The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-07-16
HIGHER EDUCATION.


Tc the Editor of the indianapolis Journal.
/ have read with much interest President
SWANS able address before the Charleston
educational convention on state Aid TO
Higher Education" Much of it is very
plausible. some absolutely unanswerable;
but it is marred all through by needless
filings at sectarianism, the ghost that
haunts the president by day and by night.
Blu it is not TO indorse or to ~criticise the
able paper that l write, but to insist that
if what he says of the duty of the state to
foster higher and professional education is
even approximately true. it is the duty of
the State of Indiana to begin at once and to
vigorously provide for il. on no mean or
niggardly scale. Our public school system
has no superior i'm all the States, because
the Constitution provides for it and the
people have a will to ii, but, so TO speak,
in an evil hour, through such men as Hon.
T.. A. Hendricks and Joseph Ristine, at that
time, as later, the leading Democrats OF
the State, with the aid OF such Wings as
Schuyler Colfax and John S. Newman, the
State declared, by a resolution in the con-
ventiOn of 1851, which led to the present
form of the Constitution, that "the Legis-
lature, in the establishment of a general
system of education, shall not provide for
or establish at the public charge, any school
or institution of learning other than dis
trict or common schools" This Constitu-
ton was ratified by a popular vote of near
ly four to one. and so went into immediate
effect; every county seminary was at once
abandoned and not a dollar was a~ppropri-
ated TO higher education by the State for
moro than a quarter Of q contr1rv uvhap
in 1861, by a stratagem. a moribund private
corporation for school purposes secured an
appropriation of $1,000 to meet present
emergencies, but which has grown from
year TO year until its present draft upon
taxpayers is in the neighborhood of $3.50. 900
a year and increasing yearly, and yet it
costs every individual student approx
mately as much TO attend that school as
it does 10 attend a "Sectarian' school. And
these appropriations in these thirty-three
years have run up into the millions, with
absolutely nothing TO show for il except
the increased wealth of that individual
private corporation. The State does not
not own a foot of its real estate nor a
1t does not even elect the trustees that
manage its affairs. Moreover, it is not In
any sense a state institution. in law or in
fact, and never even pretended to be, and
no attempt has ever been made by any
Legislature to constitute it a state school.
1t is simply a mendicant, living on the
Charity OF the Cldlt, WHile Ol0ef SCHOOLS
of equal or greater merit must provide for
themselves.
1t seems to me, therefore, that the imme-
date duty Of President Swain and those
who believe with him that il is the duty
of the State TO foster higher and profess
sional education. is 10 see 10 the establish
ment of a state university. If this can be
done under the Constitution as it is, so let
Ii be, but IL not, the process of amending
the Constitution is not difficult nor expen-
sive. II has been done frequently. In
be on a scale worthy the State. Instead of
one small school in a remote and practi-
cally inaccessible locality, let us build a
plant in some railroad center, near the
center of the State, say at Lafayette,
where we have already a campus of 200
acres and valuable buildings TO begin
with, or let us build a half dozen or more
i'm convenient localities as We multiply and
locate our public school plants. / do not
state the relative merits of these two
| methods, only insisting that we cannot af-
ford 10 throw away other millions merely
because we have wasted millions where the
| people of the State cannot reach it, except
at great cost and Inconvenience.
Personally, I am much inclined to favor
| state aid TO colleges and professional
schools. but, TO be just. IL must be ade-
quate to the wants of the whole State. For
more than a hundred years the State OF
New York has fostered these schools 10 the
entire satisfaction of the whole people-a
hundred fold more satisfactory than the
| systems of Michigan and Wisconsin nave
been to the people OF these States-and IL
may easily be adapted TO the present con-
| ditions of Indiana. The University of New
York, as such. owns not a brick nor a
] book. and asks no special appropriations