Evening star., 1937-04-04
BY THOMAS M. JOHNSON.

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ment in higher education since
the depression Is taking place
L today, almost unnoticed. En-
boldened by business recovery, the
privately endowed colleges and uni
versities are starting unobtrusively an
effort to raise millions of dollars to
repair the ravages of depression. If
their effort succeeds, it will give edu-
cation a greater stimulus than any
PEDAGOGICAL innovation. If it fails, all
too many colleges may have to choose
between going broke and going on the
dole; the country may have to decide
whether to lose them or subsidize
them.
That may startle the average Ameri-
can. He is more interested in educa-
ton than any one on earth. but he
hardly realizes that education, like
business, has been facing crisis. and
that that crisis has not yet passed.
He appreciates the value Of our pri-
vately-endowed higher Institutions
including many Of the oldest and most
distinguished-fre from local or State
political interference; but he little
dreams that now not a few of them
dread being forced beneath the thumb
Of national politics.
Today the colleges stand at cross
roads. Hitherto, two-thirds and more
of the country's higher institutions
have depended less upon fees paid by
their students than upon the gifts Of
their alumni and of private philan-
thropists. To gifts they owe much OF
their $1,000, 100000 in invested funds.
But the income has Shrunk nearly 80
per cent, while gifts to principal have
shyunk as much as three times thirty.
When depression comes in at the door.
gifts go up the f1ue.
Funds Run Short.
That is no joke today. 1t takes real
money to make the Prof. go; also the
campus, the laboratory, the stadium.
1t takes, in fact, good deal more
money than many privately-endoWed
colleges have been getting these last
years.
Their students never did pay more
than a fraction of the cost of educat-
ing them. Lately that fraction has
been well-nigh halved, surprising
though that seems Almost as many
boys and girls have gone to college
since the depression as went before.
but they and their parents have paid
much less for the privilege. Most
colleges felt constrained to offer re-
duced fees, loans, scholarships that
sometimes were bonafide, sometimes
were simply rebates disguised. Some
obviously improper" recruiting tao
tics were curbed by intervention Of
the Association of American Colleges
and by the recruited students dis
concerting habit of going broke and
then going ION the college" for bed
and board. So income from students
dwindled, like income from invest
ments.
For all colleges and universities, that
was alarming-for State institutions
whose incomes were cut as much as
so per cent, but even more for pri-
vately-endoWed colleges. All colleges
have had to economize-many of them
to the danger point. They have let
their $3,000,000,000 equipment de-
preciate from disrepair, discharged
nearly 10000 teachers and employees
and cut the survivors salaries as
much as so per cent
Debt of Colleges.
Nevertheless, by 1885 243 colleges
confessed that they owed $77,OOO,OO
and many others refused to confess
how much they owed One college
with but $4,000 endowment owed
$600,OOO! Denominational colleges
were so hard hit that some churches
tried to weed out their weaker wards.
The situation generally was worst
in the Mississippi Valley and the
South. but the country over nearly a
score Of institutions toppled from va
rious financial tight ropes into failure
or merger. The latest example is St.
Mary's of the famous foot ball teams.
The 1885 Carnegie Foundation report
said that the struggle for existence
had become so fierce that more insti-
tutions would disappear and many
would lose ground.
Just then the New Deal came to the
rescue-or did it? Anyway, clad in
the shining armor of the National
Youth Administration, it last year
granted sl5,500,000 as a form of
work relief to needy college students
This year it is aiding 124.818 needy
and deserving boys and girls-which
number almost equals the increase in
entering classes since the N. Y. A. be-
gan operations.
Number to Be Helped.
This year twice as many college stu
dents applied to it as could be helped,
although the number being helped is
nearly 10 per cent of the total en-
rolled in higher institutions, which is
1,140,786 or 1,788,0OO, depending on
what you call higher institution"
Those totals are but l per cent nu-
merically below the all-time record of
five years ago, but the financial return
is much farther below than l per
cent.
1he New Deal has kept many boys
and girls in college, but 1t has scarcely
helped the colleges to balance their
budgets. In fact, Presidents Angel
OF Yale and Butler of Columbia are
leading swelling chorus of protest
that its heavy taxation of wealth
helped to cause the recent alarming
reduction in private gifts to higher