ustxtxb_obs_1965_10_01_50_00009-00000_000.pdf

seen as unavoidable in this context. But also, had Texas not spent more, it would have dropped further behind other states, instead of just holding its ground; for this is a fall when nearly every U.S. state Utah is said to be the only exception is dramatically increasing spending on higher education. Texas has made a two-year gain of 44% in state appropriations for higher education, and the previous two-year Texas increase was 35%, according to the Southern Regional Education Board; South-wide the comparable figure has been 40%. Alabama gained 60%, North Carolina 63%; 10 of the 15 Southern states did 40% or better. The same source computed the state funds provided for higher education per $1,000 _personal income and found that Texas in 1964 spent $5 per $1,000, which is exactly the national average. However, in the South the average is $5.60; Texas was behind nine of the 15 Southern states. 19 The Investment Theory of Learning Obviously something’s going on that wasn’t before. What? If the Texas experience is in the general pattern, this is what: Businessmen have perceived that big contracts and new industries are dependent on “brains” and often tend to concentrate, geographically, around the great schools wherein the brains cluster. The power structure of Texas decided, tentatively in the fifties and with increasing single-mindedness in the sixties, that commercial enterprise in Texas depends in large measure on a first-rate system of colleges and universities, which Texas doesn’t even nearly have. Governor Shivers enunciated this doctrine in an article in U.T.’s Graduate Journal. “Our universities must produce scientists and mathematicians at a greatly accelerated pace,” Shivers wrote. “Not by coincidence, the business community has lately discovered economic growth [going] to communities which have the most to offer in the way of research facilities and postgraduate opportunities. Space age installations tend to spring up where scientists and engineers can be attracted and kept happy.” Shivers referred to these developments as “this interesting liaison between education and business.”” In 1958 . the privately-financed “Committee of Governing Boards of Texas State Colleges and Universities,” made up of one representative from each state governing board, formed and went to work selling businessmen on this idea of higher education. At its 1960 meeting, for instance, Reagan Legg III, chairman of the Texas Woman’s University regents, said that with Texas industry hiring top people from out of state, “In general, we trained the hired hands and looked to other states to provide the bosses.” Texas A&M Regent John W. Newton asked: “From a practical businessman’s point of view, how much of what kind of higher education can we afford in Texas? . . . The [answer], from a purely business standpoint, [depends] on the kind of economy we want in Texas and the position we want to occupy in the national scheme. . . . New industries born from new technologies feed on the ideas coming from top-flight colleges and universities. Research-based and research-propelled industries make use of special facilities of nearby educatiOnal centers, use faculty members as consultants, and profit from the stimulation of their own staffs through association. . . . “We demand quality in the products we buyour cars, clothes, homes, and services of all kindsand are willing to pay for it. We should apply this same criterion to the education of Texas boys and girls.” S. A. Kerr, Jr., of Kerr’s Department Store in Huntsvilleand a regent at North Texas Statesaid, again in the idiom of business: “I think of our position as being the same as the board of directors of animportant business, with the people of Texas as the stockholders. . . . [W]e, as board members, have a responsibility to our stockholders . . . to see that the education given is the very best we can buy with the funds available.” 2′ In the fall of that year eighteen luncheons were held in Texas cities by the committee, with transportation for the speakers provided by Texas businessmen. 22 The state’s top educators were glad to cooperate and attend, and the Texas Assn. of Classpressed its appreciation to the committee for its work that fall. Dr. Logan Wilson, then the U.T. Chancellor, was careful to make the point that many of the purposes of higher education transcend financial considerations, but he, too, made use of the stockholders-in-the-colleges analogy. `Industry Is Inescapably Bound To Education’ Connally was gung-ho for education from the very first, and although his firstterm record was not much different from the preceding two years when Daniel was governor, he kept at it. In his 1963 message to the legislature Connally declaimed, “Brainpower is the coin of the realm of this new age. Columbus’ search for the new world, Coronado’s search for the seven cities of gold, the wildcatter’s search for oil, all pale into insignificance when compared with our search for the new Edisons, Bells, Einsteins, and Salks.” In a candid AP interview in the summer of 1963, the governor said, “Only half our high school graduates get any more training. We need these people’s skill. We need to make really competent, skilled technicians out of them. We can’t all be doctors or lawyers or engineers. “A lot of boys and girls go to college just to get a degree or something. That causes them to feel they have a position in society above what they are really competent to do. There is too much emphasis on the degree without analyzing what they are equipped to do. The result is, they’re not worth a damn at anything.” 23 Later that year he told the Committee of Governing Boards that Texas educators had to work closer with industrialists and legislators if adequate financing was to be obtained for the colleges. 24 “The minds of men are our most precious asset,” he told the University of Houston graduating class summer before last. 25 Last winter he told the Texas Manufacturers Assn. convention in Dallas that industry “of .all groups” should be the first to insist on tax money for education. “Modern industry demands brainpower. Industry is inescapably bound to education,” he said. 26 As pointed out before in the Observer, Connally’s appointments to his committee on education beyond the high school were weighted, 15-to-10, with business and industry people. In the retrospect it now becomes clearer why he did not call this group simply the committee on “higher education.” Vocational and technical training in junior colleges may be higher education, but then again, it may not. One of the most suggestive discussions of what the group now in charge of Texas higher education have in mind occurred between Zachry, as chairman of Connally’s committee of 25, and Kemper Deihl, a reporter for the San Antonio Express, last fall. Zachry told Diehl: “We know that the industrial revolution, which has done so much for our state, has been geared to one overriding objective production. Its chief ingredients have been land, power, metals, oil, gas, water, and capital equipment. Now we are certain this is being transformed into a knowledge revolution which seeks new business through technblogical advances, and through volume production. Its chief catalysts are ideas, not natural resources. Its leading institutions will be universities, not facto -ries. “Yes, Texas is shifting from a society based on natural resources to one based on human resources, and we are presently far behind. . . . “It’s easy to see in my own business. . . . At our office, we have a complete IBM computer set-up. We handle the scheduling of jobs through CPM.” \(Diehl explained this is the Critical Path Method, a sophisticated system of long-range planning of jobs, using computers, so that all activities more and more into utilization of these machines,” Zachry continued, “we realize more and more the need for highly-trained individuals.” And the need for older types of workers correspondingly declines, he went on. “It’s so easy to see the effect. IBM estimates their machines and others like them will replace three million office workers within ten years.” Zachrytouching on a theme Connally has also stressedsaid vocational education needs emphasis and agricultural edu October 1, 1965 9