In Defense of Higher Education

Abstract

O N FEBRUARY 6, I94I, Brigadier General Hershey said that every care must be exercised to prevent a condition in which the personnel of colleges would appear to the general public as a group which has special privileges. Leaders of higher education have been loyal to this principle-so loyal, in fact, that they have forgotten that training can be accomplished outside academic halls more easily than can education. In brief, educators have made little defense of the traditional purposes of higher education in their eagerness to do the bidding of the armed forces of our Government. There may have been no reasonable alternative, but we are in danger of forgetting what George A. Gullette, of the University of Toledo, pointed out so clearly when he said: Totalitarian governments require many trained but few educated men. Democracies require many of both. There now comes a new challenge to higher and secondary education from an unexpected source. This time it comes from the educators themselves. The Educational Policies Commission recommends that seventeen-year-old high-school students who have reached senior standing be admitted to college and be permitted in one year to earn a high-school diploma and credit for a year in college. This proposal has received the blessing of the President of the American Council on Education. It adds fuel to the fire started by a few college and university presidents who have suddenly decided that the senior year in high school has been a waste of time and that it may well be eliminated. It is interesting to observe that these presidents are among the educators who in the past have insisted that not less than four years of pre-professional work is desirable for admission to professional schools. They are also