The American College in War Time

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Paul Bedford (1897) was elected a charter trustee in 1934 following four years of service as an alumni representative on the board. His committee assignments which include grounds and buildings, health and athletics, undergraduate life and library, and his membership on the University Council on Athletics as a trustee representative, provide evidence of his wide range of interests — to which should be added particularly his devoted shepherding of the program in music.

The article printed herewith is the substance, which he has kindly set down at the request of the Weekly, of an address delivered on April 23 at Easton, Pa., at the conference of trustees of universities and colleges called annually by Lafayette College. 

This is not the first time the colleges of this country have faced a crisis. The experiences of the moment are not without precedents of the past. The trustees of former generations met the facts and solved the problems. 

In the American Revolution, some of our forbears saw their infant institutions almost succumb. But the Colonial colleges survived, and their material loss was out-matched by a spiritual gain that provided the leaven for the educational growth that followed. During the War between the States, similar chaos again prevailed on an even wider scale. In the days of the first World War, most of our colleges had colossal difficulties to surmount. In England today, after nearly three years of war amid the most devastating attacks in history on their homeland, the English universities still function and operate. 

WILL IT HELP WIN THE WAR?

The American college will surely survive the present crisis if, as in other crises in the past, it proves its right to survive by the job it does now. It will not expect in advance a blue-print for that survival. Founded in the name of freedom and dedicated to the education of free men, it above all will not ask for security when liberty is at stake. It will not ask “what does this get me?” when everybody must ask “will it help win the war?”

But the question “will it help win the war?” is not easy to answer in respect to the manifold problems of readjustment to be made toward the war effort. The easiest answer would be to forget our historic functions and to think in terms of training camps. Or to surrender completely our established curricula in favor of courses of study devoted exclusively to applied military service. Or to keep the semblance of our normal objectives with greatly lowered standards. Any of these answers would be easy, but none would be right. 

Over a period of three hundred years, we have developed in this country a system of higher education that is unique in the world. It is unique in the percentage of population that enjoys its advantages. It is unique in the great variety of institutions, each of which in its own way has by a long process of trial and error developed its own methods for achieving the ends set by itself in its particular field and for its particular community. 

Higher education today is one of the strongest resources whereon the nation can draw for war effort.

Converting our society to a war machine is at bottom a tremendous teaching job. The majority of our people must learn new skills quickly, whether in the highly technical methods of warfare employed by the armed forces, or in the equally technical methods of war industry. This teaching job will be done for the most part by college men and women who have secured the benefits conferred by our institutions — mental training, technical knowledge and skill in imparting ideas. 

For successful combat in this war, the prime requisite is individual self-reliance. For instance, the fact that swift mechanized forces fighting in conjunction with dive-bombers produce on land a war of movement rather than position is now well known. Less well known, but more apparent forthwith, is the fact that war at sea today is a conflict between small forces rather than battles of great fleets. The result is the same: the dependence on small units of operation through self-reliance and steady initiative. If there is one thing that America’s differentiated system of higher education is calculated to produce, it is initiative. We must see that this characteristic is preserved —not for sentimental reasons— but because “it will help win the war.”

The Situation to Date

So far, the various branches of government have recognized the great value of the facilities of our institutions and have in general made wise provision for their best use. At the outset, the government formed an organization which now utilizes to the best advantages our men and equipment in the sciences for work on new devices and mechanisms of war. For obvious reasons, we trustees are not permitted to know specifically the problem our scientists are solving. But we do know that it is one of vast importance and the one which may well provide the margin to win the war. 

The government has consistently urged our students to remain at their tasks until called. Army and Navy officials have emphasized that the best preparation for military service is college training and sound physique. There is unanimity of advice that the individual student take, as preliminaries, the courses which provide the background for the respective service he wishes to enter and that, thereafter, he pursue the major courses best suited to his aptitudes. With prompt accord, the college have provided accelerated courses of study and special training for physical conditioning, with rapid readjustment for the national program. 

Selective service authorities and local boards and local boards have ruled that students of draft age may continue their studies when preparing for occupations essential to the war effort wherein there is a shortage of trained men. For their part, the colleges have not asked special privileges for the rank and file of their students. 

The proposal of the United States Office of Education calling for direct government subsidies appears to follow the same pattern in recommending grants to colleges and to students in order the help finance accelerated programs in the fields of engineering, chemistry, physics, medicine, dentistry and pharmacy. These are fields of crucial importance to the war effort; moreover, they are fields of shortage of man-power.

These examples indicate the cooperation between government and educational institutions to date.

Future Problems

As the war develops, the government will, undoubtedly, make greater demands on our colleges. Public opinion and the changing attitudes of students and their families will bring to bear strong influences. It is for us, the trustees, to try to achieve a proper balance between the calls of government on the one hand, and on the other hand, the demands of popular pressures, so that our educational facilities may best promote our national destiny throughout. 

There is not time to dwell here on the many problems that will arise as our participation in the war expands. Nor is anyone wise enough to anticipate them all. But it may be helpful to refer to a few.

Our elective courses will be reduced and our curricula simplified as the war continues. There will be fewer students to take the courses and fewer faculty members to teach them; many from both groups will be called to service. In the disproportionate number of upperclassmen to be called, it is not unlikely we shall approach the relative status of junior colleges, as at Oxford and Cambridge today. In simplifying our schedules we will favor those courses that are most needed in preparation for service in the armed forces or industry. Fortunately, these courses are generally considered by educators to be of unquestioned merit in general education.

Some temporary sacrifices may be made in subjects closest to the hearts of many of us, such as literature, art, music. Like many other elements of the daily life of all, such sacrifices are obligatory in order that we may in the future enjoy these blessings. We do not fear any black-out in these subjects. The claims of the liberal arts on human thought and aspiration will survive temporary curtailment. Their values must stay forever in our consciousness if we are to find satisfactory meaning in the misery of war and if we are still to cherish the very things for which we fight.

LIMITS TO ASSIMILATION

Quite another problem is forecast by some recent proposals advocating drastic shortening by several years of the heretofore normal period for graduation. These proposals prune both secondary schools and colleges by reduction of two years from each, or four years total, with a bachelor’s degree at the age of eighteen. But there is danger in too great acceleration. The mind of the student must absorb his learning, his spare time for thinking must be without the hazards of haste. There are limits to assimilation. All growth is regulated. A seed sown requires a periodic time for fruition. You cannot change human nature in spasms. You cannot expedite maturity by mental indigestion. To graduate a boy for the pursuits of life with his intellect, his powers and faculties undeveloped because of immaturity, means a step backward, not forward, in educational preparedness. For the average boy, or, indeed, for any except a super-man, the proposal seems chaotic. At least, a cautionary delay for due deliberation should precede drastic changes in the tempo of acceleration.

We must beware of permitting our colleges to engage in competition in this matter of acceleration. It would be absurd to compete on the basis of the degree of acceleration or the percentage of students accelerating. Rather, we should compete on the basis of the best use of the time allowed our students in preparing themselves for war service. If we approach the problem in terms of teaching individuals to think for themselves and to develop their leadership qualities, rather than in terms of credit hours, clearly there are limits beyond which we cannot go in expediting the college program. Before their call to service, it will be better for our students to have two years of sound college training without a degree, than two years of a confounded, superficial dash for a degree which has lost its meaning. The college degree is a standard. That standard gives value to the entire educational process and we must never permit its currency to be debased. Thousands of our students who would ordinarily be graduated will not earn their degrees, because their courses will be interrupted by calls to service. In their cases, the colleges will want to grant certificates indicating their progress toward the degree and honoring them for war service, but we will only confuse the issue if we call such certificates degrees.

FINANCIAL PERPLEXITIES

Financial problems — those with which trustees are most concerned — will become severe. Shrinking income from investments will pace the rising costs of commodities. Heavy taxes will bring fewer large gifts. In this connection, a Treasure Department recommendation causes grave concern. It proposes limitations upon deductions for tax purposes for bequests to educational and charitable corporations. An enactment of such legislation promises disastrous financial effects upon all American institutions supported in whole or in part by private philanthropy. The Association of American Colleges in now engaged in an effort to frustrate the prejudice to the public interest of such legislation. So long as the recommendation remains unacted upon, uncertainty is created which may deter benefactors from providing by wills for bequests they desire.

Decreasing enrollment will reduce income from students fees. Of course, we can admit larger freshman classes, but not sufficiently larger to compensate for withdrawal of upperclassmen for war service. The number admitted will be necessarily limited by the amount of good material available — unless we throw away all our standards. The number will also be limited by the amount of funds available for student aid — funds which must not be spread so thin that none will produce good results.

Various other proposals are current for government grants in aid of the kind already proposed by the United States Office of Education. We should be slow to seek government subsidies unless for real and definite war tasks. Dependence on government aid for general functions would sooner or later limit our independence. Untrammeled initiative has been chiefly responsible for the present position of our private colleges and universities which supplement the work of state institutions in providing our unique system of higher education. We must guard against discarding, through panic induced by dread of poverty or fear for survival, the independence that has made our institutions great.

For the most part, we shall be compelled to depend for support on annual free-will offerings of alumni and friends. In some institutions, annual giving is already systematized. More than one American college would have collapsed before this if its alumni had not come to its rescue at some crisis in its history. Our alumni will stand by again, provided we demonstrate to them that we are in our own respective ways doing a thorough, competent performance in the war effort, and provided further, that we also demonstrate to them that the colleges are making their own sacrifices. Irrespective of the source, sufficient financial support cannot be expected to enable us to proceed without sharp retrenchment. Many expenditures considered necessities in peacetime will now be viewed as luxuries. How and where to retrench demands all the wisdom obtainable.

LET THE TRUSTEES LEAD!

It is certain the war will bring great dislocation that will result in permanent change in the post-war era. Men and institutions are inevitably alarmed in these times by two important questions. First, what will happen to the individual or institution during this change? Second, how can the individual or institution best help to achieve a victory that will make possible an advance in our hard-earned civilization instead of a retreat to barbarism? In the case of the universities, it is felt that the answer to the second question will largely determine the answer to the first.

President Lowell, speaking at Harvard’s Tercentenary, declared that an institution is never killed while it is alive; it commits suicide or dies from lack of vigor and is buried. These words have heightened meaning today. Scuttling our true objectives or prostituting our standards from a mistaken view that we will thus insure the survival of our particular institution is the surest way to commit suicide. It is also one way of weakening the war effort. Let it be known there is nothing in our college program we will not forego, however dear it is to us, if necessary to forego for the nation’s program for victory. For it will be only through the sacrifices of institutions, as well as individuals, that we will earn a future wherein free institutions for free men may continue to exist. 

The glorious collegiate record of the past is a challenge to us now. That record is a trust to be upheld undimmed. Let the trustees lead!

This article was originally published in the May 1, 1942 issue of PAW.