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Opinion
University Daily Kansan
Monday, Sept. 16, 1985
Inflated college costs
Something's amiss when an commodity's price rises faster than doctors' bills.
Students' disposable personal incomes and those of their parents no longer can match the blistering pace set by tuition. Even federal aid and private grants can't keep up with the cost of college.
A clear clue: Already this fall, enrollment figures rolling out of admissions offices nationwide reveal sharp declines.
Such is the case with college education in the United States.
In doing so, however, many colleges and universities are inching closer to pricing themselves out of business.
Fortune magazine reports that average college tuition this fall increased by more than double the rate of the Consumer Price Index. That makes 1985 the fourth consecutive year in which the average cost of college has risen faster than the inflation rate.
The Fortune report verifies what many students have known for years: They're losing the battle to keep pace with tuition.
College administrators say the vast expansion of knowledge on their campuses and the cost of buying expensive computers have driven up education's price.
Of the Big Eight Conference schools that have tabulated such figures, only the universities of Kansas and Oklahoma report more students on campus this fall than last.
Kansas State and Oklahoma State universities' and the universities of Colorado and Missouri report losses. Figures aren't in yet at Iowa State University and the University of Nebraska.
Interestingly, KU and OU are schools that consistently rank at or near the bottom of Big Eight tuition price lists.
It's not a coincidence that the two Big Eight schools that continue to draw more students have kept tuition low through the years. Low tuition has made the schools two of the best educational bargains in the country, even for out-of-state students.
Other colleges and universities should follow the examples of KU and OU.
If the expansion of academia and computer mania continues, as it is sure to do, schools need to seek more private aid instead of fixing their eyes on students' back pockets.
In the last month, $3.5 million has rolled into KU from outside sources to bolster humanities studies. When funds from Hall Family Foundations, of Hallmark Cards Inc. fame, and the Henry Luce Foundation, of Time magazine fame, keep the University moving with the times, students don't have to carry as much of a financial load.
That means tuition stays low. And KU continues to stand out as a bargain in the higher education supermarket.
Move on shuttle bus
The University of Kansas Parking Service has plans to make life easier for students sometime next year.
Before such a system becomes reality, however, the Parking Service must first analyze data it has requested from 60 other large universities with existing shuttle bus services.
As unlikely as that seems for an agency that traditionally has been a $7.50-a-shot pain in neck's necks, it's true.
Because new buildings will be built around campus in the next few years and because more students are commuting, the problems of parking at KU can only worsen.
We'll have to pay for the ride, of course, but the Parking Service also has plans to reduce the cost of long-distance parking to partially compensate for that.
The announcement last week that the University was looking into starting a shuttle bus service between the O Zones and campus should delight those who have to park on the outer edges of campus.
So let's hope those other universities can shed a positive light on KU's shuttle bus proposal and that our milong walks to class from the faraway parking areas will be relieved next year.
Carrying the ban too far
Now that the stale beer smell from past residence hall parties has all but faded away, hall directors are saying they don't want even off-campus beer parties advertised.
They decided last week to restrict advertisements in the halls for off-campus beer parties. Advertising the parties is two-faced, they said, because the University's new alcohol policy bans possession and consumption of any alcoholic beverages in University housing.
An outright ban hasn't been imposed, but hall directors are keeping beer party advertisements to a minimum.
Hall directors say they want to restrict these ads because
they don't want to appear to be encouraging students to drink and drive.
Well, the corollary to not being able to have alcohol in University housing is that those who choose to drink must go off-campus.
If liability were the issue, their stance would be understandable. But it's not.
The University has chosen how it plans to keep pace with the new drinking laws.
Allow whoever wants to advertise for beer parties to do so and let students make their own choices.
Rob Karwath Editor
John Hanna Michael Totty
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Susanne Shaw
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GOP seeks distance from Reagan
Earlier perhaps than some expected, Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party are falling out of love with each other. We enter the fall with a president heading up the mountain as his party drifts out to sea. If that seems like a mixed metaphor, it is because there is no other way to describe the mixed up state of GOP politics.
It seems only yesterday that the president's wish was considered a command on Capitol Hill. Cut taxes, he said, and cut they were. Raise defense spending. Aye, aye cap'n. The man and his magic mesmerized the capital and the country.
Now it has come to this: Sen. John Danforth, a Missouri Republican of impeachable party credentials, was asked by some of his fellow Missourians whether he could arrange for the president to appear in Independence. He complied, and the president spoke there on Labor Day.
Danforth, the man who facilitated the invitation, had a "schedule conflict" and did not appear in his home state with the president and secretary of state. This absence had less to do with schedules and more to do with agendas.
Danforth is among those Republicans who joined the Democrats and labor in urging the president to adopt protectionist measures against Brazilian shoes. The president wisely rejected that counsel a few days before he was due to appear in Independence.
Since they once made a lot of shoes in Missouri, Danforth predicted there would be some angry former shoe-makers at the president's independence speech, and he was right. Under such conditions, politicians are highly susceptible to "schedule conflicts."
Those Republican senators up for re-election in 1986 are feeling vulnerable on such issues as the so-so economy, the uncontrolled federal deficit, the administration's waffling response to the apartheid crisis in South Africa and the president's lack of a plan to address the trade deficit.
As recently as a year ago, who would have thought that the time would come when a Middle American Republican would not wish to bask in the reflected glory of Ronald Reagan's celebrated charm? For those who thought no such day could come, it is time to think again. This fall we're about to see the seams of the
Robert C.
Maynard
Oakland Tribune
Republican Party tested to their splitting point.
Moreover, most of Congress came back from summer recess saying the voters were lukewarm on the one issue about which the president was red-hot, his tax reform proposal.
All this helps make clear why the president and his party in Congress are on different agendas. The president stated his agenda with chilling
clarity in his speech in Independence
an Labor Day. He said:
since the Constitution limits a president to only two terms, there are no more elections for me, and therefore, no need for political considerations in any decision I'm called on to make. Like you, I'll be living with everything we do in these next few years . . .
That's the talk of a president headed up the mountain to assume his place in history.
Add to that 1988, which is just around the corner as politicians measure time. There is no obvious Republican successor to Ronald Reagan. His overwhelming popularity and "presidential" bearing now hurt the party. No one in the GOP remotely resembles a second Ronald Reagan.
Out of this tumult, the once unthinkable looms on the horizon Ronald Reagan and the Republicans appear to be on the verge of a loveless passage in their long relationship. For various reasons, the president and his party don't seem to need each other anymore in quite the same old ways.
Down below, in that cruel sire called American politics, other realities govern the actions and attitudes of elected Republicans. The coattails of a lame-duck president are notoriously short — even those of a leader as popular as Ronald Reagan has been. The off-year election is usually unfavorable to the party in the White House. That means the Republicans could easily lose control of the Senate next year, and probably will.
A simple guide for drug discussions
Out of Bounds from the plateau of choice to the abvss of doom.
THE ABYSS DOOM
All this talk lately about whether drugs are good or bad is reminiscent of eating pancakes.
Other people don't give a flying freaking panc about eating pancakes.
Some people abhor the sight of those spherical discs of claylike batter. Pancakes make them sick and they can't stand anyone who eats them. They'd have a bumper sticker on their cars that said "Ban maple syrup — kill the cakes" if someone would print one up.
Some people call them flapjacks and they drive 30 miles in a blizzard to eat the best, all covered with walnuts, real butter and especially maple syrup.
THE PLATEAU% CHOICE
And some people like flapjacks so much they'll eat them — one after another after another — until they're a fat, sick nuisance at the breakfast table.
The debate about drugs published on these pages is not new, and it appears it will never be old. And there are too many sides of the issue to list in a single column. So Out of Bounds, as a public service, presents the Out of Bounds Drug Discussion Continuum.
This category, fortunately, is
The Need.
But he is a human fool and he should be helped by his friends first, no matter how much tension it causes in a relationship when one friend tells another point blank. "You're doing too much coke and I'm worried about you."
The fact is we're not youngsters anymore. Young, yes, but children. Ultimately it's the individual who is responsible for being corrupted and addicted by an easy drug fix. He who subscribes to the delusion that this will clear away his problems is a fool.
Gary Smith Staff columnist
inhabited by a minority on our continuum.
The Want
Dennis Highberger is, like most of us, on the plateau of choice. He only suggests that drugs are a reality in Lawrence. He too recommends care, but he simultaneously recognizes that throughout history drugs used responsibly have helped nurture self-understanding and greatness in some.
Sigmund Freud did cocaine. Pope Leo III drank Mariani wine. Cary Grant did LSD and Winston Churchill tried laughing gas.
The Don't Want.
Tim Erickson is also perched on the plateau of choice. He has been as far as the Need and in an eloquent letter of advice published in the Kansan last week he wrote, "I don't wish to be labeled an anti-drug
crusader' based on fear. I just want to issue a word of caution."
Don't Wants don't have to experience drugs as Erickson did to say "no." They just have to have studied the notion with an open mind and have decided not to. For them it's a wise choice.
Hermann Goering used cocaine
and Janis Jolin died of a heroin
toxin.
The Don't Want Anyone Else to Want.
These anti-drug crushers are fighting a losing battle armed with fear to outlaw the reality of drugs and they demand compliance with their views. They are against freedom of choice and refuse to believe drugs can be used responsibly.
Fortunately, they are as much a minority as the Need cases they hold up as examples.
So there it is. The Out of Bounds Continuum of Drug Conversation. And remember, those 19-year-old beer drinkers born after July 1 are illegal drug users — while the rest of us just like to bend our elbows now and then to relax.
Verbatim
Center for Humanistic Studies director Theodore Wilson
Grant to help center serve humanities
With a brand-new name and long-awaited financial support, the Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Center for Humanistic Studies stepped into the University limelight this semester.
The Center was renamed to honor the Hall Family Foundation, which gave the University $3 million to enrich the humanities programs — the largest gift awarded for the humanities at the University. A large portion this money will go to boost programs sponsored by the Center.
The Center's offices are on the second floor of Watkins Home, behind Watinson Library. Theodore Wilson, professor of history, has been the Center's director since 1963. He also works with staff columnist Julie Comine.
The generous endowments announced this semester will serve as a shot in the arm for the Center and for the humanities at KU. But let's back up a bit. When and why was the Center founded?
WILSON. The Center was started in 1976. A small group of humanities faculty with the idea got together, and basically what they got was approval from the Board of Regents and the administration. (The Center receives its operating funds from the state, but relies on private grants and gifts for many of its programs.)
It was clear there was a need to have some kind of effort to obtain increasing visibility for the humanities at the University of Kansas, and also increase long-term support. There was a need really to explain what the humanities are and what they do; why we need the same money as petroleum engineers and biochemists.
The dictionary defines the humanities as "philosophy, literature and the fine arts, as distinguished from the sciences." Can you specify which disciplines are included in the humanities here at KU?
WILSON: The disciplines included in the humanities can be pinpointed in a practical sense: They include all those classes with the letter H listed
after them in the University catalogue. (This includes courses in architecture, history of art, classics, history, languages, law, literature, music, philosophy, religion and theatre.) Why they're listed as humanities classes, though, is a historical question, and often is debated by people within that discipline.
Can you give an example?
WILSON: History is classified as being in the humanities here, but as a social science at many other schools. I've been told that in the late 1960s, a vote of history faculty was taken, and at that time they were solidly in favor of classifying history as a humanities. But I would bet that if a vote was taken today, probably a slight majority would vote to classify it as a social science, because of the department's orientation.
What's the difference?
WILSON: It's an individual outlook. We're really talking about methodology, methods of doing research. In history, for example, someone with a humanistic outlook would be more interested in the unique aspects of a phenomenon, where as a colleague of mine with a social science orientation is more interested in those phenomena that appear to recur in history, things can be studied scientifically.
Taken simply, a humanities person is a splitter, and a social science person is a lumper — someone who studies phenomena in the aggregate.
In recent years, have the humanities been left in the shadow of professions such as business, journalism and engineering?
WILSON: I think its fair to say that our society has given greater emphasis to vocations and to questions about what kind of "product" students get from their education. To me, using monetary terms is a more effective and less effective — ways of measuring education.
In a nutshell, can you define the Center's purpose?
The Center's many programs include the Humanities Lecture Series, an annual faculty development seminar sponsored by the Mellon Foundation, a biannual newsletter and several scholarly journals and a pilot program to teach Spanish to engineering students.
WILSON: We try to do things that individual students just aren't set up to do. For example, I served a term as chairman of the history department. I tried to set up a group called "Friends of the History Department" with modest success. We started with a zero endowment and ended up with a few hundred dollars.
Having the Center builds a constituency for the humanities. It serves as a focal point, where members of individual departments can, in turn, support projects in their own disciplines. That's what it's all about. Trying to make possible for faculty members to do — and to do more easily — what their interests dictate.
What kind of projects does the Center plan to use the money for?
WILSON: A travel fund for humanities scholars. We often say that our laboratory is the world. We have many research and scientist doctors in set up setting.
Bringing faculty members from other institutions to KU through post-doorball fellowships and exp in internships in the United States, and abroad.
Support of special projects for areas of study at KU.
areas of study at AU.
And there are areas yet to be developed. I'm especially interested in trying to bring together the faculty strength and library strength in what I'm calling — for lack of a better term — North Atlantic Studies. This would combine literature and history from Britain, England, Ireland also would include art history.
Would this be like an area studies degree program, such as the one offered in Latin American Studies? WILSON: It would have some of the hallmarks of an area studies program, but the intent is not to have a degree-granting program. It would be more of a unique, inter-
Another area of interest is with children and childhood studies. As you probably know, KU is a national center for studying childhood development, particularly in the disciplines of psychology, human development and family life and special education. It would be appropriate to have a study program looking at those kind of problems from a humanistic point of view, one that asks questions about the development of children across cultures, across times.
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