The Last Dike

With the growing demand for higher education and the resulting need for more teachers, the liberal-arts graduate school should beware of two tempting solutions: the lowering of standards and haphazard expansion. Last week, in his first report as dean of the Graduate Faculties of Columbia University, Historian Jacques Barzun warned: "As the highest institution of learning, the graduate school suddenly finds that it may soon become the last dike in the flood. Elsewhere, the diluting of quality may do limited or temporary harm. Not at the top. Somewhere the idea of scholarship must be kept unimpaired. Clearly, the graduate school is the one autonomous place where this can and must be done."

At the same time, the graduate school must "discharge its duty as a trainer of teachers on a scale unparalleled in . . . its history." If U.S. college faculties are to retain their present quality, "the graduate schools must contrive to prepare a proportionately increasing number of graduates. Otherwise we shall see an adulteration of college work comparable to that which has overtaken the high schools . . ."

To take care of more students, said Barzun, the graduate school can go far with such reforms as accelerating courses, eliminating departmental duplication, and relieving professors of routine paper work better handled by a secretary. But though a little expansion, e.g., 10%, might be feasible for such schools as Columbia's, a sizable increase in the student body is no answer to the graduate school's problem.

Barzun concludes: "To expand for the sake of a mere numerical show would be akin to demagogy, especially if done in the name of civic duty. And from the truly social point of view it would amount to debasing the coinage--a poor gift to the unsuspecting students seeking our degrees and to the community that would accept them at face value."

Integration in Washington

Even when it does not lead to violence --as it has in Clinton, Tenn.--the process of desegregating Southern public schools creates problems that can dismay the most idealistic of men. Last week, after five months of investigating the effects of integration in Washington, D.C., the four Southern members of the House subcommittee headed by James Davis of Georgia issued a report that, for all its obvious bias and sensationalism, contained some shocking facts about what a Southern city can be up against. Chief findings:

P: Integration may spur a general exodus of white citizens from the capital. In one year the number of white students in Washington schools dropped from 38,768 to 34,750, now accounts for only 32% of the school population. "In the not-too-distant future," said the committee, "the District of Columbia will be a predominantly Negro community."

P: On IQ tests given last year, Negro pupils scored well below their white counterparts. In 22 elementary schools that are 99% white, for instance, the average IQ was 105, while the average in predominantly Negro schools was only 87. Though the committee jumped to the false conclusion that these scores "verify the fact that there is a vast difference in the academic ability of the races," school officials have still had to divide their pupils into four groups, according to ability, and to give each group a different curriculum. "The result," said the committee, "is a new form of segregation: instead of having a segregated school system, they now have segregation in different classrooms under the same roof."

P: In integrated schools, disciplinary problems "have been described as appalling, demoralizing, intolerable, and disgraceful." All youngsters arrested for murder, rape or embezzlement in one year were Negroes. Teacher after teacher reported an increase in stealing, vandalism and obscenity. But something else disturbed the committee more: "One of the dangerous and deplorable developments in the District of Columbia schools is the sex attitude of the Negro . . . The fact that 13 little Negro girls--six years old and under--were treated for gonorrhea in 1955 is only a sample of the sex attitude . . . Illegitimate children born to 15-year-old girls increased 42% during the first year of integration. The Department of Health reported 854 cases of gonorrhea among schoolchildren in 1955--97.8% were Negroes."

On the basis of such evidence, the majority members concluded that integration in Washington had not only been "too hasty," it had "seriously damaged the public-school system. Therefore, we recommend that racially separate public schools should be re-established."

Two Republican minority members disagreed. "In a close reading of the hearings," they said, "we must come to the conclusion that the technical staff presented leading questions to a select group of witnesses . . . Persons with views not in accord with those of the counsel were not given full and fair opportunity to testify." However, added the Republicans, "the facts brought to light by this investigation seem to indicate that Negro leaders, and those actively interested in the advancement of the Negro people, have much work to do among the Negro people, and that all of the difficulties attendant upon integration are not caused by the seemingly uncompromising attitude of the white people."

Dynamo at Pitt

To those who have only a nodding acquaintance with it, the University of Pittsburgh is probably best known for 1) the 42-story Gothic skyscraper called the Cathedral of Learning, 2) Dr. Jonas Salk, and 3) its football team, the Panthers. But in future, Pitt may well be most famous for the 42-year-old dynamo it has as chancellor. In his 18 months in office. Edward H. Litchfield has made it clear that he wants to make Pitt nothing less than one of the top six universities in the country. His ambition has proved contagious. "Ever since he came," says one facultyman, "the university has been in a ferment. There is a terrific amount of soul-searching going on. People are looking at themselves in Litchfield's mirror."

When Pitt's trustees picked Litchfield in the summer of 1955, they were well aware that the university needed a face lifting. Though it had long been doing a competent job, it was, in comparison with other U.S. campuses, a mediocre place in danger of stagnation. Restless and indefatigable, Litchfield taught political science at the University of Michigan, at 33 became General Lucius Clay's civil-administration director in Germany. Later, he took over the Governmental Affairs Institute, a nonprofit research organization, and as a dean at Cornell University, he made the Graduate School of Business and Public Administration one of the most flourishing institutions of its kind in the U.S. But not the least of his assets has been his refreshingly frank way of attacking things he thinks are wrong.

Not Good Enough. He has certainly been frank about Pitt. "Our teaching," says he, "is not as good as it should be. In fact, some of it is poor. Also our research is not as good as it should be. There have been many bad comments about our dearth of research." Except for medicine, none of the university's eleven professional schools is in the front rank, and in spite of Pitt's traditional emphasis on engineering, it lags far behind its neighbor Carnegie Tech as a technological school. Adds Litchfield: "Our humanities and natural sciences are fairly strong. But the social sciences are weak. We have been grossly inadequate in our work in anthropology. We are practically starting instruction in the subject now."

Furthermore, says Litchfield, Pitt's library is in wretched shape. While Harvard spends $192 on books per student, Pitt spends only $17. The scholarship program is below par, and there is a shortage of housing. Meanwhile, the university suffers from a severe case of provincialism: only 4% of its 18,000 full-and part-time students come from outside the state.

The Crescendo. Before accepting the chancellorship, Litchfield persuaded his trustees to agree to a long-range, $100 million fund-raising campaign. The university has already taken over the old Schenley Park Hotel, where Lillian Russell was married, and is turning it into a new student social center. It also has the seven Schenley apartment buildings, which will become dormitories. Litchfield has given his faculty a 10% raise, cut from 28 to nine the number of officers reporting to him directly, given Pitt its most streamlined administration in its 169-year history.

But Litchfield's chief goal is to up academic standards. He wants to set up a series of alumni visiting committees, modeled after Harvard's Overseers, to make sure that each school and department is up to snuff. To a large extent, future faculty raises will be on the basis of performance. At the same time, some faculty deadwood will have to be weeded out. "You can't talk about a new standard of quality," says Litchfield, "and not admit that some people cannot rise up to it."

Up at 7 each morning, Litchfield rarely finishes his day's work before midnight. Though he claims that he has not really begun to concentrate on fundraising, he has stirred up enough enthusiasm to bring in $2,000,000 in the last six weeks. Even more important is the new spirit he has generated on his campus. "Things have reached a crescendo," says he. "I've never seen a faculty or board of trustees as enthusiastic for change. It makes all the difference in the world for someone sitting in my seat."

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