ficiency. Would you object to that type of aid from the Federal Government? Mr. SNAVELY. You are talking about a high school. You see, your bill refers to colleges. These colleges throughout the United States have descent laboratories, and the church-related colleges do, too. I just do not follow that philosophy. Mr. ELLIOTT. Our bill, in title I, provides for grants for highschool laboratories. Mr. SNAVELY. I did not catch that. I did not get your bill until I came down here. I did not know I was going to be flattered by your invitation. Mr. DIXON. I appreciate your testimony, Mr. Snavely. There are 1 or 2 questions I would like to ask. Do you think that the scholarships would tend to make "sissies" out of the students? Mr. SNAVELY. I certainly do. Mr. DIXON. Do you have a different view about fellowships, where they have to work for what they get? Mr. SNAVELY. Well, sir, with regard to fellowships, I read in one statement that they are available in many universities, and they have difficulty finding the competent men. The trouble is we do not have the competent candidates. We do not have the competency started in the lower grades. That is the thing we have to overcome. I think there are plenty of good fellowships. For instance, I was at Birmingham-Southern last year, and the Rockefeller Foundation, through its education board, which is going out of business shortly, had given a number of scholarships to the southern area, to the colleges and universities of the South. Those scholarships gave every boy who was graduated from college from $2,000 to $2,500 doing postgraduate work. They had difficulty finding enough men to do that, to fill those scholarships. There is plenty of opportunity for that sort of thing. I said in my last statement that the thing to do there is to give more money to the National Science Foundation. It is a going concern. It is operated smoothly. As far as I know, its cost for overhead is very little. Mr. DIXON. You would take, then, the money provided in these bills and give it to the National Science Foundation; would you. Mr. SNAVELY. Not all that money. They would not need it. I would give it to the fellowships. Mr. DIXON. You would be far more liberal than we are now? Mr. SNAVELY. For the postgraduate fellowships. Mr. DIXON. I do not know about there being enough fellowships. My experience has been somewhat different. Mr. SNAVELY. Has your experience been up to date in the last 2 or 3 years? I would agree with you 5 years ago, but the last 2 or 3 years it is amazing how many fellowships are available. Mr. DIXON. I am a bit rusty; I will admit that. Mr. SNAVELY. Just 5 years ago there was a great difference in the situation. Mr. DIXON. For example, I have a bill in for research for utilization of farm crops. I know as well as I sit here that more money spent on research, so that they could use farm crops in industry would take away most of our surpluses. I got a letter from a manpower commission, and they think the idea is a good one, but they say we have not got any scientists, so what is the good of appropriating money for research when there are no scientists? Evidently, our fellowship programs are not producing scientists. That is one of the great needs of our country. Would you not feel that if we had stepped up fellowships far more than we are doing, where they have to work for what they would get, that they would come out a better product than those who get the scholarships for nothing? Mr. SNAVELY. I would agree to that; yes, sir. Mr. DIXON. What will an abundance of scholarships do to the fellowships? Mr. SNAVELY. In what way; in the way of finances or in the way of material or in the way of personnel? Mr. DIXON. What law is it that pertains to good and poor money? Poor money runs the good out; isn't that right? Mr. SNAVELY. Mine runs out. I do not know what makes it run. Mr. DIXON. It takes the place of your good money. Mr. SNAVELY. Yes, sir. Mr. DIXON. Will that principle enter into this competition between fellowships and scholarships? Mr. SNAVELY. I should think it would. Mr. ELLIOTT. Thank you for coming, and we appreciate having the benefit of your views with respect to this important legislation. I might say to you, Dr. Snavely, that the people who testified here are certainly not all of one mind. We want the whole spectrum of opinion about this legislation. I realize that we are in a field where the greatest care must be exercised. Mr. SNAVELY. I thank you for that attitude and for your courtesy in inviting me to come. Mr. ELLIOTT. Thank you for coming. The subcommittee will meet again at 2 o'clock. May I say to you, Dr. Dixon, I hope you will be with us. I believe that at 2 o'clock we can finish in about 40 minutes. Could you come back? Mr. DIXON. I will try to. I certainly appreciate your lenience in letting somebody not a member of the committee ask questions. Mr. ELLIOTT. The committee will now stand adjourned until 2 o'clock. (Whereupon, at 12:40 p. m., the subcommittee recessed, to reconvene at 2 p. m. of the same day.) AFTERNOON SESSION (The committee reconvened at 2:30 p. m., upon the expiration of the noon recess.) Mr. McGOVERN. The committee will be in order. STATEMENT OF HON. CARL ELLIOTT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ALABAMA Mr. ELLIOTT. Dr. Clanton W. Williams, president of the University of Houston, Houston, Tex., was in Washington a few weeks ago and talked to me about giving testimony before this committee. Dr. Williams has a very deep and abiding interest in education and he agreed upon my suggestion to prepare a statement and to testify at such time as the subcommittee or subcommittees might invite him to do. We arranged a schedule, but it turned out that Dr. Williams had had a heart attack on his return to Houston, on the night after he talked to me here in Washington, and he has spent the time of his hospitalization following the heart attack preparing this statement, apparently. He says in the course of the statement, as the subcommittee will note, that he considers this to be the most important letter he has ever written. So that being true, I want permission at this time to have the entire letter or statement, dated March 12, 1958, made a part of the record and, in addition to that, I want to read parts of it. Mr. McGOVERN. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. ELLIOTT. Now, this is addressed to Representative Carl Elliott, House of Representatives, Washington, D. C. Now, I will begin reading the letter. It was 7 weeks ago today that I talked with you in Washington. That night on the plane home I had a heart attack. I'm out of the hospital now and already back at work, but at a somewhat different pace. Under the circumstances I doubt that I'll be allowed to testify before your committee on March 26, as your telegram invites me to do. I am therefore, writing you here at some length for whatever use you see to make of this testimony. Let me state first that I am among those who are skeptical about Federal aid to education. Even so, when I weigh in the scales of reason the fact that America as a Nation is rapidly losing its posture vis-a-vis others primarily because of paucity of financial support of education at the local level, and that, therefore, our very survival is endangered, I have to conclude that a national crisis of giant proportion has resulted-a national crisis which demands action on the part of the National Government. I quickly add that that action must be wholehearted-highly stimulating-or it should not be taken at all. If it is half hearted and the people at the local level assume an attitude approaching "Leave it to Washington," then the results might easily be the reverse of what you and I seek. Now, before telling you what I think of your bill, let me assume that the Nation at last realizes that we face a twofold problem of education in America. It embraces a giagantic problem of quantity of well educated Americans whose decisions at the poll direct the course of democracy on earth. It also embraces the very difficult problem of how to achieve the ultimate in scholarship in the sciences, so that no nation or combination of nations may surpass us in brain power in this hydrogen age. Let us call this latter the quality problem-though this does not mean that quality in the humanities and social sciences is to be neglected. To me the most significant statement which has been made since Sputnik I was that of foreign born and foreign educated Wernher von Braun when he stated that America's major problem now is that we have scraped the bottom of the barrel of pure science research. I am sure that foreign born and foreign educated Edward Teller and all the other foreign born and foreign educated scientists we now have—including those on my faculty-would agree with that statement. May I add, Carl, that I was the historian of the AAF during World War II and that during the Korean war I was recalled to active duty and directed the research work of hundreds of colonels and Navy captains at the Air War College; that I still lecture to our military schools here and overseas, and have been connected for 33 of my 53 years with 6 of America's institutions of higher learning, and that, therefore, I know too well that Von Braun's statement is alarmingly true. America is long on engineering know-how, but woefully short on new basic discoveries. That is our weakness; and it could be the cause of our death as a democracy. And where is pure scientific research done? In corporation operated laboratories? Yes, but to a very limited extent. In military operated laboratories? Yes, but not much. Most of the work of these agencies is applied research-the application of the findings of university professors and their graduate fellows. It is these dedicated university researchers who are not trying to invent some gadget, who are not trying to make money or acquire power, who are not trying to prove anything but who are simply exploring the unknown, probing, experimenting-always advancing knowledge for knowledge's sake, who are this Nation's hope in this new age of science. And 98 percent of them are just as patriotic as you and I are, and just as alarmed over how America has allowed its education system relatively to deteriorate. They see calamity ahead unless something drastic is done-and now. And what do such men and women ask for themselves? Not much. But surely enough to give their families the simpler comforts and security they deserve to have. They want bright students to whom to pass on knowledge, to help with research, and to carry on after the "old prof" has gone. They want and must have the physical facilities to do their experimenting. And, finally, they want academic freedom, including the right to publish their findings. resent and resist absolutely any outside interference. totalitarian state will they work under compunction. Nevertheless, when the university cannot pay them a decent living wage and cannot provide them with graduate students and laboratory facilities, and when some profit-making organization or a military agency offers them a decent salary plus assistants and facilities, then they will leave the university. They will do so sadly, but with conviction that their first duty is to their families. They will Only in a completely And since World War II they have been leaving in droves. Nearly all of them are thus actually lost to fundamental or pure research-they have sold out to applied science. And every year while this is happening America drops one notch further down the scale. I need hardly add that there is a somewhat similar and equally alarming set of factors which has led to an exodus from or avoidance of the high-school classroom of able teachers of languages, mathematics, and the sciences. Now, please don't think that I am opposing applied science and engineering. Quite the contrary. It, too, must be supported on our whole educational program, from elementary and secondary schools to technical institutes, colleges of engineering, and graduate work in all of the sciences. But I am stressing first that there must be a complete reemphasis upon pure science research, and I am convinced that our national survival depends upon it. Because of this I am ready to see our Federal Government take positive action to alleviate this great national crisis. There, then, is the problem of quality. I'll say a bit more about this below. Now, let's look at the problem of quantity. I must assume that your and also the President's proposals to institute a great national scholarship program spring from a desire to produce more scientists, engineers, and technicians, plus a desire to make it possible for the poor, but highly intelligent boy or girl to go to college no matter what course of study he wishes to pursue. You know that I approve of those motives. And I fully appreciate the fact that these scholarships would go to those high-school graduates who have proved to be most scholarly, and, therefore, in the final analysis, the scholarship program is aimed toward solution of the quality problem, too. But in your bill, Carl, and in the President's proposal, both of you have failed to come to grips with the enormous problem that this would impose upon the institutions of higher learning. Someone has to pay for the 50 percent of educational cost not covered by tuition and fees. Neither your nor the President's proposal recognizes in fact the statement in the report of the President's Committee on Education Beyond the High School, that it is time for the Nation to wake up to the fact that we must stop asking our professors to subsidize the education of our students. Asking those professors to do more of this than they are now doing (that is, to take a cut in salary in order that we might somehow procure more professors to teach the scholarship students) would, in fact, be doing exactly the opposite of coming to grips with the problem of quality because this would accentuate the flow of topflight professors from the classroom to industry and a substitution of less qualified persons for these able men. This the universities are not willingly going to do. I will tell you what the private schools will do and what the tax-supported schools will have to do or else lower their standards. They will accept the scholarship students, but they will deny entrance to less scholarly applicants to compensate for the overload the scholarship students will create. And so, even the quantity problem is not resolved and you shall have only scratched at a solution of the quality problem. All the while let us not forget that there is already facing our Nation's colleges-public, church related, and private-a tremendous quantity problem which does not need stimulation by any scholarship program. I cannot condone the conclusions that because a youngster was born in the 1940's or 1950's, he deserves less of an educational opportunity than those born in the twenties and thirties. It grieves me greatly to realize that a majority of our abler graduates of high schools in 1970 apparently are going to be denied entrance to colleges--that unless something revolutionary is done now, only the A and B-plus students are going to make it. My own university, already with a 13,000 enrollment, will have 26,000 qualified applicants 8 years from now. Did you read U. S. News & World Report on June 14, 1957? May I suggest that its article, Crisis in the Colleges, be included in your committee's deliberations? Are we not moving toward the 19th century European concept of an intellectual elite and poorly educated masses? If so, does this not mean retrogression of active intelligent democracy in America? Here, Carl, is the great national problem of quantity which apparently is not going to be resolved short of a huge program of Federal aid to education, as huge as is the highway program. Resolution of this giant problem, of course, you are not attempting in this national defense bill. At this point you are asking me, "Well, what do you propose?" I have to answer for the collegiate profession, which is crying out to the American people, "Give us the tools and we will do the job." We need money to pay salaries comparable to those of industry and money to provide teaching and research facilities. These are the tools we must have. We know our business and we know how to do the job. Naturally, we approve heartily of section 102 of your bill. The scholarship program should contain a provision to grant to the institution which the scholarship student attends an amount equal to the scholarship. This would make it possible to eliminate our faculty members' subsidizing the education of at least those students. The validity of this point is recognized in section 705 (b). There is one other serious deficiency in the bill as now drawn. The appropriation figures in section 502 and 551 are completly inadequate. My university alone is in sad need right now of at least $16 million for science-including engineering and techniology-buildings and equipment for teaching and research. But that amount of money is nowhere in sight despite all the exaggerated tales about generous Texas oil millionaires. We are having one devil of a time raising $600,000 a year to just keep our heads above water while struggling to hold our excellent faculty. Provision for new construction and enlarged facilities for all branches of the sciences must be made. At the same time provision for maintenance of these facilities must be established else the faculty will eventually pay for that mainte nance. If the Federal Government will do the former, surely locally or from our alumni we ought to be able to procure funds to cover the latter. (See more here below.) Let me add this thought: I do not know what President Eisenhower or the Democrats may ask Congress to do to stop the present recession. But if a public works program of any kind is contemplated, this Nation's future existence will be far closer to being assured by the building of science buildings of all types and providing facilities for university research than it will be by the building of post offices and scores of other things, even including highways. Perhaps I should stop this long letter right here, but I won't. It is too important. Now as though I were before your committee, I'd like to get down to specifics of your bill. The preamble is excellent. |