Remarks Delivered by Telephone to a Joint Convention of Education Leaders

Doctor Cornette, Doctor Jensen, college presidents and leaders of higher education:

I want to thank you very much for your kind words and the citation you just referred to. I wish I could be there with you this morning, but I do have a busy day here. That is impossible.

Eric Hoffer said not long ago: "America is the only new thing in history." He touched on a theme that has been sounded by many observers, both native and foreign. But what really makes America new? That is what we want to find out. What makes America new? What makes America different?

The answers range far afield--and sometimes far astray: Skyscrapers are something different about America; supermarkets and superhighways; mass production and mass consumption; the melting pot; rock-and-roll; chewing gum and soft drinks.

But a better answer to what makes America new or what makes us different it seems to me, lies there with you this morning in your meeting; and in the purpose to which you leaders of our education are dedicated.

In England, 5 percent of the young men and women go to college. In Germany, 8 percent. In France, 16 percent. In the Soviet Union, 24 percent.

In America, 43 percent-compared to 5 percent in England, 8 in Germany, 16 in France, 24 in the Soviet Union. In the different America--43 percent and it is still climbing.

Seven percentage points it has climbed in the last 4 years of which I am very, very proud.

For the first time in history, for the first time anywhere on earth, here in this different America is a land where the young person can set his sights on college with the real hope and expectation of getting there.

There is a world of social change summed up in this one sentence: More than half of the young Americans in college today-more than half of them--are the sons and daughters of men who never went to college.

No slogan of democracy, no battle cry of freedom is more stirring than the American parent's simple statement which all of you have heard so many times: "I want my child to go to college."

The workingman wants his son to be a doctor; the salesman wants his daughter to be a teacher; the teacher wants her child to be a reporter; the housewife wants her boy to be President. She had better think twice about that one.

That rising ambition is one of the great stories of America today. In recent years the Federal Government has made many major commitments--I am glad to say--to help fulfill those ambitions which I have just recounted:

--In the last 2 years, our Federal assistance to colleges and universities has doubled: from $2 billion to $4 billion in 2 years. The Federal budget was just a little over $4 billion--the entire Federal budget--when I came to Washington in Herbert Hoover's administration. But it is up from $2 billion to $4 billion in the last 2 years.

--Federal programs to help college students have increased by 1,000 percent-scholarships, loans, and work-study grants: from $147 million in 1965--$147 million 2 years ago--to $1.5 billion this year--$1.5 billion to help college students.

Our commitment, therefore, is reasonably clear. I said shortly after I took the oath of President that one of my first goals would be to see that every boy and girl in this country got all the education that he or she could take.

We want every young man and woman to have all the education they can absorb.

But that commitment goes with a very high price tag: --For today, more than 5 million young people already are enrolled in colleges and universities.

--In 10 years, there are going to be twice that 5 million--or 10 million. This is equivalent to increasing enrollments by 50 percent in every single one of our existing colleges and universities--increasing them by 50 percent in 10 years-and then establishing 1,000 new colleges with 2,500 students each.

Even as the students crowd into the colleges and universities, the cost of educating them is still growing.

In these days in Washington, that is one thing that is giving us a lot of trouble: the increased costs of the things we are doing.

By 1975, unless we can ease this financial pinch some way, the annual gap--the gap I am speaking of, between income and expenses in higher education, will be as much as $9 billion.

Yet, as we weigh these costs, we will still hear ringing in our ears all the time the demand of the American parent: "I want my child to go to college."

Then I think, as leaders, you and I must ask ourselves, "What kind of a college do I want my child to go to?"

Even if we meet the challenge of quantity, what about quality?

Will that child be taught by an experienced qualified professor--or by an untrained assistant?

Will most of the professors be Ph.D.'s-or only a minority that have that training?

Will college offer a challenge to the student--or will it simply be a way to pass the time while waiting to grow up?

The decisions must come first from you who are leaders of higher education. You must do the planning and the deciding. And that is one reason why I want to talk to you so much today.

College leaders must decide how to use resources more wisely. And that decision may--and I think will--upset some of the cherished old traditions.

Therefore as one who wants our era to be remembered as the education era, this morning I would urge you education leaders to:

One, experiment with new ways to extend the reach of the teacher without short changing the student.

If this Congress does nothing else but pass the public television bill and if we can concentrate in this country and around the world the interests of educators in educational television, there will not only be reform but there will be real revolution in education.

Again, I think you ought to seek more support from private sources--and here I would say especially business because business benefits so directly from higher education; and the better the education generally the better the profits.

Second, we talk a lot about States' rights. Now, this is a right and an obligation as well. The States must make some hard-and courageous--decisions. They don't like to make them. But they must make them.

In the last 10 years, the Federal share of total spending for education has already jumped from 16 percent to 24 percent--not quite doubled, but almost. But the share of support from State and local government has remained virtually unchanged and hasn't jumped a bit.

So some States and communities are carrying only a part of the burden that they must bear. The courage to tax for education should not be limited to lawmakers at the national level. It does take courage to tax.

You look at the polls on any fellow who recommends, who has enough courage to recommend that you do increase taxes in order to avoid inflation, and you will see what happens to that fellow if he takes the courage to recommend it.

A man more interested in his poll than he is in his people is not going to recommend the taxes for education.

So you must pick your leaders with courage and they must do what is right in the knowledge that ultimately the people will sustain them.

Finally, higher education in the next 10 years, I think, will call for decisions from the Federal Government--momentous decisions-decisions from the President and from the Congress.

We are already--I think in the last 4 years--committed to do our part and a great deal more than anyone ever felt we would be doing 4 years ago. But what will be the size and what will be the shape of the Federal commitment for the future?

Well, we are going to have to find answers to some of these difficult questions. And you are going to have to help us provide the leadership to find the answers and the resolutions to those answers.

First: How can the Federal Government best build on the existing programs we already have to help students pay their way, to help colleges build facilities, to help pay the bills for research and graduate education? That is one of the difficult questions.

The second one: How can we find better ways to develop excellence in higher education? Dr. Gardner, who is in my Cabinet, is constantly talking about developing excellence. I am saying if that is high on your agenda of difficult questions to be answered, how can you--you leaders of higher education-find better ways to develop excellence in higher education?

Third, and I think really quite important: How can we find ways to help colleges and universities with the basic costs of higher education?

The time to begin looking at these difficult questions is yesterday. It is now, not tomorrow. I hope that before you leave there today you will enlist as an active participant in trying to help us answer some of these difficult questions.

Just down the road in 1976--it will be 200 years from 1776--we will mark the 200th anniversary of our American Revolution.

I have just gone through historic Virginia. I don't know whether you read about my being at Yorktown or not. I am sure you observed I attended church Sunday.

But as I went through this revolutionary country I was thinking about not the 200 years since 1776, but the next 100 years--the third century.

I am already asking some of America's most thoughtful men and women to draw up a blueprint for our third century--for the next Ion years--and this is going to be an important mammoth undertaking. I am going to ask them to give us a list of specific goals for the years to come--and an accounting of what they will cost.

So let us declare today three goals to be achieved before we even begin our third century in 1976:

By 1976, let us raise from half--from 50 percent--to two-thirds--66 2/3 percent--the proportion of high school graduates who enter college. That is a goal we can reach; not just half of the high school graduates going to college, let us make a step and take on a program of seeing that two-thirds of them get to college.

By 1976, let us strike down the last financial barriers to higher education. Let us make it a national policy that you don't have to be born rich to acquire training in this country, to acquire educational resources and to get a college education.

Let the father of a child who is born in a poor cabin with a purple vine growing around the door have an opportunity to get a college education just as the son of America's richest philanthropist.

By 1976, let us do these things--without any decline in the quality, or as Dr. Gardner would say, in the excellence of higher education.

And let us say to each other today and to the Nation: We have only begun to show mankind how broad our vision is--and how far we plan to go.

So let us get answers to these difficult questions:

--How can the Government build on existing programs?

--How can we find better ways to develop excellence in higher education?

--How can we find ways to help colleges and universities with the costs of higher education?

And between now and 1976 let us raise from half to two-thirds the proportion of high school graduates who enter college.

Let us strike down the last financial barriers.

And let us do these things without any decline in the quality of higher education.

Those are goals worth embracing because as a leader in education--and as a leader in government in the early days of my State--one of our great men said that, "Education is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator that free men recognize and it is the only ruler that free men will accept."

So those of you who are the leaders in the educational field have some goals and have some objectives. I want you to work with me and I want to work with you, not to get another plaque or another award, but to get these goals that I have just outlined realized in the time allotted to us.

I am sorry I cannot be there with you today. I am seeing Ambassador Bunker and General Westmoreland, and am having a lunch with Secretary Rusk and others.

I do have engagements that made that impossible. But I am happy that you are interested and I am grateful for your help.

Thank you very much.