Wescoe—
(Continued from page 1) work that lay ahead of us. Now it is time to look at what has been done and, if looking back is dangerous, whatever is gaining on me will have to move fast to catch up, for the inexorable calendar is moving me out of the way.
"My thing," in other words, is to consider with you how the University of Kansas has changed in the past nine years and how the Medical Center has changed since 1952, and I intend to do it.
There have been significant changes: in size, in scope, in philosophy, even in mood and temperament. Nine years ago I said "it is self-evident that future growth will have to be at a more highly sustained rate if we are to fulfill our responsibilities." The most significant changes clearly have been in the area of growth, and it has been at a more highly sustained rate.
Enrollment at the University, long foreshadowed, increased 7,795 between 1960 and 1968, from 10,036 to 17,790. It took but nine years to add to the University what it had taken 90 years to
reach in total, excluding the temporary bulge in the late forties. The facilities and programs that have been built over a span of nearly a century suddenly, in nine years, had to accommodate almost twice as many students. During this period students began staying longer in college; the spring semester enrollment drop grew smaller, more students returned for their sophomore, junior, and senior years, and more students continued into graduate and graduate-professional study.
Even summers, when the University is popularly (and incorrectly) assumed to estivate, became busier; enrollment in forcredit study alone increased from 3,610 in 1960 to 7,072 in 1968.
KANSAN 5
Inevitably, the structure of the University developed certain creaks and groans. But, while a greater percentage—now 60%—of the Kansas high school graduates were continuing on into college, the quality of the University's freshmen did not fall off but actually increased, with 29.7 percent ranking in the top 10 percent and 84.1 percent in the top half of their senior classes compared to 28.4 percents and 79.7 percent in 1960.
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1969
One of my great sources of pride is our demonstrated ability to keep our growing pains to a minimal level. Despite our growth we have, I believe, largely succeeded in maintaining a campus of traditional friendly nature; there has been here no one who remained anonymous or became lost in the crowd unless he deliberately wanted to. By the creation of what we call Colleges-within-the-College we have managed to maintain whatever the benefits are of a smaller institution within the context of the riches available in the larger one.
Assembling a faculty to teach all the additional students has been one of our most difficult tasks, in a highly competitive market and particularly in a period when more faculty members had to be qualified to teach at the graduate level. We found not merely adequate but superior additions and replacements; the full-time faculty increased from 575 to 917 during the period; interms of the full-time equivalent, from 656 to 1,030.
The increases in students entering has been matched by an increase in the number of students earning degrees from the University; 1,339 were graduated in 1960, 3,428 in 1968. Graduate degrees awarded have increased particularly sharply in terms of numbers and percentage, jumping from 363 in 1960 to 973 in 1968. KU has achieved its status as a true University.
Of particular moment to me is the fact that nearly one-third of all the degrees awarded by the University—approximately 24,000 of the total, over more than 100 years, of approximately 76,700—was awarded during the nine years I resided at Commencement. I will always think of them as my graduates.
One of the casualties of the period of expansion has been our student-faculty ratio, which has increased from 14.3 to 1 to 16.1 to 1. The University must continue to be concerned about this vital factor in the quality of its programs. Recognizing the economic forces at work, the increase has not been great and, thankfully, during the past year the upward trend has been reversed, dropping the ratio from its high point of 16.3 to 1 in 1967-68.
The change in which I take great pride is in the compensation of the faculty, for adequate compensation is not only a matter of justice for the faculty but of
simple logic for those seeking improvement in the University's performance. The greatest limiting factor on the quality of the University is its ability to pay a competitive salary. That ability has increased from an average compensation of $7,891 in 1960 to one of $13,697 in 1968. Even though competitive pressures have forced the University to increase most rapidly the salary offers it has made to new Ph.D.'s, we directed our major efforts toward achieving the goal adopted in 1964 by the Board of Regents—to reach for all professional ranks Step B of the AAUP salary schedule. This year we reached it, finally, through the use of private as well as Federal funds. For the full professor we have increased from $10,078 in 1960 to $17,072 in 1968, the largest increase of all. Over the past nine years average compensation has increased 69.4 percent for professors, a remarkable achievement when one considers that we doubled the number of professors in the same period, 58.9 percent for associate professors, and 63.2 percent for assistant professors.
After a long period of holding the line in the development of new programs while trying to cope with numbers and to improve the quality of existing programs, the University in the past year has added the School of Ar-
for nonresidents. This is a trend we deplore in terms of the inevitable narrowing of opportunity. In the same period the costs of board and room in the University's residence halls increased from $650 to $800 with another necessary increase of $100 already scheduled for next year.
ichtelecture and Urban Design and the School of Social Work, bringing the number of schools in the University from 10 to 12.
Not surprisingly, fees have climbed during the nine years, from $208 to $341 for Kansas residents and from $398 to $801
During this period we completed the residence hall building portion of our physical development, constructing Hashinger, Ellsworth, McCollum, and Oliver Halls, adding spaces for 2.750 students, and completing Stouffer Place apartments. Then, as many students began expressing their desires for apartment living, we stepped aside and let private enterprise fulfill its role of responding to private needs with private facilities.
We have not forgotten the continuing need to help students obtain an education at KU with financial assistance, although the rising cost of living and of that education have made it difficult to increase financial aids as rapidly as the number of students has increased. Thus, the value of scholarships awarded grew from $285,000 in 1960 to $400,000 in 1968 but the number increased only from 1,190 to 1,300; short-term loans from the Endowment Association increased in value from $420,000 to $625,000 but in number only from 3,100 to 3,500.
Other means of assistance, fortunately, have increased remarkably or have come into being, most particularly from the Federal government. Long-term loans under the National Defense Student Loan program increased from $289,950 in 1960 to $709,350 in 1968 and in number from 484 to 1,124. Private bank loans under the USAF program increased from $62,000 in 1960 to $611,250 in 1967 and the number of borrowers from 310 to 590. With the shortage of Federal funds and growing scarcity of bank funds for loans, these programs have been cut back this year; their place has been only partially filled by an increase in federally insured loans started in 1967 for about 390 KU students in the amount of $400,000 and increased to $500,000 this year for about 650.
The Federal government also inaugurated two new programs of students help: Educational Opportunity Grants which provided $103,180 in grants to 243 students in 1966-67 and $371,950 to 663 students this year; and the work-study program which provided $41,370 to 168 KU students in 1966-67 and $226,800 to 498 students in 1967-68. This latter dropped to almost nothing this year because of the decline in Federal funding.
As we have always told the donors of private funds, the state has met its challenges. Appropriations have doubled during the past eight years. In 1960-61, appropriations were $13,015,000 with $3,247,000 for the Lawrence campus and $3,768,000 for the Medical Center campus; in 1968-69 that figure was $26,012,000 with
$18,832,000 at Lawrence and $7,180,000 at Kansas City. The total income for both campuses has increased even more markedly, from $28,404,258 to $73,775,-473, as student fees, sponsored research, and hospital income climbed at an even faster rate than did appropriations.
Grants and contracts for sponsored research have increased more swiftly than any other source of support during this period; the University received $5,135,002 in 1960-61 and $18,407,-708 this year.
The statement that "the library is the heart of the University" has become an academic cliche, but we changed it to "the heart of the
campus is where the library is," when we built a new research library, with a gift of $2,125,000 to the University by a generous alumna, Mrs. Kenneth A. Spencer, in memory of her husband. During this period, moreover, we constructed a $1.6 million addition to Watson Library which increased its capacity to 1,350,000 volumes.
We have been busy filling the shelves of those libraries with books and journals. The number of volumes in our libraries increased from 876,000 in 1960 to 1,344,739 today. The number of volumes added each year increased from less than 55,000 in 1960-61 to 83,762 this year. The