A couple of years ago I was having lunch in Quincy House at Harvard and there fell into conversation with a young man from What Cheer, Iowa. He was doing some teaching at Harvard and was serving as a counselor and advisor of undergraduates, and he was doing very well in both assignments. Since then he has been given a post in an outstanding college on the West Coast. This young man not only had started out in a small town—what more can be said of What Cheer, Iowa?—but had graduated from a small church-related college of somewhat Dutch background.
We talked about his preparation for a successful career in the Harvard Graduate School. “Tell me,” I said, “do you find much difference between the students here at Harvard and those who went to your own college? And what about preparation in a small college for a large university?”
“I think there are always a few geniuses floating around the university somewhere,” he replied. “Take a Leonard Bernstein, for example—we always have some of them in production. But as far as the cross section is concerned, I think the best students at Harvard are matched by the best students at the small college, the only difference being that at Harvard there are more of them. So the best students are about the same, but the average of the student body at Harvard is higher. As for professors, there are always some very good ones in small colleges, and you always have access to the best ones there, something that isn’t always true in the large schools.”
The church-related colleges are now, as always, skidding along on the edge of financial disaster. Many people are ready to wrap them up and forget about them, feeling they have served their time and are no longer capable of competing with the heavily endowed Harvards or the universities that wallow in the affluence of state support. What has dropped out of the discussion, however, is a lack of confidence—confidence in what church-related colleges are accomplishing in the total educational scheme, confidence in what they could accomplish if they would concentrate again on what they ought to be and what they ought to do. I am convinced that if this confidence were regained, proper financial support would follow.
There were reasons why church-related colleges were started in the first place, reasons why they took on a certain climate and atmosphere of life, why they have constantly fed graduate schools (not to mention the schools and the churches) with great distinction, and why millions and millions of dollars have been poured into them across the years. Enough people have believed in them to support them with students and money, and results have been gratifying. Do they now need a fresh start? I should like to make a few suggestions.
First, most colleges will have to retreat before they can go forward. As C. S. Lewis once suggested, it doesn’t matter how fast we are moving if we are on the wrong road; the only way to go forward is to go back to the place where we got off the road.
Most church colleges ought to reduce the number of their students so as to improve quality both in academics and in moral suasion. Colleges have been building dormitories and using government money, and so they have to keep the dormitories filled with warm bodies. As a result, despite loud affirmations to the contrary, they have lowered their admission standards in every direction. If they cannot maintain quality, they have no reason for continuing their existence. They have nothing better to offer than state universities. Colleges are not reform schools, or special recess centers for the mentally deficient. To cut back on a student body is a very, very expensive operation, but unless this price is paid we can just forget any worthwhile contribution from the small, liberal-arts, church-related college.
Second, some faculty members ought to be unloaded. (This means big trouble, as anyone who has ever tried to unload a college professor knows.) The ones who should go are those who in general do not agree with the purposes of the college, and who by affirmation and innuendo cut the college down in the classroom. By the manner of their own lives they are audio-visual aids for a great many things the college doesn’t stand for.
Third, to get anything like the above accomplished requires a special kind of board. Board members must be willing to stand the heat, in these days when a great many newsmen are making a living from the troubles of college campuses. The heat will come from some disgruntled parents, too, and there may even be a lawsuit or two, not to mention a little picketing.
Fourth, the president of the college must be given full power to act as the chief executive officer of the board. The function of a board is to ask questions like these of the president: What are you doing? Why are you doing it? How is it working? Have you examined other options? If the president is ineffective, he should be unloaded. If he is effective, he should be supported to the hilt against all comers. When the board no longer supports him completely, the president should resign.
It doesn’t do in college circles anymore to separate responsibility and power in the man who is supposed to be in charge. Judging by the number of colleges looking for presidents right now, it is no great thing to be a college president. And those who want colleges had better begin thinking seriously about what it takes to create an educational system and keep it useful.
As for the students, I guess the time has come for the majority of them to quit taking the guff from the minority. The ability to be loud, rough, and argumentative does not always line up with where the truth is. College students need to realize that college is an opportunity that they are welcome to pay for and use but not welcome to destroy for others. Most college students already look on college as an opportunity. They are being robbed by their peers.
As I suggested earlier, all this is very, very expensive. But the road we are on now is leading to disaster. This is manifest to us all. Some board and some president pretty soon now will have to find the fortitude to lose money, suffer misunderstanding, look bad—in short, bear a cross. If the church college goes down the drain, I have a feeling that a great many other things we can’t afford to lose will go down the same drain. We can no longer serve God and mammon.
ADDISON H. LEITCH
