Page 2
University Daily Kansan Wednesday, Dec. 17, 1958
The University Budget
The governor's budget hearings for next year's University appropriation start tomorrow. The administration and the Board of Regents have submitted a request for $9,150,367 from the Legislature this year. This is big business, and requires careful study.
Wisely. Gov. George Docking has not announced how much he will recommend that the Legislature appropriate. It is no secret, however, that he intends to hold state spending to 1958 levels if he can. A concern with taxpayers' money must be commended.
The problem is basically this: Can Kansas afford the amount requested? It is generally admitted that education is worth the money it costs, in terms of national strength, standard of living, or just plain dollars-and-cents investments.
But the governor must also find the money from somewhere. Since the severance tax was killed early this year, revenue has been hard to
come by. The increased sales tax is only a partial solution.
So, regardless of the wishes of those concerned, the 10 per cent hike in the KU budget will be difficult to meet.
But if the University has accurately computed its needs, the money must be raised. From any viewpoint—local, state, or national—higher education is not a luxury, but a necessity.
A college or university that lowers its standards now will hinder progress by producing inferior products. The demand is for superior graduates; the cost will be more than repaid in the future.
The technical world we live in and the extended death struggle with communism militate against any backward step in education. Trite? Certainly. But those are the facts.
There is the problem, and we must wrestle with it. We believe the state must provide the best educational system possible. To do less would make Kansas a backward state.
Alan Jones
The Question: Is Education Worth It?
THE
SALINA JOURNAL
(Ed. Note: This editorial was written by Whitley Austin.)
With all the bother about higher education, it may be high time for the taxpayers to inquire why they foot the bills for any of it. Taxpayers contribute around 68 per cent of state school operating costs, for example.
Presumably the students who go to college know why.
But what's in it for the rest of us? We are entitled to know and we should have common sense answers and not a lot of high-faluting theory.
Those answers well might come from the colleges themsele, and in down-to-earth terms all can understand.
If the colleges can provide them in brief, succinct form. The Journal will be glad to print them.
Here are some questions that might be asked:
The colleges turn out doctors, lawyers, teachers and other professional men. Many of them earn good salaries. But to what extent does the public benefit from their education?
There is a big demand for engineers, chemists and other technicians. But how much do they contribute to the wealth of Kansas?
The universities spend a lot of time and money on research. Do these test tube jockeys improve the lot of the farmer, the shoe salesman, the bricklayer or the housewife?
Business administration is becoming a popular course in college. It is any help in collecting
College students are supposed to spend much of their time in cultural studies that are believed to give them a greater insight both into the world and into their own personal problems. But because the students can answer some riddles, can they put up any more hay, successfully decide Salina's traffic problems or keep their hands off the office steno?
past due accounts or selling washing machines?
Granted that these questions, and others that may occur to you, are put in practical, materialistic terms. But taxes seem pretty materialistic when you pay them.
What do, in fact, colleges contribute to the gross Kansas product, to the distribution of wealth, and to the comfort, health, well-being and security of all our citizens? Are they worth the candle that seems to be burning us at both ends?
The Reply: Kansas Papers Say Yes
THE IOLA REGISTER
Whitley Austin, a well educated man who does a fine job of editing and managing the Salina Journal, gives the shock treatment to his readers by asking why tax-supported colleges and universities exist at all.
"... we should have common sense answers and not ... theory," he says. Then he asks a bunch of questions. We will try to give a common sense answer to each:
Answer; Doctors keep people from dying when they are sick. Lawyers keep people from being convicted for crimes they didn't commit. Teachers teach our children how to read and write so they can earn a living in a society which no longer has more than a handful of jobs left for illiterate ditch diggers.
Answer: Without . . . technicians there would be no cement plants in Iola or Humboldt, no airplane industry in Wichita, no flour mills, packing plants, foundries in Salina, no jobs for half a million Kansans now employed in industry.
Answer: The test tube jockeys of K-State and similar colleges have turned the farmer from a peasant, barely feeding himself, into a production engineer who feeds ten families besides his own.
Question: "Business administration is becoming a popular course in college. Is it any help in collecting past due accounts or selling washing machines?"
Answer: You're darn right it is.
It teaches managers how to manage business . . . to provide jobs for the nine families who no longer have to till the soil in order to eat.
"What do, in fact, colleges contribute to the gross Kansas product, to the distribution of wealth, and to the comfort, health, wellbeing, and security of all our citizens?"
Answer: They contribute to the very foundation and existence of all these things.
They produce the trained minds which have conceived and designed the technological age in which we live.
They produce the business and professional men who make it work, who build the factories . . . who manage the enterprises that provide the jobs by which we live.
Every man in Kansas who is self-supporting contributes to . . . our institutions of higher learning. He gets it back ten-fold in dividends from the economic system . . . and from the society of freedom and opportunity under which he is privileged to live.
(Editors' Note: The Manhattan Mercury quoted the Iola Register's editorial on education, then wound up with some conclusions of its own.)
THE MANHATTAN MERCURY
Perhaps Charles Kettering might have invented the self-starter anyway. But he didn't think so. At least he persisted in getting his electrical engineering degree.
We couldn't help but think today ...how Charles Kettering proved the worth of public education.
"Boss Ket," it will be remembered, toiled ...through a tax-supported school—Ohio State University—where his great genius was trained...
...No amount of reckoning could measure the value of his inventions and scientific contributions. And it would be equally impossible to measure in dollars what similar opportunities and values are being created in Kansas by the 68 per cent of support provided by taxpayers...
As large as today's college attendance is... administrators predict it will zoom much higher... But isn't that the way Kansas taxpayers generally want it? Nevertheless, the Salina Journal editorially hints that it "may be high time for the taxpayers to inquire why they foot the bills..."
...we are certain the Salina paper is off its base in thinking the people...are ready to call a halt in providing the means for...higher education.
Of course taxes are high. And they will be higher as we keep step with growing enrollments. We will need more faculty members... Too many buildings now are obsolete, and there are not enough of them...but is that any reason to quit on our schools? It remains for the school people to spread the word of the forthcoming needs ... so that when our legislature must decide what to do, it will know whether public opinion is for greater college progress or, as the Journal puts it—whether our schools are "worth the candle that seems to be burning us at both ends."
Kansas never has played ostrich when it comes to...providing for better schools...we are not ready now to fall out...and let the other states pass us by. If it takes more tax money, somehow we are ready to dig it up. Otherwise we may become a "busted community" and Kansas schools a flock of "lame ducks" with fewer, and poorer, teachers. Remember this when the guns start firing in the education fight in the next session of the legislature.
Chancellor Comments
Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy has staed the University needs approval of its $9,150,387 budget to avoid becoming a "second rate University."
Here are some excerpts from recent public statements by the Chancellor.
In a reply to an editorial in the Salina Journal, the Chancellor said:
"It is ironic that in the middle of the 20th century and the greatest scientific technological revolution the world has ever seen, one must still devote a substantial amount of time in defending the needs for the highest quality of higher education and research. . .
"We have found the resources to permit us to take pride in one of the best highway programs in the country and one of the best programs for the mentally ill. One would think that we have collective sense enough to provide for our young people and for the future of our state and nation, a higher educational program quite as good as that found in any other state."
We spend more on liquor and tobacco than we do for "the institutions and the people that provide all of our trained and skilled manpower and most of the new knowledge that stands between us and a world controlled by totalitarian tyranny," he wrote.
In a Daily Kansan press conference Nov. 20, Chancellor Murphy warned that "unless the Legislature approves the University's 1959-60 budget request, the University could become a second-rate institution."
"What the American people do about higher education systems as to quality, quantity and research during the next five to 10 years
"The University, in preparing the budget for the 1959-60 fiscal year, requested from the Board of Regents the money it felt the University needed to provide a first-rate institution," he said.
will be so crucial it could very well decide whether this country will be a first-rate or a second-rate power by the end of the century."
"Further complicating our problem and, if not corrected, leading to an almost intolerable competitive disadvantage is our lack of any kind of adequate funded retirement program for our teaching and research faculty. Not only are we at a disadvantage in salaries paid, but practically all of the institutions who stand over us in salary scales, have, in addition, the advantage of such a retirement program."
Regarding faculty salaries, Chancellor Murphy said this:
"Other states, not only in our middle western area but in all parts of the country, seem to have comprehended the situation. Kansas must understand that the most important issue of our times is the trained and educated mind which comes only by way of gifted faculty.
"In spite of the advances of the salary scales achieved in recent years, we have actually fallen relatively even farther behind the institutions with which we must compete to acquire and retain competent teachers and research workers. In the last analysis, no institution is more effective than the quality of the teaching staff that it can acquire and retain. If we cannot at least reach the national median, or climb a little above it, our pretensions for distinction at KU are completely without meaning.
If these faults are not remedied, the Chancellor says.
"The losers will be the people of this state—the businessmen who look for economic growth, the laboring men who look for more job opportunities and, above everything else, our children who have the right to look for educational opportunity at least equal to that to be found in any other state."
Salary Figures
A recent study of faculty salaries at state universities shows that KU ranks below the national median for every category of the teaching staff. Here are the figures:
Raymond Nichols, executive secretary of the University, has said that despite a 10 per cent salary raise granted by the 1957 legislature, KU is as far behind other schools as it was before.
The major item in the proposed budget increase is a raise in faculty salaries. The budget request asks for $735,333 in salary increases.
National KU
Full professor $8,967 $8,100
Associate professor $7,071 $6,800
Assistant professor $5,952 $5,700
Instructor $4,750 $4,200
The Florida Board of Control made a study of salaries which shows KU ranking this way:
Full professor 21st of 23 schools
Associate professor 19th of 23 schools
Assistant professor 14th of 23 schools
Instructor 21st of 23 schools
A third study, one of midwestern state universities, also ranked KU with other schools. These are the findings for KU:
Full professor 11th of 12 schools
Associate professor 8th of 12 schools
Assistant professor 8th of 12 schools
Instructor 12th of 12 schools
Kansas State College also plans to increase salaries. The K-State request is for $890,566 in raises.
Both schools intend to award raises on merit rather than longevity. Mr. Nichols has said faculty additions have been kept to a minimum so available money could be used for salary increases.
Dailu Hansan UNI UBITS
University of Kansas Student Newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone Viking 3-2700
Extension 711, news room
Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 420 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $4.50 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays, and examination periods. Entered as second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan. post office under act of March 3, 1879.
News Department ... Malcolm Applegate, Managing Editor
Business Department ... Bill Irvine, Business Manager
Editorial Department ... Al Jones, Editorial Editor