ustxtxb_obs_1965_10_01_50_00010-00000_000.pdf

cation, de-emphasis. “We’ve got to bring in line the courses which we teach to the professions we need,” he told Diehl. 27 The governor’s committee of 25 received a report from Gifford Johnson of Dallas, president of Ling-Temco-Vought and chairman of a subcommittee of the committee of 25, proposing that no student be allowed in the state universities who was not in the upper 15% of his graduating class and no student be allowed in state senior colleges who was not in the upper 35%. Any high school graduate could go to junior college in Johnson’s scheme. “The student population is a natural resource of the state which must be conserved and improved,” Johnson’s committee said. 28 With the committee of 25 meeting in secret, the report vanished into its inscrutable deliberations; the final report of the governor’s panel did not deal with it, although that final report proposed that the coordinating board should “adopt increasingly selective standards of admission when institutions approach capacity enrollment.” 29 The legislature this year gave the board power to consider plans for selective standards of admission. 10 The Texas Observer One may anticipate how educators might view selective admissions, rigidly conceived, by looking back to a speech made in 1960 by Chancellor Harry Ransom of U.T. He said admitting every high school graduate would be wasteful of student time and powers. “The second general admissions policy dictates the initial selection of ‘top students’ for university education,” he said. “This system plainly assumes that the university population is an intellectual elite. . . . It limits or postpones opportunity for the highly motivated but poorly prepared student. . . .” Ransom said that “throughoUt the state, Texas educational opinion has generally rejected” both these policies in favor of emphasizing the individual student and taking into account personal variations.” The recent discussionone would not call it a debateon higher education in Texas has been saturated with the language of the investment theory of learning. Zachry told the San Antonio Lions Club last winter that it “certainly makes good business sense” to take a hard look at all “our educational enterprises,” with special attention to “the quality of the management.” 31 Marvin Hurley of Houston, president of the Texas Chamber of Com merce managers’ organization, said, “One able and creative individual may have more economic worth to a community than a new industry.” 32 Morgan J. Davis, retired board chairman of Humble Oil, said Texas higher education is a billion-a-year business and that “I can’t imagine a billion-dollar business without even a board of directors.” 33 John Gray, now coordinating board chairman, told the Beaumont Rotary Club that only 16 out of every 100 third graders graduate from college, and “If any manufacturer had this much attrition from raw material to finished product, he would be bankrupt in a very short time.” 34 Ed C. Burris is the vice-president of the Texas Manufacturers’ Assn. and a columnist in its house organ. Early in 1963 Burris wrote that good professors are essential, but “professors who advocate ‘social- ism’or ‘change for change sake’ . . . are paid too much, irrespective of their wage.” Professors, he said, should “have gained their eminence in the right subject” and “be grounded in, and believe in, the American political and economic system established by our forefathers.” Burris asked, “Why are there so many graduates of universities who advocate the imposition of excessive burdens upon the shoulders of American industry . . . ? Is that not . . . . traceable to Fabian socialism taught in many of our institutions of higher learning?” Yet for 1965 Burris readily endorsed Connally’s proposed program for colleges, explaining, “The purpose is to require that institutions .of learning beyond secondary level offer to students programs more in keeping with current industrial, technological, and economic demands. This will be an expensive but desirable program.” 35 An example of straight-line industrial logic on higher education was provided in a full-page Texas Instruments advertisement as the legislature set about its work. “TI Seeks 14,000 College Grads by 1974,” the headline of this ad said. Almost 5,000 of these would need advanced degrees, the ad explained, and additional thousands of clerks, technicians, assemblers, and other persons working for TI would need at least a high school education. Much Dallas-based industry is subsidizing the Graduate Research Center, which hopes eventually to have 1,000 scientists and supporting workers. Its president, Dr. Lloyd Berkner, says, “We certainly must make better use of people, as a resource.” 37 In this general context one can perceive the governor’s and the legislature’s new emphasis on junior college education as part of a program to tool up Texas colleges for the needs of industryto prepare Texans for the available jobs. The state has greatly increased its financial support for junior colleges this year. Connally told the board Monday that junior colleges are to “become full partners” in higher education and faculty members in them are “certainly the equal” of those in senior colleges and universities. Unfettered by “extensive research commitments” and publish-or-perish rules, the junior college prof can devote his whole attention to teaching, and should receive a salary comparable to that of his AMERICAN INCOME LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY OF INDIANA Underwriters of the American Income Labor Disability Policy Executive Offices: P.O. Box 208 Waco, Texas Bernard Rapoport, President