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In the sciences, in the arts, in our understanding of human behavior, all of our tools must be sharpened. Our public policy must encourage further the spread of research and scholarship throughout our system of higher learning. In our graduate schools, your Federal Government-your Federal Governmentawards 12,000 fellowships and 35,000 trainees in science and engineering. We spend $850 million-$850 million-almost $1 billion-on the support of research in our universities alone.

The partnership of Government, your Government-not in any way off yonder, but something that belongs to you the partnership of your Government and the universities is closest in the advanced education of postgraduate students. Twenty-nine percent of engineering students, 37 percent of the students in physical science, 46 percent of those in life sciences, and 10 percent of those in humanities are aided. And there simply just must be no neglect of humanities. The values of our free and compassionate society are as vital to our national success as the skills of our technical and scientific age. And I look with the greatest of favor upon the proposal by your own able President Keeney's commission for a national foundation for the humanities.

We must also make certain that there is no neglect or no compromise of the American devotion to democracy of educational opportunity, because universal, free, public education is the very foundation upon which our entire society rests today. So our goals must be to open the doors to education beyond the high school to all young Americans, regardless of station or the station of their families. You and I have an opportunity that is not unlike that of the men and women who first formed these New England States. We have the opportunity to plant the seed corn of a new American greatness and to harvest its yield in every section of this great land.

On the response of our partnership depends the vigor and the quality of our American way of life for many generations yet to come. As a party to that partnership, let me urge you of this campus to admit no compromise in charting our course to excellence. Concern yourselves not with what seems feasible, not with what seems attainable, not with what seems politic, but concern yourselves with only what you know is right. Your duty is the vision. The duty of the world that I represent is the reality.

25. Statement by the President at the White House, October 14, 19641

I have approved H.R. 9124, the "Reserve Officers' Training Corps Vitalization Act of 1963".

The roots of the ROTC program reach back more than a century to 1862 when the Morrill Act required the land grant colleges to offer courses in military training. The program as we know it today is founded on the National Defense Act

of 1916.

Under the authority so wisely provided, the ROTC has become familiar to all and has trained many, many thousands of our young men in the leadership so necessary in the three major conflicts in which we have been engaged during this century. Today, this vital program constitutes the largest single source of trained officers not just for the Reserves, but for the Regular forces as well.

I am convinced that the bill I have approved today will bring about a marked improvement in the ROTC programs being conducted in our colleges and universities, and I congratulate the Congress for the changes it has made to this end. The bill permits the establishment of new 2-year ROTC programs, in addition to continuing the traditional 4-year programs authorized by previous legislation. This will open the ROTC to many young men who have been unable to qualify before, either because they were transferees from a junior college or because the heavy academic load of freshmen and sophomore years has prevented them from patricipating.

The bill also permits the Army and the Air Force to award scholarships comparable to those which have been authorized for the Navy since 1947 under the So-called Holloway plan. While these scholarships should help to strengthen the 4-year ROTC programs for which they have been provided, I earnestly hope that the Congress will later see fit to make them available to participants in the new 2-year program as well.

Ibid., Oct. 14, 1964, 1 p.

The bill, however, contains one feature which concerns me. This involves pro visions which specify that Junior ROTC units in secondary institutions mus be established within prescribed numerical limits if the institutions meet certain standards and criteria. The bill further provides that the President shall pro mulgate, by January 1, 1966, the regulations prescribing such standards and criteria.

I am aware of the fact that the Junior ROTC program has been the subjec of some controversy over the years. Even though the program fulfills no direct military requirement, it continues to occupy the full time of several hundred members of our active military personnel. Before I promulgate any regulations relating to the expansion of the program, I have asked the Secretary of Defense to conduct a thorough study of it and to ascertain whether it can be made respon sive to the needs of our national defense and yet be conducted at the lowest possible cost.

26. Remarks of the President upon signing of S. 3060, National Defense Education Act Amendments, East Room, October 16, 1964

Ladies and gentlemen, friends, and fathers and mothers of education: I want to welcome you to the East Room and tell you how good it makes me feel to know of your interest in this most vital of all subjects, and to have you here to participate with us in this historic occasion.

The 88th Congress is gone but its good works continue. The measure before me is one of the finest works of this very fine year.

For reasons personal, as well as Presidential, I am pleased and I am proud to be able to sign this measure into law today.

In 1958, I was privileged to be one of the authors of the National Defense Education Act which this legislation extends and expands. If it will not be construed as an intrusion on the bipartisan nature of this ceremony, I might mention that the other author was the Senator from Minnesota, Mr. Hubert Humphrey.

So 6 years ago our Nation was sorely concerned about the future. We were concerned about how our system was faring in the contest of this century. There were voices of despair and there were cries of doom. But we turned back to the vital source of our great society's strength and our people's capacity for renewal. We turned back to the well-spring of education.

We committed ourselves to do many of the works in education which had long been neglected and which had been left undone.

When this original legislation was enacted, I said—and I hope you will pardon me if I repeat it today: "History may well record that we saved liberty and saved freedom when we undertook a crash program in the field of education. "We have not gone far enough fast enough. There must be an awakening not only here in the Congress but throughout this great country of ours. And first things must come first."

Today under your leadership, because of your courage and your counsel, there has been an awakening. We face the challenges and the contests of the world with much greater certainty and sureness than we did 6 years ago. Our effort in education is succeeding and is moving forward. More than 3,001 young men and women have been trained for college teaching. Five thousand more are already enrolled. Over 600,000 students have been helped to secure a college education under the National Defense Education Act student loan programs. Much has been done.

But as I said in 1958 to the Congress, "first things must still come first." In our colleges today the student enrollment is about 6.3 million. In only 6 more years the enrollment will be over 7 million. Already the American families must expect to spend from $4,000 to $5,000 for the college education of each of their children. These costs may be expected to increase by nearly half again in the next 10 years.

We are now losing more than 100,000 school graduates of the highest ability who cannot afford to go to college. Now, ladies and gentlemen, this just must not continue. The challenge is obvious and we must meet it. Higher costs must not put higher education ont of reach.

The Continental Congress was the first to pledge and I quote: "That the means of education shall forever be encouraged." Now it's up to us to keep that pledge in our time.

That is the purpose of this legislation that I sign today. Under this program we will increase our training of teachers fivefold. We will, under this program, extend guidance and courage to almost 45 million elementary school pupils. Under this legislation we will establish 10 new graduate and 60 undergraduate language centers. And we will do much more that a growing America requires us to do.

The 88th Congress represents a turning point for education. There is a consensus. There is a commitment to unite and to move ahead in education. And I, with the forces that I see here, the leaders in this Congress, we are just going to do that.

I said the other night in Denver, Colo., to the largest facility they had for seating people, and every seat was full and there were almost an additional 15,000 or 20,000 outside, that we must say as a matter of national policy in the United States of America that every boy and girl born in this country under that flag has a right to all the education that he or she can take.

Now these Powell and Morse amendments represent a long step forward. And special thanks are due for the fine work of all the Members of the House and the Senate Education Committees, especially Senator Morse; and my own beloved Senator, Senator Yarborough; and Congressman Powell, Congressman Perkins, and Mrs. Green, and others who I will not take the time to enumerate because I have talked about those of you that have talked to me so often and so much on this subject. But I know you would yield to all the others in their dedication to this great program.

I have just been in a meeting with the Ambassador from the Soviet Union. They have a new government in the Soviet Union. And new governments bring new problems. We spent 45 minutes-he, assuring me that he was directed on behalf of the new government, to tell our people that they wanted to continue to explore with us every possible means of achieving better understanding and relieving the tensions in the world.

We have just confirmed the detonation by the Chinese of a nuclear bomb. It is rather crude weapon, but it is the beginning of a series of steps that I anticipate will be harmful, injurious, and require great sacrifices on the part of the Chinese people.

Now living in this kind of a world—even our good friends, the British, have a new Prime Minister that I must talk to this afternoon, if I can. We just can't rely on dropouts, on fourth grade intellects and on any people that have not acquired all the training and all the education that they are capable of acquiring. That is the investment that would pay us the greatest dividends of any investment we can possibly make.

A great President of the Republic of Texas once said, and I have repeated it so much that I hope my colleagues in the Senate will indulge me, "That the educated mind is the guardian genius of democratic government, of democracy." The educated mind-it is the only dictator that free men will ever recognize. And it is the only ruler that free men desire.

So as we sign this bill this afternoon, let's let this be another step along the road that we have taken and when we come back here, whenever that may be, let's be prepared to go all the way.

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