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All this is supposed to work under a super-coordinating committee, which met last week for the first time. But there is one big trouble: the legislature passed the plan as simple law, not a constitutional amendment, so future political meddling is inevitable.
Dead Level. The problem of all U.S. state universities in the 1960s is to keep mass education from becoming mob education. It is a problem created in part by state universities themselves, who made their motto "The state is our campus," opened their doors wide, and inside (along with the valuable) taught fatuous courses from baton twirling to picnic packing. The result is vast educational empires, and an impulse towards empire building. Too often, state universities become amiable places with imprecise standards. Many a state university still fuzzily follows one of John Dewey's fuzzier utterances: "Since growth is the characteristic of life, education is all one with growing; it has no end beyond itself."
Letting boys and girls in to grow as they will, many state universities often ignore the special needs of the bright. The true honors society is the football team; the real classroom is the fraternity house.
Opportunity. As enrollment goes up, state universities now have a chance to grow up—not just to grow. All they have to do is grab the chance. Across the country, their entrance standards are rising. Only five states (Kansas. Montana. Ohio. Oklahoma, Wyoming) still require state universities to admit all high school graduates. Admittance tests are even becoming fashionable. And the great sleeper in U.S. education is the phenomenal rise of public two-year junior colleges.* which now enroll 25% of all college students (40% in California).
These low-cost† schools spell opportunity for millions, and they also help state universities escape their four-year rhythm: the high cost of admitting inept freshmen, then weeding out and flunking out. leaving upper classes half filled. By sending on only their ablest students, two-year colleges can lessen the pressure on universities.
Diversity. The way state universities can beat the numbers game is through such expansion of higher education on lower levels. With better students, they can set better standards, and many already have. Impressive honors programs have spread to 87 public campuses under the influence of the Carnegie-financed Inter-University Committee on the Superior Student. At Michigan State and Wayne State, separate colleges are devoted to gifted students. Honors courses have galvanized jaded professors—and suddenly given dullards a glimpse of "what a university stands for."
Actually, the standard possible for state universities was never invisible: it was always there on the graduate level. While panty raiders giggled under the elms, the labs hummed with research by scholars. After fattening U.S. farms, state universities went on to pioneer the TV tube (Purdue), discover streptomycin (Rutgers), develop anticoagulants (Wisconsin), invent the cyclotron (California), provide instrumentation for U.S. satellites (State University of Iowa) and give sex a new name (Dr. Kinsey's) to conjure with (Indiana).