Remarks to a Delegation From the American Alumni Council.

Congressman Boggs, ladies and gentlemen:

I am very proud this morning to be able to welcome this distinguished group to the White House.

You really should know that this Cabinet Room is called the Alumni Room of the White House, because at this table the heads of our departments and agencies gather together the roster of various alma maters that is quite imposing. We have Rhodes Scholars and numerous Phi Beta Kappas and former deans of Harvard and graduates of Yale and men from Princeton and California, and neither last nor least, Southwest Texas State Teachers College.

We have in this country today some 20 million alumni of 2,500 accredited colleges and universities. The men and women who have had the benefit of a higher education have for all of their lives, I think, a very special responsibility, not only to the colleges from which they graduated but to the country of which they are citizens.

A great President, Woodrow Wilson, once said that every man sent out from the university should be a man of his Nation, as well as a man of his time. And today, the central challenge to our society is the challenge of education at every level. We are facing up to that challenge at this moment in the House of Representatives, where all day and perhaps part of tomorrow, we will consider the most comprehensive, the most far-reaching, the most unique education bill to ever be considered by this Nation.

I think history will soon forget both the objections and the objectors who oppose the marshalling of our strength to meet our educational needs. History, I think, will only honor those who answer yes to the education of American youth.

On this question, I firmly believe that America is not a divided Nation. I believe that there is a great and a growing will in every section of this country and in every State of this Union to put the past behind us and to get on with the job of supporting and strengthening American education.

I am proud that one of the most constructive and most useful forces in this educational effort is that of our alumni. Last year, 1,100 colleges and universities of the American Alumni Council received nearly $250 million contributed to them by their former students. More than 60 million of this was contributed through annual giving programs. This is good--and it could be better.

I understand that, on the average, only one in five alumni contributes, although in some institutions participation reaches as high as 70 percent.

Another heartening factor is the support that responsible American business concerns are giving to higher education. Last year 5 million of alumni contributions were matched by another 5 million of corporate matching grants. I believe that Dr. Malcolm, whose company is doing so much to foster alumni support of higher education, speaks for all American enterprise when he says, "We believe that education is very much the businessman's business."

So I am happy this morning to join in congratulating the organizations of both Columbia College and Stanford University on their selection as the award winners for 1964 and 1965. I hope these outstanding organizations, and others like them all across this land, will be in the forefront of our accelerating effort to improve and to advance the quality of education for all of our people in every region and at every level of education.

I spent some time this morning reviewing appointments, and I observed that a substantial number of the career men that have come through the ranks and we have tried to promote in the last few months were men who had excellent educational backgrounds, and their real rise is due a great deal to the quality of the education they received.

We have a good many teachers, members of college faculties, that have patriotically left their posts to come here and help their Government when it needed them.

One member the other day, I think, observed that he didn't know whether a certain business spot in Government was a place for a professor or not, and the professor took umbrage at it. And when he came in to tell me the story--I kind of had to referee it--I said, "Why don't you just tell him to keep his shirt on and cool off, that you didn't really have any Harvard, Yale, or Princeton professor in mind when you raised that question; that what you were really thinking about was a former Mexican school teacher."

So this is a very eventful day for me to be here, as a graduate of a favorite school of mine in Texas, as a teacher myself, as one who has spent most of 15 or 16 months trying to envision the day when we could commit our national resources to the improvement of the minds of our children and the bodies of our people. We are sitting here very tense today trying to see what the product will be. Since this Nation was born they have always found various ways and means and reasons to divert us and to hold down our national effort in the field of education, and I think outside of really preserving our country, defending our country, there is not anything as important to the Nation and to freedom as the education of our citizens.

Really, whether we are able to defend this Nation or not is going to depend primarily on whether we have the training and the brain power and the education to match the knowledge and the training and the education of other nations.

So I congratulate you and I thank you for having let me be a part of this very laudable undertaking.