2B
Friday, October 25.1974
University Daily Kansan
Enrollment rise generates optimism
By BUNNY MILLER
Copy Chief
Despite much talk of low faculty morale at the University of Kansas, optimism among both faculty members and admissions may have rallied to a new high this year.
"I've seen faculty morale pretty low in the past," Charles F. Sidman, chairman of the history department, recently said. "It certainly isn't low now."
Talk of low faculty morale developed as an offshoot of talk about financial exigency, the fiscal situation that could result in the firing of tenured faculty members.
Fear of financial exigency usually is accompanied by academic depression—a general slump in faculty morale and a corresponding decline in the quality of
Late last summer, a group of "concerned
EVEN TENURE, that golden academic life, lifes the door during exigent times. lifes the door during exigent times.
professors" submitted a report to the University Senate Executive Committee contending that in fighting among schools, "they were killing students," had caused faculty morale to deteriorate.
In the report the professors stated, "The University of Kansas should not take lightly the possibility of being in a condition of financial exigency. It should view such a condition as a grave danger to its well-being. It undermines tenure, it promotes nepotism and it destroys competitive among units in the hope of protecting their faculty positions—all of which are detrimental to quality education."
According to Frances Ingemann, president of the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AUAP), such competition takes place when students increase enrolment in their classes, just to get bodies to sit there in their classes."
WHETHER THEY play dirty tricks,
teachers know that when enrollment falls off, teaching positions are likely to fall off as well, especially in times of crises or when new positions budgeted by the University depends on the number of students expected to enroll. And enrollment often goes up and down, depending on the success of the program.
Because of inflation and the tight job market, enrollment at colleges and universities is slowing.
18,000, were given their walking papers. In 1973, Bloomfield College in Bloomfield, N.J., abolished tenure and fired 13 faculty members. At the nine campuses of the University of Wisconsin, 88 professors have been laid off.
NO NEW TEACHING positions were made available at the University of Kansas and departing faculty members because enrollment expected to decline slightly and the
chairmen interviewed said they expected the surge in enrollment to allow 40 to 50 more teachers to be hired here during the next few years.
Because of inflation and the tight job market, enrollment at colleges and universities nationwide is down, and teachers are being dropped right and left.
teachers are being right up and left. Last year, 104 faculty members at Southern Illinois University, a state-supported school with an enrollment of
OLSEN SAID the increase this year would also buy time for the University to make such adjustments as changing retirement criteria and finding a funding formula that would budget more teachers to departments that were expanding.
From humble beginnings, KU develops excellence
By GERALD EWING Contributing Writer
On Sept. 12, 1866, the University of Kansas opened its doors for the first time. It was hardly a shattering event but nonetheless, it was a beginning.
Today, the University has over 22,000 students, more than 2,100 faculty members and 80 buildings on the Lawrence campus and the Medical Center campus in Kangas City, Kan.
KU started out 108 years ago, with three faculty members, a lecturer on hygiene, one of the first distinguished research scholars on the faculty, no library and only one building—a small wooden structure built on a knob more appropriately named Mount Orange.
It was indeed a humble beginning. In fact, the entire University, including salaries, operated on a meager budget of only $21,000 that first year.
But during the next 100 years, the University was transformed from an undistinguished preparatory school into a distinguished university with benefits and pitfalls of a major university.
In the introduction to his book, "The University of Kansas: A History" Clifford St. Griffin, professor of history, writes, "In 1850, at the age of 29, we were a contract with the Peace Corps, an
seemed to agree with Youngberg in this respect and said the phrases go way back and originate with the rivalry between KU and Kansas State.
"Part of it is in the purposes of the two institutions," Nichols said recently. "K-State was a land grant college and a university with its own students who were less sophisticated than urban students. K-State was established, principally for agriculture and the applied arts and thus had professional schools such as journalism, pharmacy, the arts and engineering."
What might have been part of the cause of the derogatory phrases were two events that occurred in 1890. The first was the changing of KU's colors from corn yellow and pale sky-blue, to the crimson of Harvard and the blue of Yale.
Colonel John J. McCook, a Harvard man,
donated his football field to the football field
at KU. He also built a KU training
The second was that George Barlow Penney, the first dean of the school of fine arts and the originator of the alma mater, Cornell's "Far Above Cavage's Waters."
Regardless of the origin of the phrase, if academic excellence is viewed as sloppish, then the phrase does apply to KU. And the facts bear this out.
For example, since 1954, the University
Accompanying this rise to excellence has also been a rise in a feeling of contempt... evident in the pet phrases of "Snob Hill," "Athens on the Kaw" and "Harvard of the Plains."
"All of which meant the University of the 1960s was a modern American state university that had outrun its founders' roostest dreams."
outstanding art collection, the only United States Cavalry survivor of Custer's Last Stand (a horse named Comanche displayed, in the museum) of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma XI west of the Mississippi, a university press, an alumni association, vast tracts of vacant land, a traffic problem, and sizeable plains. The museum, as well as the crater forms of ornaments.
It is also generally considered by many that KU is one of the top public universities in the country in its reputation not resting on overall achievement of departments but rather in overall excellence.
Accompanying this rise to excellence has also been a rise in a feeling of costumefort to the Middle East, evident in the pet phrases of Midwest," evident in the pet phrases of Athens in the Kaw" and in the pet phrase of Athens in the Kaw"
But by far, not everyone views KU with contempt. Irvin Youngbear, a fixture in the Endowment Association for many years, recently that these phrases were good for KU.
"I don't know where it originated but I love it," he said. "He's prestige with it. I'm proud of that name. We have reason to smile mobs because it's so outstanding."
Chancellor Emeritus Raymond Nichols
A 1969 survey showed KU among the top 35 universities in the nation in terms of general strength and excellence in graduate education.
has had 225 Woodrow Wilson scholars, more than twice as many as any other Big Eight school. KU students have won eight Rhodops Scholarships in the past 16 years, more in that period than any other public university in the nation.
But things haven't always been this good at KU. In fact, severe problems, mostly financial in nature have plagued the university without its years, including the present day.
Griffin explains the problems encountered in 1868. "With the House of Representatives proving especially pugnacious, the lawmakers not only rejected the $50,000 bond proposal, but eliminated the $3,000 for the president's salary by 25%, and the salaries by $100 a year each and the budget grounds request of $2,000 to $400. In all the legislature chopped an original $13,800 request to $7,200."
It took time but the University did continue to survive and grow, adding a new building here and a new faculty member there. But growth wasn't taking place as rapidly as some people wanted, especially Chancellor Frank Strong.
rank into the third and at the present rate unless our legislature places the University decisively back in the second class, it will fall from the third to the fourth. . . . State universities are one of the great institutions of the country, but it is not so."
Griffin writes, "Where the 1920s had been merely disappointing, the 1930s blasted all dreams of excellence on Mount Oread. The crash of 1929, the subsequent national depression, and wretched weather sent profits, prices and spirits plummeting."
In 1890, Strong remarked that, "The University of Kansas long ago fell from the first rank of state universities into the second. It has now fallen from the second.
The regents had asked for a 22 per cent increase in the budget for fiscal 1932 but instead the legislature denied the increase and cut $66,000 as well.
The trend of 1932 continued until the early '40s when economic conditions became more favorable, largely because of World War II. Since the war, the University has had a period of sustained growth that has made the University what it is today.
Nichols said it was the intention and the mission of many people to make KU the best university in the Midwest. He said earlier, it was the undergraduate program that excelled while in recent years KU's graduate work has become more well known.
"I think it is still correct that KU is one of the best universities in the Midwest," he said. "We have this tradition of excellence and we are committed to continue it with our present funding."
Youngbear said a lot of the credit for KU's continued excellence must go to the university.
"We've had a lot of good dedicated people here, especially our amazing chancellor's," he said. "A good example of this is the number of people that stayed on here during the depression, took pay cuts and helped KU through the really tough times."
Griffin scums it up well when he writes, "During the 20th century the school grew from a small provincial institution to a huge emporium of knowledge whose leaders after 1945 constantly stressed its importance to the entire world."
"Some people were very upset by this, and I think it caused some deterioration of faculty."
"The initial reaction (to the retirement proposal) is one of fear that the policy would work the decrement of the faculty. We're fearful about it, but we insufficient retirement income." she said.
Another instance in which faculty members were passed over was executive vice chancellor Del Shankel's decision to reserve 440 X-Zone parking spaces for free football parking for athletic contributors. This move was approved by the University, governance system, he said.
"The problem was that the proposal was made into a firm proposal before there was an opportunity on the part of the faculty to look in it." she said.
HOWEVER, THIS CRITICAL reaction to the report wasn't an informed response, she said.
"Financial exigency? We hear that is a thing of the past," said Helmut Huelsbergen, chairman of the department of Germanic languages and literatures. "And we don't hear about 'tenured in' any more."
University was budgeted for a decline. Yet there is optimism on the Hill.
The optimism stems mainly from the unexpected surge in enrollment this fall.
"There's no way we can escape the fact that the financial exigency question will face us sometime in the future, because the birth rate is falling off," she said. "The problem is how you can plan for this day in a way that is the least painful."
INGEMMAN ADMITTED that she thought faculty morale seemed higher this year than it was last spring when financial exigency caused an downturn. But she introduced a note of gloom.
Ronald Olsen, chairman of the economics department, said enrollment in introductory economics courses was up by an unexpected 30 per cent.
Many departments and schools across the campus point to hopeful signs that financial support will be available.
ENROLLMENT IN MATHEMATICS courses is also up unexpectedly here. In other colleges and universities mathematics enrollments are down. Enrollment in history courses at most Midwestern schools is down 22 per cent over the last four years but at KU history enrolment is up more than 20 per cent, according to Sidman.
William M. Lucas, associate dean of the School of Architecture and Urban Design, said a 10 per cent increase in enrollment at the school did a great deal to raise faculty morale.
"The faculty was very pleased," Lucas said. "They were able to see the University as an institution still able to attract a large number of students."
But according to Ingemann, this optimism will be short-lived. Faculty morale, she said, is affected by things other than financial exigency.
Ingemann cited the Board of Regents' new collection bargaining and refrenture agreements, 1970.
Most of the school deans and department
"What has happened is a sort or mutation and trade-off," she said. "One thing improves and other things are deteriorating."
"That is why we must settle this question of financial exigency now."
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