Embattled Texas

Practically the only martial note lacking on the University of Texas campus last week was a mechanized battle. As ardently as any other university, Texas was fighting World War II. Some 4,000 students had already joined the armed forces; 102 faculty members were in Government service. The remaining 8,000 students were geared to the war.

Since last January the university has been on a speedup, year-round program without vacations, so that a standard course can be completed in two years and eight months. (Students going to war get a semester's credit for half a semester's work.) Special war activities include a new Naval R.O.T.C., with 400 members, extension courses for 3,000 adults to make aircraft workers and shipbuilders out of farmers and migrants; a course in aircraft design with classes for women; 78 new war courses, including one for comman-dettes (girl commandos). Now the university is planning a new Naval air unit for 600 men.

Texas' serious President Homer Price Rainey figures that as 63% of Army men must have either a college education or special training, the educational system should be speeded up so that a boy will finish college, if possible, by the time he is 18. President Rainey wants U.S. high schools to go on a year-round schedule, thinks selected boys should go to college after high school's junior year. When a boy reached 18, the Government could then take charge, pay for any subsequent special training the services required.

A far cry from the Ivy league is Dr. Rainey's bailiwick (despite its student enlistments Texas remains the biggest university in the South), where students are so unsheltered that nearly a fifth are married and last year six were in the legislature. Lively Texas has been on the select membership list of the Association of American Universities since 1929, is one of four Southern universities so distinguished.*

A site for the University of Texas was chosen shortly after Texas seceded from Mexico (1836), but the university did not open for 44 years. Students and money were scarce.

In the '20s Texas U. struck oil on its western lands. There has been $41,000,000 worth of it so far. Only the interest can be spent, but Texas University is rich for the South. University income is now about $3,500,000 a year--from endowment ($800,000), student fees and appropriations.

*The others: Duke, North Carolina, Virginia.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.