Lee. In fact we were lucky if we had four or five top notch professors. And I think the question the students are raising is why can't we have more of the top notch professors. And as a man who's been in a classroom for many many years I know that I have very very often been dull in the classroom. I may have responded to a certain situation but any dullness in a classroom is a bad thing. To be sure because how are you going to compel these students to take fire. About the thing they were interested in. Unless you've got enthusiasm and can carry that over to those students. Sure I think beyond that the students are protesting certain conditions in society as well as the conditions that exist in colleges and

universities. And I think this is really one of our most critical problems as to how can we reorganize the college and university. How can we make a curriculum more pertinent to the present day problems. You take the question of of the ghetto which is dealt with in one of the chapters in this book. Or or racism. And the solution to the old problem of the way in which colleges and universities can help find better solutions. More specifically the problem of. Educating negroes. It our society. We have at the present time two hundred fifty thousand negroes in colleges and universities about half of them aren't negro institutions in half in mixed institutions. Now if negroes were to be represented in our colleges and

universities to the extent to which they are represented in our total population instead of two hundred fifty thousand we should have almost eight hundred thousand. This shows a deficit yes in the training of our negroes. And now we're talking about economic equality for Negroes. And yet it's difficult to see how we can get economic equality if we don't train Negroes for the professions to the same degree that we train whites. Right. And yet this isn't a problem that we can solve and even 10 years you know I wonder looking ahead to that time and community and beyond. I wonder if student power here is a phrase that is Cajun even yours. I wonder if that will be greater in 100 than now that. I wonder if universities will be for students rather than for faculties and come 1980. Well I think the students will have actually will have more power and will exercise

more power and 1980 than they have any time in the past. We went through this same cycle. As far as faculty powers concern in the early part of this century cycle. Faculty were not having a great deal to say about our colleges and universities. And do it. We had a number of situations that caused universities to rethink the role of the faculty in planning the future of the institution and planning the curriculum. And we had developed in the early part of this century the American Association of University Professors to protect the rights of our faculty members. We're going through a similar cycle now with students and we have to recognize the fact that today's college students are much more mature than they have been in any preceding generation. They've had a much wider

exposure exposure than that really the priest students at their age who were growing up from infancy with television. Yeah true. Of course giving the students more power or listening to them rather more than we have for a long long time does not necessarily mean an eclipse of the faculty. You know all of the hardware the new university to be I assume all these new means of communication do not shift the emphasis away from the teacher and teaching. Now it's for this reason that I read the essay that you've already mentioned William Arras Missa future of teaching with roots such extraordinary absorption in that idea. That's that's just about the key essay to my way of thinking in a book that is full of key essays and I take it you have a high opinion of that essay as well yes I think very highly of that essay because he think he puts his finger. On one of the sore points in our colleges and universities part of the students concerned namely that the professors had gone off in their research

and other type of service that had been neglected their teaching. And furthermore that makes the point that our graduate schools have become research centers training people in research and as a result have neglected the problem of teaching. And he thinks we have to really reemphasize teaching in in all of our college and university work who. Are teaching it it sounds like it is just a mere communication of information but of course it's very much more than that isn't it. It means getting some idea of a sense of importance and urgency over to the students and convey that to them with with enthusiasm so that they will take fire in the same way perhaps that the teacher who has that quality is is has been able to take fire himself and thus communicate his interest and Yasm it. So I look forward.

I may not be around in those days but I look forward to the occasion when students have more power. Andy and the student and the faculty responds to their needs in a more realistic way than they are responding at the present time. I think we have to look at it in Kermit's of learning. And place the emphasis upon the learning of the student rather than the teaching of the particle in them. And if we stressed the learning at the student we would devise a completely different system from that which is in operation at the present time. In fact if we just wanted to try and submit information to the student having it come from the teacher's lips to the student's note paper is the least economical way. I will write submitting information to you quite right now another key essay I thought with Mr Gore is the American campus 1980. Let's sample a little of that why is that campus going to be for example is he going to be the city's or

is going to be away from them. Well I think they are both. They're going to be very flexible some will be in cities in the urban areas and some will be in the in the rural areas probably starved most of the students are concerned however the campus will be in the urban area but it will be more a part of the community than it has been in the past and as we see it those of us who have been concerned with projecting education into the future higher education and in fact all of education will be more closely related to the other cultural activities in the community. There's another revolutionary idea in your book and that is that that any student who has the capacity any person young person who has the capacity to be a college student and to gain from that experience all that it offers must have that opportunity.

I was in England in 1982 and some of my friends were asking me if it were possible for anybody who had talent to get a college education. And I talked mainly about scholarships and all that sort of thing but I had to admit that that time at any rate it was not possible for everyone who was capable of achieving a good education to get it. And I'm glad to see that this is planned for in the campus of 1980. I think we must plan for it because we don't have the employment opportunities for high school and college age youth that we had in the past and consequently we must provide some type of study some type of training taught them that will develop them to a higher level than we thought possible in the past. So the bigger they become more effective citizens more effective in putting the employees in industry and government more highly

trained in the profession. Yet there's one question Chris to me right here with this result of nationalizing education and making it serve the state exclusively. Is this a part of what we have to be aware of there's a danger in the future. The money's going to have to come yes the money is going to have to come from a variety of sources from local sources from states from corporations from private philanthropy from government including the Petrel government. As I see it we need some overall. General policy in terms of providing an opportunity for college age youth to extend their education. Once we have those policy it becomes the responsibility of the local institution. To develop programs that give the student the chance. I was wondering just where how we're going to get started all this. And then occurred to

me that we can start with the people that you have assembled in your book not to correct their core people and thinkers and planners but in the meantime I hope that a great many people will read your book campus 1980 published by the delicate art press simply because it is the most vigorous and stirring glimpse into the future of higher education I've come across. It makes the imagination soar as one looks ahead to a time it is only 12 years off. I'm eager to see it all worked out. Next week I will be dealing another book with another book of significance in our time until the end. Good reading to you. This was a program in the series the reader's Almanac the readers all men act is produced by Warren Bauer and is originally broadcast by station WNYC in New York. The programs are made available to this station by national educational radio. This is the national educational radio network.