SUPPORT FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGE IDEA I do not want to take up the time of the committee with a lengthy recitation of educational groups and authorities who have supported the community college idea, but here are a few typical comments: President Eisenhower's Committee on Education Beyond the High School said: The growth of community and junior colleges is a significant development of our educational system in this century and is probably the next logical step in filling in and rounding out our educational system. While the emphasis in many junior colleges is to prepare students for transfer to 4-year institutions, an important function and contribution of the 2-year college has been to offer a terminal program aimed at providing general education and training for the subprofessions and occupations of a highly technical nature. President Truman's Committee on Higher Education recommended that the number of community colleges be increased and that their activities be multiplied. Several distinguished college presidents have given specific endorsement to the community college idea. James B. Conant, then president of Harvard University, wrote To equalize collegiate education for all except the relatively few with professional ambitions, I advocate a wide extension of 2-year community colleges. Dr. Robert G. Sproul of the University of California expressed his support in a letter: Those of us who have had firsthand experience with the community junior college are glad to support advocacy of their extension and expansion. Without them, it is doubtful that we, in California, could be meeting the State's higher education needs. With them, we believe we cannot only continue to meet those needs but can meet them with the most proper distribution of responsibilities among the several institutions of higher education and a minimum of cost to individual students. On another occasion Dr. Sproul commented: Junior college graduates who could have met the admission requirements of the university, when they were graduated from high school, do as well when they transfer to the university for their junior and senior years as do our so-called native students. The Reverend Philip S. Moore, vice president, academic affairs, University of Notre Dame, wrote: I have said for several years now that the big institutional development in American education in the second half of the 20th century would be the establishing of community junior colleges as much as high schools were established in the past 50 to 75 years. I believe that these community colleges will become almost as universal as our high schools are today. The development of junior colleges has been going on for at least 25 years. This is because they have met a need and this need will grow tremendously with the greatly increasing number of youth who want to enter college. The impact of this greatly increased potential college student population is only now beginning to be felt by the colleges. It is, therefore, my opinion that we shall see a multiplication of local junior colleges in the next few years. Presuming that these colleges will offer two programs, one terminal and the other preparatory to upper division college education and university education, they will furnish one of the best means of meeting the challenge of affording every young American who wants to continue education beyond the high school the opportunity to do so. COLLEGE EDUCATION PART OF STANDARD OF LIVING A college education has become as much a part of our American standard of living as penicillin and other miracle drugs, a family car, or a visit to the movies. Americans feel they are as entitled to assurance that qualified youngsters will have the opportunity for a college education as they now are about the availability of social security in their old age or unemployment compensation in periods of depression. While college is not essential or advisable for all youngsters, we cannot feel that we have carried out our obligations until each qualified youngster has the chance to attain the fullest of his capacity. As a nation, we must not deprive ourselves of the talents and skills of our people by failing to give opportunity for education and training. I am reminded of the lines from Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard: Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood. I urge the committee to consider the community college bill which I have proposed as an efficient way of helping to meet the problem. Because of the fewer campus buildings involved and lower overall cost, a junior college can be established more quickly and cheaply. While establishment of junior colleges is not the whole answer to our need, I do believe that it would go a long way to meet it. FACILITY IN FOREIGN LANGUAGES ESSENTIAL There are other important problems, of course, outside the purview of the legislation before you. By their nature, many of them are problems that have to be dealt with on the local and State level. To the extent, however, that Federal assistance is made available for comprehensive surveys by the States of their particular educational situations, it can help to bring about a reexamination and reevaluation of present policies and methods. There are many signs that point the need for such an appraisal. On all sides the complaint is heard that our college catalogs list far too many nonessential, nonacademic elective courses. By a judicious selection among them, many students, it is charged, achieve a degree without ever having had any real encounter with scholarly method or thought. College administrators in turn bewail the inadequate preparation with which many students arrive at their gates. They complain they must turn freshman courses into refresher courses in even such basic subjects as spelling and grammar, not to speak of mathematics and science. Comparison with the educational systems of other countries, including the Soviet Union, have highlighted serious weaknesses in some respects, notably training in languages and the sciences. As for education in science, little need be said here. The sputniks brought sharply home to most of us our rather glaring deficiencies in this area. The importance of training in languages is not so widely recognized. Yet anyone in public life knows what a tremendous difference the ability to speak the language of those with whom one deals can make. Certainly, the man who enters a foreign country with the ability to read and speak its language demonstrates his real interest and respect for that nation. His facility in the national tongue gives him direct access to people and their normal sources of information of a kind that cannot be achieved through interpreters. His task will be lighter and he can do it better. Greater facility in foreign languages is also essential if we are to keep abreast and draw on the knowledge gained and the advances made in other countries. Dr. Alan T. Waterman, Director of the National Science Foundation, recently cited an instance which dramatically illustrates the importance of overcoming the language barrier. ILLUSTRATION OF IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE In his report to President Eisenhower, Basic Research-A Natural Resource, he stated that recently several American industrial laboratories spent 5 years and at least $200,000 conducting studies of the design of electrical circuits only to find afterwards that the work had already been done. It was described in a Russian article published in a Soviet journal before the studies started. I am aware, Mr. Chairman, that there are several bills on these matters now pending before your committee. One is S. 3163 introduced by my senior colleague and many other Senators including myself. And I know the chairman also has sponsored legislation on these subjects. The solution to problems of curriculum and the like cannot be prescribed or accomplished by the Federal Government. At present, most school and college administrators are preoccupied with the problems of just coping with the growing number of students. Problems of quality too often have to take second place to problems of quantity. But if the purposes of education are to be achieved, they have to manage both. OTHER PROPOSED FEDERAL ACTION One way in which we can help is to ease the burden on local school authorities by adoption of a broad program of Federal aid for publicschool construction. We still have a shortage of more than 140,000 public classrooms. As a result, teachers are trying to educate in overcrowded and obsolete classrooms in basement boiler rooms, in school corridors, or even worse, in classes limited to half sessions. The result of such makeshift arrangements is an inevitable decline in quality. A second way to help, it seems to me, is through a program of grants to colleges to provide for the construction and equipment of expensive scientific laboratories and libraries. These are among the most expensive facilities at the colleges and yet are essential to implementing any program designed to increase our supply of able scientists and technicians. Another overdue action by the Federal Government is one providing tax deductions for teachers taking advanced training in order to improve their ability as educators. We now seem to have a double stand ard under which businessmen and others may deduct from their tax payments for expenses of operations, but the schoolteachers are in a less favored position. ADEQUATE TEACHERS' SALARIES But the greatest and most difficult problem of all is that of providing adequate salaries for our teachers. Communities cannot attract and hold competent teachers as long as the salaries fall below that of less skilled and less trained people in the community. Many communities have strapped themselves in an attempt to provide adequate salaries for educators, but it seems clear to me that they must have help. I hope that some way may be found for assistance by the Federal Government which will avoid the shoals of Federal control and interference, but which would assist in a material way. I am continuing my inquiries on this important point. Problems such as these can only be solved by the cooperative efforts of communities assisted by sincere efforts of State and Federal Government. And now, Mr. Chairman, I would like to offer for insertion in the record excerpts from certain of the letters that I have received in regard to the two bills to which my testimony has been chiefly directed. They are a very small number in comparison to the more than 500 I have received in support of my community-college bill. I will not burden the committee by attempting to read them, but this sample of extracts from the letters, I think, might be helpful for the committee in the record. The CHAIRMAN. Without exception, we will be happy to have excerpts from these letters in the record. Senator CASE. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. (Letters follow:) Hon. CLIFFORD P. CASE, COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR CASE: Your suggestions for the alleviating of the shortage of colleges are excellent. By assisting junior colleges, more students can be provided for at a lower cost than any other known proposal. Here most students can board at home and therefore attend college at a considerably lower cost. There are other advantages in having youth take 2 years of college at home rather than at a large institution. Sincerely yours, CHARLES H. BOEHM. UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND, Hon. CLIFFORD P. CASE, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. DEAR CLIFF: I have long felt that the junior college, or community college as we now call it, is one of the most promising means of meeting the mounting demands for higher education. As you indicate, it is not the whole answer, but I believe that a great increase in the number and scope of community colleges is inevitable. For their full development, I believe a measure of Federal aid will be necessary. Faithfully yours, CARL R. WOODWARD, President. TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY, Senator CLIFFORD P. CASE, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR CASE: I am in complete agreement when you emphasize a widespread system of community colleges which would carry the student 2 years beyond our usual high-school program. If we could have the kind of development across the country, it would not be necessary for us to increase the number or size of our senior colleges and universities. Very cordially yours, M. E. SADLER, President. MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE, Middlebury, Vt., January 14, 1957. Hon. CLIFFORD P. CASE, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR CASE: I have read with interest your analysis of the problem of this coming shortage in facilities for higher education. I have for some time given support to the point of view of the at-least-partial solution that you propose. Certainly the 2-year community college has demonstrated its effectiveness in the Far West and Southwest. I see no reason why such institutions should not be equally successful in other parts of our country. Frankly, I see no other solution for accommodating the very great increase in numbers of high-school seniors who will be seeking further educational opportunities. Sincerely yours, SAMUEL S. STRATTON, President. MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY, Milwaukee, Wis., February 25, 1957. Subject: College facilities Hon. CLIFFORD P. CASE, United States Senator, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR CASE, I am in substantial agreement with the proposal for the expansion of public community colleges as a practical approach to the problem of providing for the increasing college enrollment in the next 15 years. A major problem confronting all higher education is the conservation of resources; that is, faculty, buildings, and equipment. The community can provide for such conservation by making use of many existing facilities in local schools, by utilizing most efficiently various levels of professional talents in the school system, and by permitting students to live at home. Sincerely yours, M. G. BARNETT, S. J., UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA, OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, Tucson Ariz., January 10, 1957. Hon. CLIFFORD P. CASE, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR CASE, I am in accord with the view that we must provide an opportunity for a college education to those who are qualified and willing to receive it. The junior college movement will be the answer in some States. Federal aid, I believe, will have to be the answer to some extent if the proper facilities are to be provided. Sincerely yours, RICHARD A. HARVILL. |