26

The Educational
Policies Commission

Staying power in the presidency attracts attention. The longer I served as president of Indiana University, the greater the number of requests I received to take a guiding role in various groups concerned with higher education. Some of the invitations came early in my administration and meant opportunities for me to work with influential leaders in the educational field while at the same time shouldering my share of the profession’s tasks. From the start I had felt an obligation to be a good “educational citizen,” that is, to be concerned with policies, problems, and directions that affected not just Indiana University but also most or all of the higher educational community. The illustrations I have given in the two preceding chapters and the two I give in this and the following chapter should suffice to show the range of service and to suggest its value, in my experience, to the university. Others I omit not invidiously but as victims of ruthless space concerns.

For some reason unknown to me, the National Education Association (NEA) decided in 1943 to revive its Department of Higher Education. I attended the meeting of the NEA in St. Louis that year and wandered into the meeting room where a group of men in higher education were discussing the possible leadership of the revived department. Much to my amazement, before the meeting was concluded I had been elected president of the reestablished organization. The action was surprising for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that I had begun to be active in the work of the American Council on Education (ACE), and the rivalry between George Zook of the ACE and Willard Givens, president of the NEA, although muted, was nonetheless real and well known. However, it proved possible for me to be active in both organizations, and I maintained a relationship with the NEA and its leadership—first with Givens, an Indiana University alumnus, and then with his successor, William G. Carr—for a good many years.

One division of the NEA in those years was quite noted, namely, the Educational Policies Commission. I served first as a member of the commission in 1954 and then as its chairman from 1955 to 1958. Among the eighteen members of the commission during that period were Kenneth E. Oberholtzer, my able vice chairman, Carr, Ruth E. Eckert, Finis Engleman, Virgil Hancher, James R. Killian, Jr., and Eugene Youngert. The secretary, a competent and vigorous leader, was Howard E. Wilson.

The pronouncements of the Educational Policies Commission had traditionally commanded considerable respect and influence in educational circles, and, when this group addressed itself to the priorities for education, the project demanded the very best efforts of all its members and staff. One of the obvious problems in trying to envision the future in higher education is the necessity to think in terms of the resources that will be available. As our group began to look toward the future and discuss the question of how much of the gross national product (GNP) could be devoted to education—particularly higher education—without doing damage to other social needs, I was distressed at the timidity with which we seemed to view this matter. For instance, members of the commission were inclined to think in terms of an increase of between 25 percent and 50 percent on the average for faculty salaries. Something had to be done to raise their sights a bit, and, as a consequence, I asked two of my Indiana University colleagues, John Lewis and George Pinnell, to join with me in a study of what increase in expenditures for salaries was socially and economically possible during the next decade.

This study resulted in the preparation of a paper for private circulation in 1956 to members of the commission and to officers of both the NEA and the ACE entitled “Needs, Resources and Priorities in Higher Education Planning.” Lewis and Pinnell furnished the facts and most of the work in preparing the article; I furnished the enthusiasm and the excuse for its preparation. In the article we called for a doubling of higher-education salaries in constant dollars by 1970 and through careful analysis argued that a substantial percentage increase in the amount of GNP devoted to higher education was feasible and socially desirable. The report, when received by my colleagues in the Education Policies Commission, was something of a blockbuster. They had not dared to think in any such bold terms, but the report did stiffen their resolution somewhat, and in their own final report (1957) they called for a sizable increase:

It is imperative, at the very least, that the total amount spent on salaries, reckoned in stable dollars, should be advanced from 75 to 125 percent within the next 15 years—preferably within the next decade. An average annual increase of 5 to 10 percent in terms of stable dollars between now and 1970—with major emphasis on more than average increases during the early years of the period—is a conservative estimate of what is necessary to attract into teaching a reasonable proportion of the available qualified personnel.¹

At least we increased the ante considerably by our study! The Lewis-Pinnell-Wells study drew heavily upon a study by another Indiana University colleague, Robert Turner. Following the publication of the Educational Policies Commission report in 1957, the Lewis-Pinnell-Wells report was published in the Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors in the autumn of 1957. Predictably, it received nationwide attention. I have reason to believe that it did have considerable influence in the thinking of Americans about the need to raise faculty salaries substantially and that the goal we established of doubling faculty salaries in stable dollars by 1970 was accomplished, and more. Actually our projections, instead of being daring, turned out to be rather conservative. I hope that in my years of association with the NEA, which roughly coincided with my years of even greater activity with the ACE, I helped to smooth the relationship between the two organizations, thereby making them both more effective on behalf of their constituencies.

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1. Educational Policies Commission, Higher Education in a Decade of Decision (National Education Association of the United States, 1957), p. 131.