UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
September 6,1978
Enrollment peak at hand
The heady days of ever-increasing enrollment at the University of Kansas apparently are gone.
First-day enrollment figures released last week indicate that KU will have 25,340 students this fall—just 13 more than a year ago. If the estimates based on those preliminary figures hold true, KU seems to be perched on an enrollment peak that could tower over future enrollment totals as the supply of high-school seniors dwindles through the mid-1980s.
Moreover, if the trend of students' taking fewer hours continues, the number of equivalent full-time students—a more accurate measure of University utilization than mere head-counts—could drop.
THE AVERAGE STUDENT, according to KU statistics, has reduced his class load from more than 15 hours a few years ago to 14.7 hours last year. When multiplied by thousands of students, even a slight drop in class loads will mean that KU now is doing less than holdings its own in the face of downward pressures on college enrollments.
KU, however, with its active freshman recruiting programs and increasing emphases on nontraditional students and continuing education, has fared better than other Regents universities.
While KU was adding significant numbers of students in the past few years, smaller schools were either
already stagnating or experiencing drops. This year, while KU has leveled off in head-count, Fort Hays State University and Emporia State University are showing slight decreases.
THIS ANALYZING and comparing of enrolment statistics means something more than who wins the prize as the state's fastest-growing—or slowest-shrinking-university.
As administrators and Regents ready the annual routine of convincing the governor and the Legislature that they need more money, declines, or possible declines, in enrollment become another factor to explain, dismiss, or aggressively ignore.
Formula funding, the state's new system of budgeting higher education, is supposed to loosen direct ties between enrollment and dollars, but enrollment declines are ready ammunition for politicians seeking popular cutbacks in funding. If such cuts occur, the University might have to find ways to reduce spending by reducing services, or make higher student fees partially compensate for smaller numbers of students.
True, if citizens are as tax-weary as we are led to believe these days, perhaps administrators could stand to spend a few sleepless nights worrying about justification of a juicy budget increase.
But anyone interested in the fate of higher education in Kansas, at least in the next several years, should keep at least one eye trained on the number of students attending Regents schools.
A recent report released by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare indicating that Kansas ranks abnormally high in the occurrence of federally financed abortions, plus figures ranking Kansas high in the total number of pre-term births yearly, in news that the state's pre-limits will harden to be take down daily.
Whether the figures accurately reflect the number of abortions actually performed in a given year is not clear because of more rigid reporting methods is an open question, but the pro-lifers, those self-appointed guardians of public morals, will surely want to be heard—and the abortion clinics—in response.
Although it is uncertain whether America actually is taking the swing to the right that the news magazines claim, it is clear that during the last few years the pre-life movement has gained both numbers and influence.
GROWING UP and gaining strength along with its sister movements, the anti-gay and stop ERA crudes, the active pro-life movement consists primarily of comfortable, middle-class women, though its leadership ranks often are dominated by men.
The members of the movement espouse what they claim is a pro-life philosophy and they have taken that phrase as a banner to lead them into battle. Ironically, however,
Letters Policy
Inflation pushes money to dishonesty
Anti-abortion groups are not pro-life
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and not exceed 500 words. They should include the writer's name, address and telephone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should be typed on behalf of the home town or faculty or staff position. The Kansan reserves the right to edit letters for publication. Letters can be delivered personally or mailed to the Kansan newsroom, 112 Flint Hall.
By Henry C. Wallich N.Y. Times Features
WASHINGTON—We have been learning for some time that inflation damages the economy and all who live by it. But inflation does more than material damage.
Inflation has ended the dollar's role as a trustworthy measure of values. Dealings and contracts based on the dollar have been used to reduce the risk of cause of economic injury. It is a moral as well as an economic issue. Without honest money our economic dealings will be unsustainable.
If our contracts were made in terms of frequently shrinking measures of weight, time or space, as we buy food, sell our labor, we can do so with the same care and regard that as cheating and as intolerable.
VET THE CASE is much the same when we are dealing with monetary values. Nothing that is expressed in dollars any longer means what it says. Inflation is like a country where nobody speaks the truth. It means of decret into all our economic dealings.
Everybody now makes contracts knowing perfectly well that they will not be kept in terms of constant values. Everybody expects the value of the dollar to change over the period of the contract. But any specific allowance made for inflation in such a case is very hard to define. We do not know whether the most valuable part of the contract may not turn out to be the paper it is written on. This condition cannot be reconciled with honesty.
In the eyes of economists and of government, inflation becomes a means of exploiting labor's money illusion, namely its ability to take advantage of the dollar. It is thought that labor will respond favorably to a seemingly large wage offer that subsequently is eroded by inflation. If labor fails to notice the trick, it will keep running with the same demand, and employment will be higher.
THE MORAL ISSUES posed by inflation go beyond what I consider deceit. There are other forms of moral deficiency, and inflation involves some of the least attractive. Inflation is a means by which the strong can more effectively exploit the strategically positioned and the well-organized can gain an extra expense of the unorganized and the aed.
Inflation also is a means by which debtors can exploit creditors. The debtor's burden is reduced by inflation; the creditor's assets are decimated. High nominal interest rates can lead to compulsory repayment of interest is tax-deductible to debtors and taxable to creditors.
THE SMALL SAVER, by law, is not allowed to obtain an interest rate reflecting infiation. Interest-rate savings on savings account will it that he will be a sufferer from inflation.
But a government pretending to serve the nation's interests by, say, misinforming the people about its military plans would be harshly taken to task. Why should trading on the people's money illusion be regarded differently?
Inflation is like a country where nobody speaks the truth. It introduces an element of deceit into all our economic dealings.
BUSINESS ACCOUNTING is made deceptive by inflation. Illusory profits on inventories, and likewise illusory profits caused by depreciation rules that allow businesses to take into account only original cost instead of replacement cost of plant and equipment, grossly exaggerate true earnings, and pay from possibly non-existent profits.
Inflation also undermines the honesty of our public policies. It allows the politician to make promises that cannot be met in real life, and it allows politicians to spend trying to keep those promises, the value of the benefits it delivers shrinks. A permissive attitude toward inflation, allowing politicians to validate their claims, creates corruption, encourages despitiful politics in politics.
INFLATION BECOMES a surreptitious means of promoting changes in our economic, social and political institutions that circumvent the democratic process. Inflation may end up making the existing system unviable.
Inflation similarly threatens to deliver business into the hands of government. As profits cease to be measurable, strong firms become less strong, less strong firms become marginal. Dependence upon and reliance on government may be the only solution.
It does so, for instance, by making it almost impossible to provide for the future by private action. Personal savings, in turn, can be wiped out by accelerating inflation.
Under conditions of inflation, only the government, then, can offer security. The government pensioner, reliably indexed as taxes, may be asked to take at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
Henry C. Wallach is a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. This article is adapted from a speech he made at graduation exercises of Fordham University's Graduate School of Business Administration.
There is no substitute for honest money.
their actions define instead a group whose humanitarian impulses are severely limited by their dogma. While professing deep compassion for the unborn child, their compassion for the living almost is nonexistent.
The pros and cons of the abortion issue are well documented and do not need to be repeated here. But what can be said of a movement that claims its pro-sabotele belief is that she cannot accept any woman that she cannot receive funds for an abortion, thereby running an increased risk
WHERE IS THE "right-to-life" for an older woman facing an unwanted pregnancy who is informed that she cannot have an abortion, even though her risk of death is much higher than that facing a younger woman?
of death the longer it takes to raise the money, or forcing the woman to have a child because she is unable to care for them.
spectrum often use usages and exploitive statements to further their cause, but the pro-life movement is reaching new depths with every new statement.
A new tactic of the pro-lifers is to pick and sit-in at abortion clinics, thus getting—and taking—the opportunity to harass women who are being aborted. Where is the humanity in taunting and harassing a woman who already is undergoing an extremely trying emotional experience? It does nothing but display the frustration thatassion expressed every day by the movement.
NELLIE GRAY, president of March for Life, a prominent pro-life organization, recently said feminists "want to kill people who are less powerful than they" while describing abortion as "killing a baby—the baby it rip out and then they throw it away."
Ideologies on both ends of the political
Statements like these only serve to show the current state of the almost hysterical rage in the movement against abortion. The adoption of the pro-life banner is nothing more than a public relations move designed to cloud actual beliefs and tactics.
Mixed emotions greet Miss America
Stripped of its false titles, the anti-balloon movement currently stands as a testament to viciousness, a prime example that is blind to any vision but its own.
The time is 9 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 9. Mom,
dad, daughter Susan and Bowser have settled for the evening and are gathered
for a party for one of their favorite annual events.
"And now, live from Atlantic City, N.J. it's time for the Miss America contest. Here's your host for the Miss Bert Parks!"
The camera zooms in on aging Parks, who begins the program with his version of "You Kill a Dog."
"Do we have to watch this again?" 8-year-old Susan cries.
But up and eat your apple. ...
Sunny groans, but turns to face the television.
AS PARKS finishes, girls from each of the 50 states begin to promenade down the runway. Each girl is nervous, but remembers to wear her by now permanently attached smile as she looks at the panel of celebrity judges.
"Aren't they beautiful, folks? We'll be back in just 60 seconds with the names of our 12 seminalists, but first, a word from our sponsor."
Dad excuses himself and heads for the kitchen.
Mom begins to vawn.
"Susan, don't touch that dial."
"Susan! Click
But, by the time Dad gets back he hears Ricardo Malbon saying. 'Now,' Tatou, 'I do.' He smiles.
"And our next contestant is 21-year-old Mary Jane Elizabeth Johnson, Miss
Allen Holder
Oklahoma. Mary Jane Elizabeth Joanne is a pre-med student at Oklahoma Panhandle State University. Tonight, she'll entertain the troops from "War Stars." At the baton to the troops from "War Stars."
BOWSER GROWLS. Dad's eyes widen.
mom snore.
The evening sweeps on. Mom's eyes never开, Dad's eyes never blink and Susan's eyes never blink.
It's now time for the always-important interview.
"That's Mary Jane Elizabeth Joanne, Bert. But you are forgotten. My hobbies are riding, camping, riding a bicycle, studying become a doctor and making people happy."
"And our final final, Miss Oklahoma.
Mary Elizabeth Jane Johnson Mary. Marry
Jane Elizabeth, tell us about
yourself. What are some of your hobbies?"
Susan groans again.
"And what fine bobbies those are, Mary,
or Miss Olkhahma. Tell us not about your
bobbies."
"MY GOALS, BERT, are discovering a cure for cancer, restoring peace in the
world, solving the world hunger problem and making people happy."
Mom begins to stim
"What a girl," Dad says.
"We'll have the winner in just a minute, and we'll all listen as the Lettermen sing. Feel good."
Bowser leaves the room. Mom's eyes widen. Dad begins to yawn.
"And the envelope please."
The song ends and Parks gets to say the line he has waited for.
The finalists gather around as Parks reads the fourth, third and second runners-up.
The family members are on the edges of their chairs.
"There she is. .
"AND THE first runner-up, Mary Jane Elizabeth Joanne Johnson, Miss Oklahoma. The new Miss America is Miss Montana, Sue Ellen Virginia Renee Jones.
Dad storms out of the room, saying, "She corrected Bert Parks. She never should have corrected Bert Parks. I'll never watch this napeant again."
Susan switches the channel. Mom goes to bed.
The time is 9 p.m. on a Saturday in early September 1970. Mom, dad, daughter苏安妮 are gathered around the television, eagerly waiting for one of their favorite annual
"And now, live..."
Staff Cartoon by DAVE MILLER
A Pacemaker award winner
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