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Page 7 text:
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Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is. perhaps, the end of the beginning. Churchill
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Page 6 text:
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Among those of us charged with sustaining and nurtur- ing an appropriate system of higher education, there has been much concern and debate over where we are going, what our responsibilities should be toward the future, and what must be done to insure our future viability. We who are associated with this remarkable university — founded by a man of extraordinary vision, Asa Packer — naturally have Lehigh ' s self-interest as our primary focus. But Lehigh cannot be set apart from other colleges and universities for, in truth, their success and our own are interwoven by way of the attitudes, requirements and laws that our culture imposes upon us. In recent years, higher education has sustained chinks in its armor. There are those who say I can make more as a plumber than as a teacher, therefore I elect to be a plumber. And there are those who say that, whatevei its merits, college no longer can guarantee lucrative positions for all those upon whom it bestows degrees. So our Ameri- can colleges and universities, which called most of the shots until the turbulent demise of the Sixties, now appear to be called upon to justify themselves. But unanimous agree- ment on college education or any other subject is a rare commodity — rarer still in a pluralistic society such as ours — and such sniping at colleges and universities should chal- lenge us, even if it hardly surprises us. Lehigh ' s defense might well be that it is a special kind of university. And universities that are special in terms of accomplishments, prestige, and success of their graduates face special responsibilities — for they are, in a sense, the elite. And Lehigh is clearly among them. When you get below the size level of a Harvard or a Yale, Lehigh is a very good place to be, is the way one of our professors summed it up. Consider the fact that Lehigh received 300 applications for a teaching vacancy in the biology depart- ment, and twice that many for a post in English. What this means is that Lehigh can do very well in terms of ob- taining the best possible people for its faculty. I can assure you that today we are competing successfully with Prince- ton, Berkeley, et al, in securing exemplary people. Lehigh can point to the fact that 85 percent of its pro- fessors with the rank of assistant professor or above hold Ph.D.s, and that they comprise 70 percent of the faculty. Where the national ratio of students to faculty is typically 16 to 1, Lehigh has a faculty member for every 11 students. At last count, we had 417 faculty members as well as over 100 full-time equivalent faculty — including graduate st udents who are teaching or engaged in significant research. All of these indicators point toward excellence in education at Lehigh. It used to be that Lehigh talked about its success in the job market, and we may still do that with justification. The university continues to provide a disproportionate share of the people who manage and control business, or who other- wise are engaged at the highest levels of their professions. The demand for our graduates continues to be strong. The engineering job scare caused by the cancellation of con- tracts in the aerospace industry barely affected Lehigh be- cause few of our graduates have been involved in that area of engineering. The emphasis in engineering may be changing to the biomedical area, or towards ecology, but the demand for the kind of engineers we produce will continue to remain strong. At Lehigh we mean it when we say we do not train engineers. Instead, we educate students through an en- gineering — or business, or arts and science — curriculum. The difference is that the individual should leave here with the adaptability to perform whatever job has to be done during his working years. When you consider that the ex- plosive growth of knowledge, which, when measured by the number of books, articles and technical papers, doubles every ten years, the significance of the Lehigh theory of education becomes apparent. The other explosion is that of relevance, and we are closely attuned to the changing needs of our students. We know that the tradition of classical philosophy will always have its place, but we also try to offer more pragmatic courses as well. So I am saying that Lehigh is in an especially strong position. In a society which still places a high priority upon college education for large numbers of people, despite the demurrers, it is natural enough that there will be a wide range of quality and specialization among institutions of higher learning. During the coming years it may well be that there will be those institutions that cannot survive, but I can assure you Lehigh will not be among them. As of the fall of 1972, there were 2,665 public and private col- leges in the United States. It ' s not easy to envision all those colleges making the grade, and good wishes won ' t save them. There are those like Lehigh with acknowledged excellence, or distinctive personalities, and they may well have the best chances at survival. We are discussing Lehigh and the elite university. The term elite university is not one of my choosing, but one long used among educators. Elite university might be simply defined as one that attracts a large proportion of students of outstanding intellectual ability. If we are to accept that definition, Lehigh falls well within the higher echelon of the elite. Excellence of scholastic performance is Lehigh ' s strongest point, and that is widely recognized. And yet, perhaps out of modesty, Lehigh people tend not to think of themselves as elite. Others recognize our unique standing. For example, we continue to attract large numbers of well-qualified students while others face the concurrent problems of empty seats and deficit budgets. Lehigh had an unexpected over-acceptance for the fall of 1973 — 1,030 students, the second-largest class in our history — and you will find here neither empty seats nor red ink. If we are, in fact, an elite university — and I believe we are — then we must continue to provide for our outstanding students an opportunity for education that is of excep- tionally high quality, both for the benefit of the indi- vidual and for the progress that science and technology require. More than that, however, we must on a higher level prepare our students to work toward a more humane, just, and civilized society, in the words of Professor T. R. McConnell, founder of the Center for Research and De- velopment in Higher Education. One of McConnell ' s former students, Sir Eric Ashby, elaborated on the societal ramifications of the elite uni- versity in a 1971 essay. He wrote: All civilized countries . . . depend upon a thin clear stream of excellence to pro- vide new ideas, new techniques, and the statesmanlike treatment of complex problems. Without the renewal of this excellence, a nation can drop to mediocrity in a generation. If we are excellent, then, it follows that we have a moral obligation to continue to provide that thin, clear stream of excellence without which our nation will sink into a morass of mediocrity. I can assure you that Lehigh is pro- viding, and will continue to demand, excellence. From the 1974 President ' s message
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