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75-27,260

FAVERMAN, Gerald Alden, 1935HIGHER EDUCATION IN MICHIGAN, 1958 to 1970
[with] VOLUME 2 AND 3: INTERVIEWS.
Michigan State University, Ph.D., 1975
Education, higher

Xerox University Microfilms,

©

Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106

1975

GERALD ALDEN FAVERMAN

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

HIGHER EDUCATION IN MICHIGAN,
1958 to 1970
. VOLUME 1
By
Gerald Alden Faverman

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Administration and Higher Education
1975

ABSTRACT
HIGHER EDUCATION IN MICHIGAN,
1958 to 1970
By
Gerald Alden Faverman

From 1958 to 197 0, Michigan higher education grew
most rapidly.

Its student population increased 500 percent

and its state appropriation base 300 percent.

In this

period there was debate on the constitution and govern­
ance issues of higher education.

These issues were the

following: 1) Institutional autonomy versus centralized
control; 2) Statewide coordination versus voluntary coopera­
tion; 3) The designation of institutional roles and the
restriction of programs to fit these roles versus the
encouragement of a comprehensive range of structures and
programs devised and articulated through the democratic
political process.
These social challenges raise questions about
restructuring and reforming the higher education delivery
system in Michigan.

The debate was couched in the following

terms: How does the state provide: 1) Increased access,
choice, and equal opportunity; 2) A balance between supply
and demand for technical and professional manpower;
3) Flexibility and adaptability of institutions and programs

Gerald Alden Faverman

to meet changing demands and circumstances of society; and
4) State leadership, support, and direction for these
obj ectives.
An historical study of the following reports, the
Survey of Higher Education in Michigan^ conducted by John Dale
2

Russell, the Citizens Committee on Higher Education Report,
the State Plan for Higher Education in Michigan,-^ and the

proceedings of the Constitutional Convention and all relevant
public documents, was conducted.
One of the continuing problems of contemporary history
is the paucity of published materials that reflect the compet­
itive interplay of personalities and passions that result in
the determination of public policy.

This dissertation

attempted to extend the public record by conducting 26 indepth interviews with members of the decision elite for higher
education in Michigan.

This approach has not been used before

for a specific area of public policy concern on a state level.
It has the advantages of extending the historical literature
by reaching those men of action whose activities have left
them little time to write, and of demonstrating the value of
studies of public policy through oral history techniques.
This study demonstrates an amazing unanimity amongst
all participants about what had occurred.

This shows the

great love of the people for higher education in Michigan
because of the force of historical tradition and the

Gerald Alden Faverman

noteworthy success of higher education in the fulfilling of
social aspirations of the citizenry.
Since higher education during this period met the
social objectives serving as a most effective mechanism
for social change, there was little support for statewide
coordination and control through a higher education board.
Further, policy makers were satisfied with the results of
policies that encouraged the entrepreneurial energy of
individual institutions.
The strong attitudes for the preservation of local
autonomy and regionalism further created the climate that
permitted Michigan's baccalaureate institutions to have a
constitutionally autonomous status and permitted de facto
autonomy for Michigan's 29 community colleges.
1
John Dale Russell, The Final Report of the Survey
of Higher Education in Michigan, Michigan Legislative Study
Committee on Higher Education, September 1958.
2

Report of the Citizens Committee on Higher Education,
Harold T. Smith, Executive Director (Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1965).
3
Michigan Department of Education, The State Plan for
Higher Education, Harold T. Smith (Lansing, Michigan, 1969).

DEDICATION
To my wife, Fran, and my sons, David and Paul,
whose love and encouragement have strengthened me over
the days of this exciting journey.

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Michigan has been a state open to talent and
receptive to newcomers.

On the long journey there have been

many warm friends and considerate teachers whose affection
and counsel have been much appreciated by my wife Fran and
myself.
To

.. . Jim

Hooker and Dick Featherstone, who nurtured me

and counseled me in this massive undertaking.
To

.. . Van

Johnson, whose encouragement, friendship and

support pushed me on to complete my graduate
studies, and Max Raines, my major professor who
also was unsparing with his advice, counsel and
assistance.
To . . . Mike Magen, whose support, encouragement, and
confidence helped me to achieve the task that I
had set out on.
To

.. . Senators Beadle, Zollar, Lane, Huffman, and Nelson,
and Representatives Engstrom, Copeland, Ford,
George F. Montgomery, whose patience with a novice,
and whose example of commitment to the public
interest for higher education encouraged me to try

to explain the Michigan record, which I had begun
to comprehend while working for them.
To . . . Chuck Sturtz and Bill Roege whose friendship and
insights have been a joy and comfort through all
the days.
To . . . Ira Polley, John Porter, Ladd Dombrowski, Ed Pfau,
and Jack Banning of the State Department of
Education, whose advice, counsel, and friendship
in the period of my apprenticeship in the Department
created my interest and curiosity about the con­
struction of public policy in education.
To .

. The 26 gracious individuals, whose willingness to
be interviewed assisted me so materially in expanding
the historical record.

To .

. Jay Alexander, Carol Koch, Carol Bielinski, and
Robin Retzloff for their assistance in the enormous
effort of compiling this dissertation.

To .

. My friend and physician, Dr. Mary Ryan, who taught
me patience and helped me to find peace and serenity.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF T A B L E S ..................................... .viii
LIST OF F I G U R E S ...................................

i*

Chapter
I. THE P R O B L E M ..................................

1

Framing the Questions
.......................
The Agenda of Higher Education Issues
. .. .

1
5

II. SETTING THE S C E N E .............................. 14
G e o g r a p h y ...................................... 14
P o l i t i c s ........................................ 22
III.

M E T H O D O L O G Y .....................................42
Introduction to Oral H i s t o r y ................... 42
Executing the S t u d y ............................53

IV.

INITIATIVES FOR C H A N G E .......................... 69
The Constitutional Convention
...............
69
85
The Survey of Higher Education, 1958 ........
The Citizens Committee on Higher Education . . 106
Report of the Advisory Committee on
University Branches
....................... 118
The State Plan for Higher Education
in M i c h i g a n ................................. 132
Constitutional Amendments
................... 142

V.

A S Y N T H E S I S ................................... 156
A Summary of Attitudes ....................... 156
The Future A g e n d a ............................. 211

APPENDICES
Appendix

I.

Appendix II.

Letter of June 7, 1968 from the
Governor to the Superintendent
of Public Instruction
............

216

The Goals of the State Plan for
Higher Education ...................

219

v

Appendix III.

Names and Occupations of Board
Members of Private Colleges . . . .

226

Adrian College
................. 226
Albion College
................. 228
Alma C o l l e g e .................... 230
Andrews University ............ 232
Aquinas College ................. 235
Calvin College
................. 236
Concordia LutheranJunior College
239
Davenport College of Business
. . 240
Detroit College of Business . . . 241
Detroit College of L a w .......... 242
Detroit Institute of Technology . 243
Hillsdale College .............. 245
Hope C o l l e g e .................... 246
Kalamazoo College .............. 249
Lawrence Institute of Technology 252
Madonna College ................. 253
Marygrove College ..............
254
Mercy C o l l e g e .................... 256
The Merrill-Palmer Institute
Corporation.................... 257
Nazareth College
..............
258
Northwood Institute ............ 260
Olivet College
................. 262
Saint Mary's C o l l e g e ............ 264
Siena Heights C o l l e g e ............ 265
Spring Arbor College
.......... 268
Suomi C o l l e g e .................... 270
University of Detroit .......... 272
John Wesley C o l l e g e .............. 273
Appendix IV.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Election of the State Board
of E d u c a t i o n ....................... 275
......................................

276

VOLUME 2
Interviews
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

John B. S w a i n s o n ........................
G. Mennen W i l l i a m s ......................
Edward L. C u s h m a n ......................
Ira P o l l e y ...............................
James Fa r n s w o r t h ........................

A
A
A
A
A

1
21
46
75
118

6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.

Robert D. C a h o w ...........................
James W. M i l l e r ...........................
Robert E. W a l d r o n .........................
Garland L a n e ..............................
Neil S t a e b l e r .............................
William G. M i l l i k e n .......................
Malcolm T. C a r r o n .........................
John W. P o r t e r ...........................
Charles L. A n s p a c h .......................
William A. R y a n ...........................

A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A

145
172
202
225
250
283
298
318
352
388

VOLUME 3
Interviews
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.

John X. J a m r i c h ...........................
David H. P o n i t z ...........................
Robben W. F l e m i n g .........................
Frank D. B e a d l e ...........................
Stephen S. N i s b e t .........................
Victor F. S p a t h e l f .......................
Leonard W o o d c o c k .........................
Milton E. M u e l d e r .........................
George R o m n e y ..............................
John A. H a n n a h ...........................
Harlan H. H a t c h e r .........................

vii

A 409
A 444
A 490
A 524
A 558
A 607
A 645
A 673
A 712
A739
A 776

LIST OF TABLES
1.

Population Growth and Source
Growth in Michigan, 1870-1960 ..............

20

2.

Summary of Vote on G o v e r n o r ...................

25

3.

Former Legislatures ...........................

26

4.

Comparison of Agency Requests, Governor’s
Recommendation, Legislative Action and
Actual Expenditures .........................

37

5.

Michigan B i r t h s .................................. 157

6.

Four-Year Colleges and Universities
Fiscal-Year Equated Student
Enrollments .................

160

7.

Physical Facilities of Colleges ...............

161

8.

Four-Year Colleges and Universities
Selected Years General Fund
Appropriations
.............................

163

9.

Higher Education Capital Outlay
Expenditure and Enrollment
Fall H e a d c o u n t ............................... 164

viii

1

.

LIST OF FIGURES
1.

Guide to Discussion of Questions
S u b m i t t e d ........................................ 58

2.

Proposed Constitutional Amendments,
1964-1970 .....................................

150

CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM
Framing the Questions
Michigan has a proud record in higher education
extending back to the period when the state was a sparselypopulated Territory.

In past generations the people of the

State of Michigan have accomplished prodigious feats in
higher education, building a network of institutions without
peer in the land.

It is the intention of this dissertation

to attempt to determine and explain the nature of these
higher education enterprises in Michigan.
This explanation will involve the following points:
1) A determination of the public policy for higher education
in Michigan in the period from 1958 to 1970;

2) An explana­

tion of how the system was constructed and what the forces
were that created the public policy so favorable to higher
education in Michigan;

3) A determination of the real agenda

of political issues, aspirational goals and institutional
objectives;

4) A clarification of the public debate, strip­

ping away the rhetoric that has beclouded these concerns;
and 5) An examination and explanation of the reasons for the
uniqueness of Michigan's devotion and support for higher
education.
1

2
It is the hope of the author that by understanding
the past we may effectively meet the challenges and oppor­
tunities awaiting us in the next generation.
One of the continuing problems of contemporary
history is the paucity of published materials that reflect
the competitive interplay of personalities and passions and
explicate the compromises and decisions so starkly presented
in the official reports.

The historian working in earlier

periods has the advantage of memoirs, autobiographies,
correspondence and private papers that are rarely available
to those concerned with more contemporary periods.
Hence, this dissertation attempted to extend the
public record by conducting 26 in-depth interviews with
members of the decision elite for higher education in
Michigan.

This approach, which has not been utilized before

for a specific area of public policy concern on a state level,
has the following advantages:

It extends the historical

literature by reaching those men of action whose activities
have left them little time to write.

It demonstrates the

value of studies of public policy utilizing oral history
techniques, for it is the conviction of the author that
studies of public policy for health, housing, energy,
elementary and secondary education, and the environment on
the state and national level would be of immense value to
future historians.

Further studies of these types can

improve the public debate over social issues and thus

3
strengthen our legislative and democratic procedures bystudying public policy determination in a more rational
and lucid manner than now possible.

This study of higher

education in Michigan might also encourage similar studies
in other states.
It is the intention of this dissertation to explain
what we have done in higher education in Michigan, why we
have done it, and what remains to be done to enhance the
system for future years.
Higher education has, over the last 17 years, been
a source of study, concern and controversy.

This study

proposes to describe: 1) the historical, sociological,
economic, and political forces in the period from 1958 to
197 0 in Michigan that created the supportive climate for
rapid enrollment expansion; 2) the creation of the new
institutions of higher education; and 3) the establishment
of new programs and services.
The reports and documents relating to higher educa­
tion management and its coordination, authority,

\nd control

will also be studied to ascertain the real agenda of public
concerns.

The reports and studies to be considered are the

Survey of Higher Education in Michigan'*' conducted by
John Dale Russell and his associates under sponsorship of
i

John Dale Russell, The Final Report of the Survey
of Higher Education in Michigan, Michigan Legislative Study
Committee on Higher Education, September 1958,

4
the Michigan Legislative Study Committee on Higher Education,
The final report by Russell was published in September, 1958.
This study, containing 45 major recommendations, was the
most significant of the reports because of its political
auspices and the technical expertise.
The second report is that of the Citizens Committee
on Higher Education^ which was issued in March of 1965 and
contained about 40 recommendations.

This report appeared

at the beginning of the impressive expansion of higher educa­
tion in the mid-1960's, especially for junior and community
colleges.

This report was influential on the third major

report to be considered.
The third report to be considered will be the State
7.

Plan for Higher Education in Michigan

published in

February, 1970, which contained 38 specific goals, mainly
directed toward structural questions and with lesser concern
about future goals and objectives.
The subsidiary report of the Davis Committee^ issued
in 1964 concerned the entire question of branch campuses and
O

^Report of Citizens Committee on Higher Education,
Harold T. Smith, Executive Director (Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1965).
3
Michigan Department of Education, The State Plan for
Higher Education, Harold T. Smith (Lansing, Michigan, 1969).
4
Michigan Coordinating Council for Public Higher
Education, Report of the Advisory Committee on University
Branches, (Lansing, Michigan, December, 1964).

specifically the Michigan State University branch at
Rochester and the University of Michigan branch at Flint.
This also will be evaluated.

This less known report

hardened attitudes that prevented optimal cooperation
between the universities, Legislature, and the State Board
of Education.
The study then proposes to analyze the conclusions
and recommendations of the Michigan Constitutional Convention
1961-62, isolating the issues that have continued to be a
source of great vexation surrounding Article VIII, five of
whose nine sections relate to higher education.
The Agenda of Higher Education Issues
Since the period of marked institutional growth
within the state's higher education system is largely at an
end, Michigan higher education in the foreseeable future is
likely to be characterized by stable or possibly declining
enrollments and programs.

This will increase demands on

institutions to change internally and externally and thus
accelerate the statewide debate on reorganization, restruc­
turing and reform in higher education.
These policy questions can more clearly be understood
and solved by a study of the historical basis of these issues
identifying and placing these issues in their historical and
public policy context.

These issues have classically been

framed in the following context: 1) Institutional autonomy
versus centralized control; 2) Statewide coordination versus

6
voluntary cooperation; 3) The designation of institutional
roles and the restriction of programs to fit these roles versus
the encouragement of a comprehensive range of structures and
programs devised and articulated through the democratic polit­
ical process.

In addition to these broad issues are the issues

of a more social nature, for example, how does the state pro­
vide: 1) Increased access, choice, and equal opportunity; 2) A
balance between supply and demand for technical and profes­
sional manpower; 3) Flexibility and adaptability of institu­
tions and programs to meet changing demands and circumstances
of society; and 4) State leadership, support, and direction
for these objectives.
Based on the author’s experience in state government
during the late sixties, as well as a preliminary review of
primary documents, several underlying issues appeared paramount
in shaping the social and political context for higher education
during the I960’s.

The author believes that a more useful under­

standing of the public policy issues would be categorized as
societal issues, aspirational issues, and institutional issues.
There are three major societal issues:
1)

The necessity to broaden Michigan’s economic base

by creating a diversified industry.

From 1940 on it was

clear to astute observers that Michigan's dependence on the
automotive industry was no more sound than its earlier
dependence on the fur trade or lumbering.

A state that was

a one-economy state was subject to too many downturns, com­
pared to mixed-economy states with a broad base of

7
diversified industries.

Hopefully, one of the mechanisms to

create that was to develop a trained manpower pool that would
draw, encourage and nurture high-skill industries to the state.
2) The use and mobilization of higher education as a
resource to meet the Soviet challenge to American supremacy.
It was a tremendous shock to the American sense of pride in
the supremacy of our social system and our industry when the
Soviet Union placed its Sputnik into orbit on October 4, 1957.
This caused a tremendous national debate about what was
deficient with American life, education, and technology,
compared to the Soviets.

The Soviet education system stressed

technology and hard sciences and investment in state-supported
research.
3) The use of education as a social engine for inte^
grating the disadvantaged into the good life of the middle
class was another social issue.

A crucial element in American

history has been the religious belief in progress.

Americans

have always believed, perhaps because of the frontier experi­
ence and because of the opportunities that existed in the rich
lands opened up in the modern period, that the way to get ahead
was through hard work.

This important element in the mythology

of America was expressed in the Horatio Alger dream.

This

element energized immigrants from Western Europe, Eastern
Europe, and later from America's own South.

The dream of

success could be attained not only by perspiration and luckand-pluck, but in the twentieth century education would be

8
that additional key to success.

This social mobility would

create a classless society that would be based on ability
and not based on restriction.
While in recent times some have been disillusioned
about the value of education, in Michigan, education con­
tinued to be deeply appreciated by a majority of the people.
For while some would say that the promise of higher education
could not be delivered for the many, in Michigan it truly
has been accessible and has expanded to meet the growing
demand.
There are several aspirational issues:
1) The citizen demand for access and utilization of
higher education services was significant in specific
regions of the state and demand for additional regional
resources was compelling.

Areas such as Detroit, Flint,

Grand Rapids, Saginaw, Muskegon, Jackson, and the state's
rural areas had a deficit ratio between the percentage of
students and the population in 1960.
2) The conflict between the demand for entrance and
matriculation versus restriction of availability in order to
conserve resources and enhance status was the next crucial
aspirational issue.

Michigan's population had grown more

than one million in the previous decade, creating a huge
demand for access.

A significant proportion of Michigan's

population had reached college age, the highest percentage
in Michigan's history.

Michigan was faced with the policy

9
issue of restricting entrance and therefore being able to
masquerade in the guise of quality.

This would create a

system much like Ohio where every graduate of a high school
had the opportunity to go to college but post -freshman places
in the system were limited, creating the revolving door
system.
3)

Another aspirational issue was how to provide the

real opportunity for blue-collar labor to purchase higher
education for themselves and their children; what mechanisms
should be established to deliver these services.

Since, for

the first time in more than 30 years the increase of
purchasing power by Michigan's workers was significant,
the leadership of labor became concerned about having appro­
priate outlets in which to spend these increased dollars.
Wealth that does not have a market causes instability,
inflation, and a decline of true value.

Hence labor leaders

such as the Reuthers, Woodcock, Fishman, Fraser, Scholle,
and Marshall became concerned that there be an adequate
place in higher education so that Michigan's workers could
buy the desired product.
College had always been regarded as unattainable,
available only to the rich and the elite, previous to the
end of the Second World War.

The most revolutionary piece

of legislation passed in the United States since the Morrill
Land Grant Act of 1862 was the passage of the GI Bill which
created the fiscal opportunity to go to school for all of

10

the soldiers returning after the Second World War.

This

important act created the belief that higher education was
really an obtainable objective for all of the citizenry.
Hence the institutional concerns involved questions
of how to implement and how to select from the various
alternatives.

These "How" questions were the following:

1) How many institutions should Michigan create and
where should they be placed?

Where should Michigan encourage

the growth of the two-year transfer programs in liberal arts
and where should that growth be inhibited?
2) Where should Michigan encourage appropriate
vocational/technical training for both current and future
employment?
3) Which four-year, baccalaureate-granting institutions
should Michigan enhance and give additional academic scope?
4) Should Michigan encourage the establishment of
new institutions where existing institutions could not fill
the projected demand?
5) Which graduate and professional programs, that is,
law, medicine, engineering, nursing, computer science and
electronics, needed to be encouraged or established de novo?
6) How could Michigan create financial mechanisms-scholarships, loans, grants, work-study programs, assistantships and fellowships--that would broaden access and
educational opportunity to those groups in Michigan who were
not currently included?

11

7) How could Michigan deliver continuing education
for degree credit and adult education for avocational and
cultural ends?
8) How could the education system meet the objectives
of manpower training while still serving the historical
tradition of encouraging civilization and contributing new
knowledge?
9) How could Michigan most effectively deliver research
knowledge to industry and agriculture, bridging the gap between
theory and practice?
10) How could Michigan accomplish all of the societal,
aspirational and institutional goals without destroying the
private sector whose schools and colleges had a long history
of contribution to the public good?
11) The most vexing question of all was how to direct
the above implementation; by centralized control, utilizing
planning, control and coordination, or by encouraging volun­
tary coordination and harnessing institutional autonomy and
entrepreneurial energy in the service of the above goals?
The third set of issues were the institutional issues:
How to create the machinery to deliver higher education
services for societal and aspirational objectives.
Planning has never been a strong point of Michigan’s
government.
its lack.

In fact, planning has been most significant by
Virtually the only area of Michigan public govern­

ment where planning has ever occurred was in the construction

12

of the highway system.

No other areas of social concern--

welfare, employment, housing, health, or education--have
been noted for their planning, yea, to the present day.
Michigan’s institutions were formed by a variety of
historical energies and accidents.

It is not easy to pin­

point the reasons for the importance of education in Michigan,
but from the earliest days the state has placed the greatest
emphasis on higher education.

The University of Michigan

was virtually the first state university to be established
in the United States in 1817.

Michigan State University was

the nation’s first land grant institution, established in
1855.

It was also the nation's first agricultural college.
Michigan had the first teacher college west of the

Alleghenies with the establishment of Eastern Michigan
University in 1849.

It was the first state where it became

legally possible, with the Kalamazoo Case in 1874, to have
free public education past the primary grades. Michigan was
the first state to have a separate department of education,
the first state to have a superintendent of public instruc­
tion, the first state to provide for public libraries in its
Constitution, and one of the first states to have a junior
college, founded in Grand Rapids in 1914.
The University of Michigan was the first state insti­
tution to admit women in 1870; the first state university to
have a chemical laboratory in 1857; it was the first state

13
school to establish full-time professorships of science and
the art of teaching; the first to have a dentistry school
in 1875; the first to organize a pharmacy college in 1876;
the first state university to offer forestry in 1881; and
the first to establish a department of speech in 1892.
Because of these kinds of activities, higher education
has always been vitally important to Michigan.

Education has

been the single social institution in Michigan widely beloved
across all sectors of society and has enjoyed a greater degree
of social confidence than any other Michigan institution.

0

CHAPTER II
SETTING THE SCENE
Geography
Michigan borders on four of the five Great Lakes,
Superior, Michigan, Huron and Erie, and has two distinct
peninsulas, the Upper which has its base along Wisconsin
and the Lower which borders on Ohio and Indiana.
Michigan ranks twenty-second in size among the states
of the Union with a total of 57,890 square miles^ and is
adjacent only to three other states of the Union--Ohio,
Indiana, Wisconsin, and the province of Ontario.
The geology of Michigan is based on an ancient rocky
skeleton.

The state is essentially a basin in which have

been deposited layers of sedimentary rock wherein lie the
state’s resources of iron, copper, ,limestone and salt.

This

rocky skeleton, except in the western Upper Peninsula, is
everywhere covered by a layer of material laid down by the
ice of the glacier period.

This mantle carries resources of

sand and gravel and the various soils it produces differ­
entiate the state into two parts: a southern region which is
^Bert Hudgins, Geographic Backgrounds and the
Development of the Commonwealth, (Ann Arbor, Michigan:
Edwards Brothers, Inc., 1953 , rev. ed.), p. 2.

14

15
principally agricultural, and a northern region which is
heavily forested and of marginal farming utility.
The state extends through some six degrees of latitude
with resulting temperature differences.

This pattern is

additionally complicated by westerly winds and the influences
of the Great Lakes.

The limitations of climatic patterns to

agriculture are partially masked by the soil differences in
the state, but are vital for its agriculture.
While conventionally divided into the Upper and Lower
Peninsulas, probably the best way to understand the geography
of Michigan is to draw a line horizontally across the Lower
Peninsula from Muskegon on Lake Michigan to just below the
tip of Saginaw Bay.

This line, called Townline Sixteen, is

the traditional division between industrial and agricultural
lower Michigan and upper Michigan--a land of sparser agri­
culture, little industry except for mining, and the remains
of a once-great lumbering empire.

North of this line lie

the 15 counties of the Upper Peninsula, plus 33 of the
68 Lower Peninsula counties.

While containing 48 of the

83 counties of the State of Michigan, in 1960 this northern
region accounted for less than ten percent of the population
of the state.
The original forest cover of Michigan has been greatly
altered by agriculture, logging and fire.

When white settle­

ment first began, 90 percent of the land area of the State of
Michigan was forested, but this soon changed.

By 1840 farms

16

were scattered over most of the southern hardwood belt, and
land-clearing was producing more timber than was needed.
Also, because hardwood timber was not easily worked with
the hand-tool technology of the day, much of it was burned
to clear the land.

The pioneers coming to Michigan and the

Midwest needed white pine for construction.

Michigan had

quantities of pine believed at that time to be inexhaustible
and was the leading lumber producing state in the nation
from 1875 to 1900.

This was a great--now legendary--era.

The wealth produced by lumbering was largely responsible
for some of the early fortunes which were the basis for
future financial and industrial investment in the State of
Michigan.
The peak of Michigan’s great timber harvest was in
1890 when mills cut a total of 5.5 billion board-feet of
lumber.

This is ten times the present annual production of

all species.

Forests today grow on more than half of the

entire land area of the state.

2

The Upper Peninsula com­

prises only 29 percent of the state’s entire area but
supports almost half of the forest area of Michigan.

As we

move south the forests become scattered and we arrive in an
area that is essentially agricultural, industrial and urban.
Mining is still important today, although certainly
not as much so as in the nineteenth century when copper and
2

Charles M. Davis, Readings in the Geography of
Michigan.
(Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ann Arbor Publishers,
1964), p. 91.

17
then the immensely rich iron of the Upper Peninsula contained
in the Gogebic, Marquette and Menominee Ranges were first
found.

Iron ore, cement, sand and gravel, petroleum, salt,

copper, gypsum, and natural gas were the key mining outputs
of the State of Michigan in the mid-twentieth century.
The center of Michigan’s agriculture is located below
Townline Sixteen, in the southern region of the state along
the Lake Michigan shoreline and in the rich lands of the
Thumb area in the East.

3

In 1959 the number of farms was 111,000 and farm cash
receipts were estimated at $705 million.

Not all these farms

were large farms; many were small and their numbers declined
as the requirements of capital and machinery increased.

The

largest crops in Michigan are corn, oats, wheat, hay, field
beans, soy beans, sugar beets, potatoes, fruit, and vegetable
crops such as asparagus, cucumbers, sweet corn, snap beans
and onions.

Livestock farming, especially dairy, as well as

beef cattle, swine and sheep production, was important in
generating some $375 million of sales in 1959.4
The productive agricultural sector supports a large
urban population.

In 1960, 73.4 percent of the population

of Michigan lived in the cities.
3

The chief cities of

"Michigan’s Agriculture", Michigan State University
Cooperative Extension Service Bulletin 785.
4Ibid., Table 3.

18
Michigan are all located south of Townline Sixteen.
The main industrial areas are Grand Rapids, with
furniture and machinery as its main industrial products;
Kalamazoo, with pulp and paper products, chemicals and metal
products; Lansing, with automotive products, primary metal
forging, and machinery; Jackson, with transportation equip­
ment, rubber products and textiles; Flint, with automotive
equipment; Saginaw, with metal products, automotive, and
machinery; and of course the largest industrial area in
Michigan, Detroit and its ring of suburbs, with automotive,
machinery, metal products, primary metals, food processing,
and chemicals.^
While not frequently noted, the Civil War was the key
period for the industrial development of Michigan.

After 1860

agricultural production never generated as many dollars as
industrial production.

The development of heavy industry in

Michigan was facilitated by the excellent transportation routes
of the Great Lakes and the river courses, the large amount of
sand available for castings and the abundance of iron.
The heavy industry of automotive production began
at the turn of the century in Detroit, Lansing, Grand Rapids,
Flint, and Saginaw, and has been the basis of the state's
prosperity in the twentieth century.

In fact, in the

^Emergence and Growth of an Urban Region; The
Developing Urban Detroit Area, Constantinos A. Doxiadis
(Detroit: The Detroit Edison Company, 1966), p. 131.

19
post-Second World War period it seemed that the old Herbert
Hoover prescription for a good life, a chicken in every pot,
had become two cars in every garage.

There are many positive

features to Michigan's alliance with this one industry, for
when it has been healthy, Michigan has been immensely pros­
perous.

Unfortunately, when this industry has had difficul­

ties, so has Michigan.
Today motor vehicle manufacture is only one facet of
Michigan's economy.

The state is also an important producer

of other transportation equipment, machinery, metals,
chemicals, rubber and petroleum products.

However, all of

these industries are closely bound to the cycle of the auto­
motive industry.

It is not likely that the automotive

industry will be replaced in its position of predominance
in Michigan.

But the importance to policy planners of other

alternatives was apparent as early as 1940.
During the past one hundred years, with minor excep­
tions, Michigan's rate of population increase has been
greater than that of the nation.

The net balance of migration

into Michigan has been the primary factor causing Michigan's
population to grow.

Table 1 demonstrates the extraordinarily

rapid growth of Michigan's population from 1870 to 1960.
Michigan's share of the national population rose from
3.07 percent in 1870 to 4.38 percent in 1960.
The basic composition of Michigan's original popula­
tion was British, Irish, German, and Canadian.

But later

2 0

TABLE 1
POPULATION GROWTH AND SOURCE
GROWTH IN MICHIGAN
(1870-1960)

Date

Percentage
of U.S.
Population
In Michigan

Total
Population
(in thousands)

1960

4.38

7,823

1950

4.23

6,372

1940

3.98

5,256

1930

3.94

4,842

1920

3.47

3,668

1910

3.06

2,810

1900

3.19

2,421

1890

3.33

2,094

1880

3. 26

1,637

1870

3.07

1,184

SOURCE: William Haber, W. Allen Spivey, and
Martin R. Warshaw, Michigan in the 1970’s ,
(Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, 1965),
p. 120.

2 1

immigration infused Michigan with a great deal of ethnic
differentiation.

Large numbers of Dutch-speaking people

settled in western Michigan--Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo,
Muskegon and the lake shore--and preserved their own
culture, religion and ethnic heritage.

The large influx

of Germans brought their tradition to the Saginaw Valley.
At Frankenmuth, an agricultural community in the Saginaw
Valley, German was the language of instruction in the schools
until the 1940's.
A significant number of people came to Michigan in
the twentieth century from southern and eastern Europe.
This Slav/Mediterranean group, with Poles constituting the
largest foreign-born group in Detroit, included Italians,
Russians, Hungarians, Yugoslavians, Rumanians and Greeks.
In some census tracts of Detroit in 1930 the proportion of
foreign-born was as large as 60 percent.
Ten percent of Michigan's population today is black
workers who emigrated from the South to take advantage of
the greater opportunities in Michigan's industry.

While in

1960,30 percent of the population of Detroit was black, the
overall population in 1960 numbered 717,000 Blacks, which
was virtually ten percent of the population of the state.
Michigan's culture is enriched by the Cornish miners
in the Upper Peninsula, the Dutch influence in western
Michigan, the Germanic influence of the Saginaw Valley, the

2 2

Slavic influence in Flint and the northern ring of Detroit
suburbs and Macomb County, and the large and significant
population of Blacks in Wayne County.
Many believe that this period of immigration brought
significant changes in patterns of living and that those
changes brought many problems.

But challenge is the very

essence of opportunity and triumph.

For that reason the

strong desire for success and fulfillment was a vital force
in the psychic make-up of three of Michigan's largest ethnic
groups--the Dutch, the Blacks and the Slavs.

Industrious

and eager to work, they adjusted to urban life, not perhaps
as successfully as theoretical planners would have liked,
but far more successfully than many other migrant people
had.

These three groups strongly believed that advancement

in America depended on education.

It would be these peoples

who would fuel the drive for better schools and greater
accessibility of these schools for their people in the
period from 1958 to 1970.
Politics
At the beginning of the twentieth century Michigan
was a one-party state.

In fact, one author referred to

Michigan as a state operated much as a company town.^
^James Reichley, States in Crisis; Politics in Ten
American States, 1950-1962, (Chapel Hill, North Carolina:
The University of North Carolina Press, 1964), p. 25.

23

Jackson, sixty miles west of Detroit, claims to be the birth­
place of the Republican Party.

For almost 7 0 years following

the Civil War, Michiganders regarded Republicanism as
synonymous with patriotism, morality and sound thinking.
From 1860 to 1932 the Republican nomination for public office
was virtually the equivalent of election.
Politics at the beginning of the century was colorful
and often fought viciously with minimal attention to ethical
considerations.

Primary elections had not yet displaced the

convention as the principal nominating device.

Newspapers

were more numerous and of more varied political complexion.
The functions of government were far fewer than they are
today, and the role of government was far less vital.
Between 1852 and 1932 the Democrats were able to win
the governorship only four times: in 1882 by supporting a
Greenbacker; in 1890 when monetary and agricultural reformers
backed the Democratic candidate; in 1912 when Republicans
were split into regular and progressive camps; and in 1914
7
owing to continued internal Republican strife.
Only in
1890 did the Democrats elect a subordinate state official
and win control of the Legislature.
The main activity of the Democrats in Michigan was
to fight for federal patronage during Democratic national
7
Stephen B. Sarasohn and Vera H. Sarasohn, Political
Party Patterns in Michigan, (Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1957), p. 8^

24

administrations.

But it should be noted that such Democratic

administrations were rare; Cleveland and Wilson were the only
Democrats to win the presidency between the Civil War and
the Great Depression.
Table 2 shows the governors elected in Michigan from
1908 to 1970.

It demonstrates that until 1948 Michigan was

essentially a one-party state.

For the 88 years after the

Civil War, only six Democrats were elected governor, and a
consideration of the pluralities will show that the Democrats
were not comfortably in office until 1954.
Democratic membership in the State Legislature
remained weak; in fact, not a single Democrat was elected to
the Senate in the elections of 1918 through 1928.

In the

House of Representatives the number of Democrats ranged from
zero to five during this period.

An evaluation of Table 3

demonstrates the Democratic weakness.

From 1914 to 1932

interparty politics in Michigan lost any real sense of
division along public policy lines.
existed around personalities.

Most party factions

The issue was, really, who

should control the store and not what the store should sell.
There was not much difference between the factions over the
philosophy of government, only over who should enjoy the
emoluments of power.
The general upsurge of Democratic strength throughout
the state in 1932 inaugurated a new era in Michigan politics.

25

TABLE 2
SUMMARY OF VOTE ON GOVERNOR
Year

Governor

Party

1908
1910
1912
1914
1916
1918
1920
1922
1924
1926
1928
1930
1932
1934
1936
1938
1940
1942
1944
1946
1948
1950
1952
1954
1956
1958
1960
1962
1964
1966
1970

Warner
Osborn
Ferris
Ferris
Sleeper
Sleeper
Groesbeck
Groesbeck
Groesbeck
Green
Green
Brucker
Comstock
Fitzgerald
Murphy
Fitzgerald
VanWagoner
Kelley
Kelley
Sigler
Williams
Williams
Williams
Williams
Williams
Williams
Swainson
Romney
Romney
Romney
Milliken

Rep.
Rep.
Dem.
Dem.
Rep.
Rep.
Rep.
Rep.
Rep.
Rep.
Rep.
Rep.
Dem.
Rep.
Dem.
Rep.
Dem.
Rep.
Rep.
Rep.
Dem.
Dem.
Dem.
Dem.
Dem.
Dem.
Dem.
Rep.
Rep.
Rep.
Rep.

Plurality
9
43
24
35
99
108
392
138
455
172
556
126
190
82
48
93
131
72
219
359
163
1
8
253
290
147
41
80
382
527
44

530
033
054
809
284
596
614
681
648
409
633
326
737
699
919
493
281
021
552
338
854
154
618
008
313
444
612
573
913
047
409

SOURCE: Michigan Department of Administration,
Michigan Manual, 1971-72, (Lansing, Michigan, 1972),
pp. 454-458.

26

TABLE 3
FORMER LEGISLATURES

Year
1909
1911
1913
1915
1917
1919
1921
1923
1925
1927
1929
1931
1933
1935
1937
1939
1941
1943
1945
1947
1949
1951
1953
1955
1957
1959
1961
1963
1965
1967
1969
1971

Membership
Sen. House
32

100

Senators
Dem. Rep.
-

4
5
3
5

34

100

34

110

38

110

1
17
11
17
9
10
7
8
4
9
7
8
11
11
12
12
11
23
18
18
19

32
28
27
29
27
32
32
32
32
32
32
31
15
21
15
23
22
25
24
28
23
25
24
23
23
22
22
23
15
20
20
19

Representatives
Dem. Rep
2
12
35
5
12
2
5
2
2
2
55
49
60
27
32
26
34
5
39
34
34
51
49
55
54
52
73
54
57
58

98
88
65
95
88
98
100
95
100
98
98
98
45
51
40
73
68
74
66
95
61
66
66
59
61
55
56
58
37
56
53
52

SOURCE: Michigan Department of Administration,
Michigan Manual, 1971-72, (Lansing, Michigan, 1972),
p p . 98-99.

27

This new era brought about the invigoration of the common
man, the rise of labor, the movement towards government as
a mechanism for social reform and the role of government as
a major element in society.
However, while Democrats increased in representation
by a phenomenal percentage compared to the impotency of the
previous 80 years, their power did not become predominant
statewide.

The Republicans maintained their strength in

many parts of the state.

There is probably no state in the

Union where state politics has been more polarized between
an urban, liberal, labor coalition on the Democratic side,
and an outstate, rural, business coalition on the Republican
side.
After the advent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, much
of the United States continued to be Democratic.

However,

after 1934 the Democratic Party in Michigan declined in
strength.

Their peak of strength had been in 1932 when they

had control of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
But by 1946 there were only eight Democrats in the Senate
and 34 Democrats in the House.
The Democratic Party atrophied because of the weak­
ness of the party structure and the inability to find
vigorous candidates who could compete with the likes of the
internationally recognized Arthur Vandenberg, Republican
from Grand Rapids.

It appeared that Michigan was returning

28

to old habits of Republicanism and that Democratic elected
officership had been but a temporary disease on the body
politic.

It would continue this way until 1948 when

G. Mennen Williams, with the assistance of Neil Staebler,
Walter Reuther, Hicks Griffiths and several other liberals,
built the beginning of the modern Michigan Democratic Labor
Party.^
G. Mennen Williams, a Princeton graduate, was heir
to the J. B. Williams Toiletries Company and popularly known
as Soapy.

He was by origin an aristocrat, but had almost a

religious sense that he was his brother’s keeper, and he was
dedicated to creating a government that would improve the lot
of his fellow man.
While these Republican electoral successes seemed on
the surface to have reinstated the GOP as the majority party
in the State of Michigan, the electoral foundation of
Michigan politics was shifting steadily toward the Democratic
Party.

The increasing concentration of the state’s popula­

tion in the southeast corner of the state, particularly in
g

Theodore H. White, the astute observer of national
politics has a most interesting insight to describing these
men: "Leadership in Michigan in 1960 lay in the hands of
three men, C. Neil Staebler, Walter Reuther, Governor
G. Mennen Williams.
High-minded yet hard-knuckled, each of
these three had been measured and analyzed.
In the course
of twelve years Neil Staebler, State Chairman and one of the
most moral men in American politics, had built one of the
most efficient citizen-politics organizations in the upper
Midwest." The Making of the President 1960, (New York:
Atheneum Publishers, 1961), pp. 137-38.

29

the Detroit metropolitan area, was favorable to the
Democrats,

So was the pattern of migration into the state

during the thirties and forties when Negroes and poor whites
from the southern states came into Michigan in large numbers.
These people had not been bred to the belief that Republicanism
was patriotic and correct, and that voting Democratic was
somehow unsound and unwise.
The basic ingredients for a Democratic resurgence
were clearly present in Michigan by 1948.

However, prior to

this time the Party had been handicapped by a lack of effec­
tive leadership and by an almost nonexistent state organiza­
tion.

In 1948 these defects were remedied dramatically.

A

political coalition between liberals and labor was formed in
Hicks Griffiths' recreation room on November 21, 1947.
Labor became loyal to the Democratic Party due to
the legacy of Governor Frank Murphy, for it was during his
1936-38 administration that the crucial labor confrontations
for the unionization of the automotive industry occurred.
The activities cast the Democratic Party in an extremely pro­
labor light which would be remembered for many years, as the
UAW and CIO began to build a political machine.

Gradually

they reached the point where, by formal resolution on
March 13, 1948, the state CIO Political Action Council
announced its decision to participate in harmony with the
Democratic Party with the following manifesto:

30

Progressives and liberals within the
Democratic party have often been outnumbered by
conservative and reactionary elements. The PAC
[Political Action Council] is unanimous in its
opinion that the best way of supporting liber­
alism within the Democratic party, to conform
to the national CIO policy, and to serve the
best interests of Michigan labor is to join the
Democratic party.
It is our objective in adopting this policy
to remold the Democratic party into a real
liberal and progressive political party which
can be subscribed to by members of the CIO and
other liberals. We therefore advise CIO members
to become active precinct, ward, county, and
congressional district workers, and to attemptg
to become delegates to Democratic conventions.
So complete had the relationship become between
labor and the Democratic Party that by 1948 Michigan CIO
President Gus Scholle would formally abandon any semblance
of the Mreward-your-friends-and-punish-your-enemies"
philosophy, enunciated by Samuel Gompers which had been
the central tenet of political laborism.

Scholle gave notice

to the Republicans that they could expect no further endorse­
ments under any circumstances.

He was reported to have said,

although later denied making such a statement: "I now think
that in the interests of simplifying the mechanics of voting,
that the CIO should endorse only Democrats, endorse no one
for any office where a Democratic candidate is
unacceptable.

g

Sarasohn and Sarasohn, p. 53.

■^Ibid. , p . 53.

31

The Williams-Staebler coalition mobilized the latent
strength of the Democratic Party and led it to an unprece­
dented series of political victories.

No Michigan governor

had ever been elected to more than three two-year terms,
but Williams was elected to six consecutive terms and
retired, undefeated, in 1960.

In the early years of his

tenure as governor, Williams was stronger than the Party.
In 1950 and again in 1952 he was the only Democrat elected
to statewide office.

However, the effectiveness of the

Democratic Party organization was increasing and by 1954
the Democrats were able to elect the entire state ticket.
From that time Michigan has become a bitterly contested,
two-party state, with the Democrats in increasingly pre­
dominant control of the Legislature and the political
conflict occurring essentially in the middle of the road.
During the period from 1948 to 1970 the Democrats
controlled the Senate only during one term, 1965 to 1967,
and the House twice, from 1965 to 1967 and from 1969 to
1971.

The inability of the Democrats to control the

Legislature was particularly bitter for them because the
division of the total state vote for the members of the
entire Legislature was very close throughout this period.
In several elections the Democrats had a clear majority
of all votes cast for the Senate and for the House of
Representatives.

The Democrats developed the belief that

32

the cause of their inability to effectively control the
Legislature was based on malapportionment.

This bitter

feeling was best expressed by the Democratic members of
the Committee on Legislative .Organization:
In the past ten years, ten legislative bodies
have been elected in Michigan.
On the basis of
the popular vote for legislators, five of these
bodies should have been Republican and five
Democratic.
In fact, all ten were Republican.
Thus, (a) the legislature is not responsive to
public opinion, and (b) it is biased against
Democratic voters and in favor of Republican
voters.
John Fenton in his book Midwest Politics said the
Midwest was divided between two classes of political orien­
tation.

Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota were regarded as

issue-oriented states where programmatic politics was
crucial and vital.

Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were regarded

as job-oriented states where the function of a political
party was to win jobs, making issues less vital than
employment.^ ^
The issue-oriented politics of Michigan was based
to a great degree on the ’’Michigan Declaration” , a state­
ment of party principle prepared with the help of professors
Karl A. Lamb, William J. Pierce, and John P. White,
Apportionment and Representative Institutions; The Michigan
Experience, (Washington, D .C .: The Institute for Social
Science Research, 1963), p. 314.
l^John Fenton, Midwest Politics, (New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1966) , p . 2 1 ~.

33

at state universities in 1956.

The Declaration was a

twentieth-century liberal document which emphasized the
egalitarian approach to solving the problems of society
and the importance of the government in securing those
obj ectives.
In dealing with the various problems of American
society, the document made clear in each case that the
Democratic Party did not rely on any "invisible hand" or
"natural laws" to solve the problems.

The "Michigan

Declaration" urged positive government action in thirteen
areas of public policy: foreign policy, segregation, civil
rights, civil liberties, labor policy, atomic energy, auto­
mation, economic policy, agriculture, natural resources,
health, education, and social security.
The following quote captures the dedication and
commitment of issue-oriented politics:
The Democratic Party of Michigan. . . pledges
itself to continued service to all of the people
in the perpetual task of making government the
instrument of achievements for the common good,
and of guarding the public weal against those
who would use the power of the few against the
just progress of the m a n y . 13
1 'S

Robert Lee Sawyer, Jr., The Democratic State
Central Committee in Michigan, 1949-1959: The Rise of~the
New Politics and the New Political Leadership, (Ann Arbor,
Michigan: The University of Michigan, 1960), p. 72.

34

In a pamphlet issued on the occasion of Governor
Williams' fourth inauguration in 1955, the following state­
ment best reflects the tone of the Democratic Party at that
time:
The roots of the political philosophy of
G. Mennen Williams, and of the Democratic Party,
lie in a well-integrated concept of "government
for social progress"--in the belief that govern­
ment reflects the people's desire to make their
political system work under changing conditions,
and work better than before. . . . The
Democratic program. . . has been founded on the
principle that government is built on people and
for people--that the function of government is
to assume those social, economic, and educational
obligations that the people want it to have, and
do those things that only government, acting as
the people's agent, can properly and efficiently
discharge. . . .14
The first sentence of the economic policy statement
reflects the concerns the government would have under
Williams and Swainson, and later under Romney and Milliken.
Government has a dynamic responsibility to assist
the people to achieve the economic growth made
possible by new science and skills and to see
that there is equitable participation in that
progress.15
The statement on education reflects some of the
equalitarian and social action doctrines of the "Michigan
Declaration" with its central notion that man is his
i4Ibid., p. 73.
l^Ibid., p . 74.

35

brother’s keeper and is responsible for the welfare of his
fellow man to the limits of his ability.
Complete opportunity for every child to a full
education commensurate with his ability at
public expense in modern, safe schools staffed
by teachers and administrators paid in propor­
tion to the immense importance of their
vocation.
Federal aid to achieve this goal
in any school district obeying the laws of the
United States.
Probably the statement of the "Declaration" best representing
the idealistic framework is the following:
So long as one human being is hungry and we can
feed him and do not, so long as one person is
naked and we can clothe him and do not, so long
as one person is sick and we can minister to
him and do not, so long as one worker or farmer
is deprived of a just living and we can remedy
it and do not, so long as one person is unwill­
ingly illiterate and we can educate him and do
not, so long as one nation is subjugated by
another against its will and we can work for
freedom and do not, the American task is not
done.17
This clarion call for social action with an implicit
belief in the use of government as the tool for social
change would be the basis of the role of government in
education in Michigan from 1958 through 1970.

The strong

adherence of Michigan’s people to this philosophy is repre­
sented in its electoral support for its political and social
institutions, which would carry it over from Democratic
Williams and Swainson administrations into the Republican
Romney and Milliken administrations.
16Ibid., p. 75.
■^Ibid. , p p . 7 5-76.

36

Williams’ inability to command a reliable majority
in the State Legislature severely limited the success of his
aspirations.

However, between 1949 and 1961 Michigan more

than tripled its annual expenditures for highways and educa­
tion, doubled its outlays for mental health and spent more
than half again as much on public welfare.

The gross state

budget rose from less than $500 million in 1949 to almost
$1,200 million in 1961.

Annual tax revenues during this
18
period rose more than 150 percent.
The question of expanding services is today not
severely debated, for the state has never turned back from
its initial attempts to create a society where all of the
people have better opportunities through government
assistance.
Whether greater increases should have been made, or
whether those that were made were financed with maximum
fairness and efficiency, were questions that would lead to
the Constitutional Convention and some of the associated
issues which are not yet settled even today.

Table 4

demonstrates the growth of Michigan governmental activity
in the period from 1950 to 1970.
In 1954, 1959, 1969 and 1974 the State of Michigan
has undergone serious economic downturns which caused
difficulties and serious fights over the question of
■^Reichley, p. 25.

37

TABLE 4
COMPARISON OF AGENCY REQUESTS, GOVERNOR'S
RECOMMENDATIONS, LEGISLATIVE ACTION AND ACTUAL EXPENDITURES
(in millions)
GENERAL FUND -- GENERAL PURPOSE
FISCAL
YEAR

AGENCY
REQUEST

GOVERNOR•S
RECOMMENDATION

1950-51

382.6

340.6

285.

285.1

1951-52

372.1

328.8

311.

312.6

1952-53

419.1

354.3

327.8

322.3

1953-54

415.

345.2

341.

331.6

1954-55

434.3

365.5

366.3

371.4

1955-56*

343.3

292.2

285.1

277.7

1956-57

378.8

339.4

330.4

330.9

1957-58

511.4

411.

340.9

366.

1958-59

507.3

349.4

332.5

376.3

1959-60

580.6

424.

400.

386.2

1960-61

583.1

409.3

418.

429.9

1961-62

663.6

462.2

462.6

476.4

1962-63

692.3

528.3

512.5

492.3

1963-64

708.4

547.

550.3

523.5

1964-65

796.3

689.5

694.4

650.2

1965-66

996.2

788.5

824.9

793.9

1966-67

1,214.6

944.9

1,067.0

1,049.3

1967-68

1,630.7

1,153.2

1,155.3

1,152.5

1968-69

1,830.9

1,334.1

1,360.5

1,339.0

1969-70

1,757.4

1,510.6

1,535.3

1970-71

2,142.2

1,736.8

1,750.2

LEGISLATIVE
ACTION

ACTUAL
EXPENDITURE

* Constitutional amendment earmarked 2 $ of the sales tax for special
School Aid Fund.
SOURCE:
Legislative Fiscal Agency Statistical Report, Aug. 1970, Schedule 3.

38

raising revenue.

It is interesting to observe that when

times are prosperous opinion leaders say, "This is not a
good time to reform the fiscal structure because everything
is going well and who would want to ruin it."

And in bad

times they say, "Good heavens, things are bad enough without
fussing and taxing those people least able to afford it."
Apparently, for tax reform and new taxes there is never a
good time.

Part of this discussion of finding a more pro­

pitious moment is delusional; while there is always
enthusiasm for increasing services, there is much less
enthusiasm for paying for them.
The main concern in programmatic politics was finding
the revenues to finance those programs.

Governors Williams

and Swainson quarreled frequently with the Republican legis­
latures on a variety of subjects, but the main area of
dispute was early established in the field of finance.
Williams sought the enactment of a tax on corporation profits
to supplement Michigan's general sales tax, which produced
almost 40 percent of the state's tax revenue.

This pro­

posal was annually rejected by the Republican Legislature
on the grounds that it would drive tax-shy industry beyond
the state's borders.
In 1953 the state enacted a business activities tax
drawn up in consultation with the lobbyists and economists
for the automobile companies.

Williams was opposed to this

39
tax but allowed it to become law without his signature.
This tax, along with repeated increases in nuisance taxes
on cigarettes, liquor, and petroleum, could not create
adequate revenue to meet the state's spiraling demands, for
in the twelve years of Governor Williams' tenure, the popu­
lation of Michigan increased by one million.
In this time of difficulty the Legislature enacted
a series of gimmicks to be used later by more liberal legis­
latures.

The inventories of the state liquor stores were

liquidated; bills for the shipments of inventories of liquor
were not paid until subsequent fiscal years; due dates on
business taxes were moved ahead to provide two payments
within a single fiscal year; and state institutions were
authorized to borrow money to help finance their operations.
Williams, badly sapped by this constant fight within
the malapportioned Michigan Legislature, decided to retire
in 1960, hoping for a high office in the Kennedy administra­
tion.

John Swainson was then elected to the governorship

with the help of labor, beating James Hare, the popular
Secretary of State.

But in winning this fight, the Party

split, creating the opportunity two years later for George
Romney to win.
Swainson was badly hurt by a split between labor and
the liberals, and between the urban-suburban sectors, over a
tax fight.

He was unfairly characterized as being inept and

40

too closely tied to labor.

He lost an extremely close

election to George Romney in 1962 because he did not carry
the campaign to his opponent and insist on a campaign of
greater specificity rather than global rhetoric.

Romney

campaigned on intangibles such as leadership and unity,
avoided close identification with other Republican candi­
dates and carried the day by the force of his personality
and style.

His style is perhaps best characterized by the

sentiment, "Believe in m e , I can lead Michigan to better
days."

Romney was elected by 80,500 votes out of 2,760,000

cast, while the Democrats captured most of the other offices.
Romney was an energetic and unconventional business­
man who had made his reputation by pushing for a compact car
and cementing relationships with labor as the head of the
first automotive company to sign a profit-sharing agreement
with the UAW.

In 1959 a group called Citizens for Michigan

established itself in Ann Arbor led by Romney and supported
by other groups.

Amongst its membership was Robert McNamara

of the Ford Motor Company, later to go to high office in the
Kennedy administration.

Romney forged a winning coalition

much like the Williams-Staebler group had in 1947.
He was an extraordinarily vital man who encouraged
the politics of accommodation pursuing centrist policies
that brought moderate Democrats and Republicans together on
matters of social policy.

He rapidly

fought a vigorous

41

battle with the conservative forces in the Legislature,
convincing the public to support his point of view at the
polls.

They replaced the conservatives who had worn the

sobriet ’’mastodons" so proudly.

Improved financial mechanisms

for generating new revenue, open housing, and increased
funding for higher education were accomplishments of his
administration.

The period from 1962 to 1968 was a period

of immense prosperity for Michigan, resulting in tax collec­
tions of fantastic amounts compared to the grim days of 1959.
Romney was open to talent and brought many able
individuals to the public sector.

Chief among them was

Glenn Allen, former Mayor of Kalamazoo and a Con-Con delegate,
who became the Budget Director.

Allen, by his subtle and

dexterous dealings with the Legislature, was able to accom­
plish the majority of the Romney administration’s legislative
program, chief of which was the improvement in the resources
available to all of education.
Romney’s Lieutenant Governor William G. Milliken
replaced him in 1969 and continued his centrist policies.
Milliken was extraordinarily successful in continuing the
policy of accommodation with urban Democrats and labor.

CHAPTER III
METHODOLOGY
Introduction to Oral History
The study began with an in-depth search of the public
documents: considering the John Dale Russell Report and its
supporting studies; evaluating the Citizens Committee for
Higher Education Report; searching through the published
documents of the State Board of Education; obtaining unpub­
lished documents of the Superintendent of Public Instruction;
studying the debates of the Constitutional Convention held in
Lansing; and studying closely all of the relevant constitu­
tional literature, particularly that of Sturm and Friedman.
The decision was made to avoid analysis of the Salmon
Case inasmuch as that case is still on appeal to the Supreme
Court of the State of Michigan to this date.

The excellent

study of Dr. Norman Schlafmann of legal, constitutional and
juridical aspects of higher education in Michigan made further
study of this segment repetitive and unnecessary.^■^Norman J. Schlafmann, "An Examination of the State
Legislature on the Educational Policies of the Constitu­
tionally Incorporated Colleges and Universities of Michigan
through Enactment of Public Acts from 1851 through 1970"
(Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 1971).

42

43
After complete consideration of the documents, the
author encountered a serious dilemma: how to evaluate what
was the public sentiment in the influence elites of Michigan.
There was a significant lack of written records that would
elucidate the cut and thrust of individual opinions and the
variety of private debates.

Perhaps the inner workings of

how elites function has been no better stated than by the
eloquent words of Theodore White:
There are fifty states in this union, each of
them endowed with a separate sovereignty by the
Constitution. These sovereignties are genuine;
they create in each state two major parties; and
within each party from two to four separate
political groups contend for capture, first of
the state party’s leadership, then of the state’s
sovereignty. Where true power lies in these
hundreds of revolving, dissolving, nascent and
fading political groups is known only by local
folklore, below the threshold of public report.
Such information is the trade gossip of politi­
cians, the treasures of wisdom that political
reporters exchange among one another from state
to state, a baffling perplexity for academic
political scientists who seek permanent truths,
the aspect of mystery that the average voter
confronts as he seeks to understand who controls
his government.
The laws of libel, the decencies of political
reportage, the conventions of friendship and
custom, the obstacles of distance and parochialism,
all effectively conceal the ever-changing topog­
raphy of American politics.
It is impossible to
report publicly which world-famous governor of
what state was commonly called "The Boob" by his
political boss; which apparently sinister boss
is only a paper tiger in the hands of other men;
which labor leader can really deliver votes and
money and which cannot; which great industrialist
is a political eunuch while his neighbor is
master of the state; which nationally eminent
Negro is considered an "Uncle Tom" by his people,
while some unknown kinsman really controls the

44
wards; which aging leadership no longer controls
its county leaders and which does. The root
question of American politics is always: Who's
the Man to See? To understand American politics
is, simply, to know people, to know the relative
weight of names--who are heroes, who are straw
men, who controls, who does not.
But to operate
in American politics one must go a step further-one must build a bridge to such names, establish
a warmth, a personal c o n n e c t i o n . 2
White's discussion in the above cited passage is
particularly useful when one considers that Michigan is a
state whose influence elite is probably on the order of
some eight or nine thousand people.

By the term "influence

elite" the author means to suggest those people in a variety
of walks of life and stations whose attitudes and activities
cause opinions and public policy to occur.

People in this

influence elite would include labor leaders, public officials,
leaders of social action organizations, special interest
groups, religious groups, industrial groups, and local and
ethnic occupational groups concerned with their own regional
interests.
This thesis contends that influence elites vary in
size from state to state but that Michigan has had, in the
postwar period, very open politics and hence has a large
influence elite.

The Michigan influence elite is amazingly

open to new talent and takes advantage of the vigor and
diversity of the population.

Yet, specific social issues

^Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1960,
(New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1961) , p p . 135-36.

45
such as highways, housing, health, and higher education
are determined bv what the author calls "operational
decision-making elites," which are subsets of the larger
influence elite.

Each of these decision elites is modest

and limited in size.
In Michigan higher education there are probably no
more than 50 people at any specific time who are the opera­
tional decision elite.

These people would be the governor,

his counselors, the chief technocrats of the executive
branch, particularly in the Bureau of the Budget, some
officers in the State Department of Education, the presidents
of the three maior universities and the key deans inside
those colleges, particularly agriculture, business, educa­
tion, representatives of the athletic groups and some
selected presidents of state colleges and community colleges.
About 12 legislators from the leadership and from the appro­
priations committees of both houses, labor leaders, business
leaders, and foundation leaders are also in the decision
elite.

This limited elite has remained fairly constant over

the past 20 years.

While the personalities may change, some

of these elites owe their decision influence to the place
that they hold.

For instance, the presidents of the

University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne
State University, the Chairman of the House and Senate
Appropriations Committee, the Speaker of the House, and the

46
Minority and Maiority leaders of the House and Senate are
classically the members of this decision elite by virtue
of their office rather than their personality.

It is not

an elite based on wealth as a criterion for membership, but
rather on personality, energy, interest, commitment, and
hard work, as well as on position.
Most of the people are acquainted with each other.
Generally in Michigan politics there has been a lack of
vituperation, or the politics of the grudge fight, and
instead there has been a sense of friendship and accommoda­
tion.

While people may be split by bitter issues, they have

found in Michigan the opportunities to break bread together
and to enjoy the comforts of civilized life.

Conflict in

Michigan has most frequently been institutionalized so that
men inside the competitive decision elites still can
cooperate with each other.

Accommodation rather than con­

flict has been the rule in these activities.
When incredibly devisive issues have come about,
such as abortion, Parochiad, daylight savings time and busing,
the decision elites have stepped aside to let the issue be
fought by the fanatics in order to preserve their continued
working relationships.
With the lack of a written record, the author had
great difficulty ascertaining that which was real.

With

the paucity of written records that reflect the real nature

47
of the transactions of public policy, additional techniques
had to be employed.

Oral history was selected.

It had not

been applied to this subject before,
Frank Freidel, the eminent American historian,
states the case for the value of oral history:
I was aware that oral history was increasing as a
discipline, but I had no idea it was exploding
even more rapidly than other phenomena in the
United States. And I'm very happy about this,
too, simply because I've had the feeling that in
this new technical age, historians have been put
into considerable difficulty by the telephone,
by the fact that so often manuscript collections,
archival materials, will contain the ratifying
letter which is written when a decision has been
made, and will tell us little about the decision­
making process.
I'm well aware that in terms of
reaching accommodations, it is wise not to have
notes made.
But we don’t have many people who
have taken the time to write [for] posterity the
kind of letters that must make research on TR
such a joy. And often we are left with simply
this fait accompli, in terms of the letter which
often gives exactly the wrong impression of how
something or other was achieved.
Professor William Leuchtenburg makes the trenchant
observation that:
There are, I think, two kinds of ways in
which oral history memoirs are of value.
On the
one hand, they offer sources of information which
one cannot get easily or at all elsewhere.
This
is particularly true when, for one reason or
another, the manuscript sources for a particular
subject are inadequate, or where oral history
has decided to concentrate on a particular field
which is not dealt with adequately elsewhere. . . .
The Oral History Association, The Second National
Colloquium on Oral History, (Harriman, New York,
November, 1967), Louis M . Starr, editor, (New York: The
Oral History Association, Inc., 1968), p. 7,

48
The oral history memoirs are, I think,
especially valuable where the source of informa­
tion is unique,
where one person knows
a
particular historical episode. . . .
The second area in which I think oral history
is helpful is in providing the historian as writer
with a source of vivid expression. . . .4
Some of the discussion in the National Colloquium
on Oral History is particularly valuable in discussing the
methodological and philosophical problems.

As Leuchtenburg

points out:
Yet, although the oral history memoirs have
been, as I've said, of great value, there are
problems, and obviously the chief problem is
knowing what kind of credence to give to a state­
ment made many years after the event, particularly
when there's no
other kind of documentation for
that statement.
This is a new kind of
historical
document which I think requires new kinds of
historical methods for assessment, some of which
I think we've not yet fully developed. . . .
One has to remember, too, that as the hero of
the story, he is going to reconstruct history,
not necessarily by lying, not by deliberate
falsification, but in order to present his posi­
tion in the best historical light.^
The difficulties of how individuals respond in the
presence of a tape recorder was particularly vexing in view
of the Watergate scandal which was occurring during the
collection of the interviews.

Freidel was sensitive to

such difficulties of interviewing.
Now, this has meant oftentimes that people
have talked more freely to me, often more wildly,
^Ibid., p p . 2-3.
^Ibid., p p . 3-4.

49
because one of the things that is lost in the
oral history editing, when the person reads over
his interview, is, on the one hand, a good deal
that he feels was indiscreet, but more that I
think he realizes is inaccurate, and which he
has to tone down.
I think many people tone
down just by having a tape recorder in front of
them.
Some people, of course, do not.
So I
think probably the oral history interviews are
more accurate than my pinpoint interviews, but
I have discovered more things in the pinpoint
type of interviewing that I have done. And
perhaps, working with a tape recorder, I have
gotten somewhere further.
Freidel's discussion of his interview with
Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt points out one of the inhibiting
factors of the tape recorder.
For example, take the case of Eleanor Roosevelt.
A1 Rollins, in that excellent piece of his in
The Nation magazine, points out among other things
that we can't tell how Eleanor Roosevelt actually
thought and what she would say about, say, her
mother-in-law.
The fact is that Eleanor Roosevelt
could not have been more explicit in expressing to
me her extreme antagonism toward her mother-in-law,
and the fact that I was there was very handy,
because I will never forget the way in which she
simply almost shrieked at me in her indignation
at some of the things her mother-in-law did.
I
have a feeling that if I'd had a tape recorder
in front of me, or if this were going to be typed
over, she would have been considerably more
generous and less from her heart. . . .
Now, what does this add up to altogether?
Well, it means simply this, that there can be
shortcomings in this material, that there can be
I think some real assets in it, that it is not
going to achieve miracles, but it involves a lot
of history which otherwise would have been lost.
It can involve, in terms of a good many of these
people, very colorful turns of phrase, which are
very well worth remembering.
From this stand­
point I feel very badly that I did riot have a
^Ibid., pp. 10-11.

50
tape recording of some of the things that
Mrs. Roosevelt said to me when I was inter­
viewing her. And it’s a body of material
which I am sure will stand the test of time,
and will have new uses 50 years from now which
we don’t even think of today.
What, then, is the value of oral history?

In

Technology and Culture, John Rae says the importance of
oral history lies not in producing facts, which he believes
historians could supply with documents, but in giving (as he
puts it) the " ’feel’ for these facts which can be provided
O

only by one who lived them."
James MacGregor Burns further states the case by
saying: "Oral history is both an indispensable weapon of
research and a risky endeavor.

It cuts into a complex

tissue of events at a very certain point, or along a very
certain channel.

It cuts in at the action point.

But not

only is it subject to all the problems that have been
mentioned this afternoon, bad memories and the desire for
vindication and all the rest, but it particularly will turn
on the perspective, obviously of the person being inter­
viewed."^
Cornelius Ryan raises the question: "It has been
said before that anyone who dares write history, when faced
^Ibid., p p . 11-12 .
8Ibid., p. 39.
®Ibid., p p . 18-19.

51
with a statement of fact, must ask himself first the
question:

'Who said so, and what opportunities had he of

knowing it?'"^
It is the contention of this study that the 26
individuals interviewed were involved at the action point
in the complex tissue of events, and as members of the
decision elite, had the opportunity to know what really
occurred.
The written record is incomplete and even misleading
because many of the important decisions were not recorded in
correspondence or formal documents.

Many significant trans­

actions occur by contact among the decision elite through
breakfasts, lunches, suppers, social occasions, telephone
calls, and informal face-to-face meetings.
Negotiations that frequently result in agreement
are sealed by one's word or his handshake.

Also, the respect

that one group inside the decision elite has had for the
other on a human basis has prevented vindictive and selfserving argumentation.

The production of memoirs and

reminiscences has, for a variety of reasons, been unfor­
tunately sparse in Michigan.
The value of memoirs, political biography and remi­
niscence, so useful in other states, is, to the contrary,
not useful in Michigan because of the sparcity of such
10Ibid., p. 16.

52

literature and the quality of that produced.

Even the most

generous evaluation of this genre would be mediocre.
such as Milliken: A Touch of Steel

11

Titles

are an example of this.

Facing these kinds of problems one could not truly
reflect the determination of public policies because of the
immense number of transactions of an informal, private and
social nature between the membership of the decision elite.
Therefore it would have been impossible to record an accurate
history of higher education in Michigan, especially since
none of the major figures--members of boards of trustees,
college presidents, senators, representatives, governors, or
political party leaders--had written any sort of record that
could be cited to clarify these issues.
The majority of the revealing materials came from
newspaper articles.

In writing this dissertation it was

therefore the dilemma of the author that the documents did
not substantiate the realities of what he knew had occurred.
The author had been a member of the Department of Education
from 1966 to 1968, and a staff member for the Legislature
from 1968 to 1971.

Observing many of these events as a

participant, he could not write a history that reflected
the reality.
Hence the decision was made to attempt an oral
history because of the fortuitous circumstances of: 1) the
■^Dan Angel, William G. Milliken: A Touch of Steel,
(Warren, Michigan: Public Affairs Press, 1970).

53
limited nature of the Michigan decision elite; 2) the overall
lack of rancor which permeated the decision elite of Michigan
higher education public decisions and politics; and 3) the
accessibility of the author to members of the decision elite
whom he either knew personally or had introduction to through
other members of this decision elite.

It was decided to under­

take an oral history, interviewing those who had played
instrumental roles in higher education during the period 1958
to 197 0.

None of the interviewed personalities had ever been

interviewed about this area of Michigan history.
Executing the Study
Interviews were requested based on the author’s per­
ception of the membership of the decision elite and consulta­
tion with a variety of people.

The author extended the range

of interviews based on responses to questions 18 and 19.
Ultimately, interviews were requested of 28 people, 26 of whom
responded in the affirmative.

Harold T. Smith of the Upjohn

Institute, who had been the staff director of the Citizens
Committee on Higher Education and later served in the same
capacity with the State Plan for Higher Education, unfortunately
was too ill to stand the rigors of an interview.

Durward Varner,

former President of Oakland University, had moved to Nebraska to
become Chancellor of the state system there and was not available.
The following men were interviewed: four governors of
Michigan: G. Mennen Williams, John Swainson, George Romney,
and William Milliken; five current and past legislators:
James Farnsworth, Robert Waldron, Garland Lane, William Ryan,

54
and Frank Beadle; two superintendents of public instruction:
Ira Polley and John Porter; nine current and former college
presidents: James Miller, Father Malcolm Carron; Charles
Anspach, John Jamrich, David Ponitz, Robben Fleming, Victor
Spathelf, John Hannah, and Harlan Hatcher; two senior college
administrators, Edward Cushman and Milton Muelder; one labor
leader, Leonard Woodcock; one educational lobbyist, Robert
Cahow; one party leader, Neil Staebler; and one representa­
tive of business, Stephen Nisbet.
An interview instrument of 19 questions was con­
structed and submitted to all of the selected interview
respondents.

Of the 26, 25 responded.

The present Governor

of the state, William Milliken, much pressed by the activ­
ities of his public office, responded to a more abbreviated
subset of the same questions.

The questions for the 25 were

as follows:
1.

What in your opinion were the reasons that led to the
expansion of higher education in Michigan from 1958 on?

2.

What were the social and economic factors that led to
this significant growth?

3.

What were the policy objectives that underlaid this
expansion?

4.

What were the key issues that resulted in partisan and
parochial conflict in the attempts to attain the above
policy objectives?

5.

Did any of the policy goals for the enhancement of
higher education have as their objective the destruction
of class and culture barriers?

55
6.

Do you regard as one of the key issues of this period
1958-1970 popularism in higher education versus
elitism in higher education?

7. How important were vocational and occupational training
objectives in the enhancement of higher education?
8. Did the growth of culture and the arts have importance
in the dialogue over the growth of higher education?
9.

What was the position of labor in regard to higher
education?

10.

What was the position of industry in regard to higher
education?

11.

What was the position of commerce in regard to higher
education?

12.

What was the position of agriculture in regard to higher
education?

13.

What were the pressures and influences in the determina­
tion of public policy, if any, from the federal government?

14.

What were the pressures and influences in the determina­
tion of public policy, if any, from the private sector
of higher education?

15.

What was the nature of regional and local pressures to
expand higher education in one location rather than
another?

16.

What in your opinion were the reasons for the failure of
the branch campus system that had begun to be developed
in Michigan with Oakland, Flint and Dearborn?

17.

Why in your opinion did an institutional system for the
coordination of higher education not come about after 1964?

18.

Who in your opinion were the significant opinion leaders
in higher education in Michigan in this period?

19.

Who were the influential individuals whose insights were
of the greatest significance to you?

56
The subset of questions for the Governor were as follows:
1.

From 1958 to 1970 the state funds appropriated for
higher education have increased from $82 million to
$284 million. What in your opinion were the reasons
that led to this expansion?

2.

What in your opinion were the objectives that elected
officials had as their goals in view of the significant
investment of public funds?

3.

Obviously, in the construction of public policy, con­
flicts amongst secular and regional interests arise,
as we know so well from our experiences with K-12
school reform.
What were these interests in higher
education and what were their positions, as you recollect
them, in their attempts to modify or constrain public
policy formulation?

4.

In 1967, shortly before you became Governor, the Detroit
riots occurred.
What were the public policies you
attempted to construct to create more educational oppor­
tunity in higher education and ease class and cultural
barriers?

5.

Do you have observations about the need or desirability
of additional management or policy coordination mecha­
nisms for higher education in order to attain your
administration's objectives?
Further, do you have any
insights into why coordination of higher education
failed in 1964?
The above questions were designed as an organic

whole, to facilitate an evolving discussion.

The author did

not feel pressed to insist that the interviewee answer the
questions in order.

If the interviewee responded to a

particular question within the framework of another, the
author did not belabor the question.

The essential purpose

of the interview was to draw out the respondent, encouraging
him to reflect on his experiences and observations.

This

approach is to the contrary of the more rigidly constructed
survey questionnaire frequently used in research.

57
Hence, Figure 1 is but a guide to the pages on
which an individual discusses the various issues.

Some of

the spaces were left blank because the question was either
answered indirectly throughout the conversation, or was not
germane to the discussion.
Each of the recipients received the interview instru
ment and a copy of the dissertation proposal in advance so
he could consider the questions beforehand.

It was made

clear that the entire interview would be on the record.
Each received identical questions and realized other members
of this decision elite were being interviewed.
The interview was taped, a transcription thereof
was made and then edited into a transcript suitable for
reading, punctuation, capitalization and the like being
added since written English is different from spoken English
These transcripts were annotated and then submitted to the
individuals interviewed for review and approval.

The

individuals had the right to make any changes that they
wished in order to best reflect the sense of the
discussions.
After all editings of the transcript were completed,
a signed letter of release giving permission for the tran­
script to be published was issued by the interviewee.
26 letters have been filed with the Chairman of the
Dissertation Committee.

Further, the interviewee gave

These

FIGURE 1
GUIDE TO DISCUSSION OF QUESTIONS SUBMITTED
(Pages "A" in Volumes 2 and 3)

Swainson
Williams
Cushman
Polley

101

102

105

107

115

117

133

134

135

138

142

143

163

165

170

148

194

195

198

199

199

218

219

220

220

248

248

Farnsworth

118

119 j122

122 '124

125

126

127

127

128

129

129

130

Cahow

145

146 I150

150 ,157

157

159

159

160

160

160

161

162

Miller

172

173

176 :179 i 181

182

184

187

187

188

188

189

193

Waldron

202

209

211

211

213

214

214

214

215

Lane

225

Staebler

250

253

lilliken*

283

175

232

236

237

238

240

241

243

243

242

244

245

230

257 !258

261

259

263

266

264

265

267

267

268

275

255

276

270

283 !286 I290

288

284

286

291

290

291

294

291

307

Carron
Porter

;

318

330

331

334

304

301
335

336

337

339

339

341

326

342

344

346

FIGURE 1--Continued
Anspach

352

353

355

3§r

Ryan

388

389

390

Jamrich

409

412

Ponitz

444

Fleming

366

369

371

380

380

382

382

372

373

376

377

378

384

391

393

393

395

395"392

396

397

397

398

399

402

403

404

407

417

422

426

429

430

430

431

431

432

434

436

419

438

440

441

447

452

458

468

469

%

473

476

476.
"448

478

478

479

m

483

485

486

490

491

493

504

504

504

510

513

515

515

516

517

518

519

521

522

Beadle

524

525

528

531

534

536

537

5U.
"500
539

541

542

543

543

545

548

546

549

554

Nisbet

574

578

590

587

588

593

593

576

575

5J£""595

576

595

596

599

602

-^4

60£"561

Spathelf

607

609

613

615

620

616

625

628

630

630

630

630

633

634

634

635

637

640

Woodcock

645

645

649

650

653

656

660

662"645

665

666

666

667

668

670

667

683

683

683

688

690

691

692

693

695

666
69£u
"590

667

"668-' 673
"■673

701

703

705

708

717

720

717

720

725

729

729

731

731

719

734

735

736

749

755

754

758

761

762

763

765

764

766

767

768

771

722

722

801

802

805

807

808

811

812

813

814

814

6

1

8

9

10

11

12

B

14

15

18

19

Muelder
Romney

712

715

Hannah

739

743

Hatcher

776

776

787

788

1

2

3

4

365

5

698

* Milliken was asked different questions, but pages direct reader to discussion relating to.

384

8B."
"792 781
16

17

60
permission for the audio tape to be submitted to the
Michigan State University Voice Library under a two-year
time bond.

At the end of two years these tapes of unedited

transcripts would be available for researchers to use.

These

tapes will lend additional insight to future researchers
because they capture the emotive factor of communication and
expression to the printed transcript.

These tapes will also

be useful for studies in other fields because many members
of the higher education decision elite had a multiplicity of
roles and the conversations frequently involved a host of
other issues.
It was stimulating, as the interviews proceeded, to
discover that there was a real difference in communication
as the author experienced the warmth and ambience of the
face-to-face interview.

In the personal interview, facial

expressions, intimacy and the reality of contact created one
sense of the interview.

Listening to the tape rendered a

second kind of experience, for the interview now was a purely
auditory sensation rather than one in which all of the senses
were involved.

The consideration of the raw transcript is

difficult because in normal conversation there are inter­
ruptions and interjections that come out of enthusiasm for
the subject.

It is indeed hard to find anybody sufficiently

dispassionate who speaks in clear, concise sentences, devel­
oping one thought to a conclusion before then taking up the
next thought.

61

Humans learn to communicate on several basic levels.
One level of personal contact is complete with all of the
activities of body motion, intimacy or hostility.

A second

level of communication may be a purely auditory sensation
where the words are filtered into a matrix in one's head
and responded to differently.
is readings.

A third form of communication

When the transcripts were completed after being

converted into written texts suitable for reading, a com­
pletely different sense was present.
The format was free-flowing; interviews ranged in
time from one hour to three hours.

There was no constraint

of time and no attempt to fit an answer into a format such
as is so necessary for the electronic media of 30 seconds or
60 seconds or, at most, a minute-and-a-half.

There generally

seemed to be a sense of pleasure as people attempted to put
their point of view on the record for history and a sense
of enjoyment reminiscing about their activities and their
perception of how events occurred.
The interviews were a success.
and open exchange of opinions.
viewees attempted to be evasive.

There was a frank

Few, if any, of the inter­
The general tone of the

interview was not to seek a victorious or a vanquished party,
but rather to have a free play of opinions; the adversarial
nature of much of the current interviewing in the reporting
of political affairs and news affairs was notably absent.

62

A general problem of classical interviews is that
most of them have a dominant and a submissive participant.
Generally the person being interviewed is more knowledgeable
than the interviewer who is not expert in the field.

Hence

communication is distorted by the superior and inferior
modalities of an interview.

This causes either the unques­

tioned acceptance of materials that should frequently be
challenged, or creates a tone of patronization, both of
which impair a free flow of discussion in the pursuit of
truth.
Another important element, if an interview is to be
successful, is the need for a relationship of intimacy.
Many of the interviews conducted for Presidents Kennedy and
Johnson Oral History Projects were conducted by co-equal
people who were knowledgeable about the problem.
This interviewer was acquainted with many of the
individuals interviewed and had known them in a variety of
settings.

Those with whom he was not acquainted were

introduced to him with recommendations as to the validity
of his efforts and the attempt to ascertain truth rather
than to seek scandal or to create rancor or fractiousness.
The study specifically attempted to seek root causes for
public policy determination and avoided the attempts for
gossip-mongering or scandal-mongering.

It was the opinion

of this author that questions of the nature of "who struck
John" would not truly elucidate what had occurred.

63
Therefore, the interview attempted to deliberately
stay away from gossip-mongering because the author was con­
vinced that in a lengthy interview the essential motivations
and humanity of the individuals would come through.

This is

particularly true in a careful reading of these interviews.
It is hard not to have an affection for John Hannah as a
human being, no matter what the legend of John Hannah is,
when he recalls the poverty and hardship of his youth in
Grand Rapids when he biked to school.

One is also struck

by Robben Fleming's remark that, notwithstanding his current
position of eminence, he had not forgotten his origins.

He
c

reflected on how his family struggled when he was in high
school after his father had died and they had perhaps
$200 a year cash to live on.
One only had to know a little bit about John Swainson's
background to understand his strong dedication and interest
in vocational rehabilitation.

The former Governor had lost

both his legs in a mine explosion in the Second World War
and had risen above these problems, seeking to be judged by
his talents and not by his handicaps.

This kind of intimacy

adds insight into the character and energy of the inter­
viewed personalities.
Dr. Maurice Crane, Curator of the Michigan State
University Voice Library, made an extremely penetrating
point, that if oral history is to be successful, there has
to be some intimacy and affinity.

He said, for example,

64
that if a young Caucasian, who had not shared in the struggles
of the Depression or of migration, were to interview an
85-year-old black man in Detroit and say, "Tell me, how was
it when you came from Georgia 60 years ago?", the capacity
for a successful interview would be severely limited because
of the cross-cultural barriers.
Dr. Crane said that a great variety of people are now
being interviewed by scholars using the oral history technique
Such interviews are more likely to succeed if they are between
persons of similar historical or cultural background.

Further

he said that disciplines such as history, political science,
and sociology should become more involved in the interview
technique and it should not be left only to the anthro­
pological projects.
Anthropologists have lead the way with the tape
recorder in dealing with non-literate peoples and have demon­
strated that in certain situations a higher level of veracity,
feeling and communication has resulted.

Other disciplines,

much tied to the written word and the typewriter, must follow
the path blazed by the anthropologists.

These techniques

developed for non-literate cultures have great value also in
literate cultures.
One of the biggest problems in approaching history is
that people have been trained to expect a "yes" or a "no",
expecting that everything is either black or white.
distorts the real situation.

This

Each individual views an event

65
from his perspective and his reality with a most personal
viewpoint.

None of the interviewed individuals had seen the

total scope of events; some had not been involved with labor,
some had not been involved in industry, some had not been
involved in the legislative process, some had not been
involved in the management of the institutional enterprise,
some had not been scholars, some had not been researchers.
Each one of them, from his vantage point, saw a particular
facet that for him was reality, and it is the summation of
all of these perspectives that is in fact the real history
of higher education in Michigan.
A particularly telling example was the polarity of
discussions in the interviews of John Hannah and Harlan
Hatcher, both with similar vantage points as university
presidents, but with different styles of operation and
different activity involvement.

During the interview,

Dr. Hannah said the role of labor was crucial in its support
of higher education.
supported it.

"Labor, like agriculture, always

The laboring man always wanted an educational

opportunity for his youngster, just as the farmer did.

The

group that you could always count on--or that I could always
count on in the many years that I was dealing with the
Legislature--was labor."

12

■^See page A762 for more discussion.

66
Dr. Hatcher, however, said he never found labor
helpful.

This exchange between Dr. Hatcher and the author

demonstrates this opinion:
Hatcher
It [labor] was supportive, yes, but I never felt
as supportive as it might well have been.
It's
hard to indicate.
It was never very helpful in
securing appropriations, for example, or in the
general planning.
I found it not unsympathetic
and wanting the benefits thereof, but compared to,
for example, the more aggressive efforts on the
part of the business community, I never found
those in the labor community too eager or effective.
Author
The labor community has a lot of political muscle
in this state to the contrary of the experience
in many other southern and western states and
even eastern states.
They didn't deliver that
muscle for you for appropriation levels?
Hatcher
13
I was never very much aware of it.
How does one evaluate this type of contradiction?
Was one man right and the other wrong?

Again we come to

perspective, and vision, and involvement.

It is pretty clear

by a variety of testimonies that John Hannah was deeply
involved in the most active way in prosecuting the public
sector ventures of Michigan State University with the
Legislature, the executive branch, and the variety of
industrial and labor groups.
Dr. Hatcher,
man.

While a direct

on the other hand, was not that kind

of

and vocal leader and a strong fighter

for the interests of the University of Michigan, he was not
■*-3see pages A807-08 for more discussion.

67
engaged in the day-to-day lobbying and day-to-day attempts
to create a favorable climate of public opinion.
While many report that John Hannah was central to
the lobbying activities of Michigan State University, others
have reported that at the University of Michigan it was the
Executive Vice President Marvin Niehuss and his associates
who handled the lobbying activities.
It is worthwhile to observe that the officials
responsible for creating a sense of public opinion and a
climate favorable to Michigan State University reported
directly to the President of the University.

Whereas, the

officials responsible for the same at the University of
Michigan reported to the Executive Vice President.

Hence

it was not disagreement, but a difference in perspective
that resulted in this seeming contradiction.
The interviewer was not discomforted or insistent
that, in order to create a true understanding of what had
occurred, each individual had to see the event in the same
way, and if two interviewed individuals replied differently,
then one was telling the truth and one was not.

One has to

make the case in history that truth is a multiplicity of
realities and that this synthesis of the various perspectives
is as close as one can come to some true sense of history.
In order to capture the sense of commitment and
involvement, as well as the ambience and mood of the inter­
views, it is vital that they be read in their entirety.

68
Hence the interviews were most valuable because they
portrayed the variety of personalities and the variety of
perspectives in higher education in Michigan, thus creating
a mechanism to expand the written record in order to
explicate that which had truly occurred.

The dissertation

proposal could only be accomplished by adding the additional
elements derived through oral history.

CHAPTER IV
INITIATIVES FOR CHANGE
The Constitutional Convention
The Michigan government constructed in 1908 was
antiquated by the 1950's because of its inability to use
modern administrative mechanisms.

These were necessary

for the government to respond quickly to problems but were
not present in either statutory or the constitutional
prerogatives of the government structure.

Michigan govern­

ment found itself strapped to act, and this was one of the
reasons for the strong consensus of reformist opinion, both
Democratic and Republican, for a new Constitution.
The Citizens for Michigan set up study groups to
conduct nonpartisan analyses of such problems as taxation,
spending, and governmental organization.

They soon decided

a new state Constitution was necessary for more effective
government, and a referendum drive was organized in cooper­
ation with the League of Women Voters and the Junior Chamber
of Commerce.

The drive for a new Constitutional Convention

was opposed by both conservatives and liberals.

The con­

servatives were afraid that their control of the Legislature
might be imperiled by reapportionment.

69

Some leaders of the

70
labor-liberal coalition argued that the delegates to the
Convention would be chosen on the basis of current appor­
tionment and thereby place them, the Democrats, in a
minority.

The Democratic attitude was that in view of the

ridiculous apportionment they might as well keep the 1908
Constitution and wait for a more propitious moment for
change.
The Citizens for Michigan were able to cast this
program in terms of better government and pull a strong
segment of opinion from the middle of the road.

But liberal-

labor opposition to the referendum turned out to be a stra­
tegic error because after approving the Convention, the
voters elected, at a nonpartisan election, an overwhelming
majority of Republicans even from the traditionally
Democratic districts in Wayne County and the Upper Peninsula.
The question of calling a Constitutional Convention
was approved at the election of April 3, 1961.

In September,

144 delegates were elected under the provisions of Act 125
of the Public Acts of 1960.

The Constitutional Convention

of 1961-1962 met on October 3, 1961, at Lansing in the
Civic Center and a proposed Constitution was adopted by the
Convention on August 1, 1962.

This close and bitterly fought

election was won by a vote of 810,000 to 803,000, hardly a
mandate.

But still it was a Constitution which has, except

71
for one or two minor deviations, not been amended by con­
stitutional act since.^
The Constitution adopted on April 1, 1963 has had
only the following Amendments proposed to it in the sub­
sequent seven years,
AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION OF 1963
SUMMARY OF ADOPTION OR REJECTION
Title of Amendment

Article

Section

Year

Action

Right of 18-year-old
to vote

2

1

Nov. 1966

Rejected

Judicial Tenure Comm.

6

30

Aug. 1968

Adopted

State Officers Com­
pensation Commission

4

12

Aug. 1968

Adopted

Manner of filling
judicial vacancies

6

2 0 , 22
23, 24

Permit election of
members of legisla­
ture to another state
office during their
term of office

4

9

Nov. 1968

Rejected

Permit graduated
income tax

9

7

Nov. 1968

Rejected

Prohibit public aid
to non-public schools
and students

8

2

Nov. 1970

Adopted

Lower minimum voting age
from 21 to 18 years

2

1

Aug. 1968

Nov. 1970

Adopted

Rejected

SOURCE: Michigan Department of Administration,
Michigan Manual, 1971-72, (Lansing, Michigan, 1972), p. 72,

72
The Convention selected Stephen Nisbet of Fremont as
its president, Tom Downs of Detroit, Edward Hutchinson of
Fennville, and George Romney of Bloomfield Hills as vicepresidents, and Fred Chase of Lansing as secretary.
Romney, elected on the Republican slate as a delegate
from Oakland County, took an active role in the Convention,
and lost some early skirmishes with conservatives led by
D. Hale Brake.

These defeats seemed to only confirm the

popular impression that this was an unbossed man seeking
the best for the people.

Romney even enhanced this view by

criticizing the Republican Party for being

dominated by

business and the Democrats for being dominated by labor.
Ultimately, he united the Republican delegates at the
Convention partly through making concessions to the
conservatives.
The major agendas in the Constitutional Convention
were to create a system of executive power capable of solving
Michigan's problems, and a concurrent mechanism for raising
revenue equitably without deleterious effects on Michigan's
economy.
Neil Staebler spoke from his long experience in
Michigan politics about the fiscal concerns.
The heart of the problem, of course, was
taxation.
It always is. We spent our first ten
years trying to unlock the treasury, the people's
willingness to tax themselves.
We kept trying to
get the progressive income tax. Williams began

73
with that in 1948 and it wasn’t until we got
the new Michigan Constitution that we got an
income tax at all.
That was one reason why some of us wanted
to favor having a Constitutional Convention.
We
thought w e ’d get some progress and that was the
most important piece of progress we secured.
We
didn't get the progressive tax and haven’t gotten
it yet, but it opened up the income tax.
That
was a terribly important thing because they state
was simply hog-tied previous to that time trying
to meet its needs.^
The success of these goals of fiscal reform and enhanced
executive power was dependent on the strength of those who
sought integration for its own sake and those who were not
interested in integration itself, but saw it as a device
for achieving substantial ends in public policy.
Although failure of the state government to solve
the financial problems created perhaps the greatest ground
swell for constitutional reform, no one wanted to scrap the
entire document.

Most advocates of reform and revision

acknowledged that the Constitution contained many laudable
features such as provisions for a merit system, municipal
home rule, the initiative and referendum, and the methods
for amendment.

Few wanted to alter the basic framework of

government, although there was some sentiment for a uni­
cameral legislature.

The guarantees of personal liberty

and property rights were regarded as inviolate provisions
of the Constitution.
O

See page A257 for more discussion.

74
Further, one should not forget that Michigan is
essentially a moderate state, not a radical state, and its
political behavior focuses mostly on the center.

When there

have been upheavals in the political structure, it has not
been because of radicalism, but because the party organiza­
tions and the opinion elites that led them had atrophied
and could not find the nextf center.

After all, the center,

the right and the left, in the history of political opinion
are not fixed locations, but are relative to the climate of
opinion, and the expanding objectives of the society.

Hence,

the middle, as well as the right and the left, is continually
shifting to new areas of consensus.

When opinion elites and

leadership elites do not cohere in the center, they lose power.
What has generally happened, then, throughout
Michigan’s political history, is that a new group of opinion
elites will come to the fore and move toward the center, one
side taking the right of the center, another side the left,
and the moderates occupying the new middle.

This process of

constant but vital movement of controlling the center for
political power has been the continuing feature of Michigan
political history.

The Sarasohns' book clearly points out

that even in the period of one-party rule, the change of
leadership involved the ability of the various factions to
change as they fought for control of the center.

The decline

of formerly powerful factions could be attributed to their
atrophying and misunderstanding where the new center was.

75
Because of the above, many at the Constitutional
Convention felt that radical alterations would only result
in a defeat at the polls.

Stephen Nisbet, President of the

Convention, in his interview with the author, portrayed the
atmosphere of caution.
I think everyone was suspicious of the
Convention.
It was only passed by a few votes,
people were afraid of it. A lot of people are
afraid of change.
I think the conservatives
wanted to be sure they had control of the
Convention.
The Romney group wanted to control
the Convention. . . .
. . . There were three problems: The first
one was getting anybody to agree to have a
constitutional convention; the second one was
to produce a document that was good for the
state; but the most important thing was to get
the darn thing adopted.
Many of them never got
them adopted.
Hence, in all of the considerations for change, the
delegates were very cautious, aware that precipitous action
would alienate the electorate.

For after all, none of the

people participating in the Convention wanted to work hard
for months only to have the enterprise repudiated at the
polls.
The following survey from Albert Sturm’s excellent
study of the Constitutional Convention ordered the issues
7
JSee pages A562 and A566 for more discussion.

76

in the priority the delegates saw them.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.

Legislative reapportionment
Tax and debt limits
Earmarking of revenue
Four-year term for governor
Reorganization of county and township government
Strengthening governor's powers
County home rule
Unified judicial organization and administration
Limit on number of executive departments
Appointment of judges
Short ballot
Modification of education provisions
Elimination of statutory detail
Strengthening legislative staff
Modification of civil service
Addition of new personal and property rights
Unicameral legislature
Reduction of voting age.
The Constitutional Convention was profoundly influenced

by major power groups within the state.

The distribution into

rural and urban districts of the 144 delegates was one measure
of the strength of regional pressures.

The majority of the

Republican delegates were from rural and small-town areas
and virtually all of the Democrats were from the metropolitan
area.
The delegates agreed to the establishment of 13
standing committees.

The Committee on Education was composed

of 21 members:
Republicans
Alvin M. Bentley (Owosso), chairman
Charles L. Anspach (Isabella), first
vice-chairman
Vera Andrus (St. Clair)
4
Albert L. Sturm, Constitution-Making in Michigan,
1961-1962, (Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan,
1962) , "p. 155.

77
Roscoe 0, Bonisteel (Ann Arbor)
Anne M. Conklin (Livonia)
John A. Hannah (East Lansing)
Bert M. Heideman (Hancock)
Dan E. Karn (Jackson)
Richard D. Kuhn (Pontiac)
G. Keyes Page (Flint)
Leslie W. Richards (Negaunee)
George W. Romney (Bloomfield Hills)-listed as an independent
Allen F. Rush (Romeo)
H. Carl Spitler (Petoskey)
Democrats
Adelaide J. Hart (Detroit), second
vice-chairman
Frank A. Blacer, Jr. (Detroit)
Sidney Barthwell (Detroit)
Theodore G. Brown (Garden City)
Edward L. Douglas (Detroit)
Jack Faxon (Detroit)
Charles L. Folio (Escanaba)
Several members of the Committee had been involved
in higher education.

Charles Anspach had been the longtime

president of Central Michigan University, Roscoe Bonisteel
had been a longtime member of the Board of Regents of the
University of Michigan, and John Hannah was the president
of Michigan State University.
While of course important to educators, the educa­
tional concerns were far less vital than other issues before
the Convention.

Actually, Michigan's citizenry was not

unhappy with the educational system, was not worried about
its well-being or its future, and had few serious objections
'’State of Michigan, Constitutional Convention, 1961,
Official Record, Austin C. Knapp, editor (Lansing, 1963),
pp. 99-101.

78
to the way the system was being handled.

In the following

exchange Harlan Hatcher succinctly stated that view.
Hatcher
Higher education was not an issue or critical
point because, as everybody acknowledged, we
had one of the best [systems] to be found
anywhere in the nation.
Author
I would assume the critical issues were the
reorganization of Michigan government and the
development of a more modern taxing system.
Hatcher
Sure.
But there was a group who extraneously
dragged in the concept that in the new
Constitution they ought to tamper with the
system of higher education in Michigan.
Hence the Committee on Education did not make significant
changes in the public education structure of Michigan in its
deliberations and probably would have found very little
support on the floor of the Convention if it had.

The

Committee was mostly concerned with elementary and secondary
education.
The key issues that faced the Committee about higher
education concerned the question of administrative supremacy
and how to deal with the problem of coordinating Michigan's
colleges and universities.

Considerable favor was expressed

by some for a single governing board for all state-supported
colleges and universities, whereas spokesmen for the colleges
^See page A819 for more discussion.

79
and universities strongly urged separate governing boards
with voluntary coordination.

The main issue in higher educa­

tion therefore was whether or not to create an all-powerful
state board of education that would have the power to coor­
dinate, control and set the objectives and evaluate the
performance of the schools.

The decision of the Committee

represented a compromise between these two points of view,
but leaned very strongly towards the autonomous perception
of the schools.
The language of Article VIII, Section 3, clearly
decided the issue in favor of institutional autonomy for the
baccalaureate institutions: "The power of the boards of insti­
tutions of higher education provided in this constitution to
supervise their respective institutions and control and direct
the expenditure of the institutions' funds shall not be
limited by this section." [author's underline].

This is

notwithstanding the following language which has been the
source of ambiguity over the prerogatives of the State Board
to plan, advise and coordinate: "It [the State Board of
Education] shall serve as the general planning and coordi­
nating body for all public education, including higher
education . . . ."
This Article essentially reflects the satisfaction
of Michigan citizenry toward the higher education structure
in Michigan.

The autonomy of the institutions was preserved

80

because the vague palliative statements encouraging general
cooperation and planning urged coordination rather than
control, thereby leaving authority and responsibility
unclear,
Tom Downs, Vice-President of the Convention and a
prominent Democrat closely allied with labor, said on
February 21, 1962, in discussion about the selection of
boards for the state’s colleges and universities: "I think
we have said time and time again on the floor, that one of
the reasons Michigan's great educational institutions have
developed is that the educational system, for practical
reasons, has been kept, as far as practical, as a separate
entity.

I believe this has fostered education."

7

The compromise on the question of the selection of
boards of control is contained in Article VIII, Sections 5
and 6.

Michigan and Michigan State both wanted to continue

the popular election of their governing boards.

Adelaide

Hart perhaps best stated this sentiment in a discussion
about the election of the superintendent of public instruc­
tion, an argument which had the same force for the elected
boards.
(1)
Elected policymaking officials are
historically more effective before the legis­
lature and its committees;
7

Constitutional Convention, p. 1190.

81
(2)
an elected superintendent makes it
his business to meet the public in every part
of the state and will be more inclined to
bring the story of the needs and problems of
education to all manner of groups.
The University of Michigan, Michigan State University
and Wayne State University were allowed the prerogative of
continuing to elect their boards of control.

The other

seven colleges and universities were given constitutional
status, but their boards were selected by the governor
with the advice and consent of the Senate.
George Romney explained to the Convention on
February 20 what was then called Committee Proposal 47,
later to become Article VIII of the Constitution of 1963,
in reference to changes from the Constitution of 1908.
[What] the proposal does is to relieve the
board of education of the responsibility for
providing the operating direction of the normal
colleges. . . . The new board of education is
given leadership and supervision over education
other than colleges and universities. . . .
[It also gives] this board overall planning and
coordinating responsibility for all of educa­
tion. . . . This board is in the position to
determine where community colleges should be
located, for instance, with the advice of the
community college board, whether 4 year colleges
should add additional departments, or whether
universities should add additional post graduate
work. . . .
It is believed that this body will establish
a stature, a prestige, that will enable it to be
very influential in terms of its recommenda­
tions. . . .
It does not interfere with the
8Ibid., p. 1189.

82
operating autonomy of the colleges and univer­
sities.
The boards of regents, the governing
boards of the universities and colleges will
retain their autonomy in the operating a r e a . 9
The report of the Education Committee was accepted
by the Convention with relatively little debate.

In

summary, the sections dealing with higher education made
some important innovations in the state system of education
for colleges and universities but the influence of tradition
was also most important.

The ten state -supported institu­

tions of higher education, including Grand Valley State
College which was not yet in operation at the time of the
Convention, were enumerated.

It was made the duty of the

Legislature to appropriate funds to maintain them and such
other educational institutions as would be established by
law.
The Article also provided that the Legislature be
given an annual accounting of all income and expenditures
by each of the educational institutions.

This was the same

proviso that had been in the 1959 amendment to the 1908
Constitution that gave Wayne State University constitutional
status.

This change was a departure from tradition because

in the 1908 Constitution, the University of Michigan and
Michigan State University were not under any constitutional
obligation to render an accounting of income and expend­
itures .
9Ibid., p. 1190.

83
Each of the ten state-supported institutions was
given a separate governing board with constitutional status.
The Article stipulated that the respective boards of control
have general supervision of their respective institutions,
and the control and direction of all of the expenditures
from the institutions' funds.

This phrase, first written

in the Constitution of 18 50, had been interpreted by the
courts repeatedly as giving the governing boards of the
University of Michigan and Michigan State, after 1908,
complete independence from legislative control.

This had

been recognized by the courts of Michigan in the landmark
case, Sterling versus the Regents of the University of
Michigan, 1896, the court saying in part:
The board of regents and the legislature derive
their power from the same supreme authority,
namely, the Constitution.
Insofar as the powers
of each are defined by that instrument, limita­
tions are imposed, and a direct power conferred
upon one necessarily excludes its existence in
the other . . . .
They are separate and distinct
constitutional bodies, with the powers of the
regents defined.
By no rule of construction
can it be held that either can encroach upon
or exercise the powers conferred upon the other. 0
The other landmark case in institutional autonomy
occurred in 1911 in the Board of Regents of the University
of Michigan versus the Auditor General.

The Michigan Supreme

Court ordered the Auditor General to pay over funds for the'
Lyman A. Glenny and Thomas K. Dalglish, Public
Universities, State Agencies, and the Law: Constitutional
Autonomy in Decline, (Berkeley, California: University of
California, 1973), p . 20.

84
normal travel expenses of the university's president, and
characterized the Board of Regents as "the highest form of
juristic person known to the law, a constitutional corpora­
tion, which, within the scope of its functions, is
co-ordinate with and equal to that (sic) of the legis­
lature .
The Detroit Free Press of March 27, 1963 approved
of the Constitution in general and specifically praised the
elimination of the superintendent of public instruction from
political activity.

It pointed out the superior coordinating

powers of the enlarged State Board, the stronger methods for
state support of libraries, and the contractual obligations
of the state in regard to fully funding pension and retire­
ment systems for state employees.
The Ann Arbor News of March 1, 1963, expressed the
sentiment of President Hatcher of the University of Michigan
and others.

They were relieved that the schools had not

been forced into a super-board situation such as existed
in California or New York, and would continue to have the
room for entrepreneurial activity and that the real definition
of coordination had not been defined to the point of control.
■^Ibid. , p . 20 .

85
The Survey of Higher Education, 1958
No other single study has had as much impact on a
given state enterprise as The Survey of Higher Education
has had on higher education in Michigan.

Popularly known as

the John Dale Russell Report, the study was well-conceived
and executed.

It was most exhaustive in its treatment of

student enrollment, programs and services, facilities,
staffing patterns, financial need, community college develop­
ments, extension services, patterns of institutional gover­
nance, and system coordination concerns.

Of the 45 major

recommendations contained in the final report, 35 have been
implemented completely or partially.

Only ten of the basic

Russell Report concerns have failed to be implemented.

This

is a rather incredible success ratio, for the history of
most study commissions in Michigan is to go through the
motions of research, submit an impressive, bound volume
which is thence filed and ignored.
Two reasons exist for this success: The first is
that the survey conducted by Dr. Russell and his associates
was developed by order of the Michigan Legislature and had
the benefit of the overview and support by a joint legis­
lative study committee.

The second reason is that the study

was published at a most auspicious time for major changes
in higher education.

Anticipated increases in enrollment

and demand for services were conditions favoring constitu­
tional revision, during a period when the political climate

86

was supportive of higher education.

Former President

Victor Spathelf assessed the favorable conditions.
. . . I don’t think that John Dale Russell
and S. V. Martorana--he used to work for me,
you know--came up with anything new.
I think
they were astute in going in and sensing
what the popular feeling was and then trying
to give a pattern to the thing.
In a sense
they were using some of the national theori­
zation and philosophic thinking about junior
and community colleges and transplanting
them here; taking some of the latent public
support and fusing it into a document which
gave them something to hold onto and at
least provided the springboard for more public
participation and acceptance of the i d e a . 12
The Legislature of the State of Michigan in 1955
adopted a resolution creating a joint committee of the House
and Senate to study and recommend ways and means to meet the
increasing needs for higher education in the most effective
and economical manner.
The commission was headed from 1955 to 1957 by
Senator Don VanderWerp and from 1957 to 1958 by Senator Frank
Andrews.

The committee had 22 meetings, five of which were

attended by a citizens advisory committee which had also
been appointed.

The study was jointly financed by an appro­

priation of $77,500 from the Legislature and a grant of
$88,500 from the William K. Kellogg Foundation.

In 1956 the

legislative committee engaged the services of John Dale Russell,
then Chancellor and Executive Secretary of the New Mexico Board
of Educational Finance, to direct the survey of higher
1?
See page A610 for more discussion.

87

education in Michigan and to make recommendations,

Russell

and his associates published a preliminary report in 1957,
12 staff studies, and published their final report in 1958. 1 ^
The study was well-conceived, well-executed, and in
an astonishing departure from other reports, was clear in
its recommendations.
dations with the text.

Other studies had mixed the recommen­
The final report of the John Dale

Russell Committee collected all of its recommendations in
Chapter 8 and published them in one succinct section of
seven pages.

While a minor point, it was one of the reasons

the Report was so successful.

Its recommendations were easy

to comprehend and available for scrutiny without going through
the 2,000 pages of text that had been produced by this study
commission and its staff.
The Report was designed to inform and guide the
Legislature.

The 45 recommendations were rather specific,

more pragmatic and less philosophical than other reports of
this type.

They proposed that the Legislature make appro­

priations sufficient to improve the quality of education
provided in the tax-supported institutions, and at the same
time provide additional facilities to take over an estimated
■^John Dale Russell, The Final Report of the Survey
of Higher Education in Michigan, Michigan Legislative Study
Committee on Higher Education, September 1958.
For a listing
of the 12 staff studies, see the Bibliography, pp. 280-81.
Hereafter cited as Russell Report.

88

73 percent increase in enrollments in state-controlled
institutions, and 90 percent increase in community colleges
by 1970.
To improve the quality of higher education in the
state, the staff report also recommended that the Legislature
provide additional support to Ferris State College and the
various community colleges so they would be able to be
accredited by the regional accrediting associations.
The John Dale Russell Report recommended increasing
faculty salaries in all tax-supported colleges and univer­
sities.

This later was accomplished by the activities of

Alvin Bentley, Chairman of the Education Committee of the
Constitution, with the Citizens Committee on Higher
Education on which Alvin Bentley also served.

His active

role is discussed quite frankly in the interview with
Edward Cushman.14
The Russell Report recommended the creation of 23
additional community colleges, while 14 others were suggested
for second priority.

There were only 15 community colleges

in Michigan when this study was written.

At the present

time that number has grown to 29, Oakland Community College
having four campuses throughout the heavily populated county,
and Macomb having two campuses in that fast-growing county.
Two additional state-supported four-year colleges were
recommended.

Grand Valley State College in Grand Rapids and

■^See pages A58-60 for more discussion.

89

Saginaw Valley College in Saginaw would be created within
the next six years because of these recommendations and
the climate of public opinion.
While a considerable increase in the enrollments of
the four regional institutions was anticipated, the Report
recommended that no new branches be established and that
those branches already in operation become autonomous
colleges as soon as possible.

There were four branches:

The University of Michigan at Flint; the University of
Michigan at Dearborn; Sault Ste. Marie, a branch of
Michigan Technological University, later to be Lake Superior
State College; and the Michigan State University branch at
Oakland.

To this date only the two latter branches have

become autonomous.

But Michigan will never go the way that

seemed likely in 1957 of having a system of branch campuses
of the major universities throughout the state.
The Report made no recommendations for limiting the
enrollments of the state's colleges and universities because of
the consensus that this was not a good public policy.

It

further felt that no substantial increases in tuition should
be made and no limitations should be placed on the enrollment
of out-of-state students.
Based on the work of Paul McCracken, the prominent
economist at the University of Michigan, the Russell study
asserted that only a small increase in the percentage of

90
the income of Michigan citizens would be needed to defray
these costs, based on the increased productivity of the Gross
State Product.

There was a strong sentiment that the people

of Michigan would be willing to devote a larger share of
their income to higher education in order to enlarge facilities
and to keep pace with the demands for admission, as long as
the standards for admission and tuition rates remained con­
stant instead of becoming more restrictive.
The Report also dealt with the problems of admin­
istration and coordination in Michigan's system of higher
education.

It recommended that each four-year college or

university have its own governing board, and that the
governing boards be appointed by the governor with the con­
sent of the Senate instead of being elected by the voters
as was the case at Michigan, Michigan State, Wayne State,
and the four normal schools with the solitary, elected
State Board of Education.

The Report also recommended

state-level supervision of the founding and operation of
community colleges, and the creation of a community college
board.
It strongly urged a coordination mechanism called
the Michigan Board of Higher Education to coordinate the
state's system of higher education by collecting data
concerning facilities, finances, and operations of all
state institutions of higher education.

It further

91

recommended that this board make an annual estimate of the
needs of each institution for presentation to the budget
division and the Legislature.

This board would advise the

Legislature and other state agencies on all policy matters
affecting higher education in the state, including the
establishment of new institutions, the development of any
new areas of service such as additional medical schools,
the admission of out-of-state students, and self-liquidating
proj ects.
The members of the Survey of Higher Education
Committee were the following:
Michigan Legislative Study Committee
Senators
Frank Andrews, Hillman
Frank D. Beadle, St. Clair
Patrick J. Doyle, Dearborn
Clyde H. Geerlings, Holland, Vice-Chairman
Edward Hutchinson, Fennville
Representatives
Charles A. Boyer, Manistee, Chairman
Arnell Engstrom, Traverse City
Allison Green, Kingston
John J. Penczak, Detroit
Frank D. Williams, Detroit
Citizens Advisory Committee
George W. Dean, President, Michigan Federation of
Labor, Lansing
S. D. Den Uyl, President, Bohn Aluminum and Brass
Corporation, Detroit
Merritt D. Hill, General Manager, Tractor and
Implement Division, Ford Motor Company, Birmingham
Benjamin Levinson, President, Franklin Mortgage
Corporation, Detroit
W. D. Merrifield, Director of Industrial Education,
Chrysler Corporation, Detroit
Stephen S. Nisbet, Vice President-Public Relations,
Gerber Products Company, Fremont

92
Stanley M. Powell, Legislative Counsel, Michigan
Farm Bureau, Ionia
Don Stevens, Education Director, Michigan C.I.O.
Council, Grand Rapids
Robert L. Taylor, Secretary-Treasurer, State
Mutual Cyclone Insurance Company, Lapeer
Don VanderWerp, former State Senator, Fremont
James M. VerMeulen, President, American Seating
Company, Grand Rapids
Survey Staff
John Dale Russell, Director of the Survey
John X. Jamrich, Assistant Director, September 1957
to September 1958
Orvin T. Richardson, Assistant Director,
September 1956 to September 1957
Task Force Members
S. V. Martorana
Eldon B. Sessions
W. T. Sanger
Julius M. Nolte
Earl W. Anderson
Robert Bell Browneib
The Committee was reorganized during the 1957
legislative session.

Senator Frank Andrews replaced former

Senator Don VanderWerp, who joined the Citizens Advisory
Committee, and Senator Clyde Geerlings replaced
Senator Carlton Morris.

The other members of the Committee

from the Senate and the House of Representatives continued.
Representative Charles A. Boyer was elected Chairman of the
Committee succeeding Senator VanderWerp, and Senator Geerlings
was elected Vice-Chairman to succeed Representative Allison
Green.
Dr. S. V. Martorana of the U.S. Office of Education
was brought in as a member of the task force on community
^Russell Report, p. iii.

93

colleges which reported in Staff Study No. 1.

Dr. W. T.

Sanger, Chancellor of the Medical College of Virginia, was
brought in for the Staff Study No. 3 on medical and nursing
education in Michigan.

Dr. Earl W. Anderson, Chairman of

the Department of Education of Ohio State University, and
Dr. Elden B. Sessions, Associate Professor and Research
Associate from Ohio State University, were brought in to
do the physical plant needs study, Study No. 4.
Dr. Julius M. Nolte, Dean of University Extension Services
of the University of Minnesota, and Dr. Robert B. Browne,
Dean of University Extension Services of the University of
Illinois, were brought in for the study of extension
services, Staff Study No. 7.
In the introduction to the final report, Russell
most aptly stated the case for an investment in higher
education:
The most precious resource of any state is the
intelligence of its population.
The funds that
are put into the development of that resource,
by means of education, constitute an investment
that is certain to pay huge returns in the future
economic productivity and human welfare.
Par­
ticularly in times such as the present, when
the State, the Nation, and the free world all
need the highest level of service that every
citizen is capable of rendering, the State has a
responsibility to see that its facilities for
higher education are such as to encourage the
widest possible participation in programs of
advanced study.
Such programs, to be effective,

i

94

must be of good quality, yet the State needs to
be assured that it is getting full value in educa­
tional service for the funds it invests in the
maintenance of colleges and universities.
Basi­
cally the purpose of the present survey has been
to study and to analyze the present programs and
facilities for higher education in Michigan, and
to point out the situations where improvements
could well be made, bearing in mind always the
interests of those who must furnish the funds
necessary for the support of the institutions,
as well as the interests of those who are the
recipients of the educational services.16
The Russell Report made the following 45 recom­
mendations :
1. It is recommended that the Legislature pro­
vide Ferris Institute sufficient support so that
the Institute may receive institutional accredita­
tion by the North Central Association of Colleges
and Secondary Schools, together with accreditation
by appropriate agencies in those technical and
professional fields in which such recognition is
now lacking.
2. It is recommended that the programs of the
community colleges that have not yet been accredited
by the North Central Association of Colleges and
Secondary Schools be strengthened so as to meet
fully the standards for such accreditation.
3. It is recommended that the State Department of
Public Instruction, in collaboration with the
Michigan Association of Collegiate Registrars, the
Michigan College Presidents Association, and other
interested groups, take steps to work out a com­
pletely uniform pattern of reporting enrollment
statistics, that can be followed by each institu­
tion of higher education in the State in all
reports of enrollment.
4. It is recommended that Wayne State University
College of Medicine be granted additional operating
expenses, with the understanding that its freshman
1 f\
Ibid., p . xiii.

95
class can then be increased from 75 to 125
students by the fall of 1958.
(This recom­
mendation of Staff Study No. 3 was in process
of being carried out at the time of the
preparation of this final Survey report.)
5. It is recommended that the State undertake,
probably not earlier than 1963 nor later than
1966, a comprehensive study of its need for
medical practitioners and their distribution,
to develop suitable plans for medical educa­
tion to meet these needs as they appear at that
time.
6.

It is recommended that:
a.

The university schools of nursing be
developed in size and with more graduate
work; this recommendation has special
reference perhaps to the University of
Michigan, which seems to have much
unrealized potential, with many factors
favorable to expansion.

b.

Substantial scholarship and loan funds
be provided from philanthropic sources
for the university schools of nursing.

7. It is recommended that Michigan attempt to find
a part of its answer to the nurse shortage by
supplying ample resources for enlarging and cau­
tiously increasing the number of two-year schools
in the State.
8. The following recommendations are made regarding
extension services in the State-controlled institu­
tions of Michigan:
a.

It is recommended that the institutions
have in view as an ultimate objective a
single, State-wide extension system,
pooling the resources of all the insti­
tutions and applying these resources as
wisdom and economy indicate that they
should be applied.

b.

It is recommended that, in order to give
better service to the people of Michigan,
a judicious but substantial enlargement of
joint offerings in extension services be
seriously and studiously undertaken.

96
c.

It is recommended that there be a
greater measure of self-imposed limi­
tations on extension services by the
various institutions, extending to a
refusal to operate activities that could
be made available or ought to be made
available through the services of such
local educational institutions as the
high school, the community college, or
other nearby State-controlled institu­
tions, or perhaps private institutions,
unless the local or neighboring institu­
tion is unwilling to undertake the services.

d.

It is recommended that a serious analysis
be undertaken of the total educational
needs of the State for extension and adult
education, and that a reasonable deter­
mination be made of the proportion of
public funds which should be made available
for such purposes, with the idea that
subsidies for adult education and extension
activities need to be enlarged sufficiently
so as to remove from such activities the
burden of almost complete self-support.

e.

It is recommended that there be a coopera­
tive examination and analysis of the
available curriculums and programs in
extension and adult education on the part
of all the State-controlled institutions
in order to determine whether or not the
offerings are responsive to actual needs,
in order to confine the offerings and
activities of each of the State-controlled
institutions to fields in which the insti­
tutional resources are adequate, and in
order to insure that the instructional
quality of such offerings and activities
will be maintained at a level consistent
with collegiate or university performance
and standards.

9.
It is recommended that the Michigan institutions
of higher education be provided with sufficient
operating funds to enable them to make marked
improvements in faculty salaries, to the end that
scholars of the highest levels of competence may
continue to be attracted and retained on the
teaching staffs of the colleges and universities in
the State.

97
10.
It is recommended that the listings of plant
needs for the various State-controlled institu­
tions, as shown in Staff Study No. 4, be considered
by the Legislature, as capital outlay requests for
new building projects are presented to it in the
future.
11.
It is recommended that appropriations to the
State educational institutions be continued at a
level that will permit the maintaining of high
quality programs, that will gradually improve the
quality of the programs in all the institutions,
and that will rapidly improve the quality of
institutions that are now below the State average
in support.
12.
It is recommended that immediate efforts be
made to set up a uniform system of financial
accounting and reporting in all the Statecontrolled institutions of higher education in
Michigan, with categories, classifications, and
definitions in conformity with standard practice,
to the end that the State fiscal authorities, the
Legislature, and the institutional officials may
have truly comparable financial information as a
basis for determining the needs for support and
the effectiveness with which supporting funds
are being used in the institutions under State
control.
13.
It is recommended that the Legislature
regularize the use of general, unrestricted insti­
tutional funds for scholarship purposes, expecially
that part of such funds which may be derived from
unrestricted appropriations. The Legislature might
well also develop a plan of equalizing the amount
that may be used from this source for scholarship
purposes in the various institutions.
14.
It is recommended that the community colleges
in Michigan develop a better balance in their
instructional programs, so that the offerings in
pre-professional fields and in the lower-division
courses in arts and sciences are supplemented by
a varied range of offerings in organized occupa­
tional fields.
15.
It is recommended that the community colleges
in Michigan that are not now accredited by the
North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary

98
Schools strengthen their programs and facilities
so that they may qualify for membership in the
regional accrediting agency, and also so that
they may receive recognition and accaptance from
appropriate national agencies that accredit pro­
grams for the preparation of technicians and
semi-professional personnel.
16.
It is recommended that the community colleges
keep up their efforts to maintain a supply of
technicians and semi-professional personnel for
the economy of the State.
17.
It is recommended that professional, educa­
tional, and lay leadership in Michigan make some
effort to formulate a policy regarding the relative
roles of the several post-high-school institutions,
and to promote a sequential and coordinated system
of higher education.
18.
It is recommended that steps be taken toward
the establishment in Michigan of a number of addi­
tional community colleges in locations that offer
a good potential for the development of an insti­
tution of satisfactory size.
19.
It is recommended that, in each locality of
the State that seems to offer the possibility for
developing a community college of satisfactory
size, a thorough study of the area be made before
decision is reached about organizing a new
institution there.
20.
It is recommended that the community college
laws in Michigan be extended to allow the formation
of community college districts encompassing two or
more adjoining school districts.
21.
It is recommended that the present specific
stipulation of 10,000 population, now found in
the community college law, be abolished.
22. It is recommended that a minimum foundation
program for the support of community college
programs in Michigan be formulated.
23.
It is recommended that the State contribute
to the support of the community colleges an
amount equal to one-half the minimum foundation
program.

99
24. It is recommended that the State continue to
assist the community colleges in financing capital
outlay projects, to the extent of 50 per cent of
the total cost of approved projects.
25.
It is recommended that the capital outlay
assistance from State funds be permitted to apply
to costs of site acquisition and improvement and
such facilities as parking areas and student centers,
but
not to dormitories or residence halls.
26.
It is recommended that further consideration
be given to the introduction of a State-wide plan
by which any district not maintaining a community
college would be responsible for contributing to
the support of each community college in which any
of its residents are enrolled anywhere in the State.
27.
It is recommended that in those situations in
Michigan where the needs of the population are such
that two or more types of post-high-school educa­
tional institutions are necessary, the State adopt
the policy that is now being followed in California.
This policy puts the community college as the first
type of post-high-school institution that should be
developed and supported.
On later study and con­
tinued evidence of need for additional types of
higher institutions, these also are authorized.
28.
It is recommended that, if and when a convention
is called for a general revision of the State
Constitution, consideration be given to revising
the method of selecting board members for the Statecontrolled institutions, so that all will be
appointed by the Governor by and with the advice
and consent of the Senate.
29.
It is recommended that, if and when a convention
is called for a general revision of the State
Constitution, consideration be given to the elimin­
ation of ex officio membership by the State
Superintendent of Public Instruction on any Board
that controls a State college or university.
30.
It is recommended that, if and when a convention
is called for a general revision of the State
Constitution, consideration be given to the elimin­
ation of all provisions for ex officio, non-voting
members of the controlling boards of the State
institutions of higher education.

100

31.
It is recommended that the statute providing
for the Board of Control of Michigan College of
Mining and Technology (C.L. 390.352) be amended by
striking out the clause requiring four of the
members to be residents of the Upper Peninsula.
32.
It is recommended that, if and when a convention
is called for a general revision of the State
Constitution, consideration be given to the elimin­
ation of the provisions that the Presidents of the
University of Michigan and Michigan State University
shall be the presiding officers of their respective
governing boards.
33.
It is recommended that the statute governing
Wayne State University be amended to provide that
the Chairman of the Board of Governors shall be
elected from the membership of the Board and shall
preside at Board meetings.
34.
It is recommended that steps be taken at once
to create a separate board for the control of each
of the four institutions now under the State Board
of Education--Central Michigan College, Eastern
Michigan College, Northern Michigan College, and
Western Michigan University.
35.
It is recommended that, if and when a convention
is called for a general revision of the State
Constitution, each board for a State-controlled insti­
tution of higher education be given the same kind of
constitutional authority and responsibility for
management and control of their respective institu­
tions as the Constitution now extends to the boards
for the University of Michigan and Michigan State
University.
There should be no change in the con­
stitutional status of the boards for the University
of Michigan and Michigan State University.
36.
It is recommended that the Legislature take
immediate steps to create and establish a board for
the coordination of the State-controlled program of
higher education in Michigan.
37.
It is recommended that the Legislature provide
for the creation of a Community College Board to
exercise the necessary State-level supervision over
the community college program in Michigan.

101

38. It is recommended that the agency, to which
central State authority over the community college
system is assigned, prepare an annual budget
request for appropriations for the current support
and capital outlay needs of the entire system of
community colleges; and that this budget request
be submitted to and be reviewed by the proposed
Coordinating Board, in the same manner as the
budget requests for appropriations for each of
the State-controlled, degree-granting institutions
are reviewed; and that the Coordinating Board be
responsible for recommending to the State fiscal
authorities and to the Legislature the total
amount to be appropriated from State funds for
current support and capital outlay projects in
the community college system.
39.
It is recommended that the Legislature transfer
the function of the supervision and accrediting of
high schools inMichigan to the State Board of
Education and the State Department of Public
Instruction, with a corresponding transfer of the
funds needed to operate this service.
40. It is recommended that the present privately
controlled institutions of higher education in
Michigan make every effort to continue their opera­
tion on a satisfactory basis without considering
the possibility of a change to public control, and
that no steps be taken by public authorities to
encourage any institution operated at present under
private control to seek to become publicly controlled.
41. It is recommended that it not be the policy
of the State of Michigan to make further necessary
extensions of the facilities for publicly controlled
higher education through the establishment of
branches of the State-controlled colleges and
universities.
42.
It is recommended that, as rapidly as is feasible,
each of the existing branches of the State-controlled
institutions in Michigan be set up as an autonomous
State institution, with its own board of control
and administrative staff.
It is recognized that
considerable time will be required to carry out
this recommendation, and that the solution reached
may be different in various locations.

102

43.
It is recommended that the Legislature
authorize the creation of a commission to con­
sider the establishment of an additional State
college or colleges, with an appropriation so
that this commission can make a thorough study
of the situation and prepare a report that will
guide the proposed State Coordinating Commission
and the Legislature in taking the necessary
steps to insure the best possible institutional
development for services to higher education in
Michigan.
44.
It is recommended that no additional barriers
be imposed by the Legislature of Michigan against
the attendance of students from other states in
the publicly controlled institutions of higher
education.
45.
It is recommended that the policy of the
State be to provide sufficient financial support
to its institutions of higher education so that
they are able to furnish education of good quality
at the lowest possible cost to the student for
tuition fees. '
As has been said earlier, this Report was aston­
ishingly effective.

Virtually every recommendation was

adopted in one form or another.

Several areas that did not

succeed were those regarding: Coordination of extension
services in the state-controlled institutions of Michigan;
the formulation of a policy regarding the relative roles
of several post-high school institutions and the promotion
of "a sequential and coordinated system of higher educa­
tion"; the creation of a minimum foundation program for
the support of public community and junior colleges; the
transfer of the functions of the supervision and accred­
iting of high schools in Michigan to the State Board of
17Ibid., pp. 171-77.

103
Education; and the recommendation that no additional barriers
be imposed by the Legislature of Michigan against the atten­
dance of students from other states in the publicly con­
trolled institutions of higher education.
President John Jamrich of Northern Michigan
University, Assistant Director of the Russell Report, com­
mented with pride on the accomplishments of the Survey.
’’That study came out with 45 basic recommendations.

The

one and only major recommendation which has not yet been
put into effect in any way in the State of Michigan is the
one having to do with coordination and planning."

18

All of Russell's recommendations for enhancing the
power of a coordinating agency as an effective centralized
control mechanism were not in fact adopted.

He and his

associates strongly recommended on one hand the establishment
of a state coordinating board for higher education, and on
the other hand the extension of constitutional status and
fiscal autonomy to all of the state-controlled colleges and
universities.

Both of these recommendations were written

into the Constitution and have led to considerable confusion,
particularly for those who like their government clean and
neat.

It is apparent that the separate concepts of insti­

tutional autonomy and state coordination are basically
l^See pages A413-14 for more discussion.

104
conflicting, particularly without some clear-cut consensus
and statutory or constitutional direction.
Even though language would later be adopted in the
Constitution, it was clear that centralized control was not
to occur either through the Russell Report recommendations
or the Constitution.

Lip service but not much energy was

given to voluntary control, nor was

this particularly high

onthe agenda of the public mind, for as

Representative

James Farnsworth said in his interview:
I am amazed at the amount of waste that the
American people are willing to pay for in order
to protect some things that they hold very,
very dear.
Let's take education, for instance.
They so value the right to determine where
their kids are going to go to school, whether
they are going to go into the trade school
or whether they are going to go into some
other higher education setting, that they are
willing to put the kids in on the front end
even though somebody could judge right then
that they are going to fail, and put them
through that process and pay for it to
protect that kind of choice.
Michigan's people are a sturdy, proud people, suspi­
cious of state control and not at all sympathetic to creating
overwhelmingly powerful centralized bureaucracies.

Virtually

every recommendation of the John Dale Russell Report that
enhanced the delivery of services or improved the capacity
of the institutions to serve the public and deliver programs
was enacted through statute and by the Constitutional
Convention from 1958 to 1970.
19

Virtually none of the control

See page A139 for more discussion.

105
mechanisms that were dear to the hearts of centralized
planners have been enacted, and it appears that the quality
of higher education has not suffered by that lack.
Jamrich, sensitive to Michigan's proud traditions
pointed out why centralized coordination has not succeeded
To go back to why central coordination has
not found a good nest in Michigan.
I think that
has some obvious reasons and it goes back to the
point I was making before.
This state's higher
education enterprise has been of such long
standing--since 1837 [U of M ] , 1855 [MSU], 1849
for Ypsilanti as a teacher-training institution-and of such high reputation, and all in a setting
of individuality and individual performance.
Anyone who thinks about it for any length of
time has to ask the question: "If we've done so
well under these conditions of individuality and
autonomy, who says there is anything better to
be obtained by merging all of this under one
board?" South Dakota has had a single board
since 1800-something, and fame and stature don't
happen to reside in higher education in that
state.
It is modest, it does its job, but
certainly nothing like the fame and stature of
U of M, MSU, et c e t e r a . 20
Really, the John Dale Russell Report placed the
agenda before the public, the Constitutional Convention
enacted most of its recommendations, and the Blue Ribbon
Committee reported to the public that all was well,
that the institutions were a great treasure, they needed
more love and more support, and that was that.
20

See page A414 for more discussion.

106
The Citizens Committee on Higher Education
The Citizens Committee on Higher Education, known
as the Blue Ribbon Committee, was appointed by Governor George
Romney in the fall of 1963.

71

It was an astutely selected

group of 56 members representing the broadest cross section
of the power elite of the State of Michigan.

There were

seven members from labor and 26 representing industry; of
that 26, five were from commerce, four from banking and
finance, three from the media, five from the major automotive
companies and one member was C. S. Harding Mott, of the Mott
Foundation whose wealth was deeply entwined with General
Motors.

Four members were religious leaders; four from the

law profession; three were certified public accountants, two
were physicians, nine members were women, and one represented
the Department of Health of the City of Detroit.

Only one

member was employed in higher education, Dr. Charles F.
Whitten, M.D.

Charles Boyer, whose occupation was insurance,

had formerly served in the Michigan House of Representatives
and had been a member of the Michigan Legislative Study
Committee that supervised the work of John Dale Russell.
The most prominent members of the Citizens Committee
were Irving Bluestone of the United Automobile Workers;
Alvin Bentley, a U.S. Congressman, Regent of the University
71

Report of Citizens Committee on Higher Education,
Harold T. Smith, Executive Director [Kalamazoo, Michigan,
March, 1965). Hereafter cited as Citizens Committee.

107
of Michigan, and Chairman of the Education Committee of the
Constitutional Convention; Richard S. Emrich, the Episcopal
Bishop of Michigan; Ray Eppert, President of the Burroughs
Corporation; Carl Gerstacker, Chairman of the Board of Dow
Chemical Company; Alex Fuller of the AFL-CIO of Wayne County
Creighton Holden, a powerful member of the Republican Party;
Mildred Jeffrey, National Committeewoman of the Democratic
State Central Committee; Judge Wade McCree of the U.S.
District Court in Detroit and later Circuit Court Judge of
the United States; John McGoff, owner of Panax Corporation
of Michigan which owned newspapers and radio stations.
C. S. Harding Mott of the Mott Foundation; Earl Wolfman of
the United Bakery and Confectioners Union of Detroit;
Theodore 0. Yntema of Ford Motor Company; Dan Karn of
Consumers Power Company; and Edward Cushman of American
Motors and later Executive Vice-President of Wayne State
University.
The Governor entrusted the Committee with the
following specific assignments:
1.

Review the present and future needs of
higher education in Michigan, and define
the needs that must be met.

2.

Create a general understanding of the
role that institutions of higher learning
must play in meeting the needs.

3.

Indicate the support necessary to provide
the kind of higher education that the
modern day requires.

108
4.

Recommend to the Governor for transmission
to the legislature and the general public
suitable plans for meeting the needs with
economy and efficiency.22
The Committee submitted its report to the Governor

on March 19, 1965.

They made between 35 and 40 recommenda-

tions not all of which are major. 23
The majority of these recommendations were made not
to the Legislature but to the State Board of Education which
had not been overly successful in effecting change in public
policy for higher education.

The Committee believed that the

State Board of Education had the power and the means to
effectively implement the recommendations.

Further, one

would suspect that the public and many members of this group,
having just come out of the Constitutional Convention, were .
trying to set the agenda for the State Board of Education in
the area of higher education before the Board went too far
down the road.

Edward Cushman, an extremely influential

member of this Committee, reflected:
In the report of the Romney Blue Ribbon
Commission that chapter on the community
colleges was probably the best single part
of that report.
I think that the growth
22

Citizens Committee, letter of transmittal.

2^A significant historical analysis of the work of
the Committee has not been published.
Dr. Gerald Beckwith,
staff associate to Governor Milliken’s Commission on Higher
Education, has written an extremely useful staff paper, as
yet unpublished. The author is indebted for some of the
discussion to his unpublished staff paper of March 21, 1973.

109
of the community colleges that you have
described has been one of the best things
that could happen to the people in our state.
That is because of the very reasons that you
have identified: mainly that it has made
education beyond high school available to
more and more students.24
Thus, the majority of the study was oriented to
community colleges and the need to extend and enhance them.
Many other recommendations were made in the manner of
cautions to institutions or other agencies to not engage in
certain types of behavior.

For instance, the following quote

from page 31 of the Report was hardly a clarion call for
action: "The Committee recommends, therefore, that the now
autonomous boards of the state-supported institutions take
the necessary steps to reorganize budgets in view of working
toward competitive faculty salary scales when such do not
now exist."
The Report recommended the development of higher
education services in Flint and in the Saginaw-Bay CityMidland region.
The Blue Ribbon Committee came out most strongly
against branch campuses and recommended that no additional
branch institutions be established in Michigan and that the
four branch campuses of Michigan State University at Oakland,
24see page A56 for more discussion.

110
University of Michigan at Flint and at Dearborn, and
Michigan Technological University at Sault Ste. Marie be
made independent.^^
The Committee also recommended that community
colleges be created outside of the then current Michigan
practice of being parts of K-12 school districts and that
they be freestanding and have larger districts.

This recom­

mendation argued for the principle of separate community
colleges rather than community colleges being departments
of school districts, as was the case in Grand Rapids,
Dearborn, Alpena and other cities.
The Committee recommended against locating four-year
baccalaureate institutions on the same sites as community
colleges.

There had been extensive dialogue about a new

four-year college in the Saginaw-Bay City-Midland area.

It

was concerned that a four-year institution with its higher
prestige competing with community colleges in offering
certain types of community services would hurt the smaller
college.

It further recommended the development of budget

formulas and the development of uniform systems of accounting
and reporting for community colleges, including redefinition
of what a full-time-equated student was.
The Blue Ribbon Committee came out in favor of full
state districting of community colleges.
24

Citizens Committee, p. 15,

To this day there

Ill
is not community college service available to every citizen
because a significant portion of the state's land is unavail­
able for such services and not generating taxes to support
in-district community colleges.

The Committee was most

concerned that community colleges be within easy driving
range to all citizens.

They recommended equal state and

local shares of capital outlay for the development of com­
munity colleges; state foundation support for community
colleges at 50 percent of the average systemwide cost, or
average institutional cost, whichever was the lesser.
In setting the agenda for the State Board of
Education, much taken with the ambiguity over voluntary
coordination, the Report recommended "that the State Board
of Education take immediate and firm control" with regard
to the approval or disapproval of graduate and graduateprofessional programs.

The Committee stated that it believed

that in the area of coordination of graduate and graduateprofessional education, this is "an area into which the
State Board of Education needs to move promptly in exercising
its responsibility for overall planning and coordination."

?^

The Blue Ribbon Committee also recommended: coordina­
tion of the general extension division with the cooperative
extension services; the establishment by the State Board of
Education of a continuing advisory commission on research
^Ibid. , p . 24 .

112
and development; the adequate funding for the efficient
operation of the State Department of Education and the State
Board of Education; that the four-year institutions continue
to adjust the admission of students to the point where
unnecessary attrition, which is costly to society and
damaging to the individual, may be avoided; that the State
Board of Education carry on constant studies of the needs
for faculty, the sources of faculty, salary scales, retire­
ment policies, and so forth, so that the institutions would
be well-informed when advising the Legislature concerning
budgets.
The Committee then recommended the development of
share-of-cost formulas in higher education between student
tuition and appropriation; the development of uniform
standards of definition of out-of-state students; uniform
accounting and reporting procedures for the state colleges
and universities; the establishment of a state center for
the processing of information on student financial aids
and the coordination of available scholarships and loan
funds between state, federal and philanthropic areas; the
development of cost-effective procedures and studies with
regard to graduate and graduate-professional programs, being
concerned about the extremely limited enrollments of some
high-cost programs; and a long-range capital outlay funding
and coordination under the State Board of Education.

The

113
Committee tiptoed almost up to the brink of recommending
bonding for capital outlay, but didn't go quite that far
since it was really against the conservative bent of people
accustomed to pay-as-you-go construction.
Dr. Beckwith in his staff paper on the Citizens
Committee on Higher Education suggests that "Insofar as it
provided needed encouragement and direction for improved
state fiscal support of higher education in a period of
rapid expansion, and insofar as it provided needed policy
guidance for the State Board of Education in its formative
stages, the impact of the Citizens Committee was considerable."
But, he adds: "In terms of specific action recommendations
the Citizens Committee Report seems not to have been near
the influence of the earlier John Dale Russell Report."
What, then, was the impact of the Blue Ribbon
Committee's Report of March, 1965?
The document was extremely encouraging to the State
Department of Education and the elected State Board.

They

were very troubled over the specific responsibilities and
the support for those responsibilities because the consti­
tutional language was complex and ambiguous.

It contained

language in favor of voluntary cooperation but provided no
administrative mechanism to make it occur.
themselves had no desire to cooperate.

The colleges

The growth of higher

education was historically driven by entrepreneurial energy
and an imperialistic interest by those who were strong

114
advocates of particular institutions,

In competition there

was success and in cooperation there was only failure.
The community colleges could only be immensely
encouraged by the language and tone of the higher education
report.

It said essentially that community colleges were

the most vital part of the apparatus that had not yet been
put in place, therefore more must be encouraged, and a
greater share of funding must be allocated to them.
The Report also attempted to set the agenda for a
new state board and a department of education which were
riven by the difficulties of selecting a superintendent
of public instruction, and by the general quality of the
state board, which was not politically balanced or in touch
with the influence elites or decision elites.
The Report states: ’’Three of the universities had
enjoyed autonomous government from the time they became
state-supported institutions and the 1963 State Constitution
extended autonomy to the rest.

At the same time, the

Constitution created a new State Board of Education to serve
as the general planning and coordinating body for all public
education, including higher education.

It was clearly the

intent of the framers of the Constitution to retain for the
institutions the freedom of action that autonomous government

115
provides, but at the same time, to provide for such
planning and coordination of higher education as may be
essential for educational efficiency and operating
economy.”26
This frank advertisement from the governor’s appoin­
tees, the representatives of the power structure of
Michigan and some of the framers of the Constitution's
education article, was intended in a subtle way as a caveat
to the ten state institutions of higher education.
The Blue Ribbon Committee made a special plea,
although again in the style of the Report, no concrete
recommendation, that the State Board of Education, the state
government, the Legislature, all interested groups and
individuals in the state be on the alert for what could be
done to strengthen and enlarge the entire private college
program.

This would give the private institutions a more

adequate place in the total educational scene of the
+
4.
27
state.

The Committee further recommended that a statewide
system of community colleges be developed as an essential
part of the Michigan system of higher education.

The colleges

would serve primarily as commuter institutions offering the
technical and vocational programs, as well as the freshman
26Ibid., p. 14.
27Ibid., p. 17.

116
and sophomore academic programs, and be geared to the needs
of the communities.
It set the following planning tenet as its view of
the needs for the restricting of program competition:
The Committee believes that this can best be
accomplished by adhering to the following
principle, a principle that may become a major
tenet of a state plan for higher education and,
indeed, a principle around which a state plan
might evolve.
This principle is: Any institu­
tion in the state should be permitted to offer
any educational program provided the State
Board of Education is satisfied that (1) there
is a social need for it, (2) there is a valid
unsatisfied student demand for it, and (3) the
institution is well qualified in scholarly
tradition, staff, facilities, and location to
offer it effectively, efficiently, and
economically.28
The Blue Ribbon Report made a strong case for review,
by the State Board, of requests for new programs and requests
by one institution for a program held by another.

The program

review process was implemented ineptly and failed to win
credibility in later years for the State Department of
Education.
In summary, the Blue Ribbon Committee suggested:
1) setting up a clear plan for the State Board of Education,
giving them advice and counsel about which way to go;
2) attempting to encourage by every way the need for enhancing
the new State Board of Education; and 3) enhancing the private
sector and enhancing the role and scope of community colleges.
28Ibid., p. 27.

117
The very tone of the Report was captured in its
beginning: "The citizens of Michigan may be justly proud
of the quality and excellence of the system of higher educa­
tion that has been developed thus far . . .

And, in a

departure from its prevailing style, the Report said most
eloquently:
There is one conclusion that stands out
above all others.
It is that the educational
needs of today and tomorrow demand immediate
and responsible attention; they demand an
immediate commitment on the part of the
citizens of the state to meet the financial
burden that coping with these needs will
require.
It must be understood that there
are no bargain-basement prices for a whole­
some and successful educational system.
The
crisis in higher education will become more
and more acute and compelling; only bold,
adequate action can prevent it from becoming
a catastrophe.
The ability of the state of Michigan and
its people to meet the challenge is beyond
question. The crucial question is whether
the state and its people have the desire, the
aspiration, and the will to turn the challenge
into a living reality, so that our young people
may have the opportunity of fulfillment for
themselves as individuals and that the welfare
of the society in which they live will be
enhanced. The Citizens Committee, therefore,
urges that the people of Michigan pay special
heed to the needs outlined in this report and
dedicate their efforts and their energies to
the fulfillment of these needs; the future
well-being of our children and our children's
children may well depend upon it.29
Some regarded the Blue Ribbon Committee Report as
important, but the evidence does not indicate that it was
^ I b i d . , Foreword and Acknowledgments.

118

influential as a change agent.

It was congratulatory to

the higher education establishment of Michigan, but did not
make many recommendations for improvement.

It was not as

lucid and clear-cut as the John Dale Russell Report.

It was

careless in its using of the words "suggest" and "recommend",
unlike the Russell Report which listed its recommendations.
The Report made no recommendations that were easy to ascer­
tain without an extremely close reading of the text.

One

can only regard it as a progress report rather than a call
for action.
The Report best reflects the fact that Michigan's
people, as reflected through the selection of this leadership
elite on the Blue Ribbon Committee, were most satisfied with
the state of higher education.

The Committee was concerned

that additional higher education opportunities be created,
additional community college institutions be put in place,
and that adequate money be appropriated, but saw no need,
as the John Dale Russell Report had seen earlier, to make
significant changes.
Report of the Advisory Committee
on University Branches
On June 12, 1964 the Michigan Coordinating Council
for Public Higher Education authorized the appointment of
a five-member committee to study the university branches.
The committee is popularly known as the Davis Committee

I

■WEWR?:

fl

119
after its chairman Harvey H. Davis, Provost Emeritus of the
University of Iowa.

Warren Huff, the chairman of the

Council, with the aid of the other members, appointed the
following people to the committee:
Harvey H. Davis, Chairman
Provost Emeritus
University of Iowa
Richard G. Browne
Executive Director
Illinois Board of
Higher Education

Cyril 0. Houle
Professor Education
University of Chicago

Edmund J. Gleazer, Jr.
Executive Director
American Association
of Junior Colleges

Leland L. Medsker
Vice Chairman
Center for the Study
of Higher Education
University of California-^

Two of the members, Edmund J. Gleazer and Leland L.
Medsker, had been active as staff resources to the Blue Ribbon
Committee which had not yet, at the time of the Davis study,
published its report.
The Committee held its first meeting at the Illini
Center in Chicago on August 27 and 28, 1964.

It was briefed

on the Michigan situation by Chairman Huff and the Executive
Director of the Council, Dr. Ira Polley, who would later
become the superintendent of public instruction.
Meetings were held on October 3 and 4 in Detroit,
and on October 18 and 19 in Lansing.

At these meetings the

Committee visited with the presidents or their representatives
• ^ M i c h i g a n Coordinating Council for Public Higher
Education, Report of the Advisory Committee on University
Branches, (Lansing, Michigan, December, 1964) , p . 2~.
Hereafter cited as Advisory Committee.

120
from all ten of Michigan’s public universities and colleges,
representatives of the junior colleges, the State
Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Superintendent of
Schools from Flint, and with the Executive Director of the
Citizens Committee on Higher Education, Harold Smith.
A final meeting of the Committee was held on
November 7 and 8 during which the report was formulated.
The final report was published in December of 1964.
The Report said that the growth in population of
college-age students was certain to be spectacular.

College

enrollments were more than likely to double from 1965 to
1975, and the growth in higher education would be 20,000
students per year.

The Report indicated that before the

Committee could really begin to study the relative advantages
and disadvantages of the establishment in Michigan of univer­
sity or college branches offering two-year or four-year
educational programs, it needed to evaluate the problem
of the proper development of a total system of higher educa­
tion for Michigan.
The Advisory Committee politely averred that in
Michigan there was no system and that there were two basic
positions:
The first holds that the best growth will come
through the exercise by each institution of its
legal right to pursue its own destiny and to do
what it believes to be best for the people of

121
Michigan.
Those holding this position find
a clear mandate for the independent exercise
of authority granted by the new Constitution
to present and future universities.
The Report explained that the holders of this
position made the case that the long tradition of freedom
had been enlarged and embodied into law and the proper course
of action was for each institution to pursue its own destiny,
doing what it believed to be sound.

It quoted Adam Smith

arguing that the entrepreneur is "led by an invisible hand
to promote an end which was not part of his intention", and
that same benign influence, though not now perceived, may
ultimately prove to have been the chief source of a sound
total program.

The Committee stated clearly how Michigan’s

higher education system had come to be and as it is now
actually in place.
There was a middle view that those who believed in
autonomy must face the reality that cooperation was vital
if free institutions were to survive.

The institutions of

higher education must learn to work together for the common
good.

It said that there may have been a time when Michigan

education was an uncharted sea in which anyone might fish at
will, but now that that frontier had been reached, the need
for planning and coordination was recognized.

The middle

position also held that the separate institutions must
operate not only according to the letter of the new
31

Advisory Committee, p. 7.

122
Constitution, but also according to its spirit.

It further

emphasized that the Constitution which granted autonomy also
required the State Board of Education to do the general
planning and coordinating for all public education including
higher education.
The Advisory Committee warned that when institutions
of higher education "use their freedom to act without due
regard to the best growth of a total pattern of education in
Michigan, liberty becomes license."

James Miller reflected

some of this concern.
Dearborn became a reality with the gift from
the Ford family. Matilda Wilson and her husband,
particularly Matilda, were very anxious to have
their estate developed into a campus.
The contri­
bution that they were making in terms of the land
and buildings, in particular, was a handsome
inducement.
I think at that point, then, the fears started
to grow that there was going to be a wide-open
scramble for a branch concept, one in Traverse City,
one in Battle Creek, here and there and all over
the state. That naturally upset other four-year,
degree-granting institutions who said, "This
isn't the way that it should be d o n e . "33
The opposite view was held by those who argued that
the need for coordination was so great that it transcended
the machinery available or contemplated for the future.

It

warned that, "if the present conflict continues, that feeling
will crystallize into the belief that stronger measures are
32Ibid., p. 7.
33see page A196 for more discussion.

123
essential, including, most probably, a single controlling
board and an over-all chancellor for higher education.
The Report pointed out that there was uncertainty
among Michigan educators as to the wisdom of establishing
freestanding institutions as compared to branches, and that
there was apprehension as to the effects of university
branches on the well-being of community colleges.

There

were questions about the community colleges’ role and place
if they would seek to become baccalaureate-degree-granting
institutions.

There was also concern about whether they

would be able to provide an adequate variety of programs,
especially in the sparsely settled areas of the state.

The

Report then raised the question as to why there were no
community colleges in the City of Detroit.
The Committee recommended that: 1) the State Board of
Education give high priority to the preparation of a Michigan
Plan for Higher Education; 2) special consideration be given
by the Legislature to research and public service activities
as well as to high-cost instructional programs; and 3) an
Advisory Council for Planning and Coordination of Higher
Education be established that would be parallel to the State
Board for Public Community and Junior Colleges.

Both the

Council and the Board would have no power except to advise
the State Board of Education.

The first job of the Advisory

•^Advisory Committee, p. 8.

124
Council would be the development of a Michigan Plan for
Higher Education.
The Committee then addressed the question of branches,
a particularly vexing problem which would be the cause of one
of the greatest difficulties of the State Board of Education.
The branch issue became one of the historical watersheds in
the construction of the Michigan system of higher education
and the question of the role of the State Board of Education.
The Committee stated that all of the branches were
initiated either by generous gifts of property, or funds on
the part of either the federal government or public-spirited
citizens.

It stated, therefore, that those who favor branches

tend to regard them as ways of supplementing scarce public
dollars by finding private support for capital expenditures.
Those who opposed branches pointed out that the
acceptance of such funds meant that the new institutions
could not be placed on the best sites, located in the most
needy service areas, nor be started at the best time.
The Report pointed out that neither argument was
directly related to the basic issue of whether new institu­
tions should be branches or autonomous units.

One dis­

tinguished university president noted to the Committee that
the basis for the establishment of campuses in the past had
been based on acts of God or acts of philanthropists.
The arguments in favor of branches i^re that a branch
college can 1) win immediate accreditation by the regional

125
association; 2) profit immediately from the prestige of the
parent institution, which may help it to attract students,
faculty, and other funds; 3) secure continuing counsel and
support from the

parent institution;4) have its central

administrative services

handled more economically than if

it were independent; 5) have a body of local alumni of the
parent institution who are immediately available to act as
interested local sponsors; and 6) aid the parent institution
to fulfill its sense of obligation, strengthen its program,
and win support for itself.
The arguments against a branch institution were
these: 1) it may

arouse the fears of other established insti­

tutions that the

parent institution is empire-building or

acting in its own interest without due regard for the total
needs of the state; 2) it may lead to the indiscriminate
opening of other branches by other competitive institutions;
3) it may destroy the possibility of sound development of
community colleges and other autonomous institutions; 4) it
may create tension locally and in the Legislature because of
opposition by supporters of other institutions; 5) it may be
so remote from the parent institution's central interests
that the faculty and students feel isolated; 6) it may orient
its standards and programs to the home campus, rather than to
the local community; and 7) it may lead students to choose an

126
institution on the false basis of accreditation or prestige
rather than in terms of the programs which it can offer.

35

On the other hand the arguments for an autonomous
institution were: 1) it can have a board of trustees and
administrative leadership which give undivided attention to
it and therefore greater incentive, and make better policies
than a board which proliferates

its concern for a number of

institutions; 2) it can invite a greater identification of
the people in its community with the institution; 3) it can
command a greater degree of local faculty authority and
responsibility; 4) it can offer a greater opportunity to
protect the richness and diversity of higher education;
5) it can grow naturally, accepting its eventual maturity
from the start and not having to go through a succession of
dependent stages; and 6) it can identify its own distinctive
functions and programs and not be constantly polarized into
*Z

either accepting or rejecting those of the parent institution.
The Committee made the following recommendations:
1) that no additional university branches be established;
2) that no university establish a branch except by specific
legislative authorization and with separate, designated state
appropriation; 3) that when there is evidence of the need for
a new degree-granting institution or upper-division institu­
tion in a given region, the State Board of Education, with
35Ibid., p. 11.
^^Ibid., pp. 11-12.

f.

127
appropriate consultation, make recommendations.

No existing

institution of higher education should act unilaterally to
enter the situation until a report has been made; 4) that
any change in the basic structure of an existing branch, such
as autonomy or the addition of upper or lower divisional work,
be examined through the same kind of multi-representational
committee; 5) that appropriate concern be taken by the
branches for

existing or future community colleges;

and 6) that

the

gifts of funds or property not be the determination

the

state is going to do.

of what

The Committee then specifically recommended the
following concrete steps:

1) Steps should be taken to explore

the possibility of establishing Oakland University as a wholly
autonomous institution.

2) The Dearborn branch should continue

to operate as an upper-division and graduate institution under
the auspices ,of the University of Michigan.

3) The University

of Michigan should postpone the offering of a lower divi­
sional program at Flint.

If and when lower divisional work,

that is, freshman and sophomore, is offered there, steps
should be taken by the University of Michigan toward acquiring
a separate campus.

If a full four-year program is offered,

there should be a careful delineation of the relative assign­
ments of the community college and the university branch.
If a four-year institution is developed, it should be given
complete autonomy, as soon as the size of enrollment justifies

128
it.

4) Michigan Technological University should postpone

the offering of an upper divisional program at their branch
37
at Sault Ste. Marie.
The Report was eloquent, but succinct, stating the
arguments on both sides with clarity and force.

But its

recommendation that the branch institution in Flint be
impeded from growing to a complete four-year program and
that plans be made to give it complete autonomy, flew in the
face of the will of the power elite of the City of Flint,
particularly Charles Stewart Mott and the powerful and
influential Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee,
Senator Garland Lane.

Ten years after this issue had been

concluded, Senator Lane still felt passionately about it.
Lane
But the State Board went there and said: "Even
though you planned before we came into
existence under the Constitution, we'll let
you have the first and second year, but you
shall phase it out and you shall go to another
structure." The City of Flint said, "We want
the University of Michigan structure."
It
meant, by picking the fight with me that it
was a head-on collision constantly for about
four or five years.
Everybody saw it, and
looked at it, and said it really wasn't what
they wanted . . . .
Author
If they had not picked that fight with you, do
you think that could have brought about...
37Ibid., pp. 13-14.

129
Lane
It would have survived and it probably would
have functioned. °
Espousing the recommendation of the Davis Committee,
the State Board of Education shortly thereafter decided to
take on the University of Michigan to get them to give the
Flint branch autonomy.

They found a worthy foeman in

Harlan Hatcher, the able and vigorous President of the
University of Michigan, who felt most strongly about the
autonomy and the constitutional personality of the University
of Michigan.

He allied with the elite of Flint, which was

indeed a most impressive group, represented by General Motors
and C. S. Mott.
This fight severely constrained the growth and the
power of the State Board of Education.

Ira Polley, however,

says in his interview that the issue was well lost before
this because of the complexities and ambiguities of the
Constitution.

The ten state institutions wanted to continue

to fish in the uncharted seas of Michigan and to continue to
follow entrepreneurial institutional interests where each
institution would pursue its own destiny, doing what it
believed was sound.
The espousal of this one specific subissue would
severely handicap the State Board's final slim chance of
attaining success in voluntary coordination.

In time the

38
See pages A246-47 for more discussion.

130
Sault Ste, Marie branch campus would become independent
from the Michigan Technological University.

The University

was an institution whose program was deeply committed to the
hard sciences, whereas the branch needed a far broader
curriculum of a community college nature in liberal arts
and vocational/technical programs if it was to gain enroll­
ment and survive.

Some 250 miles away from Sault Ste. Marie,

the University found it onerous to manage the branch and was
eager for this institution to be a separate entity.
Michigan State University, having succeeded in its
original objective of preventing the statewide establishment
of branch campuses of the University of Michigan, encouraged
the ambitions of the Oakland branch to attain institutional
skill in the management of its own resources and actively
endorsed the self-determination of this institution.
If the Davis Committee had come out solely against
future branch campuses, the weight of legislative opinion
and popular sentiment in the state would have supported
that view.

The failure of the University of Michigan to add

a line-item specifically authorizing the branch campus in
the Saginaw area was proof indeed that the time and the
attitudes in the State of Michigan had changed.

39

If the

•^Section 20 of the Public Acts of 1971, a section
which had been appended in one form or another for many years,
best exemplified the legislative attitude.
The section stated
in part: "It is a condition of this appropriation that none of
the appropriations contained in this act shall be used for the
construction of buildings or operation of institutions of
higher education not expressly authorized in section 1."

131
Davis Committee had left well enough alone, the Report would
have been an emphatic, declarative statement of that which
was.
The State Board, not content to consolidate its
influence and pick its fights wisely, picked an unwise fight
in the spirit of "machismo” .

This only alienated the

University of Michigan toward the State Board as the coordin­
ating board, and since the other nine institutions of higher
education were indifferent at best, there was little chance
thereafter for the State Board to succeed and succeed it did
not.
The dreams of the framers of the Constitution were
laid to rest in an overwhelming sense of disappointment.
Romney, the central figure in this period, expressed his
regret.
It was a disappointment that the Board didn't
have the status and influence that it was antici­
pated it would have. Those who were advocating
the elective board with the broad responsibilities
that were given to the Board of Education antici­
pated a board of such a status that it would
attract outstanding people throughout the state
to run for the State Board.
Well, that didn’t really prove to be the case.
As a matter of fact, the early Board did take
kind of a partisan approach and made it difficult
to develop a coordinated effort between the Board,
the governor's office, the budget bureau, and so on. 0
Hence the State Plan for Higher Education of 1969,
which began as the result of the specific encouragement of
40

See page A724 for more discussion.

132
the Blue Ribbon Committee, would not have much influence,
since the constitutional questions were settled de facto.
The State Plan for Higher Education in Michigan
On June 11, 1969, the State Board of Education
officially adopted the State Plan for Higher Education in
Michigan.^

This three-year task was completed under the

leadership of Harold T. Smith of the Upjohn Institute who
had earlier been the Executive Director of the Citizens
Committee on Higher Education.

Twenty of the 38 goals

outlined by the State Board of Education in its 1969 State
Plan for Higher Education in Michigan were redevelopments
of recommendations made by the Blue Ribbon Committee.
The plan for preparing this document was, insofar as
possible, to involve interested and concerned parties.

This

was accomplished by the organization of a number of com­
mittees involving a large number of people and many meetings.
The principal committees were the following:
Study Steering and Advisory Committee A , composed
of university and college personnel of the public and
independent baccalaureate institutions, community colleges,
and their respective associations.
Study Committee B, on Present and Future Needs for
Postsecondary Education, composed of university and college
personnel and citizens.
Michigan Department of Education, The State Plan
for Higher Education in Michigan, Harold T. Smith, (Lansing,
Michigan, 1969). Here a ft e r cited as State Plan.

133
Study Committee C , on Students Unable to Pay the Cost,
composed of university and college personnel and citizens.
Study Committee D, on Faculty Advisory and Study
Committee, composed of faculty members representing the
educational institutions.
Study Committee E, on Finance, composed of university
and college financial officers and citizens.
Citizens Advisory Committee for Higher Education,
composed of citizens.
Former Governor G. Mennen Williams was Chairman of
the Citizens Advisory Committee, and John Letts was the
Vice-Chairman.

Judge Letts, Ivan Brown of the United

Automobile Workers, William Defoe, President of the Defoe
Shipbuilding Company, Carl Gerstacker, Chairman of the Board
of Dow Chemical Company, Robert Herrick of the Muskegon
Chronicle, and T. A. Saunders of General Telephone had all
been members of the 56-member Governor's Blue Ribbon
Committee.

Others included Leon Fill, M.D., a former member

of the State Board; Warren M. Huff, a Trustee of Michigan
State University; Robert Kinsinger, Vice-President of the
William K. Kellogg Foundation; Francis Kornegay of the Urban
League of Detroit; T. John Lesinski, a circuit judge and
former Lieutenant Governor of the State of Michigan; and
Donald M. D. Thurber, former member of the State Board and
a Regent of the University of Michigan.
The study attempted to replicate the astute selection
of the earlier Blue Ribbon Committee, but several significant
aspects were lacking.

The first was that implicit in the

134
Blue Ribbon Committee was the support, intense interest and
advocacy by the chief executive of the state, George Romney.
Further, many of the 56 members were busy members of the
power elite of the state.

While the names on the new

Committee were familiar, many of the people having been
involved in higher education issues for a decade or more,
the members did not reflect those who currently had power
and were the real change agents.

It did not have the support

and advocacy of the Governor, nor the support of the bureau­
cratic technocracy; it did not have legislative members on
the Committee; it did not have the powerful members of the
Democratic or Republican Parties, nor the powerful members
of the UAW, as the earlier Blue Ribbon Committee had had.
Hence the capacity of this plan, if it can be called a plan,
for creating change and implementing new policy was really
minimal, if it existed at all.
The State Plan for Higher Education included
38 specific goals, but they were all actually subsets of one
goal and of the following philosophical statement:
The State Plan for Higher Education includes
38 specific goals.
Some of them refer to actions
that must be taken, or are in process, to
improve higher education in Michigan.
Some refer
to methods which will be used in the planning and

135
and coordinating process.
Others deal with
such things as projecting statistical and
financial data, use of advisory groups and
support of legislation. 2
Goal 1. The role of the State Board of
Education as the principal agent for general
state planning and coordination of higher
education is clear, and in this capacity it
is the duty of the State Board of Education
to plan for and encourage the orderly develop­
ment of a comprehensive state system of
education beyond the secondary level that
will effectively and efficiently serve all the
needs of the s t a t e . 3
The Plan stated in a plaintive tone
Plan

is

not

a scholarly

noted and put on the shelf.

that "the State

treatise or a research report to be
It is an action document, and

it will be used for action purposes.
The reality was quite the contrary.
an action plan, nor an action document.

It was neither

It was a proposal

for a future agenda for enhancing the Department of
Education's role.

For the most part, the various goals

represented State Board of Education guidelines.

It con­

tained statements of performance objectives and references to
structural or procedural mechanisms to alleviate the concerns
of the various publics, the executive office, the Legislature,
42

Michigan
the State Plan for
p. 1.
43
Ibid, p.
44
Ibid, p.

Department of Education, Implementation of
Higher Education (Lansing, Michigan, 197 0),
9.
1.

136
and the higher education community.

They had, by benign

neglect and subtle opposition, thwarted the Department from
having any significant role in higher education.
The two superintendents of the Department, Ira Polley,
former Executive Director of the Michigan Council of State
College Presidents, and John Porter, former head of the
first Bureau of Higher Education, had significant objectives
for the Department in the area of higher education, virtually
none of which had come about since the Constitution.
From 1964 onward, the Department of Education and
State Board of Education had virtually no significant role
in the determination of government policy for higher educa­
tion.

Neither the Governor, the executive staff, nor the

Legislature paid much heed to their programs, ideas or
recommendations, when occasionally they were propounded.

45

John Porter made a statement to the Governor's
Commission on Higher Education on July 17, 1973.

His words

best stated what the State Plan of 1969 really had been:
The role of the State Board of Education,
as the principle (sic) agent for general state
planning and coordination of higher education,
^ T h e Department still clung to the constitutional
prerogative as fiscal advisor for community colleges to the
executive and legislative branches. However, due to its
ineptitude and inability to make hard decisions in a timely
fashion, relating to need versus institutional requests, the
Governor, in a gracious, but firm letter of June 7, 1968,
relieved them of the responsibility of giving fiscal advice.
See Appendix I for a copy of this letter.

137
is clear; and in this capacity it is the duty
of the State Board of Education to plan for
and encourage the orderly development of a
comprehensive state system of education
beyond the secondary level that will
effectively and efficiently serve all the
needs of the state . . . .
In this document thirty-eight goals were
set forth as "directional" statements for the
planning and coordination functions of the
staff of the Department. Even though the
document was labeled a "state plan" its
implementors have recognized that it fell
short of the purposes of a state plan. The
document, in fact, provided a sound base upon
which a state plan could have been developed.
In the context of these goal statements, the
staff began to address the many issues of
planning and coordination for what was then
called higher education and what is more
appropriately now called postsecondary
education. 6
Hence the Superintendent of Public Instruction
recognized that the State Plan was not truly a plan; it was
rather a prospectus for a future agenda, and further, that
no plan had yet been developed, notwithstanding the requests
of earlier educational groups and studies such as the
John Dale Russell Report, the Davis Report, and the Blue
Ribbon Report.
Dr. Porter explained that the State Board of Education
categorized its responsibilities in the area of postsecondary
John W. Porter, "A Statement by the Superintendent
of Public Instruction before the Governor’s Commission on
Higher Education," Lansing, Michigan, 17 July 1973,
Exhibit B, p. 2.

138
education within five broad fields, and distributed the
38 recommendations within those five categories,

47

1.

To engage in comprehensive and continuous
planning and coordination at the post­
secondary level involving both long-range
and short-range goals.

2.

To develop a statewide system for collecting
appropriate information from both public and
private institutions as well as government
agencies.

3.

To approve or disapprove all proposals for
the establishment of new public institutions,
and to approve or disapprove the establish­
ment of new programs at those institutions,
and to make recommendations concerning the
reallocation or discontinuance of existing
programs.

4.

To review and make recommendations concerning
operating and capital budgets of public
institutions.

5.

To administer or coordinate state and federal
programs resulting in grants to postsecondary
institutions or students attending these
institutions.48
Dr. Porter continued in a most eloquent statement:

"One of the failing ingredients of most state agencies
charged with the responsibility of planning and coordinating
higher education is that the state agency has not been able
to identify to the satisfaction of all of the decision makers
such as the Governor, the Legislature and the institutions of
A

7

*'See Appendix II for the itemized 38 recommendations
48p0rter, Exhibit B, p. 3.

139
higher learning, just what the term 'planning and coordin­
ation' entails and what will be planned, and what will be
coordinated.
One must conclude that there is no reason to think
that in the assessment of the planning mechanism Michigan
has gone beyond that.

There is no consensus about just what

"planning and coordination" means, about what the distinction
is between voluntary mechanisms and control mechanisms, about
what is cooperative and what is coercive, and who will listen
to whom, and who will take whose advice.
In summation, notwithstanding all of the ballyhoo of
the 1969 Plan for Higher Education issued by the State Board
of Education, this was not a plan but really an attempt to
create a broader consensus of public support for the
Department.

It was a suggestion of mechanisms that could be

created to enable the Department to fulfill the expectations
of the Constitution for general supervision, to fulfill the
language of Article VIII, Section 3, which said, "It shall
serve as the general planning and coordinating body for all
public education, including higher education . . . ."
The State Plan of 1969 was really saying that if
Michigan higher education was in fact to have state planning
and coordination, this was the way it would have to organize
to accomplish it.

Dr. Porter's astute statement of

^ I b i d . , p p . 3-4.

140
July 17, 1973 speaks more adequately to how to organize
this procedure, an agenda not yet begun.
There has not been overwhelming statewide support
for statewide planning and coordination from 1958 to 1973.
Michigan’s citizens and decision makers have been confident
that allowing the institutions to follow their own academic
objectives has served the people best.

There really has been

no incentive for creating an additional centralized bureau­
cracy of greater power and control.

Those who look to the

neat organizational structures of other states as the
criterion can cite Michigan's unique lack thereof as the
failure to complete the institution of administrative power.
Many in Michigan can say, "What have we lost and what would
we have gained?"

The answers to this are not clearly on the

side of coordination.

For our unique "nonsystem system" has

worked rather well, and the demand for change has not
received any overwhelming public support.
Michigan has been controlled by the executive power
to recommend and the legislative power to appropriate.

The

schools are comfortable with that procedure and so apparently
are the Legislature and the executive.

The schools have been

sensitive to public demands and have responded in very astute
ways so that there is a consensus that the schools are
susceptible to the needs of the people.

Generally, the

executive and legislative branches have regarded the higher

141
education system as a responsive instrument of social change.
Frankly, the purposes of voluntary coordination and coopera­
tion of the state are not really concerns about fiscal
matters, but rather concerns about the higher education
mechanism fulfilling the social agenda.
If, then, fiscal concerns are less important in the
creation of control bodies throughout the Union, and the
primary hidden agenda is the desire that the institutions
serve as effective social engines, it is hard to make the
case that the institutions have not done so in Michigan.
Hence the case for coordination as a mechanism
for state control to create a useful social engine has not
been necessary in Michigan as long as the schools are sensi­
tive to the public agenda.

There is no reason to think that

there will be additional social or political energy to bring
the schools under that kind of centralized control.
Former Speaker Ryan's comments are instructive,
however, in warning that this era of good feeling may not
prevail in the future if the institutions cease to be
responsive.
Ryan
I think in Con-Con the representatives of the
institutions fought hard for autonomy and were
the main voice that was heard.
Author
And they won.

142
Ryan
And they won, as you say, but there’s been no
countervalent force that’s been giving the other
side of the argument. Occasionally, though, the
politicians who have to be responsive and
accountable to the people do use in their argu­
mentation with the citizenry the limitations to
their power that the autonomy of the institu­
tions impose upon them.
It may be that some
point down the road the citizens may rise up
against autonomy on the grounds that the
institutions can do anything they want to and
the elected representatives of the people are
powerless to prevent them.
In most cases you might talk about not so much
the economic but the social trends in institu­
tions which people get all concerned about and
ask the legislators go do something about it
and which they just have to say, "Sorry, we
don't have any power to do something."
Constitutional Amendments
Between 1964 and 1970 some 15 constitutional amend­
ments relating to higher education were offered in one house
or the other of the Michigan Legislature, none of which
passed in either house.

The main force of these resolutions

to amend the Constitution of 1963 was in relation to
Article VIII, Section 3, of the Michigan Constitution which
provided for the establishment of the State Board of
Education.

This Section vested the Board with leadership

and general supervision over all public education, including
adult education and instructional programs in state institu­
tions, such as prisons and mental homes, except those
^^See page A406 for more discussion.

143
institutions of higher education granting baccalaureate
degrees.

Further, Section 3 provided for the appointment of

a superintendent of public instruction by the State Board
and prescribed his duties and powers.

It also stated that

the Board shall serve as a general planning and coordinating
body for all public education including higher education.
Section 5 of Article VIII has also been a source of
discussion.

This Section established the Regents of the

University of Michigan, the Trustees of Michigan State
University, and the Governors of Wayne State University as
body corporates, giving them general supervision of their
institutions and control and direction of all expenditures
from the institutions' funds.
Section 6 prescribed like power and duties to the
boards of control of the other state institutions having the
authority to grant baccalaureate degrees, providing, however,
that the members of such boards be appointed by the governor
51
with the advice and consent of the Senate.
What, then, were the main focuses of concern that
these proposed amendments have raised against Sections 3, 5,
and 6 of Article VIII?
51

The author is indebted for this discussion to the
unpublished staff report of the Governor's Commission on
Higher Education, February 21, 1973.

144
The resolutions can be grouped under the following
categories: the powers, duties and responsibilities of the
52
State Board of Education;
the authority of the State Board
of Education; the authority of the boards of control of the
various state colleges and universities; the methods of
selection of the members of the State Board of Education;
the methods of selection and the composition of the various
boards of control, particularly the three elected boards of
Wayne, Michigan State, and the University of Michigan; those
dealing with the method of selection of the superintendent
of public instruction.
The debate was related to the following concerns:
The first dealt with the specific enumeration of the institu
tions of higher education with both elected and appointed
boards of control having constitutional status.

Michigan is

Judge Salmon of the Circuit Court of the County of
Ingham had little sympathy for the plight of the State Board
In his opinion regarding the suit of the University of
Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State
University against the State of Michigan and the State Board
of Education as an intervening defendant, he stated:
"[The] State Board of Education has constantly stressed upon
this court the opinion that its constitutionally imposed
duty to plan and coordinate would be rendered virtually
meaningless if it is denied the authority to require plain­
tiffs to receive its prior approval of any new programs. . .
Thus, whether the Board’s authority is rendered virtually
meaningless is a matter more within the discretion of the
Board than of this court." Regents of U of M, Trustees of
MSU and Governors of Wayne vs. State and State Board of
Educ., 7659-C Mich. (6 Sept. 1971).

145
virtually unique in this practice because most other states
treat the concerns of higher education institutions in
statutory rather than constitutional reference.
The second concern was to clarify the language stating
that the State Board of Education shall serve as a general
planning and coordinating body for all public education
including higher education.

The Section is ambiguous as

regards the concepts of institutional autonomy versus
centralized state planning and coordination.
The third concern had to do with the continuing dis­
pute about the relative merits of elected boards of control
versus appointed boards.

Essentially, the feeling was that

qualified men and women who were not by training or attitude
prepared for the strain of political life opted not to offer
themselves as candidates for the three elected boards of
higher education, or the State Board of Education.

This

debilitated the quality of citizen service on these boards.
The attitude also developed that these candidates were really
not scrutinized in the long election ballot by the voters
and, notwithstanding their ability or lack thereof, were
elected by the electoral pull of the top of the ticket.

This

concern also involved the hidden agenda that the University
of Michigan, Wayne State, and Michigan State, and the
State Board of Education would be more susceptible to

146
executive control and legislative overview if their boards
had to be appointed by the Governor with the advice and
consent of the Senate.
The fourth major concern had to do with the method
of selection of the State Board of Education which is an
elected body.

There had been widespread disappointment with

the overall quality of the Board since its establishment.
Some people argued that an elected board would more closely
reflect the will of the people, while others countered that
an appointed board could bring to service on the state level
the best and the brightest.

Another argument was that if

appointed, the board would be less responsive to political
pressure, whereas other feared that if appointed rather than
elected by the people, the board would be more subject to
political pressure because it would be a tool of the governor
or a tool of the Senate.
The fifth concern was the desire to split the functions
of the State Board of Education between elementary and second­
ary education, and higher education with the creation of a
second board.

The argument was that the Board could not

efficiently administer public education, provide general
supervision and serve the planning and coordination require­
ments of elementary, secondary, adult, community college,
four-year college and the variety of other concerns under

147
the Board’s authority.

Hence a constitutional addition of

another board would sharpen the power of each and divide
responsibilities so they both could work more effectively.
The sixth concern had to do with the role and
function of the appointed board of the junior and community
colleges.

There was ambiguity over the role of the State

Board for supervision of two-year institutions with local
control compared to the more specific language of the
Constitution as to four-year institutions.
The seventh concern was over the role and function of
the superintendent of public instruction.

This official is

named by the State Board of Education and is responsible for
executing the policies of that Board, yet is subject to the
controlling influences of the Legislature respecting the
operation of the Department of Education.

An example of this

is that the State Board has not found it within its power to
set the salary of its own employee, that power remaining with
the Legislature.

So there had been additional dialogue over

the question of the capacity of the superintendent to execute
the instructions of the Board while still being subject to
the pressures of the Legislature.
Adelaide Hart stated the case in the Constitutional
Convention over the value of returning the state to the system
of electing the superintendent.

53

"^See above, pages 80-81.

Others argue that the

148
governor rather than the State Board of Education should
appoint the superintendent, pointing out that the governor
cannot truly exercise executive leadership if he does not
have that power.

It is interesting to observe that as a

result of the 1963 Constitution, that six of the chiefs of
Michigan's 19 departments are not appointed by the governor
but by boards or commissions.

These are the directors of

transportation, agriculture, civil rights, corrections,
natural resources, and the superintendent of public instruc­
tion.

Two offices are elective, the attorney general and

the secretary of state.
A further concern was the question of the length of
the term of office for members of the State Board of Education
and members of the institutional boards of control, whether
elected or appointed.

Whatever the ideal length of term--

eight, ten, twelve, sixteen years--some would argue that one
needed to serve that long to be experienced, and others would
argue that shorter terms would make the members more responsive
to the public will.
The earliest amendments proposed to the Constitution
expressed the continued strong feeling of Democrats, liberals
and labor that the superintendent of public instruction
should be elected rather than appointed.

Much of the

Democratic concern relating to this was alleviated by the
Supreme Court decision of one man, one vote, for the Democrats

149
were not quibbling over the structure but essentially that
the Constitution was cementing the constitutional gerrymander
of 1908 into the 1963 Constitution.

However, after the

determination of one man, one vote, Democratic majorities
began to win control in the Senate and in the House.

Also,

under the pressure of public opinion and the dynamic leader­
ship of Governor Romney, the Legislature moved from its
formerly recalcitrant and negative position to a far more
accommodating position in a wide sector of public issues.
In the 1965 session those who had strongly urged a
centralized board of control introduced Senate Joint
Resolution (hereafter referred to as S.J.R.) "GM , which
recommended that all of higher education be placed under the
State Board.
1967 or 1968.

There were no amendments offered in 1966, in
Figure 2 is a list of the proposed amendments

from 1964 to 1970.
In 1969 there was tremendous social disapproval with
the student unrest and the violence that was occurring in
American colleges.

Many people in Michigan felt that the

college students were demonstrating extreme ingratitude for
those gifts of resources that the citizenry had made to
advance their knowledge and well-being; opportunities that
they themselves had not had the privilege of enjoying.

Thus

there was a strong attitude that colleges and universities
should be controlled by the governor.

150

FIGURE 2
PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS 1964-1970

1964 Session
H.J.R. n p n

H.J.R. iijii

1965 Se ssion
S.J.R. "G"

1969 Se ss ion
S.J.R. "C"

S.J.R.

n p ii

Superintendent of Public Instruction; powers
and duties; limitation on powers and duties
of State Board of Education.
(Amends Sec. 3,
Art. 8, State Constitution.)
Highway Commissioner, Superintendent of
Public Instruction; recreate as constitu­
tional officers, election and duties.
Higher Education; place under control of
State Board or Education.
(Amends Secs. 3
5, and 6, Art. 8, State Constitution.)
Colleges and universities; The University of
Michigan, Michigan State University, Wayne
State University; governing boards, appoint­
ment by Governor with advice and consent of
Senate.
(Amends Sec. 5, Art. 8, State
Constitution.)
(CF H.J.R. "E")
Education; abolish State Board; create
director appointed by Governor.
(Amends
Secs. 3 and 7, Art. 8, State Constitution.)
(CF H.J.R. "FF")

S.J.R. "S"

Education; State Board, provide for election
of members.
(Amends Sec. 3, Art. 8, State
Constitution.)

S.J.R. "U"

Education; eliminate State Board; elect
Superintendent of Public Instruction.
(Amends Secs. 3 and 7, Art, 8, State
Constitution.)
(CF H.J.R. "II")

H.J.R. "HH"

State Board of Education; members to be
appointed by Governor.
(Amends Sec. 3,
Art. 8, State Constitution.)

151

H.J. 1. MPP"

State Board of Education; members, number,
creation of educational districts, election
procedures.
(Amends Sec. 3, Art. 8, State
Constitution.)

H. J. I. MMM"

Community and junior colleges; State Board,
create; powers and duties.
(Amends Sec. 7,
Art. 8, State Constitution.)

1970 Session
S. J. I. "QQ"

State Board of Higher Education; create
powers and duties.
(Amends Art. 8, State
Constitution by adding Sec. 10a.)

H.J. I. MXXX"

Colleges and universities; governing boards;
term of office, reduce.
(Amends Secs. 5,
6 and 7, Art. 8, State Constitution.)

S.J.

I.

"LL"

Colleges and universities; constitutional
mandates, remove.
(Amends Secs. 5 and 6,
Art. 8, State Constitution.)

H. j.: L

MHH"

State Board of Education; members, to be
appointed by Governor.
(Amends Sec. 3,
Art. 8, State Constitution.)

S. J.! L.

"RRM

Remove autonomy from boards of three
universities.
(Amends Sec. 5, Art. 8,
State Constitution.)

SOURCE: "Constitutional Concerns", Staff Report
prepared for: The Governor's Commission on Higher Education,
21 February, 1973, Exhibit A.

152
In the spring of 1969, while S.J.R. "C" enjoyed the
same fate as earlier proposed constitutional amendments,
restrictive language was added on the House floor by amend­
ment to the boiler p l a t e ^ 0f the higher education appro­
priations bill concerning violence and destruction.
The S.J.R. "P" in 1969 recommended abolishing the
State Board and designating a director appointed by the
governor.

The wish was that eventually all of the 19 major

departments of Michigan government would be appointed by the
governor, subject to his control and could evolve into a
true cabinet form of government.
However, the floor discussion of Charles Anspach,
President Emeritus of Central Michigan University and a member
of the Education Committee at the Constitutional Convention,
best reflected the prevailing attitude.

"I don't believe

that a governor can dominate --there is a possibility he can
dominate a board; this is true--on the other hand, an elective
board of outstanding individuals undoubtedly could resist the
governor.

I think it is a very good check, but I don't

believe that he can dominate all boards; he might dominate
,,55
some."
^"Boiler plate" is the technical term referring to
the sections in the back of the appropriations acts estab­
lishing the conditions under which the money may be disbursed.
^Constitutional Convention, p. 1199.

153
Senate Joint Resolutions MS" and "U", and House
Joint Resolutions (H.J.R.) "HH" , "PP", and "MM" of 1969
further related to the disquiet over the State Board, its
lack of functioning, effectiveness, the disputes and polit­
icalization of the Board.
The then Superintendent of Public Instruction resigned
over the controversy with the State Board about Parochiaid,
an area unrelated to the State Board's mission and role in
higher education.

It would be fair to say that S.J.R. "C"

related to backlash over student unrest and violence,
S.J.R. "P", "S", "U", and "MM" related more to the Board and
its role toward parochial schools and relationships with the
executive branch of government, rather than concerns about
higher education.
S.J.R. "QQ", "LL" and "RR", and H.J.R. "XXX" and "HH"
were offered in the 1970 session and fell into the same pattern.
S.J.R. "QQ" sought to create a new state board of higher
education because of the lack of confidence in the present
State Board of Education.

H.J.R. "XXX" and S.J.R. "LL" and

"RR" attempted to limit the autonomy of the colleges and
universities.
State Board.

H.J.R. "HH" attempted to do the same for the
The staff of the Governor's Commission on

Higher Education issued 23 briefing papers on a variety of
issues, all most useful and interesting.

The document

entitled "Constitutional Concerns", dated February 21, 1973,

154
stated that ’’the discussion demonstrates the continuing
lack of universal satisfaction with Article VIII in its
present form both in terms of construction and with the
effect of its implementation."
A contrary point of view can be espoused far more
easily.

Between 1964 and 1972 only one of the 30-odd resolu­

tions, SJR. "Z", passed the Senate in 1972 by only one vote
and died in the House.

No other constitutional amendment

relating to education has been voted out of either house
of the Legislature.

It is not impossible to place constitu­

tional amendments on the ballot since, in the period from
1964 to 1972, thirteen constitutional amendments were
placed on the ballot, six being adopted and seven being
rej ected.
Hence the contrary case can be proven in light of
the fact that no constitutional amendments in regard to
education have succeeded.
This indicates that while the Constitution is not
universally satisfactory to those who seek centralized
control or more political leverage, the fact is that
Michigan's people and its representatives are not dissat­
isfied with the way things are functioning.

They value

localism and independence as the highest forms of public
virtue rather than centralized control or politicalization
of higher education.

155
Edward Cushman describes well the reasons for this,
pointing out the variety of subtleties that made the
Michigan system responsive,
Cushman
I would say because nobody really wanted it. The
institutions didn't want a strong central mecha­
nism and the arrangements that existed had led to
a rather good result.
Author
As I said earlier using the term subtle, the
institutions really are accountable in very many
ways to the public sector.
Don't you feel that
way?
Cushman
I do. As I say, that's what I got out of the two
years of study that I had in that commission [The
Blue Ribbon Committee].
I started out, as I indicated, with the idea of a
strong central group.
I ended up with a realiza­
tion--! like your word subtle because I think it
does describe it--[that] there are so many checks
and balances and forms of accountability that
exist both within the institution itself and in terms
of its relationships to the various branches of
state government--executive branch in its various
forms, and the Legislature which has been
increasingly interested and concerned and involved,
the general increased interest in the part of the
public and their involvement in these institutions-all of these have led to, I think, some real feeling
that the institutions are quite accountable.^6
r

£

See pages A71-72 for more discussion.

CHAPTER V
A SYNTHESIS
A Summary of Attitudes
The questions discussed with the decision elite
were designed to cover the history of higher education in
Michigan from 1958 to 1970 programmatically as well as
chronologically.

After a detailed investigation of the

published and unpublished sources and after an evaluation of
the immense body of interviews, the author offers the
following synthesis of what he believes to be the energies,
forces and compelling factors that caused the upwelling of
higher education during this period.
What in your opinion were the reasons that
led to the expansion of higher education
in Michigan from 1958 on?
Between 1948 and 1960 the population of Michigan
increased by about one million people.

It was evident that

there would be a tremendous demand for more education.
Table 5 shows that there were 99,106 individuals reaching
college age in .1958 , and 177 ,835 by 1970.

These figures

document part of the reason for the growing demand.
Also, for the first time people had come to accept,
culturally and intellectually, that higher education was a

156

157

TABLE 5
MICHIGAN BIRTHS
YEAR REACHING
COLLEGE AGE
(18)

YEAR

BIRTHS

1937
1938
1939
1940
1941

91,566
96,962
94,432
99,106
107,498

1955
1956
1957
1958
1959

97,911

1942
1943
1944
1945
1946

124,068
125,441
113,586
111,557
138,572

1960
1961
1962
1963
1964

122,645

1947

160,275

1965

1948
1949
1950
1951
1952

153,725
156,469
160,055
172,451
177,835

1966
1967
1968
1969
1970

164,107

1953
1954
1955
1956
1957

182,968
192,104
196,294
206,068
208,488

1971
1972
1973
1974
1975

197,184

1958
1959
1960
1961
1962

202,690
198,301
195,056
192,825
182,790

1976
1977
1978
1979
1980

194,332

1963
1964
1965
1966
1967

178,871
175,103
166,464
165,794
162,756

1981
1982
1983
1984
1985

169,798

1968
1969
1970
1971

159,058
163,842
171,664
161,667

1986
1987
1988
1989

AVERAGE

161,450

SOURCE: Senate Fiscal Agency Statistical Report,
(Lansing, Michigan, 1972), Schedule 13.

158
commodity available to the middle and lower classes, and
not just available to the upper classes.

After the GI Bill

had been enacted the veterans had the opportunity to go to
college.

They aspired for the same advantages for their

children who were coming of college age in the 1958 to 1970
period.
There was a very definite sense among the people of
Michigan--the Blacks, the Poles, the Dutch, and the host of
other peoples that make up the diversity that is Michigan-that the only way to get ahead in this world was by addi­
tional education.
Alger dream.

The author has called this the Horatio

At the turn of the century there was a series

of books espousing the philosophy that hard work, luck-andpluck would bring success.

The new Horatio Alger dream

added another dimension--higher education--as the ticket
to success.

Former Speaker Robert Waldron expressed some

of the compelling force of this dream.
I think educating our children has always been
a very important factor in America: the idea of a
guy pulling himself and his family up by the boot­
straps, the Horatio Alger story, all that sort of
thing.
I think that’s part of the American dream:
that everybody, regardless of where he starts, has
the opportunity to be President of the
United States--and he supposedly should have a
college education to do that.l
The new political center that came to power from 1948
onward was based on social programming.

Their view was that

^See page A204 for more discussion.

159

government had to begin to offer expanded services in mental
health, welfare, highways, and education, both elementary
and secondary, community college and higher education.

It

had to improve working conditions and the rights of the
common man.
The areas that caused the least conflict were high­
ways and higher education because they crossed the polarities
of Michigan politics.

Both rural, urban and suburban people

across all occupational, interest, and class barriers wanted
to consume higher education.
Table 6 demonstrates that the growth of 90,635 fiscal
year equated students in 1960 to 198,611 in 1970 was accom­
plished by prodigious growth within the individual institu­
tions.

For instance, Central and Eastern each had about 5,000

students in 1960.

By 1970 these figures had grown to 14,000

and 18,500 respectively.

That is a tripling of the enroll­

ment in only a decade.
This tremendous population growth is a reason for the
popular support for expansion.

During this period, Michigan

put the educational system in place.

The state built 14 new

community colleges, created two new colleges, made two branch
campuses autonomous and expanded the capacity for enrollment
by almost 500 percent.

Table 7 shows that the state also

expanded the available physical facilities by 29 million gross
square feet.

TABLE 6
FOUR-YEAR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
FISCAL-YEAR EQUATED STUDENT ENROLLMENTS*
1961-62

1962-63

1963-64

1964-65

1965-66

1966-67

1967-68

1968-69

1969-70

1970-71

5,152
5,018
3,549

5,564
5,453
3,837

6,092
6,082
4,593

—

—

—

6,512
7,207
5,191
193
566
27,632
3,287
3,479
1,480

7,214
8,110
5,767
463
530
30,573
3,386
4,099
1,849

9,451
12,063
7,349
1,308
877
37,946
4,153
6,638
3,283
173
33,196
703
737
23,574
17,188

10,722
14,145
8,280
1,668
1,042
39,497
4,515
6,943
4,086
268
34,459
675
834
24,764
18,890

11,733
16,111
8,816
2,166
1,185
41,061
4,786
7,200
4,852
589
34,931
754
1,065
25,803
19,928

13,237
17,086
9,026
2,587
1,374
41,678
5,057
7,745
5,870
1,066
35,178
800
1,274
27,464
21,888

13,995
18,594
9,350
2,993
1,550
41,659
5,418
7,808
6,415
1,500
35,195
886
1,458
29,368
22,423

158,639

170,788

180,980

191,330

198,611

Central
Eastern
Ferris
Grand Valley
Lake Superior
Michigan State
Michigan Tech.
Northern
Oakland
Saginaw Valley
U. of M.
Dearborn
Flint
Wayne State
Western

24,562
185
340
14,858
8,867

25,234
305
367
14,654
9,417

26,471
432
382
15,485
10,417

26,840
584
524
16,232
11,519

29,569
627
453
18,409
13,205

8,321
9,743
6,659
1,046
715
35,499
3,825
5,224
2,551
83
31,196
689
634
21,877
16,688

TOTALS

90,635

95,628

103,443

111,246

124,254

145,176

448
21,418
3,201
2,272
765
—

495
23,428
3,178
2,609
1,087
. . .

576
25,377
3,229
3,017
1,290
- - -

------

—

* Includes off campus enrollments.

SOURCE:

Legislative Fiscal Agency Statistical Report, (Lansing, Michigan, 1971), Schedule 15a.

160

1960-61

TABLE 7
PHYSICAL FACILITIES OF COLLEGES
GROSS SQUARE FEET
(in millions)

1960

1969

Public 4-Year

31.5

56.3

Public 2-Year

1.9

6.3

Private

6.6

13.2

SOURCE: Unpublished staff papers,
Governor’s Higher Education Reform Commission,
1972-73.

162

A consideration of Table 8 demonstrates the growth
of appropriations from $80 million to $280 million from
1958 to 1970.

Table 9 dramatically illustrates the increase

in construction dollars not included in Table 8.

Construc­

tion dollars increased from $7 million in 1951-1952 to
$31 million in 1969-1970.

It should be understood that

capital outlay dollars were used to balance the budget,
since construction could be postponed when times were hard,
and could be rapidly expanded when times were more prosper­
ous- -hence the range from $19 million in 1956-1957 to
$1.5 million in 1959-1960.
The figures on these tables demonstrate a record of
prodigious achievement in the expansion of Michigan higher
education.
What were the social and economic factors
that led to this significant growth?
The Horatio Alger dream has already been discussed.
It was certainly an important factor.

Governor John Swainson

best expressed the social attitude.
. . . Many of us who had returned from
World War II and had had the opportunity of
education ourselves--through the application
of the GI Bill of Rights in many instances-wanted to provide educational opportunities
for our children, and we all had children at
that time that were probably born immediately
after the war in 1946, 1947, and 1948,
depending upon whether you bought your house
first or had the baby first. . . .

TABLE 8
FOUR-YEAR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
SELECTED YEARS GENERAL FUND APPROPRIATIONS
(in thousands)
1951-52

1956-57

1958-59

1962-63

1963-64

1964-65

Central
$ 1,392 $ 2,360 $ 2,405 $ 3,239 $ 3,476 $
Eastern
1,590
2,650
2,650
3,485
3,733Ferris
488
1,315
1,510
2,435
2,646
---Grand Valley
558
1 0 0
---Lake Superior#
463 ^
124
Michigan State
11,929
23,675
25,315
31,170
30,698
-----Ag.Exp.Sta. *
...
--- -Coop. Ext.*
Michigan Tech.
1,533
2,531
2,262
3,389
3,403
Northern
653
925
1,050
1,639
1,832
----Oakland*
1,562
Saginaw Valley
- - ---U. of M.
14,845
28,075
30,000
36,667
38,225
-----Flint **
- ----Dearborn**
-Wayne State
3,240
9,719
16,482
17,623
Western
2,132
3,766
3,675
5,951
5,476
-----Med. Supplements
- ----Gerontology
Computer Network
----- TOTALS

1965-66

1966-67

1967-68

1968-69

1969-70 1970-71

4,177 $ 5,503 $ 7,093 $ 7,578 $ 9,106 $ 10,786 $ 12,787
4,795
7,037
8,500
10,300
11,648
14,698
18,281
3,255
4,633
5,919
6,784
9,096
10,175
7,555
1,097
1,698
2,138
1,985
3,059
2,449
3,723
1,037
504
658
946
1,155
1,484
1,862
37,197
44,655
51,320
45,233
49,008
54,086
59,932
- --5,017
4,088
4,632
5,588
---3,044
3,646
4,040
4,541
5,006
3,594
6,149
6,532
7,889
8,671
7,074
5,122
6,988
2,410
3,448
4,768
6,437
7,984
4,385
2,195
2,624
4,251
5,046
6,248
7,154
--505
1,469
2,091
431
864
63,829
51,255
59,915
69,295
44,086
58,095
59,161
----1,596
1,458
1,909
----1,892
2,300
1,900
26,684
20,128
32,319
33,556
38,176
41,835
45,050
18,234
11,428
14,879
16,165
22,257
7,720
14,495
------195
---200
211
75
270
------200

$ 34,561 $ 68,537 $ 79,049 $104,082 $109,831 $131,158 $164,629 $196,424 $204,588 $226,645 $252,322 $284,066

#Included with Michigan Tech. thru 62-63.
*Included with Michigan State thru 66-67.
**Included with U. of M. thru 67-68.
SOURCE: Legislative Fiscal Agency Statisitical Report, 1971, Schedule 15. (Column 1958-59, Bureau of the Budget,
unpublished working papers.)

164

T AB LE

9

H I G H E R E D U C A T I O N C A PI TA L O UT L A Y E X P E N D I T U R E
A N D E N R O L L M E N T FALL H E A D C O U N T

Fiscal
Y ear

H ig h e r E du c a t i o n
( Excluding Comm. Coll. § Planning)
Capit al O u t l a y A p p r o p r i a t i o n s

1951-52

$

E nr o ll m e n t
Fall H ea dc o un t

6,94 4, 62 4

41,374*

1952-53

4,56 1, 08 9

42,391*

1953-54

4, 365,332

43,930*

1954-55

8, 663,980

48,347*

1955-56

10,668 ,3 52

54,669*

1956-57

1 9 ,5 50, 45 0

80,148

1957-58

13 ,1 39 ,8 00

84,098

1958-59

1 ,69 0, 44 0

88,134

1959-60

1 ,524,013

91,480

1960-61

7,856,181

97,136

1961-62

13 ,1 50 , 00 0

103,085

1962-63

1 4, 27 3, 63 8

107,880

1963-64

22 ,024,780

111,246

1964-65

31,314 ,81 0

124,254

1965-66

38,749,871

145,176

1966-67

4 4, 84 7, 45 2

158,639

1967-68

35 ,8 74 ,5 53

170,788

1968-69

45 ,2 38 ,3 01

180,980

1969-70

31,120, 49 1

191,330

1970-71

1 8 ,6 56, 15 7

199,391

*Wayne not

included.

SOURCE: S enate Fiscal A g e n c y S ta ti s ti ca l
S che d ul e 18.

Report,

1972,

165

Higher educational opportunities were to
be restricted to the few rather than be pro­
vided for the many. Whereas, I think the newer
members coming in took an opposite view--that a
person should have the opportunity of education
to their highest potential.2
Leonard Woodcock pointed out that it was senseless
to get a raise if there was nothing to buy with it.

We had

to have useful things to spend the money on in order to
enhance the working man, anything else is just foolishness.
For the first time since the 1920's there was a real increase
in purchasing power.
their children.

Men and women wanted a better life for

Having lived through the adversities of the

Depression and the hardships of the Second World War, they
wanted to guarantee a better future now that, at last, they
could afford it.

They shared the attitude that higher

education was something which would enhance them and give
their children better income and status.
The public policy was simple.

The people were bound

and determined not to deny access to their children.

Access

was denied in places such as Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts,
and New Jersey, because they didn't make enough places avail­
able to those who wanted them.

The people of Michigan were

determined to make higher education geographically available
across the length and breadth of the state.

The doctrine

developed that education services past the high school should
9

See page A 1 for more discussion.

166

be available within driving range of virtually all of the
citizens of the state.

Two Michigan Governors, Williams,

a Democrat, and Romney, a Republican, eloquently expressed
this doctrine.
Williams
It was my philosophy and the philosophy of
my administration, and I suppose I should say
the Democratic Party, that a university educa­
tion ought to be available to everyone who is
intellectually capable of undertaking it.
There ought to be some system of hothouse
growth, so to speak, so that people who had
been unfortunate in their secondary education
should be able to get into some sort of
university development.
Now this meant that most of us would, if we
could, have free university education.
Obviously
that wasn’t in the cards, but we did what we
could behind the scenes to keep the costs down.
We welcomed the community college program and I
must say that one of the things that concerned
me was at the beginning that they be indeed
community colleges rather than high school
extensions, and I think that there was some
danger of that.3
Romney
I ’ve always felt that one of the distinctive
aspects of American life was the adoption of the
concept of universal educational opportunity,
the recognition that if people were going to
exercise ultimate power in our society, they had
to be informed. And number two, that to the
extent that we could achieve it, there ought to
be equal educational opportunity.
To make that possible I felt it was necessary
to strengthen organizations.
Not only in the
urban areas, but also we did something to
strengthen our institutions across the state,
[most] importantly in the Upper Peninsula.
If
3

See page A32 for more discussion.

167

you would take a look at what was done with
respect to Tech and Northern and also
Lake Superior College... which made it easier
for young people in that area as well as in
the urban areas.
The economic realities were pretty clear from 1940
on.

The automotive industry wasn't going to continue to be

the bellwether.

It looked good, it looked prosperous, and

there were years when it brought in a lot of money.

But

Michigan had to build more than one industry in the state
because when the automotive industry was prosperous, this
state was extraordinarily rich; but when it was sick, this
state died.

Such ups and downs were destructive to an

orderly society.

Hence the desire to create a broader,

more diversified industrial base was another factor for the
expansion of higher education.

People wanted more diversi­

fied educational opportunities to create a talent pool.
This would entice high-talent industry, which paid good
salaries, rather than bring in low-talent-need industries,
which paid low salaries and hence would not improve the lot
of the working man.
The enhancement of the schools was energized on
October 4, 1957 when the Russians put up the first satellite,
Sputnik.

That said to many that American schools were

inferior, our technology was inferior and we might fail in
the race against the hated Communists.

That was an affront

^See page A718 for more discussion.

168

to our pride.

What were the means that could create economic

technological, and social opportunities, bring in new kinds
of industry, and attain supremacy in the competition against
our international adversaries?

It had to be higher education

Since Karl Marx, there had been the concept of three
classes in America: an upper class, a middle class, and a
lower class.

Somewhere on the agenda was the intent to

create the classless society, not in the Marxian sense, but
an objective similar to it.

The objective was to have the

middle class envelop the lower class, and, since in this
state the upper class has never been that sizeable because
of progressive taxation, to create essentially a one-class
society of educated people, able to work and prosper.

How

do you move people across the historical chasm of techno­
logical incompetence and cultural disadvantage?

How do you

create social cohesion from the disparate groups who lived
in Michigan?

Our people have come from deprived situations

in Central and Southeastern Europe, and the agricultural
South, both white hillbillies who had lived on the fringes
of prosperity in the piedmont areas, and the lowland Blacks
who had been agricultural laborers and slaves.
There was the alternative either to create the peace­
ful society or to experience social upheaval and revolution.
The solution was the moderate approach of education as the
mechanism to create a middle class of the broadest extent,

169
coalesced by education and enhanced by prosperity.

This

mechanism had to build a career ladder of opportunity and
educational skill that would give people the chance to move
as far as their ability and merit would take them.
In a way, it was a very traditional attitude clothed
in a new rhetoric; it was the frontier again.

It was not a

frontier of geography, but a frontier of knowledge.
believe in opportunity.

Americans

It is part of the Protestant Ethic

that is the basis of American society.

This was a new

frontier that would give all of the energetic the opportunity
to succeed.

Thus the strongest, those people with drive,

would emerge from the disadvantaged and make society stronger
and better.

This Darwinian principle has renewed our society

time after time.
What were the policy objectives that under­
laid this expansion?
The policy objectives were clear-cut.

The first

objective was to create post-high school vocational and
occupational training opportunities in every region of the
state.

This would involve: 1) enhancing the existing com­

munity colleges and creating new community colleges so they
could provide vocational and occupational training; 2) pro­
viding skill training courses for nondegree training to
assist industry; 3) developing continuing education, both
avocational and occupational; 4) continuing the freshman and
sophomore years of liberal arts courses so that boys and girls

170
could live at home and wouldn’t have to pay the high costs of
room and board.

These measures broaden the number of people

going to college.
The second policy objective was the deliberate policy
to increase the number of people able to go to college by
widening the financial aid base through the State Scholarship
Programs and Tuition Grants created and instituted in this
time.

This assistance was to be used at both private and

public institutions.
The third policy objective, which Dr. Harlan Hatcher
expressed so well, was to strengthen the colleges to meet
the demand.
So that the first breathing space that universi­
ties had had in many years began to be visible.
They
had suffered through the long depression when nothing
whatever could be done, they just had to hold it
together--no building.
Then we went right into the
war with all of its strictures and before anything
further could be done, we added the G I ’s.
So we had one, two, three long crises periods
which had practically arrested the growth of
expansion of the physical plant. . . .
It was then obvious through population studies
that we had only a limited amount of time to get
ready for another bulge and the question before me-before all of us here at Michigan--was: "Can we get
together the right plans and the right support so that
when we move into the next big enrollment pressures,
we will be in a reasonable shape to guide it and
direct it instead of being buffeted by it."^
The colleges were so pressed by meeting the demands
of the late 1940's and the early 1950’s after the famines
of the Depression and World War II that they needed help to
5

See pages A776-77 for more discussion.

171
meet the onslaught of the 1960's.

Hence there was the

policy objective to put the machine in place, facilities,
campuses, faculty and programs, so that the instructional
load could be met and the demand to come could be delivered.
The last policy objective that underlaid this expan­
sion was the decision to enhance industry in Michigan by
supporting research in order to improve their competitive
position.

Using the universities through the instructional

programs would create trained manpower pools of highly
skilled men and women.
What were the key issues that resulted in
partisan and parochial conflict in the
attempt to attain the above policy objectives?
First of all, there were not many fights.

Conflict

made the headlines because the real issues were too subtle or
hard for people to understand.

So, while people made much of

the fights, the author believes that people were actually
supportive of higher education.

From the historical record

it is clear that for Michigan's people higher education was
a very important investment to them.

The conflicts were not

about whether or not higher education should be expanded, but
rather about how many institutions should be created, where
they should be established, who should do it, and how soon.
The first fight was over where Michigan would get the
resources.

It wasn't until the automotive industry turned

around and some of Governors Williams' and Swainson's programs,

172
and especially Governor Romney’s victory in attaining new
sources of revenue besides the sales tax, that revenues
were generated and significant progress was made.
The second fight was the attempt by the subway
alumni--this term was used because the author thinks the
institutions were somewhat more seemly about it--to prevent
Michigan State from pressing the University of Michigan so
strongly.

The Legislature decided to give Michigan State

College the title and recognition of university status,
which it had attained in fact but not in name.

The 1963

Constitution gave all of the state schools, except for Ferris
State College and Grand Valley State College, the title of
university and also gave all of the state schools constitu­
tional status.

After Michigan State won the fight for

recognition in the Legislature, the Constitution made the
issue moot for the others.
The third fight was about the expansion of the major
universities, Michigan and Michigan State, to set up branches
throughout the state.

The questions were whether the state

would go like Ohio, California or Wisconsin and have virtually
an imperial system, or whether it would have local institu­
tions with local control.
The fourth fight was the competition for the location
of new institutions that would be established.

Grand Valley

State College and Saginaw Valley State College won this fight
and eventually Lake Superior State College and Oakland

173

University became autonomous institutions instead of branches.
The normal schools--Central, Eastern, Northern, and Western-wanted to change from offering just teacher-training curric­
ula to comprehensive institutions offering a wide degree of
curricula.

Further, they wished to be autonomous and removed

from the authority of the State Board.

They were well satis­

fied by the determinations of the Constitutional Convention.
The fifth issue was what kind of fiscal resources were
needed to create capable, comprehensive community colleges,
and whether the community colleges should continue to be
departments of elementary and secondary school districts or
become independent with broader service areas than school
districts.

That issue wasn't very divisive, since the real­

ities of the new financing modes made the formerly predominant
mode--the K-14 school district--an historical anachronism.
In recapitulation of the fights over higher education
policy from 1958 to 1970: The first issue was finding adequate
resources; the second issue was the recognition of the proper
role and status of Michigan State University; the third fight
was the question of an imperial system versus a system of
regional colleges; the fourth conflict was about where the
institutions would be established and whether the four-year
normal schools would be enhanced, as they desired; and the
fifth fight was about how to protect and enhance community
colleges and free them from the relationship with the
elementary school districts.

Do you regard as one of the key issues of
this period 1958-1970 popularism in higher
education versus elitism in higher education?
When the study was started, it seemed that this was
the handle of the whole thing, this was the right answer.
Susan Jacoby’s article in the Saturday Review,^ stated the
case that the ”Cow College” triumphed over the "aristocrats"
of Ann Arbor because they were popularists who met the public
needs, while the vanquished had not.

But a scenario cast in

the sense of the grachii of ancient Rome against the haughty
Senate is too simplistic to be extrapolated here in Michigan
in the 1960's.
All of the people who ran the higher education estab­
lishment in this state wanted it to grow.

They did not want

to deny access to the tens of thousands of Michigan citizens. .
They didn't want to run the system like Ohio, where they
allowed every freshman in and then flunked them out by the
tens of thousands.

As John Cantlon, Provost at Michigan State

University, once said to the author in an insightful conversa­
tion, such a system created a large group of people in Middle
America who had hatred for themselves, and felt antipathy for
higher education because they had failed.

The State of

Michigan built a system that would enhance people and encourage
them to succeed, and not a system in which one could easily fail.
Susan Jacoby, "The Megapopulist Multiuniversity:
Michigan State Redefines the Land-Grant Philosophy," Saturday
Review (14 October 1972): 63-67.

"■

.......

I;:'5

175

A look at Table 6 shows that the prestigious institu­
tions of Michigan were so large that "elite" was not a useful
description, because elite normally implies exclusion rather
than inclusion.
In the heyday of the mid-sixties, the University of
Michigan enrolled almost 60,000 human beings.

7

It is hard to

make a case that the school was catering to an elite.

Probably

the University of Michigan was a little more reserved, much
taken with its historical tradition.

Michigan State University

was a little scrappier because it was in the Avis position of
being the underdog and having to try harder.

Some of its

popularity derived from the American affection for the underdog.
This state wasn't involved in a conflict of popularism versus elitism.

Rather the state was working out a

mechanism to deliver higher education as quickly as possible,
while being careful that institutions didn't bite off more
than they could chew.

Quality was still a factor that the

policy makers did not want to abandon, while still meeting
the quantitative demands.

Hence the policy was for expansion

of enrollment and continuation of quality.
Colleges and universities wanted to serve.

Their

styles and publics were somewhat different but both were
dedicated to their mission to serve the people while
^The FTE and FYES figures are statistical compila­
tions of full-time students.
But individuals often carry
less than a full-time load, so five students, each carrying
one 3-credit course, would be enumerated as not five, but
one FTE.

176

remaining true to their origins, aspirations and visions
of a more civilized world.
How important were vocational and occupa­
tional training objectives in the
enhancement of higher education?
The discussion with Harlan Hatcher is the best way
to start.

He said that if one is willing to include engi­

neering, medicine, and baccalaureate and graduate technical
training in the sciences, it was very important to higher
education.

The author leans to that belief, because voca­

tional training should not be categorized by the level of
the institution offering the curriculum and the imputed
status of that institution; but rather by the concept of
the skilled manpower pool for societal goals.

Thus, all

endeavors of this type were vocational, whether taught at
a high school or a university.
The state was attempting to create in the community
colleges an additional track where it had not existed before,
because previously, community colleges didn't have the
fiscal means to afford the tremendous costs of instituting
complex curricula.

For example, some of the equipment for

teaching computer tooling costs as much as $100,000.

It

was a distinct policy objective to improve the vocational/
occupational training not only in elementary and secondary
schools, but in community colleges and the whole gambit of

177

institutions of higher learning, encouraging each to teach
that which it did best.
Quite candidly, this is probably the mission that
we have done the least successfully.

If one looks at the

social agenda of the previous 25 years and asks what the
agenda is for the next ten years, this is one goal that has
not yet been met or successfully handled.

We may need to

take an additional look at how to do it and how to bring
the proper machinery, the proper political and administra­
tive mechanisms to bear, to deliver the money and enhance
the program, in order to accomplish better vocational
training for society.
Did the growth of culture and the arts
have importance in the dialogue over
the growth of higher education?
One wants to say "yes, it was important in the growth
of higher education" in order not to appear a barbarian.

But

this just was not the case in Michigan from 1958 to 1970.
Neil Staebler rather vividly explained the reason for this.
We're hardly emerged from being a state of
fender-benders. We just barely appreciate...
well, I'm a little too harsh. There's a lot
of feeling but the sense was one of a little
desperation, that, "Damn it, we're in jeopardy
on our financial base in the state, you'd better
not fritter it away with schools of music and
theaters.°
O

See page A267 for more discussion.

178

There was very little money for cultural things.
Even to this day the quality of the state's museums, the
quality of its orchestras, the precarious position of dance
and ballet, the fact that Michigan does not have a single
opera company that really is successful, the marginal nature
of our theater programs, the fact that educational tele­
vision is so poorly supported, all go to say that this is
another agenda still unmet.
One of the few places that has

sustained the arts

is in the institutions of higher education.

But it is still

most tenuous without adequate support and is unable to make
its way at the box office.
The best way to see this is to look at most commu­
nities in this state where there is little support for
cultural events.

In Ann Arbor, where there is a legitimate

market, the cultural programs are still not as fiscally
strong as they are in the eastern states.
Culture is on the agenda for the future.

Only after

the attainment of success does one then seek the expansion
of the arts.

One has to first have a sense of his own worth,

of being able to produce and contribute.

The time for

expansion of culture and the arts will come, but only after
Michigan develops an educated, broadly based middle class.

What was the position of labor in regard
to higher education?
The author believes that labor was tremendously
supportive across the broadest base because education was
an issue that was hard to oppose.

It did not divide the

membership as did other issues, such as housing, or equal
opportunity.

The leadership did not get into trouble with

the workers, they didn't lose their power base because every
blue-collar worker participating in the Horatio Alger dream
said: "Working in this damn factory is horrid.

The factories

are loud and ugly and dirty and the management is a bunch of
dopes.

I can't wait to get out, and I want my kids to do

something better, I want to see some of this political clout
used to create more opportunities."
Throughout most of the United States labor has been
mostly oriented to lunch-pail issues.

They wanted to improve

salaries, working conditions and fringe benefits.

But in

the upper Midwest, politics were issue-oriented because the
labor power was interested not only in lunch-pail issues,
but also in how society worked, and how men lived.
Labor support was crucial.
factions got on really well.

In Michigan the labor

The leadership was involved

in public service, on boards of colleges and universities;
they cared and gave strong support to the educational
structure.

180

As has been stated, Michigan has an influence elite
of some 8,000 members.

Probably 700 to 800 of these people

are labor or labor-related.

The fact that they were in

agreement about educational goals was vital.
What was the position of industry in
regard to higher education?
While Michigan labor was interested in supporting
higher education across the broadest spectrum, their support
for particular institutions was less vital and less powerful
than was that of industry.

Industry's interest was more

regional than global in scope.
Michigan has two sectors of industry.

The automotive

industry is the major industry and practically runs the state
It is composed of not only the giant car and truck assemblies
but also the host of supportive and related industries, such
as glass, rubber, steel, plastic and machine tool industries.
The second industrial sector includes the local financial and
commercial enterprises.
The automotive industry has not always been quick to
see the advantages of training and educating people in the
areas for which it has direct consumable need, such as
engineers and business administrators.

It was even less

interested in liberal arts curricula where broad knowledge
has societal values and application for industry in
encouraging innovational change.

Quite bluntly, the

automotive industry has been static lately because of its

181

inability to conceptualize uses for broadly trained, supple
minds.

Without a doubt, the industry needs the leadership

of another Alfred Sloan, once President of General Motors.
More than 50 years ago his views constructed the automotive
industry as we know it today.
Industry was mostly concerned about taxation and
keeping the cost of government services in check.

The main

way to keep things in check is not to permit the money to be
collected in the first place.

Yet, in spite of their myopia

regarding their own condition, they had civic pride in
Michigan and its local institutions.

Thus a tourist folder

for Michigan states:
In conclusion, no better testimonial can be
offered than that given by one of the world's
most foremost engineering geniuses,
K. T. Keller, former chairman of the Chrysler
Corp., who remarked, "Michigan has more to
brag about than any other state in the Union!
Michigan industry did not lend
to higher education, but rather benign
was

aggressive leadership
approval. The

case

drastically different in the local context.
The chemical, pharmaceutical and smaller industries,

and the commercial and financial interests were much more
regionally centered and their attitudes were somewhat dif­
ferent.

They espoused higher education in terms of its

advantages for their particular geographical area.

This was

the energy for the establishment of individual schools.
9

The Michigan Experience, Chamber Publications,
(Livonia, Michigan, 1974) , p . 5~2 .

182
Grand Valley State College received much of its
support from the financial community.

Saginaw Valley State

College received its support from the Dow Chemical, Wickes
Lumber and Defoe Shipbuilding Companies and the local General
Motors assembly and foundry plant leadership.

The Dearborn

branch of the University of Michigan was supported by the
Ford Motor Company.

The Flint branch of the University of

Michigan was supported by the philanthropist and largest
stockholder of General Motors, Charles Stewart Mott, and
the leadership of the local General Motors plants.
The Oakland branch of Michigan State University
received much of its support from Mrs. Matilda Wilson, the
widow of John Dodge, the automotive pioneer.

She donated

the site for the university, and to her death gave great
support to the fledgling institution.

The corporate leaders

from the automotive companies who resided in the Birmingham
and Bloomfield Hills area also devoted immense energy to
Oakland University.^
In 1968, when Governor Romney was running for
President of the United States, he made his recommendations
for higher education in January.
His former associates from
American Motors and supporters of Oakland University visited
their friend, seeking greater funding for their school. A
short paragraph on a piece of blue paper was sent to the
Chairman of the Appropriations Committee.
It stated that
on Friday, before departing for New Hampshire, the Governor
had directed an increase in the executive recommendation
for Oakland.
Such are the ways things happen in Michigan
when the correct elements are present.

183
Both sectors of Michigan industry cohered and fought
for local colleges, not for purely industrial or economic
reasons, but because of their vision of the good life.
Higher education was equally as important for a well-rounded
community as museums, parks, cultural programs, or good
hospitals.

Hence industry used its influence in regional

contexts but never on a statewide basis.
What was the position of agriculture
in regard to higher education?
The agricultural people were a fragmented group.
They didn't speak with one mind any more than industry did,
although industry had full-time lobbyists and such organiza­
tions as the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, and other groups.
A host of groups made up the influence elite of
Michigan agriculture.

The Michigan Agricultural Conference,

an umbrella group, at one time had as many as 8 0 organizations
participating in its activities.

Some of these groups were:

the Michigan Milk Producers Association; Michigan National
Farmers Organization; State Grange; Michigan Animal Breeders
Cooperative; Dairy Council of Michigan; Michigan 4-H groups;
the Farm Bureau; Michigan Horticultural Society; Michigan
Association of Extension Homemakers; Michigan Pesticide
Association; and the Michigan Association of Nurserymen.
State agencies included the Department of Natural Resources,
the Department of Agriculture, the Agricultural Marketing
and Bargaining Board, and commissions and committees for the

184
apple, cherry, potato, bean and beef industries.

Federal

agencies in the state included the United States Department
of Agriculture, Corps of Engineers, the United States Soil
Conservation Service, and of course, the Agricultural
Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service of
Michigan State University.

All of these groups cohered

around their own specific interests.
People note that in 1958 there were 111,000 farms,
and in 197 0 there were only 81,000 farms.

But while the

number of farmers has declined, the power of agriculture
has not declined at all.

One has to realize that everyone

must eat and there is a direct and vital relationship between
those who eat and those who produce the food.

The size of

the farms increased, the capitalization of agriculture
increased dramatically, and the contribution to the Gross
State Product continued to increase.

With the challenges

of famine looming on the horizon, agriculture and agribusiness
will become increasingly important in future years.
The influence of the agricultural sector for higher
education was quite important and their concerns were several.
They wanted to enhance the contribution of the Agricultural
Experiment Station, the Cooperative Extension Service, and
the various research aspects of Michigan State University.
Further, as the number of farms declined, the old 40 acres

185

and a mule ceased to be suitable for the subsistence of
farm families because of the tremendous requirements of
capitalization, equipment and land.

It became quite

apparent that rural families were looking for higher educa­
tion opportunities for their children in order to create
the good life for them beyond agriculture.

Higher education

would enable them to have the capacity to move into agri­
business and other careers as they saw fit since agriculture
was rapidly becoming less and less labor-intensive and more
and more machine-intensive, requiring fewer workers.
There was a difference between the role of agriculture
and the other sectors of labor and industry.

In labor, the

leadership was very centralized and coordinated.

In business,

three or four groupings could speak very strongly, repre­
senting the interests of business, especially if the automotive
and financial institutions of the State of Michigan were
brought into the tent.

Agriculture was far more fragmented,

and but for occasional activities of the Grange and the Farm
Bureau as spokesmen for agriculture, did not coordinate its
activities.

It has been observed that they really did not

need one statewide spokesman because John Hannah, the head
of Michigan State University, knew them, was trusted by them,
and was extremely effective in representing the aspirational
objectives of agriculture in higher education.

186
Agriculture was supportive especially in the area
of the regional community colleges, the growth of regional
institutions, the enhancement of research at Michigan State
University and the continued policy of increased places in
higher education, low tuition and adequate scholarships and
financial aids.

Governor Swainson’s insightful remarks sum

up this view best.
Agriculture, I think, had a somewhat different
position; and if I could voice that, it was if
we were going to have an expansion in the area
of higher education, then they certainly wanted
to have their share in the agricultural skills and
technologies that were fast developing.
The production of food and fiber was under­
going a tremendous change from the Second World
War until the present; the science of growing
things, the testing of soils, the training of
people in the operations of the new equipment,
and different things like this. They were
interested, but they weren’t the initiators.
But, if it was going to happen, "we want our
share."I-1What were the pressures and influences in
the determination of public policy, if
any, from the federal government?
The rhetoric in recent years has said either that
the federal government provides all the solutions or that
the federal government is creating a fantastic tentacled
bureaucracy which will smother us all.

The facts are

different than the rhetoric for the period 1958 to 1970.
The role of the federal government in higher educa­
tion nationally was supportive but not controlling.
■^See page A13 for more discussion.

Their

187

activities enhanced the research in the national interest,
tried to supply skills for the national manpower pool in
the sciences, technology, and foreign languages, and
attempted to broaden access for disadvantaged populations
with scholarships, grants and loans.

Further, the federal

government contributed a sizeable amount of dollars for
construction in public and private institutions of higher
education across the nation.

But the federal government

did not attempt to get involved in the management of insti­
tutions.

This sentiment is expressed by men of two very

different perspectives in Michigan, from the academic
community and from the state government.
President Hatcher of the University of Michigan did
not feel any pressure to control from the federal government.
Hatcher
No. The federal programs were many and varied,
of course.
By far the biggest chunks came in
in places like public health, but there were no
special constraints that I was aware of there.
Author
It may be that the federal market was different.
I ’m not sure of this but I have the suspicion
that much of federal aid was project research,
behind specific things for specific objectives
and not generalized support as some of the
federal programs are not tending to become.
Hatcher
I think in general that was true. We spoke about
the Sputnik era. You know there was quite a
period of federal support for almost crash

188

training or recycling of teachers of science to
get back to the high schools to teach the on­
coming young generation. There was lots of
federal money for the physical plant in many
of these fields, for libraries and for public
health and so on.
Representative James Farnsworth explained the reason
for this.
Author
And I think the federal contribution in social
welfare and social services has mandated many
state policies as the basis of participation.
Now federal support for education seems not to
have come with the same degree of mandates for
the delivery.
It didn't seem to mandate the
admissions, or the size of institutions, or
their expenditure ranges.
Farnsworth
I believe there is a reason for that, as against
the comparison with social services, for instance.
Institutions, as you well know, of higher educa­
tion are extremely sensitive about their own
autonomy.
I suspect that when Congress got into
the business of aiding higher education they
were very much aware of that, and would be most
reluctant to infringe on an institution of
higher education to the extent of trying to
dictate any kind of policy.
Author
Much has been made by the people I've talked with
about that--not only from Michigan but also from
the national scene--of the sense of tradition of
history, of some basic fabric of the Republican
idea.
Farnsworth
I think more basic than that perhaps.
You have to
remember that Congress is made up of people that
l^See pages A813-14 for more discussion.

189

were formerly in state and local government so
they were well aware when they went there of
this sensitivity. But it seems to me, beyond
that, that even politicians occasionally will
be statesmen long enough to be most reluctant
to have legislative bodies get into any kind
of position where they can from time to time
influence what happens on a campus of higher
education.
I think back to the McCarthy period when there
was a tremendous urge for legislative bodies
to rule out the possibility of any person with
communistic leanings from teaching, for
instance, at the university, or speaking on a
campus.
That hysteria was carried so far that
there was a proposal put through the Michigan
Legislature putting on the ballot the proposal
relative to Communism and actually put this
proposal to the people and the people voted
it into the Michigan Constitution--the old
Constitution, the pre-1963 Constitution.
But some way higher education resisted that,
and successfully.
That taught me one thing:
that I ’d better be very, very careful in
legislating that I don't break down this
autonomy that universities have.
This
freedom to teach what they want and to try
to teach all the truth.
I just think that in their saner moments in
Congress they felt much the same.
What were the pressures and influences
in the determination of public policy,
if any, from the private sector of
higher education?
The author was much concerned about the strong
antagonism between the private

and public institutions.

came from Massachusetts, where

the strongly entrenched

private schools had fought the

public schools, and was also

13

See pages A131-32 for more discussion.

He

190

impressed by what had occurred in the West, where the
stronger public schools had fought the private schools
in their attempts to survive.
In Michigan it is naive to ignore the tremendous
hold the private schools have on the minds of men in spite
of the predominance of the public sector from the very
earliest days of statehood.

Hope, Calvin, Kalamazoo and

Albion colleges and the University of Detroit, for example,
are all vital institutions which have made a great many
contributions to this state.

This was the basis for

establishing tuition grant programs by the state to aid
students to attend private colleges.

The private schools

didn't want to harm the public schools and public schools
didn't want to harm the private schools.

There was enough

for all to do, thus there was a gentleman's agreement to
aid and abet each other.
There was a good deal of statesmanship and gentle
behavior.

Former President James W. Miller of Western

Michigan University spoke of that good will.
I don't think the conflicts between the
private and public sectors were very severe in
Michigan.
In Indiana, frankly, the presidents
of the private and public institutions pretty
effectively killed off a community college thrust.
There was an effort at accommodation in
Michigan. With only a few exceptions I've never
noted any strong antipathy between the private
and public. . . .
I really can't say that I
ever detected any strong antipathy. We used to
meet with them regularly and we got along
famously as a group, I thought . ^
•^See pages A176-77 for more discussion.

191

In the mid-sixties a multiplicity of coordination
mechanisms were set up whose main function was to encourage
communication between the groups.
was clear.

The position in Michigan

People in both sectors of higher education were

conscious of the responsibility to be met, recognized their
interdependence, and neither side desired to harm the other.
Mutual respect and admiration were the keynotes of the
relationship between the public and the private colleges
and universities.
The role of both was the same--to deliver the
societal objectives of higher education.

The private colleges

were also quite powerful in their communities because of the
people on the boards.

(See Appendix III for names and

occupations of the boards of the private colleges.)

John

Porter, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, pointed
out the strength of these boards in his interview.
Porter
My observation would be that that's because
Michigan's private institutions, although
they're not very powerful individually, are
quite powerful collectively because of their
boards of trustees. You just look at Albion
or Adrian or Olivet and see who makes up these
boards. When you add all that up I think you
get a unique phenomenon.
Author
It may be a strange thing, but I'm quite struck
by the fact that in terms of physical muscle,
Michigan's universities are much more powerful
than those in other states--because of the
Constitution and the alumni.

192

But I also, in spite of the weak enrollment
mixes, wouldn't want to take on a Calvin, an
Albion, a Hope, or U of D because they have
some hold on the spirit of men.
I think about
Hope in a very forceful way.
Governor Williams
mentioned the influence that President Lubbers
had.
It strikes me that these men were
influential, and still are.
Porter
With influential board members you generate
quite influential institutions.
Author
I haven't studied that.
I think I'll have to
take a look at who was on the boards.
Porter
That's the key, and I think that's partly why
the institutions didn't go public.
I suspect
that the private colleges have more influence
across the street [at the State Capitol] than
the public institutions if it came to a
showdown on any one of these. You've got to
realize that the Gerstackers and the Dow
Chemicals or the Kresges, and the people who
give money to public institutions aren't on
public boards.
That's something people don't
realize. 1
What was the nature of regional and
local pressures to expand higher
education in one location rather than
another?
The strong affection the people of Michigan have for
their own regions was the basis of these conflicts.

A

region wanted to be able to have a place where its children
could go to school without migrating or having to pay the
l^See pages A327-28 for more discussion.

193
additional cost of room and board.

As mentioned earlier

schools were an important component of the good life.
Grand Rapids wanted a college, Saginaw-Bay City
wanted a college, Sault Ste. Marie wanted to enhance the
Soo branch of Michigan Technological University.

In Flint

and in Dearborn there was the strong desire for higher
education services, through the University of Michigan.
People in Oakland County had a great desire for similar
opportunities.

Hosts of rural and isolated areas pushed

to create community colleges, and in places like Roscommon,
Sidney, Clare, Gladwin, Monroe, and Ironwood, community
colleges were created to serve their regions.

In the

period of 1958 to 1970, 14 additional community colleges
were established.
The aspirations and the needs for higher education
were most acute in the rapidly growing suburban and urban
centers.

It would be in these areas where the score of

new colleges and universities would be established.
Interestingly enough, this class of regional
ambitions for institutions did not result in bitter fights
that destroyed the individual suitors.

Rather, an accom­

modation developed by the competitors that worked in the
following way: "I’ll help you get yours, and next year
you will help me to get mine."

The only time when this

194
did not work was when the local groups in a region fell out
with each other.

This is what happened in the case of

Saginaw Valley College,

The local lack of unanimity probably

delayed the placement of that specific institution for five
years.
The decision elite was in favor of these new institu­
tions particularly in areas that were underserved by the whole
range of public services.

The discussion with former Speaker

of the House William Ryan best highlights the advantages of
the establishment of new institutions of higher education.
Author
What was the nature, Bill of the regional and
local pressures to expand higher education in
one location rather than another?
Ryan
I think it's economic and civic.
Author
Were they an advantage to you? A lot of people,
particularly planners, make a great fuss about
the rivalry between, say, Saginaw and Grand
Rapids or Oakland and Dearborn.
I myself lean to the belief, based on my
experiences working for the Legislature, that
that's not bad at all. As a matter of fact
it wired people in who were never in.
It
brought people into the game who had the
privilege and legislative tactic of voting no.
All of a sudden you brought in Grand Rapids
people and Saginaw people and Dearborn people
and you could wire them into a system where
in order to get this they had to give some­
thing else too.

195
So I wasn’t sure that that kind of competition
was at all divisive or bad for the objectives
of the state.
Ryan
No, and it certainly has stimulated the particu­
lar legislators who came from those areas to
fight hard for this growth and expansion. °
In summary, the prevailing attitude in Michigan in
regard to higher education was to make sure that the pie was
big enough for all and not fight so hard as to ruin it for
everyone.
What in your opinion were the reasons for
the failure of the branch campus system
that had begun to be developed in Michigan
with Oakland, Flint and Dearborn?
In the late fifties and early sixties there was a
chance that the State of Michigan was going to develop a
system of branches like Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois,
Alaska, and California had.

This issue was strongly

polarized between three sectors of opinion.
One group did not believe that new institutions
which were managed in a colonial manner by an imperial
campus could do the job of representing local interests or
aspirations.

Another group said that in order to put a good

school together with good faculty, facilities and programs,
and get it accredited, the most expeditious way was under
the auspices and accreditation already granted to a main
campus.
1

f\

See page A402 for more discussion.

President Victor Spathelf of Ferris State College
was immensely concerned about the imperialism of the
University of Michigan.

He stated this in his extremely

trenchant memorandum of March 12, 1963.

He first quoted

from The Grand Rapids Press, February 13, 1963, statements
by the University of Michigan.
"Hatcher in this appearance before
the Senate Appropriations Committee,
proposed legislative adoption of a
resolution supporting citizens' efforts
to develop a branch plan.
He suggested
a $50,000 appropriation to complete the
plans. . . .
"He (University of Michigan Vice
President Marvin L. Niehuss) did say the
University of Michigan has a flexible
plan for establishing branches to suit
a community and under questioning con­
ceded the University might seek as
many as seven or more out-state
branches 'under proper conditions'. '
Spathelf then argued that:
There is no comparable analogy known
to the writer anywhere in the United
States where an existing major university
proposes to absorb an existing community
college and build upon it a future
complex university branch in any state
which even nearly approximates the
burgeoning Michigan pattern of thirty
existing state colleges, universities,
public junior colleges, and an array
of private colleges and universities.
The examples cited within the report
as possible precedent for the UM-Delta
proposal are immaterial and irrelevant.
17

Victor F. Spathelf, Memorandum to The Michigan
Council of State College Presidents and The Michigan
Coordinating Council for Public Higher Education,
March 12, 1963, p. 9.

197

The proposal is sent to the legislature for
adoption in totality or in principle as an
ultimate complex university branch of unknown
financial consequence either on operational
costs or ultimate capital expenditure require­
ments. There is evidence to support the con­
tention that branch college operation, as this
is presently conducted, is a more expensive way
to effect enlargement of state educational
opportunities in a given area than a number of
other alternatives.
The proposal should be considered for
precisely what the following summary accurately
describes it as being: A plan of general authority
to develop a complex university branch, conceived
without presentation of operational or ultimate
costs, or an analysis of its impact upon other
public or private institutions (and consultation
with them), or the pattern of state higher
education as viewed from the vantage point of
two affected institutions, for one selected
geographic area, one of which was "invited in"
and after much extended "negotiation" has
accepted on the assumption that this action,
without investigation and common agreement, is
in the best interests of the State of Michigan.
In the opinion of the writer, this can well be
considered unilateral action.
It has all of the
elements to further muddle the orderly development
of higher education in Michigan.
The proposal to develop a major complex
university branch is of vital importance to the
entire state pattern of education, both as an
undertaking and as a precedent.
Any proposal by
any institution to develop its own pattern of
expansion, including an array of branches, is of
prime issue as a matter of basic state policy
and to the existing components of higher education.
The prevailing force of public opinion developed in
the six years from 1958 to 1964.

The clear implications of

the John Dale Russell Report, the proceedings of the
Constitutional Convention, the Davis Report and the Report
■^Ibid. , pp . 26-27 .

198

of the Citizens Committee on Higher Education, were all
anti-branch.

That, coupled with the hostility of the

state's burgeoning community colleges and the nine other
baccalaureate institutions, killed any additional expan­
sion.

No further branches were established after the

Oakland branch in 1958.

This, quite bluntly, should be

regarded as the successful curtailment of the expansionist
drive of the University of Michigan.
The University was thwarted from moves into Saginaw,
Grand Rapids and into Oakland and Macomb counties.

If they

had succeeded in placing institutional branches in the
suburbs and out-state communities, the story of how this
state developed would have been entirely different.

Suffice

it to say that after branch expansionism was checked,
Michigan State University's interest in Oakland declined
precipitously.
Another key element against branch campuses has been
the strong and abiding localism of Michigan's people and
their inherent suspicion of super bureaucracies.

Univer­

sities with many branches and 30 or 40 thousand students
met the criterion of such super bureaucracies.

Academicians

have used the term "mega-universities", but there is no
reason that this term makes the beast any more palatable.

199
The discussion with Governor William Milliken
reflected some of this feeling.
Milliken
Based on my observation it really hasn’t worked
particularly well.
My impression, as I have talked with the admin­
istrations at Michigan State and U of M, is that
they seem, somehow, once they get a branch
established, to lose interest in that branch
and the branch becomes quite autonomous in its
own right.
Their essential interest seems
to be in the parent campus itself. . . .
Author
Jim Farnsworth said one of the reasons the Human
Services Bill was in trouble was that Michigan
people fear big government.
There's a sturdy
sense of local independence. . . .
Milliken
There just doesn't seem to be the kind of climate
in the state which is supportive of a very large
and impersonal system of higher education which
all flows back to a single parent.
Jim Farnsworth may be right. Maybe that's one of
the problems that we are encountering in the
human services effort.19
The University of Michigan was successful, however,
in allying with key elements in Flint and Dearborn and was
able to prevent the destruction of its entrepots in those
cities.

Harlan Hatcher, former President of the University
19

See pages A292-93 for more discussion.

200

of Michigan, quite persuasively presented his view in
defense of the branch campuses.
Hatcher
Now you spoke about the branch campuses.
There
was a great deal of misunderstanding on that
one, brought about for lots of reasons that we
don’t have time here to go into. But the basic
points are these.
If you take yourself back to the period of the
late fifties when the whole new generation was
beginning to pour into the colleges, we were
turning away perfectly qualified students
because we did not have the space, or in some
instances, didn’t have living room for them. At
one point we were actually turning away students
because there was no place for them to live.
Combine that pressure for enrollments with the
rapidly rising costs of students living away
from home--their board and room particularly-plus their tuition made it very difficult for
many of them. The question came up almost as
a corollary of the concept of the junior
college: ’’Why does a student have to go to
East Lansing or to Michigan to continue his
education when he might, at much less expense,
carry right on in his own home community?". . . .
Instead of bringing people into the campus at
Michigan, couldn't we extend the campus there
for those who wished to carry on. That was
the concept of it.
The Legislature was highly pleased with that
concept and though I haven't an overwhelming
number of pleasant memories of going to Lansing,
one of them was when C. S. Mott and I went down
to the committee, in which Senators Beadle and
Garland Lane were the most prominent members at
that time, and laid before them the concept of
an added two years of work at Flint coordinated
with the junior college, so that if they wished
they could go on, or could transfer.

201

Now behind this concept at all points was this:
If and when and at any time this kind of insti­
tution ever needed to go out of existence, or
to become locally autonomous, freestanding, it
would certainly do so. But what we were con­
cerned with was that the lead time, the
pressures and all that part were so great, that
it seemed sense to everybody that we talked
with, and it certainly seemed sense to me as
the president of this institution, to say that
we can give almost instantaneous existence to a
first-class continuation by this method which
you cannot possibly do without a long, difficult
lead time.
So we set up Flint and we set up
Dearborn.
Author
To some, though, it looked like the California
model or the Wisconsin model was attempting to
be set up, with [the University of] Michigan
controlling all the schools,
Hatcher
Yes, I know that was an interpretation of it.
Some of my own colleagues in the Council of
College Presidents were fearful of that,
particularly Spathelf, who thought that we
were embarked upon some kind of Nazi conquest
to take over.
Author
Well he viewed it as an imperialistic drive.

. .

Hatcher
...Which it was not at all. Now I don't know
how to explain that beyond saying what I did.
I know what the motives were and why we did it
and where we went with it. And it worked and
it gave [University of] Michigan immediately
a new form of continuation in these two
institutions.

202

Author
Well, some regarded it that in the locus of
power in this state you have Detroit, you have
Flint, you have Grand Rapids, you have the
suburban part and then you have the rural part.
The rural part was diminishing in influence
because of the migration and the change in the
nature of American agriculture.
Some, there­
fore, did think that Michigan moving to Flint,
to Dearborn, and being strongly romanced by
Saginaw-Bay City, and with its preeminent
position in Grand Rapids where you'd been a
long time--for instance, you still have a radio
station there--was an attempt to bring them all
in under one tent with Michigan as the head of it.
Hatcher
Well, as I said, that was not t r u e . ^
However, the level of suspicion and anxiety on the
part of the other institutions, and the ineptness of the
University of Michigan in presenting the above case, if
such was its policy, caused a coalescing of forces that
effectively barred the door.
Oakland University, formerly known as the Oakland
Branch of Michigan State University, and Lake Superior State
College, formerly known as the Sault Ste. Marie Branch of
Michigan Technological University, have both become
sovereign institutions.
President Robben Fleming of the University of
Michigan discussed the future of the remaining two branches
of the University.
20

See pages A792-94 for more discussion.

203

Fleming
By the time I came on the scene it was pretty
much over and the only ones left were our own
two.
I think what's perfectly clear about them is
that there is great local political pressure
from the people, the faculty, plus the students
in Flint and Dearborn to remain a part of the
University of Michigan.
I think that's what
keeps them there, basically.
Author
I guess when I said failure... I worried about
your looking at that question.
In Wisconsin
you ended up with the University of Wisconsin
at Milwaukee and so forth.
I guess when I say
failure, I mean I don't believe the time will
ever come again that we'll have branch campuses
of the University of Michigan at Port Huron or
at other additional cities.
Fleming
I think that's right.
happen.

I don't believe that will

Author
The concept of the branch system as part of a
satellite farm system I think is gone.
The
same with local political energies that want
the prestige of Michigan to husband their
campus.
It may sometime come when nationalism
and political climates could be different and
they may strike off on their own.
Fleming
Yes, and we have, in fact, made deliberate
efforts now to operate them as independently
as we can.
Author
I was going to ask that.
It's my observation
that in your presidency you have taken direct
efforts to make these schools more autonomous,

204

more capable of their own management, and
delegated many decisions to them that formerly
stayed here in Ann Arbor.
Fleming
Yes, we've done that deliberately in order to
make them as autonomous as possible. Therefore,
if there ever comes a time when public policy
directs that they be spun off, they could
become independent quite easily.
Author
Whereas when you came, the Michigan State
capacity to do that with Oakland, which occurred
right in your first year, was not a viable choice
for you.
Fleming
That's right
Author
That could be so five years hence.
Fleming
It wasn't viable in terms of either administra­
tion or politics.
I would say it is viable now
in terms of the administration.
It is not
viable in terms of politics. You'd see an
enormous uproar from those localities.21
Hence, the branch campus issue was divisive, but
still was only an aspect of larger matters .

More than

likely, within the next ten years these institutions will
become autonomous regional colleges.
21

See pages A519-21 for more discussion.

205

Why in your opinion did an institutional
system for the coordination of higher
education not come about after 1964?
There are several reasons.

First, the Constitutional

Convention gave all of the state's baccalaureate institutions
constitutional status.

Michigan is one of the very few

states in the Union to do so.

Once all of the four-year

colleges had constitutional status, it was just too appealing
to give up.

Second, there has been a long ongoing sense of

suspicion about strong centralizing agencies because the
line between coordination and control is very delicate,
needing great skill to execute.
The ineptness of the State Board in its early moves,
the lack of Republican representation, the inability of the
Board to win the colleges and universities to any real accom­
modation with the Department of Education's Bureau of Higher
Education, all are reasons for the Board's failure to play a
strong role in Michigan.
President John Hannah of Michigan State University
best expressed the sense of disappointment.
Author
You speak and sound as if you believed in some
of this cooperation, yet at the Constitutional
Convention George Romney had this sense of
coordination run by the State Board, and you
and Roscoe Bonisteel and some others had a
sense of the autonomy of the institutions.
That came through in a very mixed way. The

206

State Board ended up with constitutional language
but no real prerogative because the institutions
came out with a sense of their historical impor­
tance as institutions with legal power.
Hannah
I think you're mixing up two things.
Every time
the State Constitution has been rewritten, since
the University of Michigan was given constitu­
tional independence, this matter has come up.
You say Bonisteel, myself, and maybe some others
insisted that we not lose the relative indepen­
dence from the Legislature, from the internal
affairs managed by political forces.
It provided
no problem, really, to extend this to the whole
system. There was a recognition that there had
to be a coordination.
There had been various
limping movements before and it was perfectly
clear that sooner or later it was going to be.
I was on the Education Committee, as was Bonisteel,
though that wasn't my primary role in the State
Constitutional Convention. The mistake we made,
looking back on it, was in providing for the
election of the State Board of Education.
No
one could foresee that that first slate of
candidates for the Board would be picked by
people that didn't seriously regard what they
were doing.
If half of the first Board had known something
about the role and purpose of public education,
it would have been one situation, but by and
large, they didn't have that understanding.
There weren't even any strong people that could
educate them and they went off in all directions.
Author
Without getting involved in personalities,
because that's a delicacy, I have the sense-and I've said this in some of the other inter­
views- -that nobody expected eight members of
one party to win.
It happened in '32, but
the rest of the time things had been balanced.
We ended up without strong representation from
people like Bentley and Briggs and the like.
We ended up with a Board that wasn't of high

207

quality. The election process frightened out
some of the people who weren’t politicians
but were men of civic responsibility.
Hannah
They would not go through the process of being
nominated and elected.
I think now, I didn't
at the time, that all of the educational boards
would, by and large, be better off if they
served long terms, were selected by appointment
by the governor, maybe with approval of the
Senate, for the good reason that you mention.
There are very few people who wouldn't gladly
serve on these boards, but very few of them
will go the election route.
They just won't
go through that requirement of nomination by
a political party and required campaigning all
over the state.
Author
Therefore, you lose from the boards a certain
talent stream in society that the institutions
and society need.
Hannah
What you really need is some management skill
and competence and understanding.
You need
the point of view of people in the middle
categories of society, you need agriculture
to be represented, you need all of these
points of view working towards the common
objective of the kind of an institution that
will serve the purposes of all of t h e m .
Governor G. Mennen Williams stated the case quite
well, pointing out the unique influence in Michigan of
history and tradition and its hold on the minds of men
beyond the language of statistics.

He expressed regrets

that cooperation and the mobilization of the most
77
See pages A753-54 for more discussion.

208

thoughtful could not be brought about, yet he recognized
the extreme challenges to accomplishing a dynamic new
mechanism of government.
Williams
Well, I think there are two reasons.
First of
all, I think the spirit of autonomy and the
strength of the individual institution was too
strong to permit any board to operate success­
fully, despite the Constitution or despite the
law. The second thing was that the Board itself,
while they had a number of fine individuals on
it, never pulled together. They never were able
to exercise any organized strength, and as a
consequence, even if they... [or] any board
could have done it, this Boardjust wasn’t
staffed in such a way. .. .
It was tragic that the Board didn't have the
kind of dynamism that it might have had with
another mix of individual leadership.
But
any board would have had an awfully rough time.

. . .

[The universities] have a loyal and faithful
alumni.
I don’t know so much about Wayne because
they are somewhat newer and the commuting campus
may not inspire the same unity.
Anyway, State
and the University, have got a strength, you
know, that's pretty hard for anybody to contain
and then they've got this long history.
The
idea that anybody could put a cork in this
bottle is just... out of it.
Author
That's well said.
Williams
I think, however, that what is required is a
high degree of statesmanship on the part of the
Governor and the Commissioner of Education, or
whatever else, and to try and work with the
Legislature. The Legislature is really the only
one that has any kind of competitive equality
of power with these institutions.
Of course

they are dispersed among so many members so
that they don’t bring that power to bear
quite so directly.
Author
But there is one Governor and 148 legislators.

. . .

Williams
No, but I was thinking more of not between the
Governor and the Legislature but between the
institutions and the Legislature.
Theoretically
the Legislature could just cut them off because
they’ve got the power of the purse.
But you
know the people of Michigan wouldn't let the
Legislature get away with that. Then on the
other hand our people wouldn’t let the univer­
sities go too hog-wild either.
I think it's
that kind of recognition of the important
factors that has got to keep people living
together as a family and nobody is going to be
sole and exclusive boss.23
George Romney, Governor during five of these six
crucial years, when the Board met its difficulties,
summarized the case:
Author
They picked the fight over the Flint campus right
off.
I wonder if that might have sealed their
doom. Some say yes, some say no. But that was
early and you were right in the middle of that,
weren't you?
Romney
As I think back, they never pursued an approach
that resulted in establishing a good working
relationship, even in my office. Maybe that
was my fault, I don't know.
Ira Polley--my recollection is that that wasn't
too happy a selection.
2S

See pages A41-42 for more discussion.

210

Author
There was a split, and there was a period of
time when they didn't select anybody.
Kloster
was acting superintendent for a while.
Romney
As a matter of fact I think that was a disappoint­
ment to the institutions and a lot of people in
the Constitutional Convention.
They had visualized
attracting an outstanding educator and leader and
so on, and they didn't.
I think there was a
feeling that Polley was not a man that measured
up to what they expected.24
The State Board, which people had hoped would bring the
best and the brightest together, had not.

They had picked

the wrong fights and had quickly lost credibility.
It all came to the fact that the institutions of
higher education in this state didn't want coordination.
Only by a failure of the institutions to maintain public
confidence was coordination going to come about.
Then who in the public sector was for it?

Certainly

not the legislative or the executive branches, nor the
opinion elite of Michigan, all of whom were well satisfied
with the colleges and universities in this state.

The

institutions were effective mechanisms for social change
because they were sensitive to public need.

It wasn't

necessary to coordinate them, and to this day there is no
appetite for centralized control.

Thus, virtually no one

wanted coordination of the institutions of higher education.
^ S e e page A736 for more discussion.

211
In summary, from 1958 to 1970 Michigan’s people,
operating through its leadership structures, constructed one
of the largest systems of higher education in the country.
Through this system, quality, diversity of programs and
opportunity to obtain these services were spread throughout
the land.

The system has worked effectively and well.

The

things that are still left undone do not raise significant
doubt as to the capacity of the entire system.
The Future Agenda
In the period covered by the study, 1958 to 1970,
much was accomplished.

However, there are still aspirations

within the social structure to do more.

It is fair then to

ask what the agenda is that remains to be fulfilled.
Now that the period of extraordinary growth within
Michigan's post -secondary education system is past, the
issue as to the development of additional factors of quality
to enhance the institutions for the next generation should
be addressed.

Questions of quality rather than quantity

will become the primary concerns facing the public sector.
Issues of broadening the base of the service beyond
degree instruction must begin.

The mechanisms must be

constructed to deliver adult education in the communities
of our state beyond the campuses.
Continuing education programs for the enhancement of
skills for those who need constant up-grading, because of

212

the tremendous technological expansion of knowledge need
also to be developed.
Further it is apparent that the vocational training
system for first-entry jobs is not working as well as needs
demand.

Additional thought must be devoted to what delivery

mechanism and what financial support mechanisms can be put
in place to create a truly effective vocational and occupa­
tional training system in the state for first-entry jobs.
The thorny issue of who should pay for higher educa­
tion must also be faced.

Because of the increasingly high

cost of higher education, brought most directly to the
attention of the opinion elite by the Carnegie Commission
on Higher Education, a debate has begun to develop about the
appropriate share to be paid by the student and by the public
sector.
Decisions must be made to prevent the cost of educa­
tion from rising so high that the disadvantaged cannot
aspire to their place in the broadening middle class.

The

society seems to be comfortable with paying for elementary
and secondary education and is moving very strongly in this
state, through the mechanism of local tax support and state
support, to extraordinarily low tuition for junior and
community colleges.

We must begin to face the fact that if

education serves a public good and has a public value,
tuition must be done away with for all levels of education.

213

It is hard to make the case that higher education is
not socially useful.

Just as earlier educational and societal

leaders faced the issues of free public schools in the
United States, so must we bite the bullet by creating the
public policy mechanism through the opinion-forming
apparatuses of Michigan society to create a day when there
will be no tuition barriers for higher education.
New institutions of higher education must be created
in northern Macomb County, in Oakland County, and at
Traverse City.

It is also necessary in the urban area of

Detroit to establish an institute of technology whose
programmatic charge would be most similar to Ferris State
College.
Now that the main agenda for the enhancement of
institutions of higher education as manpower trainers has
been accomplished, public policy must strongly urge that we
move beyond that goal to goals that enhance civilization.
We must begin, as a part of the public agenda, to say that
not only are we trained to live this life, but the quality
of this life must be enhanced.

Not only must we make strong

efforts in the environment for the preservation of trees,
fresh water, animals, birds and bees, but we must also make
strong efforts to enhance the life of the mind by encouraging
state support for music, theatre, art, dance, literature,
and the other aspects that make the good life worth living.

214

The search must be encouraged, for only through
additional knowledge can ignorance be conquered.

One of

the highest priorities of the system of higher education
that the State of Michigan has built is to get other products
from it besides instruction.

We must begin to obtain new

knowledge and new understandings of the very underpinnings
of man's social and environmental relationship with the
world and with life itself.

This objective becomes worth­

while and necessary in the lives of our citizens.

Knowledge

and the means to attain it--research--must be strongly
encouraged.
All areas of the state must be included in community
college service areas, and these vital programs must be
enhanced with equal and equitable fiscal mechanisms.
Currently, a significant portion of the state's land, about
50 percent (estimated), levies no voted taxes for community
colleges, and in about 30 percent of this state, no programs
are available for local residents.
The determination of public policy for higher educa­
tion through a capable, consultative process has been notably
absent in Michigan.

If the institutions of higher education

are to be qualitatively enhanced, a new mechanism must be
created, for it is far easier to accomplish quantitative
growth, as in the past, than qualitative enhancement.

215

Hence, a State Council for Higher Education, separate
from the State Board of Education, should be created.

It

would be responsible for developing new strategies and
mechanisms to serve the people.

This Council should be

appointed by the governor with the advice and consent of the
Senate.

The composition of this Council should be broad-

ranging and diverse to reflect the multiplicity of views and
interests.
The junior and community colleges should be given
constitutional status equal to the baccalaureate institu­
tions.

The 29 junior and community colleges should also be

participants with the public four-year institutions and
private colleges in this State Council for Higher Education.
A public policy dialogue must also begin on what
alternatives the higher education system in Michigan could
develop if out-of-state tuition is found by the courts to
be unconstitutional.

In an age when virtually all benefits

of citizenship and eligibility for governmental programs are
instantly available to new residents, except higher education,
it is hard to believe that this last barrier to free access
will continue to stand.
These are the major agendas that remain to be per­
formed.

It is a challenging and useful agenda for the next

generation.

Michigan, since 1835, has proved that these

agendas can be fulfilled.

The public policy agenda must

216

begin to face these in the next generation.

If they are

obtained with the base we have already built from 1958 to
1970, the public will be well served and Michigan will
continue to remain predominant in the Union as the state
with the finest system of higher education with the greatest
utility to the well-being of its people.
It is the strong conviction of the author that the
future can be better than the past only by the same dedica­
tion and commitment that motivated these "giants in the public
service" who accomplished so much in this past generation.
The need is clear, the opportunity for men and women in the
public service awaits.

It is the author's hope that this

study will encourage them to set out to master the future
as the earlier generation of giants mastered their generation.

APPENDICES

Appendix I
LETTER OF JUNE 7, 1968 FROM THE GOVERNOR TO THE
SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION

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APPENDIX I

B T A T i: D F M I C H I G . A N.
m n w E or t h e g o v e r n o r
I.AN5INR,

MICHIGAN <*.0903

PEORUE r o m n e y

June 7, 1968

liO V C IW H R

ECIIVE
J U H 5.01950
D r . Ira Volley
Supev intcndont of Public Instruction
Department of Education
Lansing, Michigan 4S902

*
‘

Dear Dr. Pollejs

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* '

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’In your March 14 letter transmitting the State hoard of Education®©
Second Annual Report to the Mich if;an legislature on financial
requirements for higher educations you recommended that the Boar#©
working in cooperation with the Bureau of the Budget, be responsible
for the 'development of budget request materials for all of the public
colleges and universities.
#
_
* *
I. understand that two years ago the Budget Division requested your
Bureau of Higher Education to solicit budget requests from the varicius
community colleges and transmit a combined request on their behalf®
This arrangement was made due to a shortage of staff in the BudgeS
Division which would have precluded its effective r e v i e w of the
individual requests.
_
^
»
I understand that one of the reasons for your request
of March
14is
•'to strengthen your capability to advise the legislature of the financial
requirements of our publicly supported institutions of higher
education. Two essential points bear on the essence of your reqwest«
I’irsfc8 as a member of the constitutional convention and its cduc&Cicra
commit ice 8 it was and is my belief that the financial advj.ee J.ang.uag-2 :
is oriented toward long-range financial planning and program
coordination requirements. Further, 1 do not believe it was intended
that •the State Board of Education supplant this office in the annual
•budget processes for these ins titutions, but that it was to deal witfa
those factors having financial ramifications beyond the scope send lie©
allowed for the annual budget cycle. Second, as 1 indicated i n By
Cencral Depart mental Communication No. 25 and in r.;y remarks at 8Is©
department head meeting of May 8, 1 am determined to strengthen its©
budget process by instituting a spring budget preview to gain ait
early identification of program issues, and by requiring greater
CTiptsasis on sys lemma tic planning, programming and review of state
government service programs. 1 believe the assignment of your higher
fdueatj.on staff to the annual budget process would simply defer your

• effort*

and responsibilities in this regard, as veil as those
'iclating to planning and coordination of the further development oJi
gn>X system of: higher education,
•
.
«

Therefore* 1 am directing the Bureau of the Budget to develop the
budget request Materials for the community college capital outlay
'program for 1969--70 and for current operations commencing with the
)-970"7X budget*
X understand there has been excellent coordination
between, the two concerned offices for the period cf time involved
in the pplit responsibilities. 1 believe it would be to our mutual
benefit; for this consultation and coordination to continue. 1 also,
believe this,delineation of roles to be proper and necessary not
only from our point of reference, but also from the perspective
b£ the individual community colleges.

Appendix II
THE GOALS OF THE STATE PLAN
FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

II

APPENDIX II
THE GOALS OF THE STATE PLAN FOR HIGHER EDUCATION
Goal 1

The role of the State Board of Education as the
principal agent for general state planning and
coordination of higher education is clear, and
in this capacity it is the duty of the State
Board of Education to plan for and encourage the
orderly development of a comprehensive state
system of education beyond the secondary level
that will effectively and efficiently serve all
the needs of the state.

Goal 2

As an initial step in carrying out its constitu­
tional mandate, it is the responsibility of the
State Board of Education to assemble information
concerning the existing educational pattern of
each baccalaureate institution and community
college and analyze such information in terms
of its recognized educational responsibilities
and the scope of its services and offerings.

Goal 3

The State Board of Education will establish AS
NEEDED advisory committees of colleges and uni­
versity BOARD MEMBERS, administrators, faculty
members, AND STUDENTS.
In addition, the State
Board, from time to time, will create other
advisory committees as may be appropriate.

Goal 4

The State Board of Education expects to seek
additional methods by which the private insti­
tutions can be properly assisted. Therefore,
the State Board reaffirms its support for private
higher education, and will seek to foster its
welfare and development by appropriate measures,
consistent with constitutional and statutory
provisions and sound public policy.

Goal 5

Because of the increasing demands for greater
numbers of technically trained people and the
rapidly increasing number of vocationaltechnical programs in community colleges, it
is the intent of the State Board of Education,
in cooperation with the four other state
agencies responsible for the supervision of

219

220

proprietary schools, to develop administrative
relationships to coordinate the program
developments of proprietary schools as part
of the overall system of higher education.
Goal

Since revisions of long-range enrollment
projections are necessary in determining the
need for educational programs, space, and
faculty, and because of the important variables
affecting the college-going rate, it is the
responsibility of the State Board of Education
to maintain updated long-range projections of
potential and probable student enrollments.

Goal 7

The State Board of Education will continue to
take the initiative and encourage the community
colleges, public and private colleges and univer­
sities, and others involved with education and
welfare of our youth to seek out and assist those
who have the ability to do the required academic
work but who, because of inadequate academic
preparation or other reasons, are unable to meet
the prescribed admission standards of the
institutions.

Goal 8

Therefore the State Board of Education will
continue to support and promote the liberal arts
programs in the colleges and universities, and
encourage all studies which aim at producing
responsible members of modern society--citizens
who are knowledgeable of our western heritage,
appreciative of other cultures, concerned with
social problems, and respectful of common human
values.

Goal 9

The State Board of Education needs to be informed
concerning changes in demands for persons trained
for the professions, sciences, and technical
fields of various kinds. Therefore, the State
Board of Education will encourage and initiate
studies of the needs of people for professional
preparation in specific areas and exercise
leadership in securing the necessary cooperation
among the concerned departments of state, pro­
fessional associations, and the higher education
institutions in carrying out such studies.

221

Goal 10

There is continuous need for studies of society’s
demands and needs for people with vocational
skills. Therefore, the State Board of Education
will exercise leadership in promoting and encour­
aging continuous study of society’s demands and
needs for people trained in the various vocational
and technical skills, and to initiate such studies
in its own behalf as circumstances dictate.

Goal 11

The State Board of Education reaffirms its position
that the community colleges should admit any high
school graduate or other out-of-school person and
counsel with him about the programs or courses
for which he is prepared and from which he may
benefit.

Goal 12

In order that community college transfers to bacca­
laureate institutions may have the opportunity to
achieve their educational goals, the State Board
of Education will request baccalaureate institu­
tions to accept the special responsibility to
admit academically qualified community college
transfers, and to provide them with essential
counseling and assistance during the period of
transition.

Goal 13

Because of the lack of knowledge related to the
admission policies and practices of the institu­
tions, the State Board of Education will, in
cooperation with the colleges and universities,
initiate studies designed to culminate in
recommendations concerning admission and retention
policies and practices.

Goal 14

The State Board of Education will foster the
coordination of state, institutional, and federal
funds available to students, and will recommend
that sufficient state financial assistance be
available to every individual who is academically
qualified to undertake a higher education program
of his choice.

Goal 15

The State Board of Education will seek legislative
action to provide sufficient funds for the state
guaranteed loan fund and to accomplish greater
participation by financial institutions.

222

Goal 1

The establishment of an incentive awards program
that would identify high school students from
disadvantaged backgrounds who can benefit from
further education, is of utmost importance if
more young people are to be given an opportunity
for higher education. Therefore, the State Board
of Education will continue to give high priority
to the implementation of such a program and will
urge the legislature to provide sufficient funds
to meet the financial needs.

Goal 1

For the purpose of enabling the State Board of
Education to make annual reassessments of higher
education, each baccalaureate institution and
community college shall file its updated fiveyear plan of operations showing its educational
roles, its actual and proposed inventory of
programs, its required faculties and staff, and
its projected operating and capital costs,
including self-liquidating facilities.

Goal

As a result of the growing demands for off-campus
programs including educational television and
mail order AND CONTINUING EDUCATION courses at
the undergraduate, graduate, and graduateprofessional levels, and because there is not
now a clear direction as to the overall state
planning and coordination of such activities,
the State Board of Education will develop, in
cooperation with institutional representatives,
a statewide plan whereby off-campus education
can be encouraged, fostered, and coordinated.

Goal 1

As a matter of policy the State Board of Education
will, from time to time, recommend that certain
community colleges, especially metropolitan
community colleges, undertake such of the highcost vocational-technical programs as they are
particularly suited to offer.

Goal 2

In order to avoid unnecessary duplication of
institutions, facilities, and programs, it shall
be the policy of the State Board of Education
that, where community colleges exist, the community
college shall serve as the postsecondary area
vocational school for the said area.

223

Goal 21

Due to the great need for pre-vocational
technical skills at the secondary level, and
in the interest of efficiency and economy in
teaching, the State Board of Education will
establish appropriate standards for secondary
area vocational centers and community colleges
to avoid unnecessary duplication of programs
and facilities.

Goal 22

For the purpose of stimulating cooperative
educational, research, and public service
programs, the State Board of Education will
strive to expedite coordination of regional
programs within the state, with neighboring
states, and with private organizations.

Goal 23

Although it is not clear that there is a unique
optimum size for educational institutions, it
is believed that an educational institution
cannot wisely be expanded indefinitely.
Therefore, the State Board of Education will
study and recommend a state policy concerning
institutional size, and the distribution of
students among the institutions.

Goal 24

The State Board of Education reaffirms its
policy of April 1966, that the existing
branches should be provided their autonomy
in an expeditious manner.

Goal 25

The State Board of Education is responsible for
making recommendations concerning the formation
and scope of new public institutions.
In recom­
mending the establishment of any new public
institution, it will offer guidelines to the new
governing board on how the public institution
should grow, the level of instruction to be
offered, and the variety of professional programs
and the timing of their introduction.

Goal 26

The State Board of Education believes every
resident of the state should have access to
community colleges services.
It is therefore
the policy of the Board that all areas of the
state be included in independent community
college districts.

224

Goal 27

The State Board of Education will, based upon
appropriate advice, establish guidelines for
locating community college sites within the
respective districts in such a way as to
provide the greatest services to all of the
people of the district and surrounding
territory.

Goal 28

The State Board of Education shall, based upon
appropriate advice, establish guidelines for
determining the appropriateness of residence
halls on community college campuses, and the
construction of a residence hall by a community
college shall require the prior approval of the
State Board of Education.

Goal 29

It is the policy of the State Board of Education
that no community college should be transformed
into a baccalaureate institution.
If and when
it is determined that an upper division or fouryear institution is needed in an area, it should
be established in its own right, rather than as
an outgrowth of an existing community college.

Goal 30

Because of the growing concern over rising tuition
and fee charges, the State Board of Education will
initiate a study and make recommendations con­
cerning the entire gamut of student charges by
the public baccalaureate institutions and com­
munity colleges.

Goal 31

Baccalaureate institutions shall file financial
information upon request consistent with terms
of such definitions of accounting and reporting
terms as are agreed upon by the institutions and
state agencies involved.
In addition, the State
Board of Education will cooperate with the
baccalaureate institutions to bring about a
speedy completion of an accounting manual that
will be acceptable in meeting the uniform accounting
and reporting needs of the state.

Goal 32

The present system of counting and reporting
students by the public baccalaureate institutions
is practical and acceptable to most agencies.
The State Board of Education will adopt the
system of counting and reporting students as set
forth in Table 3.

225

Goal 33

Because the educational programs of community
colleges vary widely and some are penalized by
the standard per student appropriation, the
State Board of Education, with the advice of
the boards of trustees of community colleges and
the State Board for Public Community and Junior
Colleges, will recommend a new way of determining
appropriations for community college operations
consistent with their roles as institutions of
higher education.

Goal

34 It shall be the policy of the State Board of
Education that, when a student attends a community
college as a nonresident student because he does
not live in a community college district, the
excess of the tuition charged over the standard
charge to resident students should be paid by the
student's local school district. When a student
from a community college district attends another
community college in order to enroll in a highcost vocational-technical program or a specialized
program not available in his community college,
the sending community college should make provi­
sions to pay the difference in tuition charges.

Goal

35 As a result, the State Board of Education will
assist and encourage the public baccalaureate
institutions and the public community colleges
to arrive at optimum utilization of their
facilities and improved operating efficiency
wherever possible; always in light of the need
for quality in the education processes.

Appendix III
NAMES AND OCCUPATIONS OF BOARD
MEMBERS OF PRIVATE COLLEGES

APPENDIX III
Adrian College
Board of Trustees
Amos Anderson - President, Anderson Development Company
Raymond Burkett - Pastor, Capac United Methodist Church
Alden Burns - Pastor, Milwood Methodist Church
Frederick Close - Retired Chairman of the board, ALCOA
Catherine Cobb

-

Housewife

Russell Dancey

-

Retired Senior Vice-President,Frito-Lay

Phyllis Driggs

-

Housewife

Mary J. Ernest

-

Comptroller, Radio DistributionCompany

Donald Frazier

-

Editor, Adrian Daily Telegram

Keith Hayes - Methodist Clergyman
William Hewes - Psychiatrist, Ypsilanti State Hospital
Charles E. Hickman - President, Chairman of the Board,
Brazeway, Inc.
James Jackson - Agent and President, Jackson Agency
Corporation
Ralph Janka - District Superintendent, United Methodist
Church, Saginaw
Loran Lewis - Judge, Court of Common Pleas, Allegheny
County
Henry Montague - President, Greyhound Food Management,
Inc.
Ernest Nicolay - President, Kar-Nut Products
Fred Nofziger - Assistant City Editor, Toledo Blade
Marvin Patterson - President, Pippel-Patterson Company
Arden Peterson - Associate Professor, Michigan State
University
226

227

Ronald Rickard - Graduate Student, Wayne State University
Herbert Robinson - Retired, Secretary-Treasurer, Ace
Drill Company
T. Austin Saunders - Retired Chairman of the Board
General Telephone Company of Michigan
Norman Smith - Vice-President Mellon National Bank and
Trust, Pittsburgh
Robert C. Smith - District Superintendent, United
Methodist Church, Grand Rapids
Earl Sorensen - Farm Manager and Public Affairs, H.D.
Hudson Manufacturing
Edward Spiegel - President, Spiegel Inc., Chicago
Owsley Spiller - Staff Specialist, Personnel, Chrysler
M. Donald Swank - Owner, President, Swank Tuttle Press
Archie Thomas - Dean of Student Affairs, Heidelberg
College, Ohio
Melvin Williams - Clergyman

228

Albion College
Board of Trustees
Neil Bintz - Minister, First Methodist Church
John Bromley - CLU, Agent Massachusetts Mutual Life
Insurance Company
Prentiss Brown, Jr. - Partner, Brown and Brown, Attorneys
Dennis Cathorne - Michigan State House of Representatives
Mary Coleman - Judge, Michigan State Supreme Court
R. Bud Davis - Investment Securities
Carl Gerstacker - Chairman of the Board, Dow Chemical
Company
Joseph Godfrey - Vice-President and General Manager,
General Motors Assembly Division
Clarence Hafford - President, Clenoit Mills, Inc.
Beverly Burnham Hannett - Chairman, Department of English,
Detroit Country Day School
Kenneth Hollidge, Sr. - Executive Vice-President, Snyder
Corporation
Anne Johnson - Housewife
Stanley Jones - Vice-President, Burroughs Corporation
Bruce Kresge - Physician
Dwight Loder - Bishop, Michigan Area, United Methodist
Church
Bernard Lomas - President, Albion College
Richard Mange, Sr. - Vice-President, Retired, National
Bank of Detroit
Harold McClure, Jr. - President, McClure Oil Company
Robert McCoy - Associate Professor of Management, Eastern
Michigan University

229

Paul McCracken - Edmund Ezra Day Professor of Business
Administration, University of Michigan
Robert Morris - General Manager, Retired, Folding Carton
Division, Georgis-Pacific Corporation
Fred Neumann - President, Walter Machine and Screw Company,
Chairman of the Board
John Oakes - Executive Vice President, Time Industries,
Inc.
Peter Ponta - Executive Director of Manufacturing, Retired,
Ford Motor Company
Millard Pryor - Chairman of the Board, Retired, Barnes
Manufacturing Company
James Sebastian - President, Rapistan, Inc.
Andrew Sharf - Cardiovascular Surgeon
Richard Simonson - Administrative Assistant to Senator
Donald Bishop
Norbert Smith - Superintendent, Port Huron District,
Detroit Conference, United Methodist Church
Marilyn Harger Steele - Director of Planning Services,
Mott Foundation
Thomas Taylor, Sr. - Chairman of the Board, Ohio Machinery
Company
C. Thomas Wilson - Attorney, Beyer, Graham and Wilson
Jay T. Wisner - Regional Plant Manager, General Motors
Corporation

230

Alma College
Board of Trustees
Thomas M. Batchelor - M.D., Fellow of American College
of Physicians
L.B. Bornhauser - Vice President, Vehicle Safety and
Quality Chrysler Corporation
Reid Brazell - Former Chairman of the Board, Total
Petroleum (N.A.)
Bernard A. Chapman - Former Executive Vice President,
American Motors Corporation
Robert R. Cosner - Former Group Vice President, Ford
Motor Company
J. Alton Cressman - Minister, First Presbyterian Church
William B. Dillon - CPA, Manager, Arthur Anderson and
Company
William R. Donnelly - Executive Director, MacKay Shields
Financial Corporation
George R. Elges - Vice President, General Motors Corpora­
tion and General Manager, Buick Motor Division
Constance L. Estes - Housewife
William C. Goggin - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer,
Dow Corning Corporation
Walter R. Greene - Chief Executive Assistant to the Mayor
Charles L. Guess - Salesman, Blyth Eastman Dillon and
Company, Inc.
Robert G. Hall - President, Taylor Produce and Storage
Company
John F. Hiemenz - President and General Manager, The
Lobdell-Emery Manufacturing Company
Andrew Kalman - Executive Vice President and Director,
Indian Head, Inc.

231

Marvin L. Katke - Former Vice President, Technical Affairs,
Ford Motor Company
Bethel B. Kelley - Attorney, Dykema, Gossett, Spencer,
Goodnow and Trigg
Thomas W. Kirkman - Minister, First Presbyterian Church
Clifford S. Leestma - Manager, Dealer Operations, Analysis
Department, Marketing Staff, Ford Motor Company
Dorothy Lewis - Vice President, Lewis and Thompson Agency,
Inc.
Judith L. Maze - Housewife
Norman F. Mealey - President, Square Deal Cartage Company
Charles H. Patterson - Former Executive Vice President,
Ford Motor Company
John S. Pingel - President, Ross Roy, Inc.
Kenneth D. Plaxton - Attorney, Fortino, Plaxton and Moskal
Fred C. Sabin - M.D., Ophthalmologist
John H. Steward - President, FabriSteel Products, Inc.
Mary Virginia Uygur - Former Vice President and Corporate
Secretary, Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce
Allen J. Weenink - Minister, First Presbyterian Church
David D. Williams - Senior Vice President and Trust Officer,
National Bank of Detroit
Albert W. Wilson - Employee Relations, Dow Chemical Company
R.C. Youngdahl - Senior Vice President, Consumers Power
Company

232

Andrews University
Board of Trustees
Charles L. Anderson - M.D., Hinsdale Sanitarium and
Hospital
David J. Bieber - President, Loma Linda University
J. William Bothe - President, Canadian Union Conference
of S.D.A.
Charles E. Bradford - Associate Secretary, General
Conference of S.D.A.
Allan R. Buller - Executive Vice-President, Worthington
Foods, Inc.
William Coffman - Former Student
Floyd L. Costerisan - CPA, Partner, Harris, Reames and
Ambrose
Robert L. Dale - President, Indiana Conference of S.D.A..
Thelma D. Dean - Acting Chairperson, Division of Business
Albany State College
Jesse Dittberner - President, Atlantic Union Conference
of S.D.A.
N.R. Dower - Secretary, Ministerial Associate, General
Conference of S.D.A.
Kenneth H. Emmerson - Treasurer, General Conference of
S.D.A.
Clyde 0. Franz - Secretary, General Conference of S.D.A.
Ricardo Garcia - City of New York Human Resources Admin­
istration
Willis J. Hackett - Chairman, General Vice-President,
General Conference of S.D.A.
Richard Hammill - President, Andrews university
John L. Hayward - President, Illinois Conference of S.D.A

233

Charles B. Hirsch - Secretary, Department of Education,
General Conference of S.D.A.
Richard L. Huff - Assistant Attorney General
Frank L. Jones - Secretary, Lake Union Conference of S.D.A.
Martin E. Kemmerer - Undertreasurer, General Conference
of S.D.A.
G.A. Koelsche - M.D., Department of Medicine, Division of
Allergic Diseases and Internal Medicine, Mayo Clinic
B.E. Leach - President, Southwestern Union Conference of
S.D.A.
Reuben Manalaysay - Department of Psychology, Acadia
University
Kenneth J. Mittleider - President, Wisconsin Conference of
S.D.A.
Robert D. Moon - President, Michigan Conference of S.D.A.
W.L. Murrill
George O ’Brien - Vice President, Logistics Management
Institute
John Osborn - Ministerial Secretary, Pacific Union Con­
ference of S.D.A.
Esther Ottley - Director, General Mathematics Program,
Howard University
Robert Pierson - President, General Conference of S.D.A.
William E. Rippey - M.D.
Harold H. Schmidt - President, Southern Union Conference
of S.D.A.
Marion Shertzer - Consumer Affairs Representative of Ford
Motor Company
F.R. Stephan - Secretary, Department of Education, Lake
Union Conference of S.D.A.
J.R. Wagner - President, Lake Union Conference of S.D.A.

234

Jack Werner - Attorney, Werner and Goodland Law Offices
Francis W. Wernick - President, Lake Union Conference of
S.D.A.
Neal C. Wilson - Vice President, North American Division,
General Conference of S.D.A.
William H. Wilson - Administrator, Hinsdale Sanitarium
and Hospital
Cynthia Winston - former student

235

Aquinas College
Board of Trustees

Mrs. David Amberg - Housewife
Douglas Blocksma - Psychiatrist
Harold E. Bowman - M.D., Director, Department of Pathology,
St. Mary's Hospital
Sister Marjorie Crimmons - 0. P.
John F. Donnelly - President, Donnelly Mirrors, Inc.
Donald Freeman - President AGM Industries, Inc.
Richard Gillette - Chairman of the Board, Old Kent Bank
and Trust
Fred Grimm - Landman, Hathaway, Latimer
Raymond E. Knape - Vice-President, Kanpe, Vogt Manufacturing
Sister M. Faith Mahoney - 0. P.
Sister Helen Miller - 0. P.
Thomas Peterson - Reverend, 0. P.
Sister Mary James Rau - 0. P.
Richard Riebel - President, Foremost Insurance Company
Mrs. Clyde Sims - Housewife
Edward M. Smith - Attorney, Morse, Kleiner and Smith
Sister Mary Sullivan - 0. P.
Sister Allen Thomas
Sister M. Letitia Van Agtmael - 0. P.
Sister M. Norbert Vangness
Sister Mary Aquinas Weber - 0. P., Chairman of the Board
C. Arthur Woodhouse - Consultant, Union Bank and Trust
Company, Treasurer, AGM Industries, Inc.

236
Calvin College
Board of Trustees

Classical Members
P. Herbert Advocaat - Classis Columbia
Henry P. Baak - Reverend, B.D., Classis Northcentral Iowa
John Berends - Reverend, B.D., Classis Chicago North
Jacob P. Boonstra

- Reverend, B.D., Classis Rocky Mountain

Hessel Bouma, Jr.

- Reverend, B.D., Classis Kalamazoo

Gysbertus Corvers

- Reverend, B.D., Classis Quinte

Wilber L. De Jong

- Reverend, B.D., Classis Grand Rapids

East

Henry De Mots - Reverend, B.D., Classis Chicago South
Albert Driese - Reverend, B.D., Classis Toronto
John H. Engbers - Reverend, B.D., Classis Sioux Center
Henry Exoo - Reverend, B.D., Classis Wisconsin
Wendell Gebben - Reverend, B.D., Classis Muskegon
Edward Heerema - Reverend, B.D., Th.M., Classis Florida
John Hellinga - Reverend, B.D., Classis Grand Rapids South
Leonard J. Hofman - Reverend, B.D., Classis Grandville
Robert J. Holwerda - Reverend, B.D., Classis Holland
James Joosse - Reverend, B.D., Classis Alberta North
Markus J. Lise - Reverend, B.D., Classis Alberta South
Bastiaan Nerderlot - Reverend, B.D., Classis British Columbia
Henry Numan, Jr. - Reverend, B.D., Classis Eastern Canada
Derk Oostendrop - Reverend, Th.D., Classis California South

^ l™

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.

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237

Henry Petersen - Reverend, B.D., Classis Pella
Mel Pool - Reverend, B.D., Classis Chatham
■■

John C. Ribbens - Reverend, B.D., Classis Uliana
Nicholas Roorda - Reverend, B.D., Classis Minnesota South
Gysbert J. Rozenboom - Reverend, B.D., Classis Grand Rapids
South
Raymond J. Sikkema - Reverend, B.D., Classis Hamilton
Douglas Vander Wall - Reverend, B.D., Th.M., Classis
Central California
Arie G. Van Eek - Reverend, B.D., Classis Minnesota North
Roger E. Van Harn - Reverend, B.D., Classis Lake Erie
William Van Rees - Reverend, B.D., Classis Zeeland
John W. Van Stempvoort - Reverend, B.D., Classis Huron
Edwin Walhout - Reverend, B.D., Classis Hudson
Robert Walter - Reverend, B.D., Classis Hackensack
Jay A. Wesseling - Reverend, B.D., Classis Pacific North­
west
Robert L. Wiebenga - Reverend B.D., Classis Cadillac
Lay Members
P. Herbert Advocaat - Branch Auditor, Yakima Branch, the
National Bank of Commerce of Seattle
Norman B. De Graaf - Partner, De Graaf and Buiten Agency
John Feikens - Judge, U.S. District Court
Stewart S. Geelhood - Treasurer, American Seating Company
A. Geurkink - Livestock Order Buyer
Martin Hekman - Nursing Home Administrator, Bethany Home

‘

John Last, Sr. - Vice President, Wilkata Folding Box Company
William Post - Director of Bakery Operations, Keebler Company

Berton Sevensma - Attorney at Law, Partner, Wierenga and
Sevensma
James Strikwerda - Dentist

239

Concordia Lutheran Junior College
Board of Control
Edwin A. Benz - President, Fort Wayne Structural Steel
Company
Richard H. Bernthal - Pastor, Epiphany Lutheran Church
Ernest C. Laetz - Associate Director, University Hospital
Richard L. Schlecht - President, Michigan District of the
Lutheran Church - Missouri
Justin C. Schwartz - Principal, Emmanual Lutheran Church
Edward P. Staubitz - Chairman of the Board, Staubitz
Sheet Metal Works, Inc.
John C. Streit - Pastor, Covenant Luthern Church

Davenport College of Business
Board of Trustees
Peter C. Cook - President, Import Motors, Ltd.
James N. DeBoer, Jr. - Attorney, Varnum, Ridding, Wierengo
and Christenson
Robert J. Den Herder - President, First Michigan Bank
and Trust Company
L. V. Eberhard - President, Eberhard's Foods
Joseph A. Hager - Chairman of the Board, Guardsman
Chemical Coatings, Inc.
Harold V. Hartger - Hartger and Willard
Walter F. Johnson - Professor, Department of Adminis­
tration and Higher Education, College of Education,
Michigan State University
Robert J.

McBain - Treasurer of the Board, C.P.A.

Donald J.

Porter - President, Porter-Hadley Company

Albert Schrotenboer - Secretary of the Board, President,
Sackner Products, Inc.
Margaret D. Sneden - Secretary, Detroit College of Business
Robert W.

Sneden - President, Davenport College of Business

Detroit College of Business
Board of Trustees

Homer F. Long - Retired
Robert J. McBain - CPA
Frank Paone - Executive Vice-President of the Board;
Dean of Detroit College of Business
Margaret E. Sneden - Secretary of the Board; Housewife
Robert W. Sneden - President of the Board; President,
Detroit College of Business
Tyrus R. Wessell - Treasurer of the Board; Educator
Marian R. Wynalda - Housewife
Martin Wynalda - Vice-President of the Board; Director
Lansing Business University

Detroit College of Law
Board of Trustees

G. Cameron Buchanan - President of the Board; Senior
Partner, Alexander, Buchanan and Seavitt
Donald L. Castle - Former Executive Director, the HudsonWebber Foundation
Robert D. Dunwoodie - Member of the firm of Dykema,
Gossett, Spencer, Goodnow and Trigg
Richard W. Heiss - Vice-President and Senior Trust
Officer, Manufacturers National Bank
W. Ralph Hileman - Secretary and Treasurer of the Board;
Formerly General Secretary, Young Men's Christian
Association of Metropolitan Detroit
B. J. Humphreys - Member of the firm of Lamson, Humphreys
and Clark
John J. Jefferies - Partner, Touche Ross and Company
Louis D. McGregor - Judge, Michigan Court of Appeals
David M. Miro - Member of the firm of Smith, Miro, Hirsch,
Brody and Zweig
Ellsworth G. Reynolds - Vice-President of the Board;
Senior Vice-President, American Natural Gas Service
Company
Jeptha W. Schureman - Member of the firm of Matheny,
Schureman, Frakes and Glass

243

Detroit Institute of Technology
Board of Trustees
Richard H. Austin - Secretary of State, Michigan
A. Frye Ayers
Robert Bach - Wertheim and Company
Harry F. Barr - Chairman of the Board
R. Carl Chandler - Chairman of the Board, J.D. Jewell, Inc.
B.A. Chapman
Marvin A. Frenkel - Vice President, Advance Glove Manufac­
turing Company
Erwin H. Graham - Vice President, Chrysler Corporation
Julian M. Greenebaum - Manager, Planning and Procedures,
Jervis B. Webb Company
Del S. Harder
Charles M. Heidel - Assistant Vice President and Manager
of Construction, the Detroit Edison Company
Marlin R. Hemphill
Henry C. Johnson
Ira G. Kaufman - Presiding Judge of Probate, Detroit
John F. Langs - Langs, Schatzberg, Patterson and Langs
Chester F. Mally - Chairman of the Board, Mallyclad
Corporation
Donald R. Mandich - Senior Vice President, Detroit Bank and
Trust Company
Peter H. Ponta - Executive Director, Manufacturing Staff,
Ford Motor Company
Gerald J. Remus - General Manager, Detroit Metropolitan
Water Department

Walter M. Schirra, Jr. - Chairman of the Board, Ecco Cor­
poration
Karl E. Schmidt - Vice President, American Natural Gas
Service Company
Francis J. Sehn
C. Carney Smith, C.L.U. - Executive Vice President, the
National Association of Life Underwriters
Norman 0. Stockmeyer
John C. Townsend - President, Townsend Agency, Inc.
Ottmar A. Waldow - Bank and General Advisory Services
Robert K. Whiteley - M.D., Jennings Memorial Hospital

245

Hillsdale College
Board of Trustees
E. Ross Adair - Ambassador to Ethiopia
P. Crane - Congressman
A.A. DeLapp - Superintendent of Agencies, General American
Life Insurance
E.A. Dibble - Realtor
Virgil Drake - President, Fairfield Manufacturing Company,
Inc.
Arthur Farrell - Executive Secretary, Michigan Baptist
Convention
William Fletcher - Financial Vice President, 3520 Inc.
Ora Giauque - President, Spicer Axle Division, Dana
Corporation
Tyrone Gillespie - Attorney, Gillespie and Riecker
F.I. Goodrich - Second Vice Chairman, Board of Trustees
James W. Hallock - Vice President, Sales, Hayes-Albion
Corporation
Gerald Hennessy - President, Hennessy's Drug Store
Ned Kilmer - President, City Bank and Trust Company
Charles Kirsch - President, Kirsch Company
Mrs. Frederick Knorr - Retired, Knorr Broadcasting
Paul Leutheuser - President, Leutheuser Buick, Inc.
Rod Linton - Vice President, National Bank of Detroit
Howard McClusky - Professor of Educational Psychology and
Adult Education, University of Michigan
H.F. Mattson - Retired Physician
George Monro - Administrative Vice President, Manufacturers
National Bank

Donald Mossey - President, Ventline, Inc.
Donald Phillips - Chancellor, Hillsdale College
Robert Pierce, Sr. - Pastor, Chicago Temple
George Roche - President, Hillsdale College
Elinor Rose - Writer
Ralph Rosecrance - Formerly Chairman of the Board, J. L.
Clark Manufacturing
Leonard Schoenherr - President, Foliage Company of
America
Robert Simpson - Chairman Emeritus, Simpson Industires,
Inc.
Andrew Smith - Vice-President and General Manager;
Downtown Properties, Inc.
John D. Stoner - Retired
John Tormey - Chairman of the Board; Roadway
Jay Van Andel - Chairman of the Board; Amway
Boyd Vass - President, Thompson Industries, Inc.
Frank Vite - President, B and F Realty Inc.

—

—
ft

247
Hope College
Board of Trustees

Clarence J. Becker
Leon Bosch
Albertus G. Bossenbroek
Irwin Brink
Elton Bruins
Bernard Brunsting
Kenneth P. E. De Groot
Hugh De Pree - Chairman of the Board
Richard A. De Witt
Marguerite Den Herder
John G. Dinkeloo
Chester Droog
Robert Haack
Titus J. Hager
George Heeringa - Treasurer of the Board
Mrs. Norman Vincent Peale
Howard Sluyter
Mrs. Harrison Smith
A. Dale Stoppels - Vice-Chairman of the Board
Gordon Van Oostenburg
Herbert S. Van Wyke
Russell W. VandeBunte

248

James M. VerMeulen
Willard C. Wichers - Secretary of the Board
Frederick F. Yonkman

249

Kalamazoo College
Board of Trustees

Homer Armstrong - M.D.
H. Glenn Bixby
Kenneth J. Boekeloo - Vice-President of Corporation
Services and Secretary, Michigan Bell Telephone
Company
Carol Boudeman - Housewife
Donald E. Bowen - Bowen Agency, Inc.
Earl R. Bramblett
Garry Brown - United States Congress
Marie S. Burbidge - Homemakers, Upjohn
Maynard M. Conrad - M.D., Bronson Medical Center
William H. Crawford - Director of Projects, Flint Community
Schools
James C. Cristy, Jr. - Pension Fund Administrator, The
Upjohn Company
Edward Davis
Arthur L. Farrell - Executive Director, American Baptist
Churches of Michigan
F. Conrad Fischer - William Blair and Company
Edwin G. Gemrich - Gemrich Moser Dombrowski Bowser and
Garvey, Attorneys
I. Frank Harlow
William N. Hubbard - President, the Upjohn Company
Jane Iannelli - Housewife
Richard A. Kjoss - President, American National Bank
and Trust Company

250

Richard Klein - Executive Vice President and Secretary,
First National Financial Corporation
W. Price Laughlin - Chairman of the Board, Saga Food
Service
William J. Lawrence, Jr.
Timothy Light
Gail Llanes
Wilbert J. McKeachie - Chairman, Department of Psychology,
University of Michigan
Marian Manogg
David R. Markin - President, Checker Motors Corporation
William B. Matteson - Debevoise, Plimpton, Lyons and Gates
Richard Meyerson - CLU Manager, Equitable Life Assurance
Society
Mary Patton
Albert C. Pittman - First Baptist Church
Fraser E. Pomeroy
Burke E. Porter - President, Burke E. Porter Machinery
Company
Donald W. Rich, Jr. - President, Communication Services
Omer Robbins, Jr. - Dean, Graduate School, Eastern Michigan
University
J. Woodward Roe - President, Ransom Fidelity Company
Daniel M. Ryan - Editor, Kalamazoo Gazette
Alan N. Sidnam - President, All American Sports, Inc.
Louis J. Slavin
Donald C. Smith - Executive Vice President, American
National Bank and Trust Company
Richard E. Smoke - Hill, Lewis, Adams, Goodrich, and Tait

251

Dwight L. Stocker
Edward P. Thompson - Fox, Thompson and Morris
Paul H. Todd, Jr. - President, Kalamazoo Spice Extraction
Company
Elizabeth Upjohn - Homemaker
David F. Upton - President, Southwestern Michigan Abstract
and Title Company
Ronald 0. Warner

252

Lawrence Institute of Technology
Board of Trustees
Victor J. Basso - Architect
Ben F. Bregi - Vice President, Group Executive Lear
Siegler, Inc.
Wayne H. Buell - President of the College and Chairman
of the Board
A.P. Fontaine - Director and Chairman of Finance and
Executive Committees, Bendix Corporation
William D. Innes - Executive Vice President of Ford Motor
Company
Nelson A. Miles - Attorney
Sumner B. Twiss - President of Chemical Division of
Chrysler Corporation

253

Madonna College
Board of Trustees
Sister Mary Andreeta - CSSF, Felician Motherhouse
Sister Mary Avila - CSSF, Felician Motherhouse
Dennis Bozyk - Faculty, Madonna College
Sister Mary Carmeline - CSSF, Felician Motherhouse
Mother Mary Columbine - CSSF, Chairman, Felician Mother­
house
Sister Mary Danatha - CSSF, Ex Officio, President, Madonna
College
Earl Demel - Trustee Emeritus, Colonial Professional
Building
Patrick Duggan - Livonia Professional Building
Sister Mary Emelita - CSSF, Felician Motherhouse
Joan Kaminski - Alumna, Madonna College
Lillian Kaufman
Sister Mary Serra - CSSF, Felician Motherhouse
Joseph J. Simmons, III - Amerada Hess Corporation, Vice
President of Hess Oil and Chemical Division
Celeste Smith - Student, Madonna College
Richard E. White - College of Education, University of
Toledo

254

Marygrove College
Board of Trustees

Roy C. Belknap - Partner, Wm. C. Roney Company
Mrs. Frances R. Boltz - Chairman of the Board, Unichem
Corporation
Ernest L. Brown, Jr. - Manager, Community Relations,
Michigan Consolidated Gas Company
Walter B. Connolly - Vice-President, Assembly Division,
Chrysler Corporation
Marion Farrell - IHM, Provincial, Northwest Province,
Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Raymond A. Fleck - President, Marygrove College
Marie Gatza - IHM, Assistant to the General Superior,
Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Thomas E. Garvale - Controller, Burroughs Corporation
Frank Gerbig, Jr. - President, United States Fastener
Corporation
John M. Harlan - President, Harlan Electric Company
Joseph E. Hill - President, Oakland Community College
Lorraine Humphrey - IHM, Assistant to the Provincial,
Northwest Province
Charles L. Levin - Chairman of the Board of Trustees,
Justice, Michigan Supreme Court
Paul F. Lorenz - Executive Vice-President, Ford NonAutomotive Operations, Ford Motor Company
Robert D. Lund - Vice-President, General Motors Corpora­
tion and General Manager, Cadillac Motor Car
Division
Richard B. Lutz, Jr. - President and Director, Michigan
Mobile Homes
Frances Mlocek - IHM, Assistant Treasurer, Sisters,
Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

255

John R. Mulroy - President and Chairman of the Board,
National Bank of Royal Oak
Douglas D. Reaume - President, Douglas D. Reaume and
Associates, Inc. and Incentive Research Corporation
James L. Ryan - Wayne County Circuit Court
Trinita Schilling - IHM, Coordinator of Religious Educa­
tion for Birmingham, Bloomfield, and Troy-Research
Assistant to Archdiocesan Office for Continuing
Education for Priests
Edward R. Sczesny - Vice-President, Engineering and
Corporate Development, Guardian Industries Corp.
Mrs. Robert S. Storen - President, Marygrove Alumni
Association
Mary VanGilder - IHM, Associate Professor of Art, Oakland
Community College, Campus Minister, Oakland
University

256
Mercy College
Board of Trustees

Michael J. Brennan - President, Michigan Cancer Society
James L. Cameron - Director of Purchasing Policy and
Planning, Ford Motor Company
Louis J. Colombo, Jr. - Attorney
Robert G. Connors - Comptroller, Hamtramck Assembly
Plant, Chrysler Corporation
Rosemary E. Dolan - Special Assistant to the Secretary
of State
Sister Mary Karl George - R.S.M., Provincial Adminis­
trator, Sisters of Mercy
Martha W. Griffiths - Congresswoman
Damon J. Keith - Judge of the Federal Court
Sister Mary Leila Koeppe - R.S.M., Administrator,
Mount Carmel Mercy Hospital
William W. Lutz - Feature Editor, Chairman, Detroit News
Sister Agnes Mary Mansour - R.S.M., President of Mercy
College
Miles M. O ’Brien - Consultant, Detroit Insurance Agency
Harry S. Rudy - Administrative Consultant, Mercy College
Joseph B. Sullivan - Wayne County Clerk

The Merrill-Palmer Institute Corporation
Board of Trustees

Mrs. William H. Baldwin
Lem W. Bowen
Mrs. Wilber M. Brucker, Jr.
Mrs. George E. Bushnell, Jr.
William M. Day
Mrs. Edsel B. Ford
Mrs. William C. Ford
Edwin 0. George
Carlton M. Higbie, Jr.
Mrs. Harry L. Jones
Tom Killefer
John N. McNaughton
Mrs. Theodore H. Mecke, Jr.
George E. Parker, III
Mrs. Elliott H. Phillips
Mrs. Eugene B. Power
Mrs. Sidney W. Smith, Jr.
Mark C. Stevens
B. James Theodoroff
Cleveland Thurber
Mrs. Charles F. Whitten!
Mrs. Delford G. Williams, Jr.
Wallace E. Wilson

258

Nazareth College
Board of Trustees
Delores Beste - SSJ, Superintendent of Schools, Diocese of
Kalamazoo
Gene Booker - Professor, Western Michigan University
Eugene Doucher - SSJ, Treasurer, Sisters of St. Joseph
Colleen Duncan - Housewife
William B. Fitzgerald, Jr. - Representative
James S. Gilmore, Jr. - President, Jim Gilmore Enterprises
Michael Hanley, Jr. - Plant Manager, General Motors Corpora­
tion, Fisher Body Division
Joyce Herr - SSJ, Social Services, Flint
William A. Holtgreive, Jr. - Division Manager, Consumers
Power Company
John R. Light - Freelance Writer
Robert Moser - Attorney
Carl Pacacha - Director, Curriculum, Lakeview School
District
Mrs. Preston Parish - Housewife
C. Robinson - Housewife
Ida Critelli Shick - Writer
Glen C. Smith, Jr. - Senior VicePresident,
National Bank and Trust Company

American

Mary Spradling - Director of Young Adult Department,
Kalamazoo Public Library
Edmund Talanda - M.D.
Richard Tedrow - President,

UpjohnInternational

Edna Ternes - SSJ, Director, St. Agnes Foundling Home

259

Mrs. W. John Upjohn - Cultural Leader
Elizabeth Veenhuis - SSJ, Second Vice President, Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph
Irene Waldmann - SSJ, President, Congregation of the Sisters
of St. Joseph

260
Northwood Institute
Board of Trustees

Charles L. Anspach - President Emeritus, Central Michigan
University
Charles Edward Ballard
Robert B. Bennett - Treasurer, Dow Chemical Company
Elmer Braun - General Manager, Central Foundry Division
G.M.C.
Peter J. Carras - Attorney
R.W. Caldwell
Lynn Coleman - President, Lake Superior and Ishpeming
Railroad
Peter Cook - President, Import Motors, Incorporated
Gilbert A. Currie - Attorney, Chairman of the Board,
The Chemical Bank and Trust Company
Reed T. Draper - Draper Chevrolet Company
Carl A. Gerstaclcer - Chairman of the Board, the Dow
Chemical Company
Edgar Harden - President, Story Incorporated
Merritt D. Hill
Carson Hollingsworth
Laurence P. Horan - Attorney
George W. Kibbie
William Lanphar - Vice-Chairman of the Board; President,
Lanphar Oil and Gas Corporation
Everett Luce
John S. Mahoney

261

Oscar L. Olson - President, Swedish Crucible Steel
Company
Charles F. Reed
Andrew Rose
Jack Sanders - M.D.
Donald Schma - D.D.S.
R.J. Smith
R. Gary Stauffer - Secretary of the Board; Executive
Vice-President, Northwood Institute
Harvey Stephens - Executive Vice-President, Automatic
Retailing Services, Inc.
Mrs. William Stout
Clark Thompson
Harry A. Towsley - M.D.
Thomas K. Treon - Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith
Arthur E. Turner - President, Northwood Institute
Robert VanderKloot - Chairman of the Board; President,
Detroit Colortype Company
Macauley Whiting - Director of Basic Resources, the Dow
Chemical Company

262
Olivet College
Board of Trustees

George R. Berkaw, Jr. - Senior Vice-President, the
Detroit Bank and Trust Company
Erwin A. Britton - Minister, First Congregational
Church
Edmund B. Brownell - Partner, Brownell, Gault and Andrews
Harold W. Charter - Attorney-at-law, Landman, Hathaway,
Latimer, Clink and Robb
Henry B. Davis, Jr. - Partner, Hayes and Davis
Albert F. Dexel - Assistant Secretary, Auto Specialties
Manufacturing Company
Paul G. Goebel, Jr. - Partner, Heines, Goebel Company
Lewis I. Jeffries - Principal, Pelham Middle School
Ronald F. Kinney - President, All-Phase Electric Supply
Company
Ralph J. Ladd - President, Michigan Mutual Liability
Company
Scott E. Lamb - Chairman of the Board, Michigan Life
Insurance Company
Arthur S. Nicholas - President, U.S. Industries, Inc.
Philip M. Park - President, Besser Company
Joseph S. Radom - Attorney-at-law
Thomas R. Ricketts - President, Standard Federal Savings
Robert B. Sanford - Manager, Southland Stor, J.L. Hudson
Company
Hans Schuler - President, Win Schuler's Inc.
George A. Schumm - Ford Marketing Corporation
Jack D. Sparks - Group Vice-President, Whirlpool
Corporation

263

Rhinehart F. Thalner - Retired, Personnel Director,
Buick Motor Division, GMC
Howard R. Towne - Minister Emeritus, First Congregational
Church
Ralph C. Vahs - President, Olivet State Bank; Standard
Oil Dealer
Joseph P. Van Blooys - President, A.L. Holcomb Company
Armin H. Vogel - Partner, Manley, Bennett, McDonald and
Company
Duane N. Vore - Conference Minister, Michigan Conference,
United Church of Christ
Robert F. Weber - Partner, J.F. Weber and Company,
Real Estate
Leonard A. Wilcox, Jr. - Partner, Eames, Petrillo and
Wilcox

Saint Mary’s College
Board of Trustees

Edward Arcy - Industrialist, Dearborn Gear and Tool
Company
Anthony Balczun - Pastor, St. Casimir
Francis Banaszak - Retired Pastor
Henry Bogdan - Pastor, Corpus Christi
Vincent Borkowicz - Retired Pastor
John Cardinal Dearden - D.D., Chairman of the Board
Jerome Jablosnki - Vice-Chairman of the Board
Simon Kilar - Retired Pastor
John Kociela - Pastor, Transfiguration Parish
Stephen Kowalski - Executive, Food Industry, Kowalski
Sausage
Edwin Lukas - Industrialist and Attorney, Rex Industri
Leo Obloy - Industrialist, Special Drill and Reamer
Corporation
Frank Padzieski - Co-owner of Dearborn Underwriters
Insurance
Venanty Szymanski - Pastor, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel
Stephen Ziemba - Attorney

265

Siena Heights College
Board of Trustees

David Bernstein - President, Meridian Industries, Inc.
Warren Buckey - Partner, Arthur Young and Company
Mrs. Donald Cobb
John F. Daly - Vice Chairman of the Board; President and
Chief Executive Officer, Hoover Ball and Bearing
Company
Chester Devenow - Chairman and President, Sheller-Globe
Corporation
Gerald Diehl - Vice-President, Diehl and Diehl, Architects,
Inc.
Sheldon W. Fantle - President, Lane Drug Company
Edward P. Fisher - Secretary-Treasurer of the Board;
President, Bank of Lenawee County
Sister Nadine Foley - O.P., Councilor, Adrian Dominican
Generalate
Dick Ford - Vice-President, Worldwide Automotive Marketing,
Bendix Corporation
Sister Marcella Gardner - O.P., Co-Provincial, Immaculate
Conception Provincial House
Irving Goldman - President, Sam S. Shubert Foundation,
Inc.
Nathan Goodnow - Attorney, Dykema, Gossett, Spencer,
Goodney and Trigg
Dominic Guzzetta - President, University of Akron
Fred E. Harris - Associate General Secretary,
Board of Education, the United Methodist Church
Sister M. Carolyn Harrison - O.P., Administrator,
Dominican Santa Cruz Hospital
Arthur Hass - Attorney

266

George Hawkins - Retired Vice-President, Detroit Bank
and Trust Company
Walter Johnson - Professor, Michigan State University
Harvey Kapnick - Chairman, Arthur Andersen and Company
John C. Ketcham - Executive Vice-President, Toledo
Trust Company
Edward T. King - Superintendent, The Stroh Brewery Company
Thomas I. Klein - President, Haberstroh Farm Products, Inc.
Webb Low - President, Bonanza International, Inc.
William V. Luneburg - President, American Motors Corporation
William E. Macbeth - President, Tecumseh Products Company
Seymour Mindel - President, Chock Full O'Nuts Company
Richard T. Murphy - President, E.L. Murphy Trucking Company
David W. Murray - Chairman of the Board, David W. Murry
Company
Sister Kathryn Noonan - O.P., Treasurer General, Adrian
Dominican Generalate
Radcliffe F. North - President, North Construction Company
Richard Powers - Chairman and President, Indian Head Inc.
Willard M. Reagan - Chairman of the Board; Attorney and
Councilor, Stark and Reagan, P.C.
Robert Sage
Donato F. Sarapo - M.D., Internal Medicine
Arthur F. Snyder - President and Chief Executive Officer,
Bank of the Commonwealth
Miriam Michael Stimson - Professor and Chairman,
Chemistry Department, Keuka College

267

Charles Verheyden - President, Charles Verheyden, Inc.
Grosse Pointe Funeral Directors
Eugene Vorhies - President, Nelson Associates

268

Spring Arbor College
Board of Trustees

Selwyn Belsher - Canadian Tire Associate Store
James G. Buick - Controller, Lincoln-Mercury Division,
Ford Motor Company
Kenneth H. Coffman - University Ombudsman and Associate
Professor of Psychology, Oakland University
H. William Cooper - English Teacher, Mt. Morris Junior
High School
W. Dale Cryderman - Bishop, Free Methodist Church
Richard A. Henderson - Elementary Principal, Jackson
Public Schools
Edgar N. Howison - Howison Electric Company
Burton E. Kettinger - Minister, Free Methodist Church
Charles W. Kingsley - Christian Witness Crusades
Carl W. Koerner - Conference Superintendent, Western
Area, East Michigan Conference, Free Methodist
Church
Paul Lynch - Assistant United States Attorney for Western
Louisiana
C.R. Miller - Assistant General Manager, Construction
Department, S.S. Kresge Company
E. Harold Munn, Jr. - Consulting Radio Engineer
Everett E. Ogle
Eldon E. Post - President, Minor Walton Bean Company
William F. Probst - Patent Manager, North Electric
Company
Leland D. Sayers - President, Rep Sales Company, Inc.
M. Robert Scofield - High School Principal, Davison
Community Schools

269

Jack Seberry - Conference Superintendent, Grand Rapids
District, North Michigan Conference, Free Methodist
Church
Carl Shafer - Manager, Professional Personnel, the Dow
Chemical Company
Edwin G. Small - Dawlen Corporation
Lyle G. Stone - Supervisor, Meter Department, Consumers
Power Company
0. Jack Van Wagoner - Counselor, Beecher High School
Gary Walsh - Minister, Free Methodist Church
Mervin Webb - American Cancer Society
Glenn E. White - Vice President, Chrysler Corporation
Hugh A. White - Allied Investments
Glenn R. Winters - Executive Director, American Judicature
Society
Howard E. Winters - Chemistry Teacher, Henry Ford Community
College
Marvin R. Zahniser - Assistant Vice Provost for Arts and
Sciences, The Ohio State University

270
Suomi College
Board of Trustees

John A. Archer
Walker L. Cisler
Gordon R. Connor
H. David Dalquist
James F. Derse
Randall A. Forselius
Milton J. Hagelberg
Vaino A. Hoover
N. Leonard Jarvis
P.T. Calvin Johnson
Arvid Jouppi
Henry D. Kleckley
Onni A. Malila
Walfred E. Nelson
William P. Nicholls
Paul C. Ollila
Russell 0. Parta
John W. Rousseau
William R. Sauey
Kenneth D. Seaton
William Veeser
L.C. Verrette
Raymond W. Vargelin

Roger D. Westland
John C. Wollwage
Godfrey D. Yaeger

272

University of Detroit
Board of Trustees
Edward H. Blum - Specialist in Urban Science Programs,
RAND
Louis H. Bridenstine - Vice President and Associate
General Counsel, General Motors Corporation
Malcolm Carron - S.J., President of the University of
Detroit (Ex-officio)
Gerald F. Cavanagh - S.J., Associate Professor of Manage­
ment and Organization Sciences, Wayne State
University
William C. Cunningham - S.J., School of Law, Loyola
University (Chicago)
Daniel L. Flaherty - S.J. (Chairman), Executive Editor,
Loyola University Press
O.B. Hardison, Jr. - Director, The Folger Library
Merritt D. Hill - Chairman, Hill Associates, Inc.
Jerome J. Marchetti - S.J., Secretary-Treasurer, St. Louis
University
Richard A. McCormick - S.J., Professor of Moral Theology,
Bellarmine School of Theology
Walter T. Murphy - Director, Public Relations, North
American Automotive Operations, Ford Motor Company
Brian T. O'Keefe - Director of Government Liaison - Public
Relations, Chrysler Corporation
Thomas E. Porter - S. J. (Vice Chairman), Professor of
English, University of Detroit
Caroline Ann Roulier - Secretary
Joseph 0. Schell - S.J., Coordinator of Religious Affairs,
John Carroll University
Frank D. Stella - President, Stella Products Company
Charles H. Wright - M.D., President, International AfroAmerican Museum

273

John Wesley College
Board of Trustees
Kenneth S. Armstrong - President, John Wesley College
Delton V. Armstrong - Real Estate Associates
Ronald E. Ayres - D.O.
H. Raymond Bayne - Pastor, Grace-Bible Church
Larry Dennis - General Manager, Dale Carnegie Courses
Joseph C. Ditiberio - Pastor, First Baptist Church
Thomas E. Dunn - Pastor, First Free Methodist Church
Robert W. Eagleson - President, Eagleson Plumbing and
Heating
Donald N. Elliott - Manager, Manley, Bennett, McDonald and
Company
John R. Francis - Educator
G.A. Gough - Corporate Executive, John Wesley College
Gordon Green - Buick Executive, General Motors Corporation
James H. Green - Director, Special Education, Shiawassee
County
E. Paul Hamlin - President, International Diversified
Gary Jones - D.D.S.
John V. Koczman - Superintendent, Durand Schools
Harry 0. Lytle - Partner, Elmer E. Fox Associates
Robert D. MacDonald - President, Champion Homes
Gerald J. McClear - Attorney
Edwin R. McKnight - M.D.
Harold C. Meier - Retired, Universal Electric Company

274

Randall L. Omer - Partner, Lee L. Omer Realty
Howard Rogers - Vice President, Oxford Foundation
Edward D. Schweikert - Pastor, First Church of God
Ronald K. Seelhoff - Comptroller, Indian Trails
J. Stratton Shufelt - Minister of Music
Lloyd W. Thompson - Vice President, Thompson Company
Richard R. Wynn - Regional Director, Youth for Christ

Appendix IV
ELECTION OF THE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION

APPENDIX IV
ELECTION OF THE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION
November 3, 1964
DEMOCRATS

TOTALS

Donald M. D. Thurber
Leon Fill
Carmen L. DelliQuadri
Marilyn Jean Kelly
Peter Oppewall
Thomas J. Brennan
Charles E. Morton
Edwin L. Novak

1,802,962
1,701,368
1,691,002
1,724,930
1,688,130
1,770,868
1.637.056
1.692.056

REPUBLICANS
Ellen M. Solomonson
Karla Parker
Bourke Lodewyk
Joyce Hatton
Robert P. Briggs
John C. Kreger
Alvin Bentley
James F. O'Neil

1,149,323
1,192,664
1,179,218
1,228,961
1,213,112
1,161,060
1,305,045
1,242,387

The Freedom Now Party also ran a late of eight
candidates.
Their top candidate received 6,816
votes.

SOURCE: The State of Michigan, Office of the
Secretary of State, Michigan Manual, 1965-1966,
(Lansing, Michigan, 1966), pp.464-71.
275

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HIGHER EDUCATION IN MICHIGAN,
1958 to 1970
VOLUME 2
Interviews
By
Gerald Alden Faverman

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Administration and Higher Education
1975

CONTENTS
1.

John B. S w a i n s o n ............................. A

1

2.

G. Mennen W i l l i a m s

A

21

3.

Edward L. C u s h m a n ........................... A

46

4.

Ira P o l l e y ................................... A

75

5.

James F a r n s w o r t h ............................. A 118

6.

Robert D. C a h o w ............................. A 145

7.

James W. M i l l e r ............................. A 172

8.

Robert E. W a l d r o n ........................... A 202

9.

Garland L a n e ................................. A 225

10.

Neil S t a e b l e r

A 250

11.

William

G. M i l l i k e n

A 283

12.

Malcolm

T. C a r r o n

A 298

13.

John W. P o r t e r

A 318

14.

Charles

L. A n s p a c h

A 352

15.

William

A. R y a n ............................. A 388

ii

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
JOHN B. SWAINSON1

F--Is it your recollection that one of the important
factors that led to the expansion of higher education
in Michigan was the national concern in 1957 over
Russia putting a Sputnik into orbit?
S--The realization that their technology seemingly had
outstripped ours.
I think that was the most dramatic
thing that had happened in that year. The awareness
of the members of the Legislature of this event, and
an explanation of it in the technical aspects, I think,
gave everyone pause to think.
But I say that that was only the dramatic event.
I
think that prior to that many of us who had returned
from World War II and had had the opportunity of educa­
tion ourselves--through the application of the GI Bill
of Rights in many instances --wanted to provide educa­
tional opportunities for our children, and we all had
children at that time that were probably born immedi­
ately after the war in 1946, 1947, and 1948, depending
upon whether you bought your house first or had the
baby first.
I think that there was a greater awareness on the part
of members being elected to the Legislature.
[To] the
members who were there--the older members--this was not
as important to them. They still were very much
involved in how things were in 1939, the year of
normalcy.
Higher educational opportunities were to be
restricted to the few rather than be provided for the
many. Whereas, I think the newer members coming in
took an opposite view--that a person should have the
opportunity of education to their highest potential.
Ijohn B. Swainson; Democrat; Governor, 1961-62; State
Senator, 1954-58; Lieutenant Governor, 1959-60; Circuit
Court Judge, 1965-70; elected to Michigan Supreme Court
in 1970.
Interview conducted March 20, 1974.
A 1

A 2
Swainson
F--Then there was a clear-cut feeling that we were going to
have to move toward expansion of the system as it then
existed when you were in the Senate because it was not
capable of handling the baby boom that was coming from
the post-Second World War marriages.
S--I am sure that is true. We were quite aware of the
development in our primary schools. You had to build
many, many more classrooms for the primary grades, and
this was going to go right through the high schools.
And then what do you do with them? So there was an
awareness that we had to get started on providing the
facilities and the personnel to provide for this group
of students coming in.
I realize these are generalities,
but I think...
F--No, I think they are important, though we'll come down
to more specific reasons later.
We were in bad economic times, in part because of all of
the restricted fund gimmicks that were going on, and the
like. Was there still willingness to spend the money?
S--There was not a willingness.
I think you had the dichotomy
there.
There was an unwillingness on the part of the
people that were in control of the machinery of the
Legislature, your chairmen, but there also was a great
willingness on the part of the governor at that time.
If you recall, I was the minority leader in the Senate,
and as much as we were termed at times a programmatic
party, we took every opportunity to expand.
I recall
supporting their [Hannah and Hatcher] positions on the
floor of both Houses to expand the universities.
F--After working in the Legislature I am aware of the onethird group that's always against everything, so I
realize how, when I ask you the question, I'm really
talking about that one-third in the middle. My view of
it is that one-third are for programs, one-third always
against, and the other third you've got to coax and sell.
S--Yes, they were the ones that could determine one thing
or another.
F--They could go either way, too.
S--Depending on the issue and other issues that they were
primarily interested in.

A 3
Swainson
But I think that the influx into the Legislature, the
post-World War II legislators [who] generally speaking
had conducted their campaigns in the fast-growing
suburban areas with people that had had the opportunity
to be homeowners, and, too, as I say, had benefited
from training provided them by the GI Bill would be
important.
F--But that kind of entitlement was running out as a federal
program and therefore the state had to move in.
S-~The state had to move in. You had the parents who had
had the opportunity of education; they could realize
and did realize the benefits and wanted to provide that
educational opportunity for their children.
F--Therefore, this being for many of the parents the first
generation that had ever gone to college, that dream for
their children to have equally as good and better was an
important force socially.
S--Yes, and without the war that provided the impetus that
gave them the education.
I think that on a personal note that I would be just that
example.
Had it not been for my injuries in World War II
the direction of my life might have been quite different.
But here I was provided with an education.
Because of
the severity of the injuries it became apparent to me
that I would have to have the education.
I wasn't going
to be a truck driver or something else, and you could
see the benefits.
Now, I would certainly want to provide that for my
children.
I have one boy who was born in '47 and
subsequently a boy born in *49.
F--I can understand that on a very personal sense.
I'm the
first son to go to college.
My dad is a printer and when
I was a boy only the rich went to school.
S--It was a hoped-for dream that maybe you could go to
college, but you certainly couldn't depend on your family.
F--It didn't exist to go to college until after the war when
people found out it was a possibility.
Back in Boston,
Harvard and places like that weren't for working people.
Were there economic factors such as industry thinking
about the value of improving the trained manpower?

A 4
Swainson
S--Well, I'm sure that this varied with the people that you
talk to.
I know I talked to the president of Chrysler
Corporation in those years and his attitude was that if
you could only afford kindergarten that's all anybody
would be entitled to, you don't raise taxes for this
purpose.
It was a pay as you go. How he related that
to the school children I don't know.
F--I asked the question specifically because one of the
things that has struck me in my experience is that when
people talk about Michigan they talk about the power of
Michigan industries.
In my time, from 1966 to the present, I have never felt
the slightest bit of interest in education from Michigan
industry, or the slightest concern, except from Chrysler
in one specific instance. The only time you ever see
the automobile people is in the tax committee.
S--I think that is very true.
I think also that in 1967,
when we had the civil disorder down in Detroit, that
brought them together.
F--That's what I'm referring to--Wayne County Community
College.
Before that, never, and never since.
S--That's right, never since, and it has diminished since
that time.
F--But you didn't feel that kind of pressure, although the
automobile industry went through a tremendous expansion
in terms of plant and wealth.
S--Yes, and at the same time, to my mind at least, they took
every opportunity to suggest that Michigan was on the
rocks because of the 1958 recession, and that it was
because of the policies of the governor at that time,
the Democratic Party in particular, and this is what
caused all the problem.
[They suggested] that plants were going to be moving out
and yet when the studies were made by Dr. Haber he
indicated that Michigan, because of its strategic loca­
tion, the availability of water, transportation, and
n

William Haber; Dean, College of Literature, Science,
and the Arts, University of Michigan; noted analyst of the
Michigan economy.

A 5
Swainson
skilled workers, would still be the hub of the manu­
facturing industry.
3

F--As an aside, Hiram Todd still sings that same line and
it is still one of self-serving interest, because they
located in states which had sales tax and industrial
profit taxes of one sort or another.
S--They could never justify their position when you got
right down to it; except it was a refrain that everybody
sang for a while and we argued and debated it and made
advances, I think, during that time.
F--So one of the policy objectives was to create an oppor­
tunity for the children of Michigan residents to go to
college who had never had that opportunity.
Their
parents, many of them, had seen it was possible and many
had had the GI Bill. And, the second one, obviously,
was the concern about the Soviet technology.
S--Here we thought we were heads and shoulders above the
Russian people and we find out that they were capable of
putting a missile, a vehicle, in space and we had not
done it. And, of course, in 1960, as you recall, President
Kennedy undertook a ten-year program and achieved it much
before the ten years. We've gone ghrough the space program.
F--Were there partisan and parochial conflicts--by parochial
I mean institutional interests, for instance, Michigan
State for Michigan State, Wayne for Wayne, and the like-over the attempt to encourage the growth of schools?
S--I think they were all interested in the expansion but
obviously there was parochial conflict between the insti­
tutions as to which one should be developed, and how it
should be developed.
Wayne State University always felt that they, being sort
of a city campus, were providing more education to a
greater number of persons and should be supported perhaps
more than they were at the time. Whereas most of the
people in the Legislature were not really graduates of
Wayne State but were either Michigan or Michigan State.
You had the partisanship whether the University of
Michigan was superior to Michigan State.
It seems to me
7
Hiram P. Todd, Jr.; Chrysler Corporation legislative
liaison.

A 6
Swainson
that just a few years before we had changed the name of
Michigan State College to Michigan State University,
which was a matter of debate. We undertook the funding
of Wayne State University.
F--Were there antagonisms over this? I still heard some^
of these things, like when I dealt with John Sobieski .
He was the Wayne County lobbyist later, but he had been
on the Appropriations Committee and not notably an easy
man to live with, as I had heard.
S--Oh, yes, there was personal prejudice. That was always
there, but in my role as the minority leader we tried to
follow a general policy of expansion of education.
And yet we were quite aware that there were parochial
interests amongst the members of that caucus, notably
Garland Lane. At that time [the University of
Michigan Flint branch] was in the talking stage... to
receive a great deal of its funding from the Mott
Foundation.
F--We'll come to that.
I'm going to talk to him, but I'm
not sure how one can do that delicately.
He's still
warm about it after all these years.
Did you have maybe a private agenda or deliberate hope
to break some of the class and cultural barriers?
S--Oh, I would think that that would be a fair statement.
To open up the colleges, so to speak, that had hereto­
fore been closed to many of the ordinary people of this
state.
The encouragement, as I say, as a general policy
matter, that each child, each young person, should have
the opportunity of education to their highest potential.
At the same time that we are talking about higher educa­
tion we were also expanding our mental health programs,
and quite frankly our mental health institutions were
in a deplorable condition.
New words, new knowledges
were being developed.
We had a tremendous challenge
in convincing people that there was a difference between
mentally retarded persons and emotionally disturbed
persons, and that an emotionally disturbed person was
capable of education. And yet we had no educational
facilities at any of our mental health institutions,
^John N. Sobieski; Democrat; State Representative from
Wayne County.

A 7
Swainson
but merely the commitment procedure, in a storehouse
sort of arrangement.
So that at the same time we were expanding higher educa­
tion we were trying to take care of some of these other
details also.
F--Did any of the policy goals that you worked at bring in
the question of popularism? By that I mean mass educa­
tion versus elitism.
I think about listening to people like Niehuss^, who was
at Michigan and had been Hatcher's man, much concerned
about quality and testing procedures and not bringing
in those people obviously unsuited.
S--Well, at this same time, of course, the concept of com­
munity colleges was developing. Whether or not we were
going to have sort of a chain-store approach to the
expansion of the University of Michigan having a campus
at Dearborn, and a campus at Flint. And then what about
Michigan State? Would they have extension programs,
here, there... or would it be better handled by the
development of the community colleges?
If we were going to have so-called community colleges,
how were they going to be financed? Would they be twoyear institutions, or would they be four-year institu­
tions? This was a completely new concept, at least for
our legislative bodies.
F--And for educators too.
S--And for educators too.
And to reserve perhaps major institutions for the pro­
fessional training or the graduate work after a person
had gone to a community college.
At the same time, of course, we were expanding our statesupported institutions with the development of Grand
Valley College, the expansion of Western Michigan,
Eastern Michigan, taking away the so-called normal school
image that they had.
F--Some of the efforts were really truly psychological
rather than programmatic, like, as you say, changing the
^Marvin L. Niehuss; Vice-President, University of
Michigan.

A 8
Swainson
normal school image, changing the title from college
to university.
When the Constitutional Convention
was concluded there was hardly a college left that
didn't have the title university.
S--This status was very important.
I think that everybody
realized that when you get a degree you want to have as
much on that certificate of graduation as you possibly
can. You didn’t want to have gone to the normal school-sort of a live-in/teacher arrangement of the frontier
days--when you graduated.
Of course it wasn't that understandable to the newer
members but quite understandable to the older members
of the Legislature.
F--I'm curious. How important, and I know they were, were
the vocational and occupational training objectives in
the enhancement of higher education?
Certainly in community colleges there was that component
part.
S--Yes, and I think also in the area of Ferris, which was
Ferris Institute, now I guess is Ferris State College.
F--But it had burned down, hadn't it?
S--It burned down in '52 I think, and was undergoing a
rebuilding process.
Certainly Vic Spathelf ;vas a very
articulate and persuasive administrator.
One that I
came to rely on in many instances for general informa­
tion and found him always accessible and very knowledge­
able in the area.
Particularly, the development at Ferris was to provide
the practical education, whether that be an auto mechanic
or in the area of pharmacology or printing or any number
of things. And I think that it has been demonstrated
that perhaps we did not give enough emphasis at that
time in the development of occupational skills.
When we developed--after the Constitutional Convention-our State Board of Education, the debate was shifted to
how we provide people with the opportunity of earning a
living. Not everyone is going to be a doctor, a lawyer,
or an Indian chief. We are going to have to have cabinet­
makers, mechanics and television repair persons.

A 9
Swainson
F--Michigan State, for instance, had developed the School
of Packaging; the Engineering Schools at Wayne and
Michigan; and the whole growth at Tech; were there
concrete policies to enhance those kinds of programs?
S--Well, I think we relied upon the people that we were
successful in electing at that time. Whether it be a
Cornelia Robinson^, [or] some of the people that went
directly from the labor movement, like Don Stevens',
into the educational sphere, [people] that would very
much be interested in just what you are discussing, the
expansion of the curriculum.
F--So there was some close contact.
It's hard always to
feel the informal role of trustees. The three major
schools elected them and the others were really appointed,
Generally we've not been successful in selecting board
members who had stature in and of themselves.
S--The method that we utilized for selecting of our board
members, of course, was based on the partisan elections
and sometimes you had people to fill the ticket, some­
times you had educators, the pendulum swings.
But in
the area that we are talking about we were eminently
successful in attracting candidates that did have depth
of understanding and also the ambition and determination
to change things. We were in contact with each other
as legislators, as executives, as educators, and tried
to develop through seminars and conferences exactly
where we should be heading.
8

F--I noticed that when Bluestone , for instance, was put on
the Grand Valley Board--which was in a sense far from his
constituency, but not far from his interests.
S--That's right. And people that were energetic people and
dedicated people, and were elected because the ticket was
elected, and not because of their individual attainments.
F--I think that is still true.
Cornelia A. Robinson; Member, State Board of Education.
7

Don Stevens; Member, Board of Trustees, Michigan State
University.
g

Irving Bluestone; UAW executive; Member, Grand Valley
State College Board of Control.

A 10

Swainson
S--Yes, I ’m sure it is. Horstein's Law I guess. There’s
a big ferry coming in and it brings everything in its
wake.
F--Governor, were there some of the trustees that were
really crucial, whose opinions and attitudes about the
whole enterprise were important and significant, that
you relied on?
S--Yes, at that time I felt the Democratic Party was almost
like a family organization. We relied on each other for
expertise in the various areas that we were functional
in. Eugene Power was on the Board of Regents at the
University, Don Stevens on the State Board of Trustees,
[and] Cornelia Robinson.
These people that we had worked
with, had confidence in, we would rely on for information
and we generally received very reliable information.
F--I think an example of what you talked about, for instance,
is the Institute of Gerontology at the combined Wayne and
Michigan program.
It came very strongly out of the UAW
interest.
S--Right, and their broad range of social interest, basically
the people they represented, but more [generally for] the
general population of the state.
F--The academic people are always concerned about the fact
that we will become so occupational, so vocational, that
we won't stress the value of civilization itself.
It's
always easy to point to vocational objectives.
It's
harder to point to the value of, for instance, the
discipline of law as an intellectual as well as vocational
thing, or music or theater.
S--0r just pure research. And we generally had these debates
that the person that is doing research, although he could
not put his finger on a concrete accomplishment, is going
to be better for the general population.
To have accom­
plished this research, where he might take a sabbatical,
or he might be looking at an egg and deciding just why
it turns which way at which time.
9
F--People like Jack McCauley , for instance, were always
terribly critical of the whole research thing.
It's
easy to beat upon politically.
^John E. McCauley; Democrat; State Senator from Wyandotte.

A 11
Swainson
S--Right, and people like Senator Porter --who was my seatmate in the Senate--would periodically take the catalog
of Michigan State University and their extension services,
and say, "Here we're spending money for someone to teach
a housewife how to bake an apple pie. Do we really need
that?", or, "Here's a course in the dance.
Is this the
kind of thing that we are called upon to support?" And,
yet, we recognize that the development of the individual
is more than just bread and butter.
F--But aside from the rhetoric, when you had to count the
votes, were the votes there?
S--Generally. We never obviously received exactly what had
been proposed or recommended, but we made an advance from
the year before, or two years before that, and we were
satisfied that we were progressing.
F--It's still that way.
S--Yes.

That will never change.

F--What was the position of labor?
I'm quite struck by the
strong sense that the UAW had a much broader interest
than just bread-and-butter issues.
S--I am too. Of course, when we talk about the UAW, we are
talking about a labor organization that is horizontally
organized, rather than, say, trades unions that are
vertically organized, and their interest was greater in
the whole spectrum of higher education. They did, when
they could, provide persons who had the capability to
develop programs and policies.
This was not true when you talk about building trades or
the Teamsters, or the other large labor organizations,
while they were members of the AFL-CIO.
F--How much, I wonder, do you think it was the personality
of Walter Reuther himself?
S--Well, I think there was a great. Walter was a stellar
figure obviously, and very articulate.
F--I was always impressed that in the end he lived on the
campus at Oakland.
-^Elmer R. Porter; Republican; State Senator from
Blissfield.

A 12
Swainson
S--Yes, and his development of the Black Lake institution
as more of an educational development of that union.
He was the leadership. You had leadership through educa­
tion. You brought in your committeemen, you brought in
your local union presidents, and gave them the opportunity
to develop.
11

Obviously, Doug Fraser
is one of the prime examples of
a man coming from the shop to leadership position.
He
was very much interested in that and very much interested
in higher education, and thought that laboring people in
this country had not had their fair shake in this area.
F--And Bluestone obviously was of the same mind because he
had been in the Constitutional Convention. Were there
other labor leaders? I don't know enough yet about where
Gus Scholle12 was, for instance.
S--Gus Scholle was very supportive of this area.
Their dis­
agreements, of course, were more internal than they were
public. How you proceed, whether you had a constitutional
convention, whether you increase the sales tax in the
Constitution or not increase the sales tax, whether you
have earmarked funds, and things like this. But generally
supportive of education, and I don't think there was any
dispute between the leadership in this regard.
F--As for instance, the main pressure felt from the Teamsters
was over health and not over education.
S--And rates for the benefit directly of their membership.
F--But not a long-range...
S--No, not a long-range educational program.
F--We've talked a bit about industry, do you want to amplify
it?
S--No, I think we have discussed this. Theirs was a general
reluctance and grudging advance more than anything else.
They didn't see it as their responsibility.
F--I've made a distinction between industry and commerce,
because looking over Governor Romney's Blue Ribbon
•^Douglas A. Fraser; Head, UAW, GM Division.
12August Scholle; former Head, AFL-CIO.

A 13
Swainson
Committee that was established, and the Con-Con committee,
I noticed the strong relationships of retailers.
I was curious if, in fact, the commerce people had a
different attitude than the heavy industry people.
I'm
not sure that they did.
S--I don't think they had what you could call a different
attitude.
It seemed to me at the time that the people
in commerce, mainly represented by the Chamber of
Commerce, were forever going to Washington saying don't
do anything because it would be better left to the state;
and they would come to our State Legislature and say
don't do anything here, it’s better left to local govern­
ment; and they would go to local government and say well,
this isn't a function of local government.
The whole
posture was one of let's not do anything.
F--And that kind of eviscerates their position in many ways,
because they always sort of held that way.
S--Yes. "The least government," they like to say, "is the
best government," but then they don't want the government
to be taking any initiatives at all.
F--What about agriculture?
S--Agriculture, I think, had a somewhat different position;
and if I could voice that, it was if we were going to
have an expansion in the area of higher education, then
they certainly wanted to have their share in the agri­
cultural skills and technologies that were fast developing.
The production of food and fiber was undergoing a tremen­
dous change from the Second World War until the present;
the science of growing things, the testing of soils, the
training of people in the operations of the new equipment,
and different things like this. They were interested,
but they weren't the initiators.
But, if it was going to
happen, "we want our share."
F--I sense that to be an important element, but I sense one
other thing, and I want to see if you have an attitude
about it.
It struck me that farmers were vitally fright­
ened about their children leaving home and concerned about
the migration of their children to the cities. They were
hoping that local institutions, community colleges,
regional colleges, would give their children a chance to
learn other skills and still stay home.

A 14
Swainson
S--I'm not aware, as I say, of agricultural people initiating
this sort of thing; but if it were going to happen, they
would take advantage of it.
I think they saw the changing
in the farm technology, that the traditional 160-acre farm
was just not feasible to provide the college education-the amenities of life.
Therefore, if they saw the handwriting on the wall--the
consolidation of properties, the working of properties
like almost corporate farms--then they wanted to provide
the children with the education that would make them selfsustaining .
F--I asked the question: "What were the pressures and
influences in the determination of public policy from
the federal government, if any?" Now, I've been con­
scious of the fact that in programs like welfare, the
federal requirements have been significant.
I haven't
sensed that about the federal government, but I'm curious
if in your term in public life you felt requirements
coming from federal encouragement to create state programs.
S--Well, generally I was not so much aware of them at the
time I was in the legislative body as I became aware at
the time I was in the executive office. A great part of
any executive at this time, a state executive, is to have
a portion of his staff skilled in writing proposals for
federal grants that are available, whether they be in the
area of research [or] health education and welfare.
I
think that their public policy in providing funds upon
application was very important.
F--Of course, in the early days one sensed that there was
legislative complaint about going for these funds.
I
recollect the story that the Appropriations Committee
required every federal grant to come to the Appropriations
Committee.
I guess that Michigan delivered six file
cabinets full; and they decided that was an excess...
And so I assume that there has to be some pressure over
the grant policy.
S--Oh, yes, there was pressure, particularly in the voca­
tional education area.
Funds were available to us, the
monies were appropriated at the state level, and we found
ourselves to be about 51st in the country in taking
advantage of the funds that otherwise would be available
for persons that had physical handicaps, particularly
administered by the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation.
I was particularly interested in this field because of
my own handicap.
It was ridiculous.

A 15
Swainson
F--That’s something that slipped my mind, because of the
fact they are funds.
13
And to some great degree, he [Ralph Peckham]
was the
architect of that program.
I went to school under it,
and so I, myself, wouldn’t perhaps have gone to college
without that opportunity; because we didn't have in
Massachusetts the tradition of education that was
economical.
S--I spent many hours with Ralph Peckham.
I had a personal
interest, obviously, and a general interest, naturally;
but to train a person to be a watchmaker and then not to
have positions for watchmakers seemed a ridiculous use
of money.
The opportunity of developing skills when you are
physically handicapped, to make you a tax-producing
citizen rather than a tax-using citizen, was to me just
logical.
[I felt] we should take advantage of the funds
that were available.
So it was always my position on
the floor to be the leading spokesman for the OVR.
F--What were the pressures and influences in the determina­
tion of public policy from the private sector? I'm
thinking about private colleges, the views of U of D,
Calvin...
S--I don't recall those in a very specific way. At that
particular time it seemed that our private institutions
of education were operating in such a manner that they
were not facing the near-bankruptcy that they find
themselves in today, so we didn't have too much contact
with those institutions.
The enrollments, of course,
had not...
F--They really hadn't begun the serious decline that they
have...
S--That we've seen in the past, say, four or five years.
I
don't have any recollection of influence in that regard.
F--I was thinking that Father Steiner^ and then Father Carron
were very influential people and wondering if their views
had been important.
13

Ralph Peckham; former Head, Division of Vocational
Rehabilitation, State Department of Education.
■^Father Celestin Steiner; President, University of
Detroit, 1949-60; Chancellor, 1960-66.

A 16
Swainson
S--No, we were in contact with Father Steiner, Father Dane
from the University of Detroit Law School, but more on
a social-political plane than programmatic.
F--What was the nature of regional and local pressures to
expand higher education in one location rather than
another? I recollect that the Saginaw Valley issue and
the Grand Valley issue and the Oakland issue were...
S--Well, obviously, the western part of the state and the
middle portion of the state, were interested in providing
regional educational institutions to accommodate their
citizenry and felt that the expansion of the traditional
big three should be somewhat curtailed and the opportunity
be given in these other areas. We got into a debate where
a law school or medical school should be expanded. Of
course, it was always south-eastern; and they interposed
their objections to that traditional development.
F--Why, if I may interject, did the attitude come to curtail
the big three? That wasn't the case, Governor, in places
like California or Wisconsin.
S--No, I think it was a basic philosophical debate going on.
Whether, as I say, we should have the continual development
of the student body to 40,000 to 50,000, where does it stop?
Or should we not provide additional institutions and
develop those institutions. And I would say that it was
very persuasive.
The people that organized Grand Valley
College were undertaking in that area of the state to
provide the monies required by the Legislature before
they could get any [state] monies, and we now have seen
it develop into a respected institution.
F--And that's a very important point you made.
It seems to
me to be the wrong kind of public policy to say that
before we will do something that's in the public interest
you must put up a dowry--which the Grand Valley and the
Saginaw Valley and the Oakland and even the Dearborn
people, in a sense, had to do.
S--I think that the third of the people that you mentioned
in the Legislature that are against everything, wanted
to exact tribute. Earn this money. This then was the
expression of the will of the community to follow through.
If you had your own money invested in it, you aren't
going to let it default; and this was, I would say, the
attitude of those legislators [who] controlled the
machinery.

A 17
Swainson
F--I think about people like Spike Francis
and Lester
Begick-*-^ getting into the wrong kinds of issues over
Saginaw Valley; not whether it was useful for the people,
but all kinds of peripheral and personal issues rather
than public-policy issues.
S--I was on the floor with Spike Francis, and I could never
quite understand--I wouldn't know whether he was the
Senator from Midland, Michigan, or the Senator from Dow
Chemical.
On one hand arguing [about whether] the
Department of Aeronautics should provide planes for the
travel of the inspectors of the highway system to spend
half-a-day and do their inspection, or whether they should
get in their car and drive for a day-and-a-half and stay
overnight to do the same inspection.
Dow Chemical, of
course, saw the advantage of the utilization of aircraft,
and he could not. That was just frills for government.
F--What in your opinion were the reasons for the failure of
the branch campus system? I think you talked about the
desire for schools to be of creditable size rather than
massive beyond the proportions for people to understand
and, also, the desire for people to be able to locally
identify with them.
S--I don't know whether it was more psychological or whether
there was an administrative problem that couldn't be over­
come.
Psychologically everybody wanted to be on the main
campus. There was something less about Dearborn and
Oakland.
I think perhaps Michigan State recognized this
a little more than the Regents did at the University of
Michigan.
F--It was quite a different public policy at State.
State,
from the very beginning, made Oakland prepare itself to
be a sovereign entity, and Dearborn and Flint still became
satellites. That is still to this day sort of a con­
tinuing problem all over, although I think that the branch
campus issue is done.
I don't see the day coming when
we'll go back that way.
S--No, I think we'll see the development of independent
institutions rather than branches.
■^Lynn 0. Francis; Republican; State Senator from Midland.
■^Lester

Bay City.

o.

Begick; Republican; State Representative from

A 18
Swainson
17
F--Morton
made a very persuasive case--Charles Morton,
who was on the State Board--for communities having their
own kinds of institutions.
I always found it personally
persuasive, his view that Flint needed a Wayne State
University rather than a branch. A comprehensive insti­
tution that crossed a lot of curriculum and class barriers
rather than setting up...
S--...a branch for the prestige
one's underling.

that was fostered by being

F--In fact, to this day, I personally think that Flint, the
second major city, is still deficient in the kinds of
opportunity for middle-class people.
The rich are still
going to Amherst and Yale and Michigan without any fiscal
problems.
S--I think that is very true.
F--You were quite close to some of the cutting and pushing
and shoving over the institutional systems for coordina­
tion of higher education by the State Board.
Do you have
any thoughts as to why it didn't come about?
S--Oh, I think there was an attempt, and I think Ira Polley
was sort of involved in trying to establish that coordin­
ation, but I think that the basic jealousy that always
existed predominated.
The relinquishment of what was
considered a constitutional...
F--What a word. You're in that business, but that word is
psychological.
S--And it sometimes was subordinated to the development of
the system of higher education that would meet the needs,
and we still have that today.
F--After the Goldwater flood, we ended up with eight members
of the State Board being Democratic.
Do you think their
decision--feeling the muscle of that temporary Democratic
upsurge--to take on the Flint campus issue was a political
mistake that led to the...
S--Oh, I think in retrospect that what you say is very true.
They were people that perhaps didn't expect to get along;
that had half-formed ideas that really were not founded
in the development of education in the State of Michigan,
17

Charles E. Morton; Member, State Board of Education.

A 19
Swainson
[that] wanted to accomplish what could be accomplished
during their tenure in office and certainly made some
mistakes and had a lot of internal problems at the time.
Had it been a board that relied upon older members that
were continued on with the infusion of new members, an
ongoing development, it might have been...
F--Call that instinct; but in any case, it may be an
erroneous view that the Flint thing prevented them from
being effective.
Because of the constitutional pre­
rogatives and jealousy, they might have just foundered
on another issue.
S--Right, but they wanted to argue that issue to establish
themselves, really. You mentioned the Goldwater flood
in 1964, but then this was also the first year that that
body had come together after the Constitutional
Convention--which went into effect in January, 1964.
It
was a big, big step and perhaps not treated as best as
it could have been.
F--Well, we've gotten involved in a lot of shallow political
analysis about the real nature of the party structure in
Michigan.
For instance, it is worthwhile to observe that
in '64 the Democrats had only controlled the Michigan
Senate four years in that century. And it's worth
observing that in the 70 years I'm dealing with--from
1900 to 1970--that the Michigan Senate has been
Democratically controlled only six years, '32 to '34,
and '36 to '38, and '65 and '66.
S--And started to develop the insights--it's such a long
time between drinks.
F--That's true, and in the same time span the Democrats
controlled the House 12 years.
I'm much taken by the
story that we hear about Kowalski18 that when they took
power they didn't even have a clerk that they knew about.
That must have made it extremely difficult being a
minority governor, in a sense.
S--Very much so, and the same thing happened, of course, in
the Senate about that time.
Fred Chase1^ was a reposi­
tory of all knowledge, yet he was intolerable to the new
18
Joseph J. Kowalski; Democrat; State Representative;
elected Speaker of the House in 1965.
19
Fred I. Chase; Secretary of the State Senate.

A 20
Swainson
majority. And yet, they couldn’t find adequate replace­
ment; and so there were organizational problems right
away. Lack of knowledge and depth, and those problems
beset the people who were trying to legislatively
accomplish something.
F--So that, in a sense, when you attempted to bring executive
policies to the Legislature, instead of really being
capable of leadership, you had to really broker them
because you didn’t have the votes.
Well, let's answer both remaining questions quickly now.
Who in your opinion were the significant opinion leaders
in higher education?
S--Dr. Hannah, I think, would be one person I would have to
point to as the leading exponent.
F--What about Hatcher?
S--Hatcher, I think, was a gentleman of the old school, but
wasn't the activist that Dr. Hannah was.
F--I've heard many people talk about Vic Spathelf.
S--Vic Spathelf I ’m a great admirer of, and I think he
accomplished a great, great deal. And V a r n e r ™ was an
excellent man who was a leader at this time, too.
F--What about Henry

21

or anybody at Wayne?

S--I don't have a recollection as I do of these other
gentlemen.
F--We have talked through the course of our conversation about
some of the influential individuals, and I just thought
maybe...
S--Well, I'd say Vic Spathelf, certainly Jim Miller, certainly
Dr. Hannah; these are the people I would point to, Lynn
Bartlett, of course, as Superintendent of Education.
F--Thank you very much, Governor.
?n
uDurward B. Varner; Vice-President, Off Campus Education,
Michigan State University.
21

David D. Henry; President, Wayne State University.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
1
G. MENNEN WILLIAMS

F--What I’m trying to do is to evaluate why, in Michigan,
we had the opportunity to build a very massive and
unique system of higher education when in other states
like us, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, that wasn’t the
case. Just taking a look at the relative wealth of
Ohio and Michigan is always an instructive lesson--to
see the differences in public services and quality of
life.
This is outside of the area of our discussion, but I ’m
particularly impressed, for instance, that there's not
a mile of toll road in this state.
It's impressive the
tremendous number of parks we have.
It’s impressive
that our public school support ranks about second in
the nation.
Ohio--which is its ninth richest state,
w e ’re seventh, and the population mixes are quite
similar--ranks forty-eighth.
W--I might say that their mental health facilities are
practically medieval compared with ours.
F--And in your time, when you were Governor, one of the
important areas of public policy was the construction
of an adequate system of mental health facilities which
got around the problem of just warehousing people.
W--Not only that, but we were able to make a very forward
step in setting up the Lafayette Clinic, which I think
is about the first such institution which wasn't
dedicated to bed care.
It was dedicated to research.
G. Mennen Williams; Democrat; Governor, 1948-1960;
appointed Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs,
1961-66; Ambassador to the Philippines, 1968-69; elected
to Michigan Supreme Court in 1970.
Interview conducted
March 21, 1974.

A 21

A 22
Williams
F--And very strongly oriented to helping children, too.
Well, it's all of those kind of things that I want to
get at, because I believe that this is a peculiar state.
The fact that we were able to have programmatic politics
rather than partisan politics in the area of education,
I think, is instructive--certainly compared to Illinois.
So that's really the nature of the approach.
I'm going
to interview John Swainson, yourself, Governor Milliken,
Governor Romney, Hatcher, Hannah, Vic Spathelf, Nisbet,
and the like, and hopefully come to some sense of it.
Our government is truly one of men and people.
Political
scientists, who try to put so much stress on structure,
don't understand much about human energy and vision and
the like.
W--Well, I think in general that Michigan has had a great
tradition as far as education goes.
Of course, we shared
with Ohio the Northwest Ordinance of 1789, but somehow or
other we got started very, very early on public schools
and also on a university.
I think that there has been a constant spirit of the
people in favor of education that goes back a long, long
ways.
Of course, that may be the result of whatever
conditions there are, but at least I think it's tracable.
F--I'm going to try to get to that.
I'm going to move to
the questions and let's see how it goes.
What in your opinion were the reasons for the expansion
of higher education in Michigan from 1958 on?
W--Well, I think there were two reasons, primarily. One
was the tremendous demand for education. The schools
were just blowing up with new applicants.
Secondly,
I think that we had a Legislature which, despite their
tendency to reaction in other areas, at least responded
fairly favorably in the area of education.
I'm sure
that must be because the people of Michigan were
sympathetic to education.
I would say those were the
primary reasons.
I must admit that we put on a very hard drive in favor
of education, and I think that we had some degree of
cooperation from the administration of the universities.
We were able to bring the presidents together in a

A 23
Williams
fairly tolerable cooperation, despite the tendencies
of the boards of all of the institutions to fly off in
different directions.
I think the presidents obviously
were responsive to the boards.
I think they did recognize
the need for some degree of cooperation vis-a-vis the
Legislature.
F--But it's still true during this time that Michigan State
and Michigan had some strong degree of institutional
rivalry with each other.
W--There's no question about it, they always did have.
When I first became Governor I was approached by the
presidents of these universities and we regularly met
together....
I constantly drummed into them that if
they didn't cooperate to some extent, that they would
be faced by popular uprising in legislation which would
set up a unified system, which of course was anathema
to all of them.
So, I think that there was an understanding on the part
of all of us that the Legislature did have to have at
least some degree of cooperation and cohesion or other­
wise the whole system was unmanageable.
F--Do you think there was some concern on the part of the
institutions about the danger of state-mandated
coordination?
W--Yes, I do indeed.
I don't know that they felt, under
the circumstances, it was imminent, but I think they
did feel that if their rivalry went to too great an
extent it could happen.
2
F--It is my understanding that M. M. Chambers --who is
today a recognized expert on school finance--came to
this state and functioned for a year as some kind of
coordinating personality before he left and the
experiment collapsed.
W--Well, I don't recall Chambers, but I do know that
surrounding the Russell Report and the other things
there was always the spectre of a unified state system.
I think that this always had a very sombering effect.
2

M. M. Chambers; Professor of Higher Education,
University of Michigan, 1958-63; Executive Director,
Michigan Council of State College Presidents, 1961-62;
Consultant to Michigan State Board of Education, 1966;
author of several books on higher education.

A 24
Williams
F--It still does.
What were the social and economic factors that led to
this significant growth? Some have identified, for
instance, the large number of veterans that came back
and had the opportunity to have a higher education
under the GI Bill and then had that aspiration for
their children.
W--Well, I think that that was a significant factor, because
that provided both a population pressure and an oppor­
tunity to finance the growth.
I think that there was
some growth in the state at that time, and then there
was an increasing percentage of the young people who
wanted to go to the universities. This made for a
numbers pressure.
Obviously the GI Bill was the only new item in the
economic factors at this time.
In 1958, of course, the
state's finances were very poor, so there wasn't any
strong economic inducement.
I think it shows the sense
of responsibility of the Legislature and the administra­
tion that despite the economic difficulties, they did
support education.
F--I was thinking, in my experience working inside the
government structure, I have never noticed a strong
sense of the value of education from Michigan industry.
I can never recollect automotive companies urging the
Legislature to set up vocational programs, manpowertraining programs.
Generally their posture has been
to go to the taxation committee to escape burden, not
to encourage new programs.
I wondered if that had been different, if you had had
some sense from Michigan industry that expanding the
trained manpower pool would advantage them and the
people?
W--Well, I would say first of all that [although] I wasn't
conscious of any concentrated drive on the part of
industry to increase educational funding, I don't have
any specific recollection of their particularly training
their guns against education.
In some ways they were cooperative, at least in the
philosophical sense.
Industry strongly supported a
commission I set up for research.
I went to Ford,
Chrysler, and General Motors and asked them for their

A 25
Williams
top scientists. They did give me those scientists, and
that committee did work. That committee was very strong
in pointing out that education was an extremely important
part of the state's assets and that the educational
climate was essential if Michigan was to have an oppor­
tunity in the atomic age, so to speak. This committee
tried to bring science-oriented industry to Michigan, or
at least to create the climate so it would be attracted.
So, at least from that point of view there were people
in industry who recognized this. This committee was
broader than the three automobile companies: Bendix
[Corporation] was there, Walker Cisler was there, I
forget who else.
So there was that kind of interest and
I think that in some specific instances, you earlier
talked about Delta College, I think in the Grand Valley
College near Grand Rapids--I know at least the commercial
interest [was present]--Seidman over there was very strong
for it.
I think that he had a strong business base where
there was commerce rather than industry.
I don't think that industry was very forthcoming or wise
taxwise, but I certainly couldn't make any blanket
indictment of their failure to support education.
F--One of the most encouraging things about your time as
Governor was the capacity, in my personal opinion, to
move issues into rather broad programmatic approaches:
the mental health, the transportation.
I'm curious
if there was some kind of broad policy aspiration that
underlay the objectives that you had in view of the
expansion.
W--You mean in the area of education?
F--Yes, higher education specifically.
It's obvious that
the committee of scientists had developed a more broad
base for more modern industry would be of concern.
W--Well, I can't remember the exact quotation from Alfred
Lord North, but it was to the effect that without
education, society isn't going to go anyplace.
I'm
3

Walker Cisler; President and Chairman of Detroit Edison
Company.
4
L. William Seidman; partner in Seidman and Seidman
Accounting Firm in Grand Rapids.

A 26
Williams
convinced that a lot of the bulwark of society is educa­
tion.
Certainly for societal progress education is
absolutely essential.
This is true everywhere.
I know when I was in my African
experience you could see that for a developing country
education was absolutely essential.
Of course, it was
equally essential here --referring back to that science
committee.
If you haven't got education, you can't
supply the needs of any of these science-oriented
industries.
F--I'm thinking specifically, and I recognize the importance
in Africa of the institutions of higher education, how at
Makerere and in West Africa and Nigeria the institutions
were so crucial to them.
But what I'm thinking about was that we had in this time
of your administration significant proportions--virtually
the majority--of first generation in college students.
They came from working class homes, the middle class of
that strong group of ethnic communities that surround
Detroit. There's, frankly, no hope to bring agricul­
tural minorities, such as a great host of our black
citizens who have come from Alabama and Mississippi,
without adequate education, into jobs. Did you have
the expectation and desire to do it for that reason,
amongst others?
W--Yes. Of course in this area we go beyond higher educa­
tion, because the real problem in education in Michigan
was that secondary education was just not supplying to
the colleges and universities the kind of product that
they could meaningfully process.
I was concerned about the education of these people,
because you go to Jackson Prison and I think one percent
of the people there have a college education. As you go
down the line the other way, the people who are there in
greatest abundance are those who have had the least
education.
Of course this doesn't mean that some of the people who
are guilty of fraud aren't highly educated, but the fact
of the matter is that our society has little meaningful
place for those people who don't have a good education.
So, we must supply that in order to have a viable society.

A 27
Williams
F--I recognize the strength of the Grand Valley pressure
from the commercial interest rather than, say, indus­
trial. Did you have strong pressures to creat
institutions about the state in various areas?
W--Well, there were several.
Of course the Delta College-I think it was at this time that Flint branch was
started--Oakland, Northwestern in Traverse City, there
was strong community pressure[at those locations].
Of
course there was pressure for what has since become
Lake Superior College. There were those kinds of
pressures.
Likewise, there was pressure in the Upper
Peninsula and elsewhere to support the two existing
institutions, Tech and Northern, which now are very
flourishing institutions; but Northern, particularly,
at that time [was not].
I think they had about 7 00 or
800 students.
F--It was really at that time, in the beginning of your
administration, a normal school rather than a college.
W--Well, it was.
I think it was Dr. Tape^, a very fine
gentleman, but he was pretty old and he didn't have g
the vitality to drive that place up like Edgar Harden
subsequently did.
So there was some pressure to keep
it going. Of course it was always an embarrassment to
the Upper Peninsula people, because it cost as much per
student to keep that going as it did the University of
Michigan with all of their higher educational programs.
So they finally got over a thousand and had the nut
there, so to speak, then the thing could go forward.
I think the answer to your question is yes, there were
regional pressures. When we went into Ferris, this was
not quite regional, but it was a specialized pressure.
The moment that we started moving on that there was an
interesting combination of pressures.
There were a lot
of old boys that came out of the woodwork everyplace.
There was a school that had had a great pharmacy
tradition. The pharmacy people came out and so on...
F--It had burned down and it had been built up anew in
your time.
’’Henry A. Tape; President of Northern Michigan
University.
^Edgar L. Harden; President of Northern Michigan
University.

A 28
Williams
W--That's right.
It would have vanished if the state
hadn't taken it over.
It would have been a tragedy,
too.
F--Were there concerns about the state taking it over?
W--No, no. When we looked at it, we did the same thing we
did with Wayne. We set up a committee to examine it, a
broad-based committee. They made their report and then
I think it was a three-year basis [on which] the state
took it over.
I think there were just a few buildings
left [and] the faculty, which had lots of courage and
devotion with no finances.
F--What, Governor, were the key issues that resulted in
partisan and parochial conflict in the attempt to attain
the objectives of creating mass education? Were there
any that you saw or felt or had to be careful about?
W--I'm not sure that I understand your question, but it's
broad enough so I can give you different answers.
There was, from time to time, a feeling on the part of
some of the religious groups that we should not get away
from an original basis of supporting a dual system of
education.
Of course there are various constitutional
difficulties in connection with that. The GI Bill
afforded one kind of opportunity and then there were
federal grants for construction which helped.
I think also there was a concern that the state not give
up the philosophical approval of a dual system.
At times I think some of the teacher groups were sort of
secular-dominated and they felt a little challenged by
the fact that in the religious schools the teachers were
paid so little.
There were harbingers of problems, but I don't think of any
actual problems that were difficult.
F--What I was thinking about specifically is that Wayne came
into the state system. There were some antagonisms,
because I could feel some of them many years later when
the Wayne County Community College issues came up. They
had had the expectation that in return for taking over
the four-year, the two-year would be run by Detroit
people.

A 29
Williams
I had the concern and curiosity about how did places
like the University of Detroit, Calvin, Albion, and
Kalamazoo regard the quickening growing of this higher
education? Of course it got much worse much later.
W--Well, I was very careful, and if I hadn’t been, I would
have been more strongly reminded in all of our educa­
tional committees and things of that sort that the
nonpublic colleges and universities be represented so
that our products would represent their concerns.
The problem was particularly acute because like Northern,
many of these institutions were running at school popu­
lations of about 700, and we figured at that time you
needed about 1,000 to be administratively viable.
So
there was a great pressure on them and a concern that
if we did everything for the state universities and
nothing for them that they would lose students.
I haven't followed it recently but I rather gathered
that most of those institutions have gained some strength
in numbers so that their situation isn't quite as perilous
as it was.
F--I don't think that is true.
I think that while the nut
has moved up to 5,000 to be sound... there has been the
ongoing decline of private schools --it's gone down about
one percent per year for the last 15 years.
Further,
their difficulty is that they can't offer the graduate
programs--where significantly larger numbers of our
citizens are making the decision to go--because of the
tremendous costs of law, medicine, engineering, and the
like.
Did any of the policy goals for the enhancement of higher
education have as their objective destruction of class
culture barriers? We've talked a little bit about that.
Did you want to add anything to that?
W--Well, there were, when I was there, special efforts.
I
think particularly at MSU.
I think they were earlier
than some of the others. Well, Wayne came naturally to
help the minority groups, to work them into the programs.
One of the curious things was that when the new president
came to the University of Michigan I advised him from a
political point of view that he would be well advised to
broaden his constituency so that vis-a-vis the Legislature

A 30
Williams
he would have greater strength.
I said that MSU has for
years relied very strongly on the farm groups and I said,
"Why don't you look to the union groups?" But they never
took my advice.
But John Hannah never lost a bet. He was able to make
oil and water mix.
I think the unions ended up feeling
pretty sympathetic to the goals of MSU because they made
their extension facilities available, and so on. Even­
tually, of course a union man was elected to the board.
F--Don Stevens got on the board.
W--Yes, but I think even before he got on, and maybe one
of the reasons they pushed to put him on, was that there
was that sympathy there. While that isn't exactly a
class barrier it was interesting that the agricultural
and industrial groups did get together.
I guess that if
you looked at the charter it was the agricultural and
mechanical...
F--0ne of the curious things that always struck me, which
is a little bit outside of the scope of this, but still
germane, is that all of the Northwest Treaty states
had had the support of higher education by the sectioning
of the land. Most of them followed the concept of one
agricultural and mechanical school, and one university.
In places like Ohio, Indiana with Purdue and Indiana,
and Iowa, that is still quite the case.
For some reason, and I personally think it is quite a
good approach, we made the decision to go for more than
one university to blur that distinction between the arts
and handicrafts.
So over a period of time, much of it
occurring during your administration, Michigan State
became more than an agricultural institution, more than
a mechanics school, and at the same time Wayne grew to
become a school with an immensely sized graduate program.
At the current time Western is on that same route.
So
we have probably three-and-a-half to four...
W--Well, I think that there are two explanations or at least
two observations I would make.
First of all, well, maybe
not in any priority, but obviously John Hannah wouldn't
be denied. He was going to make Michigan Agricultural
College, which it originally was, into a university.
He was particularly successful with the Legislature and
was able to do a great job of building.
I think that
[the growth at] Western was due to Jim Miller, because

A 31
Williams
from the very first when he got in there, it was one of
his objectives and he went ahead.
I can't say what
happened at Wayne.
I knew the presidents but I don't
think there was any there that was as continuous or as
outstanding as the other two I mentioned.
But I think that there was another thing going on here
and that was that some of us felt that if we didn't
create alternate outlets for the student population
growth that the University of Michigan and Michigan
State would, you know, grow not only too fast but too
big. So, as we could, we had a conscious policy to try
and develop what would then be the normal schools into
larger institutions and, of course, institutions with
a broader academic background. And so there was that
kind of conscious effort.
F--And that culminated really after you left to go to
Washington, with the Constitutional Convention session
when the normal schools turned their backs on their
names and became universities, and started themselves
off on broad-base curriculums other than just teaching
certificates.
W--Yes, and of course I remember when Michigan State
College tried to get through the Legislature the change
of name to university.
My alma mater was most unseemly
in its opposition to that kind of thing. Of course,
today everything is a university.
I'm just glad that Ferris Institute, or Ferris State
College, didn't become a university, because they have
special opportunity school requirements which I think
are absolutely essential to the complete mix in our
university setups.
F--I'm going to come to that.
Did you regard as one of the key issues of this period
mass education in higher education versus elitism? I
constantly heard in my work the strong feeling that
Michigan only served the rich and--though that's not
easy to demonstrate when you take 40,000 students--the
feeling that we needed to open the system up with the
creation of community colleges.
Obviously there was
some conscious desire here, because other states did
not have the system as early as we did nor in its com­
plexity or size.

A 32
Williams
W--Well, it was my philosophy and the philosophy of my
administration, and I suppose I should say the Democratic
Party, that a university education ought to be available
to everyone who is intellectually capable of undertaking
it. There ought to be some system of hothouse growth,
so to speak, so that people who had been unfortunate in
their secondary education should be able to get into
some sort of university development.
Now this meant that most of us would, if we could, have
free university education.
Obviously that wasn't in the
cards, but we did what we could behind the scenes to
keep the costs down. We welcomed the community college
program and I must say that one of the things that con­
cerned me was at the beginning that they be indeed
community colleges rather than high school extensions,
and I think that there was some danger of that.
F--Seven of them, seven of the dozen that existed in your
time, were really departments of school districts.
W--Yes, that’s the way they originated.
F--Delta was the other kind of model freely set up under
the legislation that was passed.
W--Well, of course, they were larger than any school district
and so had reason.
But there were some areas, as you
pointed out, where, you know, this was a mixed blessing.
[It] was great that they were interested in developing
it, but it did have the danger that it would become an
extended high school rather than a university.
F--How important were vocational and occupational training
objectives in the enhancement of higher education? Were
there significant concerns about that?
W--Well, yes, there were significant concerns and not only
in higher education but in secondary education.
I think
that in secondary education we probably are still far
behind where we should be. There originally was legis­
lation which provided for vocational education largely
directed to farm areas. This may have been successful
for them, but the amount of vocational education
available in industrial areas was very small, possibly
because it was more expensive than general education.
I think this was an area of great neglect.

A 33
Williams
Now in the university area, of course, we mentioned
Ferris.
Ferris had a sort of dual philosophy, it
seemed to me. One was an opportunity school to take
people from wherever, with or without completing their
secondary education, and give them the equivalent of a
college education. The second thing was that they were
strong on all kinds of vocational schools. We talked
about pharmacy, they had printing, and they had some
other things. Now some of our universities disdained
that kind of thing but I think Western...
F--They had a school of industrial technology and an
aircraft program.
W--Right.
Of course--we were talking about industry--there
the paper industry was very strong in helping them out.
The only thing I know about the auto industry [is that]
they came in very late with $10 million for the traffic
safety school--but this was long after my time--at the
University of Michigan.
But, oh, I don't know, they were training airline
hostesses and everything else at Western. Which in a
sense, you know, might be demeaning in a trade school
sense, but on the other hand, I think it was fulfilling
a need.
I gather that today parents are more and more
concerned about people having some practical education
along with their classical education so that they can
face the world.
F--And I imagine these vocational programs receive some
greater degree of support from the Legislature.
I can
just see some of the legislators you had to deal with.
As I recollect you never had a control in either House.
W--No, the closest we ever came for one two-year period
was--we had a tie--55 to 55. But it was very interesting.
One lady legislator was sick the day they organized and
the Republicans organized the Legislature as though they
had a 90 to 10 majority.
F--They did that again later too. That happened in 1966,
I think. They had a 55-55 House, and Representative
O'Brien was conveniently absent.
So it's instructive
to take a look and see really what a miracle it was, in
a sense, that you were able to build a Democratic Party
here, because from 1900 to 197 0 the Democrats have
controlled the Senate only six years.

A 34
Williams
W--There were three times in this period when there wasn't
a single Democrat in the entire Legislature,
F--It is astonishing.
What happened in 1946 to accomplish
the virtual slaughter of the Democrats? In the thirties
you were able to build up so that you would have at least
ten in the Senate and about 45 or 35 or 37 in the House,
In 1946 there were five Democrats in the House and three
in the Senate.
W--And we lost practically all of our Congressional repre­
sentation too.
I don't know whether we lost all of it,
but heavily so.
I gather that there was a national
movement as well as a local movement involved,
I don’t
know, I can't explain it.
F--It was really kind of astonishing when you take the
historian's point of view to see how you were able to
build this consensus over a period of time.
It has been
eight years now since a Democratic administration...
no, 12 years.
What was the position on the growth of culture and the
arts? Was there importance in that? Were there concerns
about it?
W--Well, I think we had, to my knowledge, the first cultural
commission that the state ever had.
It was a large
dimension [and] it had fine representation. We didn’t
have any money for it except I think the governor got
$10,000 a year for all commissions so we gave it some
sort of staff, but that was about it.
It functioned
and it stayed alive.
I think that was the most that
could be said for it. Not that the commission wasn’t
good, but it just didn't have that much support.
But
it kept the idea alive, and it subsequently flourished.
I don’t know what else I could properly say to answer
that question.
F--Did you want to add anything to what you have already
said about what the position of labor was in regard to
higher education?
W--Well, labor strongly supported higher education and they
supported, of course, our tax program.
On several
occasions I would have to take my educational budget to
the people and they were helpful in turning out people
to come to the meetings and so on, and to help organize
in the communities. They were concerned.

A 35
Williams
F--It struck me, for instance, that the position of the UAW
was much more issue-oriented and less bread-and-butteroriented. They seemed to actually have put muscle into
social issues that wasn't typical.
W--Yes, the UAW was, as you say, issue-oriented. They were
strongly in support of education, they were strongly in
support of mental health that we were talking about, and
a number of things of that kind.
Incidentally, we were fairly successful too in getting
the veterans organizations, who now, of course, are not
such an important part of our political scene. They too
were helpful in issues other than the direct advancement
of the cause of veterans.
F--The gerontology program between Michigan and Wayne is a
direct outgrowth of UAW interest, for instance.
W- -Yes.
F--What about industry? We've talked about it but I've tried
to separate industry from commerce.
I'm not sure, but I
think they had different positions and feeling.
W--Well, I think what I said before about the industry
vis-a-vis education probably covers most of it.
F--Would you segregate the difference into commerce? I
noticed, for instance, that merchants like the J. L. Hudson
people' were involved in some of the commissions that were
established in this period.
I wondered if the businessmen
themselves had some interest that you could identify?
W--Well, there were individuals.
I can’t really place them
in my mind now, but we called on industry in most areas
for their support, and in many areas we got it. Obviously,
we didn't get it in taxation.
In civil rights we had to
fight them for seven years, and then they came right over
and joined up.
I would say outside of election times and
on taxes, that industry was generally cooperative.
I mean
we had industrial people, for example, helping in our con­
servation programs, and things of that nature.
F--I guess I was thinking was there pressure on the Chamber
of Commerce for instance.
In every administration you
7

Walter A. Crow; Corporate Secretary, J. L. Hudson Company,
Detroit, Michigan.

A 36
Williams
always have men who have a broad view and get involved
no matter what.
W--Of course, we had then something which doesn't appear
at all today, and that was that John Lovett represented
the Michigan Manufacturers Association. When you say
he literally controlled the Legislature, that wasn't
too far wrong.
Governor Milliken's father, for example, who was a small­
time member of the Michigan Manufacturers Association,
although as you say he was in commerce, nonetheless used
to complain about John Lovett.
But you know, John Lovett
was really a boss in the sense that we don't have in the
Legislature, we don't have in the government today. As
you pointed out, historically Michigan had been
Republican and I think in a sense it had been, well, we
know what a company town was, it was pretty close to a
company state, and John Lovett ran it for them.
The thing that I tried to talk to the industrial presi­
dents, and they were all agreeable and gracious to me,
was that they had to watch these people because they
didn't, in my mind, always represent the truly best
interests of the industry.
It was easier for them to
take a hard line than to take an understanding line.
They could always go to their bosses and say, "Look, I
really skewered this wage increase," or "skewered our
safety legislation," and not expect much trouble.
Whereas,gl think yoy know, that if you had a Lynn
Townsend or a Cole , you could sit down with them and
argue some of these things out. You would probably get
some better agreement.
But obviously those people
didn't have that kind of time and while someone would
say, "That's not a bad idea," nothing really ever
happened.
But I think that today there just isn't
anybody with the practically autonomous control that
this fellow exercised.
F--You shouldn't have any nostalgia for that.
g

Lynn Townsend; President and later Chairman of
Chrysler Corporation.
9

Edward Cole; President of General Motors.

A 37
Williams
W--Well, he was a character.
Personally he was just as
genial and personable as you could imagine, but my God,
John Lovett was as hard as nails.
And they had a good recruiting system. They went out
and picked likely Republicans in the primary and backed
them in the Republican primaries and many of them were
lawyers and had appropriate retainers. He had a real
good system.
F--What were the pressures and influences in the determina­
tion of public policy, if any, from the federal government
for higher education?
W--We’ve talked about the GI Bill, I think that was a vitally
important area. Obviously in the research area it did
have an important impact. Of course this did not come
through the state so I could observe that only indirectly.
F--But others observed that the executive process had to
defend the institutions from legislative attack about
research.
It was usually easy to make fun of and to cast
doubt about.
W--As I remember back I don’t have anything standing out on
this in my memory.
F--And, of course, you mentioned earlier the construction
program, the federal construction program.
But there
were no... you can’t recollect any others? My major
professor suggested that I ask that because I really
regarded the higher education thing to some great
degree as a state function without much in the way of
federal requirements or inducements.
W--Well, obviously if you take a look at the University of
Michigan budget today I think it is about 25 percent
federal money. Now that undoubtedly has some impact.
What it was when I was there I don’t recall. But again,
since that money came directly to them and didn't come
through us, I don’t...
F--But there were some examples as I recollect where states
made investments or had to encourage investments, like
at Lake Superior. You know, there had to be some state
indication that Fort Brady was able to come to Tech as
a branch campus. And then we got Willow Run for Michigan,

so...

A 38
Williams
W--Of course in the Willow Run and Michigan [transaction],
they took care of that all by themselves.
In the Fort
Brady thing I was very active. Here again we set up a
commission and they made a study before they made the
recommendation.
I personally had some dealings with
the federal government about not disposing of the Fort
in any other way until we could get this thing organized
F--As an aside, have you been up there lately?
W--Yes, I was up there last summer.
F--Fantastic, isn’t it?
W--Oh yes.
F--I remember walking through that Fort and it looked just
like a 1930 movie. And then coming back and seeing what
has happened really gladdens your heart.
W--Well, today it is one of the few bright spots in the Soo,
which is economically depressed.
F--Maybe the only one.
What were the pressures and influences in the determina­
tion of public policy from the private sector of higher
education? I'm thinking about the private colleges
specifically. You’ve talked a little bit about that,
but....
W--Well,
they
they
that

as I said, they wanted a hearing.
First of all,
wanted the state to retain the dual system.
Second
were always interested in such financial advantage
they legitimately could have.

F--Did the private college tuition program come during your
time?
W--Yes, it started then.
F--Because that’s become one of the real hidden bases of the
support of private schools today through the Department
of Education programs.
W--I don’t recall the exact date, but I think that this was
an outgrowth of the GI Bill...this showed a viable way.
There were members of the Legislature that obviously
were very strong for this and promoted it.

A 39
Williams
F--What was the nature of regional and local pressures to
expand higher education in one location rather than
another? You alluded to the Grand Valley pressure,
Delta obviously existed, and there was Flint and
Dearborn, ...
W--And Northwestern up in Traverse City.
Well, there was pressure to assist local communities
in establishing or expanding their existing units, but
I don't know that I was ever conscious of any competing
claims.
So I don't have any answer for that.
F--It seemed to me that if there was a public purpose for
the establishment of an institution we shouldn't have
required the local people to put up a dowry.
W--I suppose that as a matter of legislative strategy
it was easier for the Legislature to say, "Ok, we'll
put this school in Grand Valley because they have come
up with this." And that would answer the reason why
they put it there rather than in Muskegon, let's say.
F--I suppose that's true.
What in your opinion were the reasons for the failure
of the branch campus system that had begun to be
developed in Michigan with Oakland, Flint, and Dearborn?
Whereas, say in Wisconsin, that branch campus system
rather flourished and became a model.
I'm not espousing
it in any way, but...
W--I noticed that question when I read over your question­
naire this morning.
I never heard it discussed as to
why it happened.
I would suspect that at Oakland from the very beginning
this was such a large operation and did have some
independent origin with that sizeable grant from
Mrs. Wilson-^... And then of course, Woody Varner
was down there and was an empire builder in a good
sense, a real strong, powerful individual.
I think
that, you know, it was bound to want to be autonomous.
l^Mrs. Alfred G. Wilson; widow of John F. Dodge,
co-founder of Dodge Motor Company.

A 40
Williams
Dearborn, I think, started before my time and I have
no reason why they continued to exist that way.
Flint, I don't know, probably if M o t t H wanted it to
stay with the University of Michigan, it would stay
with the University of Michigan.
But I think the mutual jealousy of the large institu­
tions would preclude their viewing with any favor this
kind of expansionism.
F--Certainly the mutual jealousy was a very crucial factor.
I think that it occurred this way is instructive, and I
think it points out something, in the following sense:
In some other states they are perfectly comfortable
with a very rigid hierarchical system.
California in
my opinion failed because they built the plan without
any room for human interest; they built a technocrat's
plan.
In Michigan when we started these schools people began
to regard them as civic and regional institutions of
great value and they wanted them to be much their own.
State established Oakland with a very strong dose of
its own autonomy. The fact that they picked Woody,
for instance, .... Hannah could not have been
surprised because he had a track record of his own.
They weren't picking a weak kind of lackluster guy.
And, very quickly Woody got all the automobile tycoons
involved in the cultural thing and gradually built a
very strong sense of community around the institute.
W--You had Walter Reuther on the other end.
whole spectrum.
F--That's true.
close to it.

You had the

Reuther lived on campus, I believe, or

W--And his wife was out there quite a bit.
I was struck also that Michigan until recently had been
strongly opposed to branch banking.
It may be that a
sense of local independence was...
F--I never thought about that.

Why in your opinion did an

Charles S. Mott; major stockholder in General Motors;
funded the Mott Foundation, a philanthropic enterprise.

A 41
Williams
institutional system for the coordination of higher
education not come about after 1964?
W--You're talking about the Board of Education.
F--I'm thinking about the State Board.
W--Well, I think there are two reasons.
First of all, I
think the spirit of autonomy and the strength of the
individual institution was too strong to permit any
board to operate successfully, despite the constitution
or despite the law. The second thing was that the Board
itself, while they had a number of fine individuals on
it, never pulled together.
They never were able to
exercise any organized strength, and as a consequence,
even if they... [or] any board could have done it, this
Board just wasn’t staffed in such a way.
F--The Democrats won all eight seats in that tidal wave
of ’64.
It's conceivable that if there had been a real
consensus that something could have been done.
W--I think something could have been done. Let me put it
this way, something was done, I think.
I think the
rapport that was set up between the Governor's office
and the educational institutions subsequent to that
act may have been an indirect benefit of it. I worked
on that citizens committee of that Kellogg thing, and
my observation was that the key legislators really
placed quite a bit of confidence in the state's
Department of Administration, or whatever it is, their
counterpart.
They had a pretty close working relation­
ship, so whether this was a separate growth or a
resulting growth, I don't know.
In any event, I felt
that the executive and the Legislature were closer
together than I had observed it at some other times.
It was tragic that Board didn't have the kind of
dynamism that it might have had with another mix of
individual leadership.
But any board would have had
an awfully rough time.
F--And I noticed that, just as an aside, the latest guber­
natorial committee recommends a statewide coordination
system and a constitutional amendment.
They are talking
about that as a part of the governor's higher educational
reform commission which will be outside the focus of this.
But I would suspect that it is going to be an extremely
difficult thing to accomplish because of that strong
institutional thing.

A 42
Williams
W--Well, I can't recall offhand what the budgets of Wayne,
State, and the University of Michigan are, but they are
pretty enormous and...
F--100 to 200 million dollars apiece.
W--Yes, and not only that, they have a loyal and faithful
alumni.
I don't know so much about Wayne because they
are somewhat newer and the commuting campus may not
inspire the same unity. Anyway, State and the University
have got a strength, you know, that's pretty hard for
anybody to contain and then they've got this long history
The idea that anybody could put a cork in this bottle is
just... out of it.
F--That's well said.
W--I think, however, that what is required is a high degree
of statesmanship on the part of the Governor and the
Commissioner of Education, or whatever else, and to try
and work with the Legislature. The Legislature is really
the only one that has any kind of competitive equality of
power with these institutions.
Of course they are
dispersed among so many members so that they don't bring
that power to bear quite so directly.
F--But there is one Governor and 148 legislators....
W--No, but I was thinking more of not between the Governor
and the Legislature but between the institutions and
the Legislature.
Theoretically the Legislature could
just cut them off because they've got the power of the
purse.
But you know the people of Michigan wouldn't let
the Legislature get away with that. Then on the other
hand our people wouldn't let the universities go too hogwild either.
I think it's that kind of recognition of
the important factors that has got to keep people living
together as a family and nobody is going to be sole and
exclusive boss.
F--Political scientists like to draw very neat charts full
of hierarchical structures and boxes and bars and the
like, but I’m struck by the fact that it may be that in
Michigan, particularly, those peculiar balances keep
things working without all the boxes. There is a sense
of probity here with the people and a sense of their
view of the world.

A 43
Williams
W--I think that’s true. And of course in the field of educa­
tion there is something else that is heppening that I
haven't thought of in this connection before, and that
is there will be no more John Hannahs. John Hannah at
the end, as you know, was barely tolerated by the
faculty and if he hadn't been a John Hannah, he wouldn't
have been tolerated at all. Presidents today in a
university are no longer presidents, [but] are sort of
mediators between the faculty.
It's going to be very
difficult for any president to exercise political or any
other kind of dominance. He's going to have a lot of
trouble right in hiw own backyard.
I don't mean trouble,
I mean he's going to have a lot of necessary problems.
F--Presidents are more mediators than they are leaders today.
W--That's right and in one sense I welcome it, but in another
sense I regret it because the faculty can look after their
own interests better.
Obviously [in the] MSU of twenty
years ago the faculty was underpowered, they didn't have
the power vis-a-vis the president they ought to, but
unless the future presidents from time to time have more
power, it's going to be hard to direct the progress that
may have to be made....
We're talking about vocationalism,
you know, when you get all of the different faculties
together they are not going to make a decision very easily
that you've got to move into vocationalism. It's going to
take one leader....
F--No, but the point is that there will certainly be future
public demands that we cannot anticipate and there won't
be any representation of that to-be-created-demand.
W--Let me just button that up. Again, I'm not talking in
any invidious sense about faculty power.
I am merely
observing that the faculty is comparable to the
Legislature and the Legislature with its dispersal of
numbers vis-a-vis the Governor has difficulty in
marshalling itself to turn around or to do something.
I think it's going to be more difficult for universities
to meet, as you say, novel challenges just because of
the structure.
F--And I understood what you were saying about the days of
solitary leadership rather than consultancy of things
are probably past.
W--Oh, yes, that's gone forever, and probably rightly so.

A 44
Williams
F--Let me ask you two last questions. Who in your opinion were
the significant opinion leaders in higher education in
Michigan in your time? Secondly, who were the influential
individuals whose insights were of the greatest significance
to you?
W--Well, I saw that question, and I knew I was going to have
difficulty in answering it.
The most powerful individual leader was, obviously, John
Hannah, because he was not only a thoughtful person but he
was always able to gather the votes to move things in his
direction.
There were others.
I mentioned Jim Miller who certainly
performed at a somewhat later date a minor revolution over
there at Western.
I don't know, I worked with all of them, I mean all the
presidents, all the various individuals.
I knew some of
the professors who gave me somewhat of an insight.
I really
would prefer not to answer that without having time for
further thought because obviously...
F--Let me tell you what the purpose of the question is. As I
conduct some of this, there is always the public eye out
there and everyone says and people have the view that
governors do it all by themselves.
There is always some
guy in the back room.
W--Well, I had two people that were in the back room that were
very helpful to me. One was Jim Miller because he was my
budget director and all that, and before him was Bob
Steadman. Now these two people were extremely helpful...
^
I was closely tied to the teachers' union and Adelaide Hart
was always very helpful in giving me a different perspective
on these things.
I had excellent relations with the MEA
[Michigan Education Association] and Dr. Phillips
.
12

Adelaide Julia Hart; Democrat from Detroit; Member,
Executive Board, 17th Congressional District Democratic
Committee; Delegate to Constitutional Convention.
1%

Albert J. Phillips; Executive Secretary of the Michigan
Education Association, 1933-67.

A 45
Williams
F--I wonder if there was somebody in the labor...
like Mel
Glasser particularly stands for health issues today, and
I was wondering if there was somebody there I might talk
to that I have missed.
W--If you would talk to Adelaide Hart she could tell you.
I
was sure there was somebody in the UAW and I was trying to
place him or her in my mind, but I can’t. I'll tell you
somebody who was also helpful and she can't help you because
she is dead, unfortunately; that was Margaret Price.
She
was interested in young people and their problems.
You
know old President Lubbers at Hope College gave me some
interesting insights and I'm thinking of one professor at
the University of Michigan, William Haber.
F--Governor, thank you so very much.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
EDWARD L. CUSHMAN1

F--What in your opinion were the reasons that led to the
expansion of higher education in Michigan from 1958
to 1970?
C--I would say, basically, the numbers of students that
were interested in higher education.
This was a result of two factors: one, the aspirations
of students as they recognized the value of higher
education; two, the fact that the economy continued
to be essentially an expanding economy and revenue
sources were sufficiently available to the state to
make possible education beyond high school for more
students.
F--One thing strikes me as a curious thing: In other states
the number of the citizenry who made the decision to go
to college was significantly lower.
Do you think there was something peculiar about our
population, or peculiar about the public policy role of
government and the institutions of our Michigan society,
that created a desire way beyond the national norm for
people to go to college?
For instance, Ohio has certainly got a lower percentage
of people who have gone to college.
C--We've had, as you well know, a tradition since indeed
before the founding of our state, for education beyond
the high school.
I think there is a serious condition
that exists in public education in Michigan.
I've
Edward L. Cushman; Director, American Motors Corporation,
1962; Co-chairman, Citizens Committee on Higher Education,
1963-65; Executive Vice-President, Wayne State University,
1966. Interview conducted April 19, 1974.
A 46

A 47
Cushman
forgotten the exact percentages now, and you would
know them.
In contrast with Ohio--where a wandering minister
could open up a private college--from the beginning
Michigan had its institutions, whether private or
public, under reasonably close regulation.
They had
to be licensed and supervised, in effect.
Not that it was always done too well, but if you recall
the University of Michigan was originally, in effect,
the body that had the authority to approve the creation
of any private or public institution of higher learning
in this state. This was true for a number of years
when the state was first organized.
F--That's a good point. As a matter of fact, I recollectand I had forgotten it until you refreshed my mind-that the University of Michigan also was the accred­
iting agency through the Bureau of School Services for
all the K-12 programs in the state.
C--That's true, until not too many years ago in fact.
F--But it's still an important point.
What in your opinion were the social and economic
factors that led to this significant growth? Some
have identified, for instance, the post-war aspira­
tions of returning soldiers.
C--Yes, I would agree that that was it, although there
was great disappointment that there weren't more
resources made available for them. From that point of
view, that's true following World War II and since.
Opportunities were made available to greater numbers
and the aspirations were such, you know....
Let's put
it this way, when need or aspirations and resources
get together at the same time, then you have the
opportunity for it. That's what happened in this state
I think, too, we had a growing number of first-genera­
tion immigrant families in Detroit who themselves had
not been able to get to college, who with the war-time
and post-war improvements in the economy, and when
their own conditions were improved, encouraged and

A 48
Cushman
were able in fact to get their children to go to
college.
I think that’s a pretty deep-seated feeling.
F--And it is still probably true to this day, isn’t it?
C--I believe that to be true.
F--I think one of the main engines of Michigan’s society
has been what I call the Horatio Alger Dream; which is,
in a sense, the belief that for our ethnic and agri­
cultural minorities, Blacks and the like, the way to
improve your station and status in society is really
and truly education.
C--That's right, and that’s true right now. Not only true
here but all over the country there's been a much
higher degree of career orientation and motivation of
students in higher education than was true during the
decade of the sixties, and it is indeed shown by the
kind of courses that the students elect.
I think that
that's going to continue to be a major motivating
influence.
F--Did you, from your vantage point, see that the labor,
agricultural, commercial, automotive industry, other
industry, and the government itself, had policy
objectives for higher education designed to improve
the quality of life in Michigan?
C--I

would say so.

I think that it was primarily, however, stimulated by
public leaders rather than by the leaders of commerce
and industry, or indeed even of labor, Although both
of these elements, industry and labor, have traditionally--and feel very strongly today in Michiganfavored education beyond the high school.
The automobile companies and the contracts with the
UAW provide the various kinds of training allowances
for people to improve their job-related skills.
General Motors, for example, will pay the tuition of
a student for a course at this university, or others
throughout the country in fact, in order to permit that.
But I do think that the primary stimulus, if you want
to call it that, came from the voters; the parents of

A 49
Cushman
students and students themselves.
I think this was a
citizen influence more than any other single factor, and
that this, therefore, led people like legislators, gov­
ernors, and so forth, to provide some real leadership.
The first of these reports that you were talking about
was really a legislative-initiated report.
This sort
of fell on deaf ears because it was filed and sort of
just put away in libraries. There wasn’t a citizen
impact on it, that led to it, and then the governor
didn't pick it up and give it any leadership either.
The Constitutional Convention, of course, provided a
very real opportunity for examination of this and the
subsequent Blue Ribbon Commission that Governor Romney
appointed was involved rather heavily.
In the Constitutional Convention, in which as you know
I had some involvement, primarily through my wife
[Catherine Moore Cushman] who was a delegate, but I had
also served as the vice-chairman of Citizens for Michigan
and vice-chairman of the Coordinating Committee that led
to the calling of the Convention. And I did serve as
the chairman of the committee that worked to try to get
the new Constitution adopted in this state.
F--Let me ask you a question or two about Citizens for
Michigan.
You were involved in the Citizens for Michigan, and that
was in fact one of the vehicles that led to George
Romney becoming Governor and perhaps even being nation­
ally considered as a viable candidate for President of
the United States.
Do you believe that education was one of the most
important citizen concerns that came through that public
movement? It was really one of the first public move­
ments that we've had in this state in a long time.
C--Not as much as I would like to, because Citizens for
Michigan was created to get at the problems that we
had in the state government. At that time, as you
recall, we were in a financial bind, partly because
A reference to a preliminary discussion about the
John Dale Russell Report.

A 50

Cushman
we had so many of our resources earmarked under the
old Constitution and the Legislature and the Governor
weren't working together as effectively in facing up
to the problems as they might have been.
We had just started to study these problems, including
having a committee on education, when the League of
Women Voters of Michigan--which had joined with the
State Junior Chamber of Commerce in proposing a
Constitutional Convention--got hold of me. The state
president said that unless Citizens for Michigan got
into this matter they were going to have to drop it
because they didn't have the money.
They didn't have
the manpower--womanpower I suppose I should say these
days--to do it. The Jaycees had proved to be no real
help, a lot of talk but not much action, and they
didn't have money.
And so we held a session and decided that no matter
what the studies, both in the field of education
finance or other dimensions of it, it was very clear
that the Michigan Constitution was in need of modern­
ization.
We joined with them and the Jaycees and a
number of other groups in creating a coordinating
council that went to work to get petitions signed to
call the Convention.
Now it's true that this focused some real attention on
education because among the things that were discussed,
it was. But once the Convention was called, however,
Citizens for Michigan didn't continue to study this
question of education on its own. But when the
Convention appointed a Committee on Education under
the leadership of A1 Bentley^, the chairman, they
spent considerable time on it.
I think that this did
focus some real attention on it.
F--Did you supply--the Citizens for Michigan--some of the
fiscal muscle for this movement?
C--Yes.
3

Alvin M. Bentley;, Republican; U.S. Congressman from
Owosso; Member Citizens Committee on Higher Education;
Regent of University of Michigan.

A 51
Cushman
F--Where did they get their money?
C--They got their money from the membership contributing
to it. Some loans were made by the chairman and the
vice-chairman, which I don't think ever got paid off,
not very much of [it]. I know I got stuck for some
of it.
F--I guess I was curious if Michigan industries had
thrown money in.
C--No, no, these were individual contributions. We had
something over 5,000 contributing members at one stage
and that's where it came from.
I know that in connec­
tion with it we borrowed some money.
That is, Citizens
for Michigan did.
F--We were talking about what the policy objectives were
that underlay this expansion, and you identified the
strong feeling of Michigan citizens on a very broad
base to improve their own skills. And you talked some
about that long sense of Michigan history, about being
concerned about higher education, that had gone back
to the time when we were a Territory--which I think
is certainly appealing to a historian because of the
value of tradition--which perhaps has not been so in
some of the other states.
What were some of these key issues that resulted in
partisan and parochial conflict in the attempts to
broaden the base? Certainly, for instance, the
question of a state university in the city of Detroit
must have been one.
C--Well, I don’t know about the degree of conflict that
existed about it but the State of Michigan--I became
acquainted with this in the two years I spent as
Co-chairman of Governor Romney's Blue Ribbon Commission-has not only had this long tradition that we're talking
about, but it has had a system that has encompassed
both public and private institutions.
Some of them are
parochial or religious, in their origin at least, and
some still continue from that point of view, although
in a very sharply diminished number and relationship.
The growth occurred because the system was a viable
system.
I think there was a need.
I think that the

A 52
Cushman
individual institutions tailored their programs to
meet that need and I think that we have ended up with
one of the better state systems of higher education
in the nation.
F--It is certainly hard for people in other states to
understand the subtle nature of our system because it
is not bureaucratic, it's not really administrative,
it's a very subtle system for the competition for
resources.
C--Let me say this: During the Constitutional Convention
I had tended to favor the idea of the California
system.
This indeed I pushed for with my friends who
were delegates to that Convention.
It was not, however,
something that the Convention was willing to accept.
They, in their wisdom, looked at the arrangements that
had existed, thought that they were better than
California or other systems, and retained essentially
the same arrangement.
The only exception was that the State Board of Education
that was created was given a responsibility to help plan
and coordinate higher education in the state. Not with
any authority over operations of the institutions of
higher learning, but with some advisory or coordinating
function--the word coordinate being a rather confusing
word--subject to various kinds of interpretation.
But it was clearly understood by the Convention.
I
can say that from having talked tomany members and
delegates of that Convention. The intent was to
continue the kind of operationthat existed, with
the autonomy that had existed, but to give to the
institutions, other than the so-called big three
institutions, a higher degree of status than they had
had before.
At the time that this was approved I was not in agree­
ment with it, although I've been told that I was by
some people.
I can say that I wasn't during that
Convention. John Hannah, with whom I discussed it at
the time, indicated that there was much to be said
for some of the things I was saying, but it wasn't
practical.
I think that he's probably right because, as you know,
the new Constitution was adopted by a thin margin.

A 53

Cushman
If it had had the opposition of probably a few more
people at the Convention, the result would have
endangered the new Constitution.
I became much more aware of what you call the subtleties
of the Michigan system during the two years of Governor
Romney's Blue Ribbon Commission.
I was the one who got
Harold Smith made available as the staff director by
the Upjohn group in Kalamazoo. He did a good deal to
help me think it through.
Dr. John R. Richards, who used to be here at Wayne
State University [where he] spent half-time as an
assistant to President David Henry and half-time
working with me in the Institute of Industrial Labor
Relations.
He later became, eventually, the Executive
Director of the California Coordinating Council on
Higher Education, and a member of the Governor's
cabinet.
That Council is supposed to be the group
that helps to coordinate higher education in that state.
Knowing him rather well I called him after the
Governor's study commission was created and invited
him out to talk to us about it, which he did on several
occasions.
In my first telephone conversation with him,
when I spoke to him with some degree of warmth about
the values of the California system, he responded by
saying that I didn't understand the system if that
was my attitude, because the system didn't work the
way it was supposed to on paper.
He also advised me that my good friend, Clark Kerr,
was probably the biggest single stumbling block to
working it out. He had gotten to know Clark and they
had had some frank discussions.
He used to run the
Industrial Relations Center at Berkeley before he
became Chancellor at Berkeley and at this time he
was President of the University of California.
The University of California didn't try to tie in,
apparently, as well as it might with the system of
colleges--I think they have changed to call them
universities recently--and with the community colleges.
The regional colleges all aspired, as they have
apparently now become, to being regional universities.
They just couldn't seem to get the plan to operate

A 54

Cushman
the way it was supposed to on paper, and in his
opinion by statute.
Have you talked to Harold Smith?
F--No, but I'm going to.
C--He's a great note-taker and he may have had some of
that stuff from Jack Richards, who later became the
President of the Institute for International Education
in New York and unfortunately died some years ago.
I might also say that I talked to Dr. Kerr, who himself
was not that enthusiastic about the system either.
I
never did get him to come out and meet with the group.
F--What, Ed, do you think were the reasons that the
Con-Con delegates turned their backs on the admin­
istrative structure that was so much a part of the
California system?
Jim Farnsworth--who is vice-chairman of the House
Appropriations Committee--talked to me about that
strong sense of history which you have alluded to,
and also that sturdy sense of independence that
Michigan residents have. He said there is a fear
by Michigan residents of big government, big schools,
big universities, big administrative structures.
I
wonder what your thoughts were from talking to
delegates.
C--That's a good statement by Jim Farnsworth of my
impressions.
I think that all of those factors were
present and motivated because of that attitude.
I
think that the delegates thought that it was unwise
to depart from a system which they believed had
resulted in some outstanding institutions of higher
learning in this state, to change to something new
and different, where bureaucracy and partisan
politics might more likely get into the situation.
Traditionally the governing boards of the institutions
of higher learning, up until recently, have been quite
decidedly nonpartisan; even in the three elective
boards up until not too many years ago, which are
elected on a partisan basis.
Once the people were
elected they acted as if they were nonpartisan in fact.

A 55
Cushman
I might also say that one of the things that did not
happen in the Constitution was the elimination of the
elected governing board members of the three major
institutions.
Once again, this was because of tradi­
tion and history and a belief that the University of
Michigan had become one of the great universities of
the world under that system, Michigan State University
had grown in its size and quality under that system,
and Wayne State University--since it became a state
institution in 1956--had grown both in size and quality
as well, and that perhaps it was just as well not to
tamper with that.
F--Although I do gather there was a strong disinclination
to let the schools, the big three, grow bigger.
I
hear they wanted to limit their size to 40,000.
C--Well, there was a discussion about that, but there was
also a feeling that it wasn't realistic to put numbers
in the Constitution. A number of people who were
delegates would have certainly agreed that that was
a good idea.
F--Do you think that might have been for the same
objection? Part of the focus of the Constitutional
Convention was to take budget controls out of the
Constitution and to end the designated fund concepts.
Do you think that same attitude may have prevailed
for the same reason--not to have put numbers in?
C--I believe so.
F--They didn't want to sort of etch it in concrete--a
policy that might not last a hundred years.
C— I believe that to be true.
F--Do you think one of the key issues of this period
was popularism in higher education versus elitism?
C--Yes, I would say so.
F--It seems to me that part of the focus where the
University of Michigan was strongly on the defense
and others were [espousing] a desire for alternative
educational institutions rather than going the
California way.
C--You understand that in California they had the same

A 56
Cushman
kind of problem.
The University of California at
Berkeley was charged with being an elitist institu­
tion during much of its recent history, the last
several decades in particular.
The contrast between that institution and some of
the regional colleges was designed to have access to
higher education made available to those who just
couldn't meet either the intellectual or the financial
requirements of Berkeley.
F--I guess I'm after something more than this.
It's my
suspicion that the citizenry became concerned with
the desire to graduate elites rather than to admit
them, and that in this focus developed Michigan
State, Wayne, the regional institutions, and yes,
the growth of a complete community college system.
In 1958 the appropriations for community colleges
was $3 million.
This year I suspect that it is some
$65 or $70 million.
That in a sense is a massive
allocation of public resource.
I wonder if that
w as....
C--Very much so. One of the unfortunate results of the
John Dale Russell Report's failure to be widely read
and used--I've forgotten the name of the representative4 who was so active in that in the House, from
upstate--was that the community college aspect of
that didn't get used the way it might have.
In the report of the Romney Blue Ribbon Commission
that chapter on the community colleges was probably
the best single part of that report. I think that
the growth of the community colleges that you have
described has been one of the best things that could
happen to the people in our state.
That is because
of the very reasons that you have identified: mainly
that it has made education beyond high school
available to more and more students.
4
Dr. Cushman soon recalled the name of Charles A.
Boyer.

A 57
Cushman
F--I'm particularly stimulated by your remark about the
difference between the John Dale Russell Report and
the Blue Ribbon Report,
As an observer, rather than a student, it struck me
that the Blue Ribbon Report somehow legitimatized and
enfranchised the community college and really gave it
its tremendous impetus.
In 1964 the appropriation to
community colleges was only six million, so that in
fact in that six-year period it had only doubled,
whereas in the next six years it went from some six
million to some 40 million.
So somehow I think that you are right about that
100 percent--that the Blue Ribbon Report some way gave
a new sense of direction and purpose to it.
It was
very rapidly implemented without a great deal of
hurrah and foolishness about sending it back to
committee.
C--I think, at least I like to think, that what you say is
true.
I think one of the advantages is that the member­
ship of that study commission was a fairly broad state­
wide membership.
We had people who are not noted for
their being unrealistic, like Carl Gerstacker, the
Board Chairman of Dow Chemical.
Nobody has ever accused
Carl of being unrealistic.
You had people who are key people, scattered round this
entire state, that took some leadership in this in their
home communities as well.
F--I have the feeling that in some way the John Dale Russell
Report didn’t really touch the communities of this state.
C--I don't think that they even knew it existed, frankly.
I like the use of your term when you say this report
legitimatized the movement.
I think it did, at least
I like to think it did, in terms of the quality of the
report.
But also I think that the quality of that
commission had a great deal to do about it.
I've
forgotten who they all were now [although] I was
involved somewhat in the selection.
F--It is a very interesting cosmopolitan group.
I was
curious as to who you regarded as the most influential

A 58
Cushman
people. Now it is true that everybody makes a contri­
bution, but there must have been some with greater
degree of energy that you regarded as really vital.
C--Well, let me put it this way.
I ’d say that the history
of this is that Governor Romney talked to me about the
need for such a group. We sat down and discussed it
and I suggested--he may have suggested it but I think
I did--the idea of a troika.
I guess that wouldn't
be a term...no, that's not a good term today...but
the idea was to have somebody who appealed to the
more conservative Republicans in the Legislature
and in the state.
So he asked Dan Karn, who was then the retired
President of Consumers Power in Jackson and who had
been a delegate to the Constitutional Convention.
He had been thinking about this and of course the
Governor knew him well and that was one reason for
his suggesting him.
And Irving Bluestone, who is International Vice-President
of UAW and a man of great ability and deep concern about
higher education.
He took his Master's degree from the
University of Berne, if I remember.
That gave us a
Republican and a Democrat.
Although I've been accused of many things, I've always
considered myself a political independent. And
furthermore, since I was with American Motors on my
12-year leave of absence from this University, I had
the advantage of not being considered a professional
administrator or college professor, but instead there
was some feeling that perhaps I had some degree of
practicality in looking at it.
As far as the others were concerned: A1 Bentley, who
later became a Regent at the University of Michigan,
in part because of his work here, was the chairman
of the Finance Committee.
I might say that the
selection of Alvin Bentley to this commission was a
suggestion of my wife, who had gotten to know him in
the Constitutional Convention, in particular, although
we knew him casually before that.
I had never been a
great admirer of Mr. Bentley when he was a Congressman,
but my wife said to me that as chairman of that
Committee on Education he had demonstrated a deep

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Cushman
concern and knowledge and a high degree of dedication
to improving education.
I thought that as one of a rather large number of
members of the commission, his acceptance as an outstate conservative Republican who didn't like to spend
money would be very helpful.
If in fact he was a
believer in the expansion of higher education in the
state--which took money--and if through the process
of identification of the issues and problems and
opportunities and needs, he could be persuaded (as
I was with my prejudices a priori going into this)
that there had to be a significant expansion in
education and in its resources, this would be a
great thing.
So I added him in my suggestions to
the Governor, who had gotten to k^ow him as a man of
integrity and dedication and as a delegate to the
Constitutional Convention.
The opening day of the first meeting of this study
commission I happened to walk down the corridor with
A1 Bentley.
I said to him: "A1, I don't know how
well you and I are going to get along in this
commission.
Compared to you, I'm a great spender.
I am thoroughly and completely convinced that what
we need in this state is a judicious, to be sure,
but nonetheless massive infusion of resources to
meet the needs of the people of this state." Where­
upon Mr. Bentley said to me: "Well, I don't disagree
with that, Ed.
I'm certain that we need expansion
for higher education and that it takes money."
Consequently when Mr. Karn and Mr. Bluestone and I
sat down to pick the chairmen of the committees, I
suggested that A1 Bentley would make a great chairman
of the finance committee.
Mr. Bluestone said to me,
"Are you kidding, Ed?" I said, "No, I'm quite serious
about that." It didn't seem to him to be in the cards,
but we looked over the membership and of course Dan Karn
was all gung ho for him. And so we proceeded, and he
made a tremendous contribution.
He also made a tremendous contribution in serving as
the chairman of a subcommittee which led to a sharp
increase in the state appropriation for that year.

A 60
Cushman
Governor Romney said to me that we ought to take on
the chore of looking at what the appropriations for
higher education ought to be.
I said to him that I
didn't think that was a function of this study
commission, which had a two-year life of studying
what we ought to be doing fundamentally about higher
education in this state.
But he was very insistent
and so he sent a letter to the commission in which
he asked us to take on this chore. Mr. Bentley [was] a
logical person to chair that, and I served as the
vice-chairman of that subcommittee.
We had a number of meetings in which the net result
was a recommendation which jumped the appropriation
appreciably.
I've forgotten the figures now, but I
do know that Governor Romney felt that we had sort
of put him in a corner and the Legislature would
never accept that sharp an increase, but that he was
committed by us--we were his commission--to fight
hard for it.
It was approved and adopted.
In addition to Governor
Romney, I would say that the most effective lobbyist
for it was one Alvin M. Bentley because, if you will
recall, Senator Gearlings of Holland....
Was that
before your time?
F--It was before my time but I recollect legends of the
man.
C--Well, he was not a spender and, as I indicated, A1
Bentley was not a spender.
In fact, I could give
you chapter and verse about such things as paying for
breakfast as he looked down and found 10^ added
improperly and had it corrected. He would not pay
the 10<f--although I believe he could afford it
reasonably well.
Senator Gearlings said to A1 Bentley, "How can I
argue against it when A1 Bentley is for it?" I saw
him about five minutes after that and he said, "I
don't want to talk to you. A1 Bentley has already
talked to me and I'll just tell you I don't see any
way of avoiding my being for this, but I think you
fellows are all wrong."

A 61
Cushman
That kind of pressure from Bentley took some of the
most conservative Republicans and put them on the
right side of that appropriation.
And strangely
enough that was one of the reasons for his election.
This fellow I was trying to think of before on the
earlier study, the Russell Report, was Charles A.
Boyer of Manistee.
Boyer had earlier been a member
of the State Legislature and was on the committee
that worked with Russell.
Carl Gerstacker was another
very able and aggressive member of the committee.
I ’ve forgotten frankly which [subcommittee] he chaired
but he was very effective in dealing with it.
You look at the membership. As I look at it now I
can see why it was a pretty good group.
It was state­
wide in character. Austin Saunders, head of General
Telephone Company of Muskegon, is not only an important
businessman but a very well-liked one, a very active
one in the community.
You can say the same thing
about Mrs. John Parsons of Traverse City, who is very
active in that community and was head of the ParentTeachers Congress of the state, and that sort of thing.
Mrs. Parker^ of Grand Rapids was chairman of the...
F--And Heavenrich^from Saginaw.
C--We picked them from all over.
Motors, Ford, and so forth.

We had the UAW, General

Earl Wolfman was with the labor movement,yWhich was
well represented.
Bill Defoe of Bay City , and the
city of Detroit was well represented.
F--Who were the people from the automotive industry?
C--Well, I was from American Motors.
Tom Morrow of
Chrysler Corporation, who--I don’t know what his title
is now--he was Group Vice-President at that point;
Ted Yntema, who was Vice-President for Finance of the
'’Mrs. James C. Parker.
^Max P. Heavenrich, Saginaw merchant.
7
William M. Defoe of Defoe Shipbuilding Company.

A 62
Cushman
Ford Motor Company at that time; and General Motors’
George Jacoby, who was Director of Personnel Services
for General Motors and among other things handled
their relationships with higher education throughout
the country.
Bill Pine, who is a former university
president--you may have met him--was with Ford Motor
Company as Director of Scholarship Programs. All of
the auto companies, in other words, were represented
by senior people.
F--One of my conclusions that I'm working on is that
because of the felicitous choice of people the Blue
Ribbon Committee had great strength above and beyond
the normal kind of study commission.
C--I’d like to emphasize that, because, as I say, one of
the objectives from the beginning was--let’s not have
another Russell Report that just gathered dust. There­
fore you had to have a group that really actively
worked. And that group, incidentally, did actively
work. Harold Smith can provide you with the details.
F--I think one of the interesting things is that the
commission mechanism was a political mechanism of
Williams’ administration, when they didn't have
strength in the Legislature, to go beyond that to
the public.
Since the new Constitution, institutions have been
more receptive to public opinion, the broad-ranging
commission had disappeared as a phenomenon of the
Michigan landscape.
Really, since this commission,
there truly has not ever again been one as wideranging or as influential.
In my personal view,
Governor Milliken’s attempt to create school reform
failed because he only went for five people rather
than...
C--I agree with that.
Governor Milliken called me and
reached me over at the bar at the Park Shelton when
he was appointing that committee.
I gave him three
comments in connection with it, one of which he
followed.
One: He talked to me about the proposed membership and
it did not include a woman.
I suggested the then State
President of the League of Women Voters [Ilene Tomber,
1971-73] be a member, which he accepted.
That was the
only one of the three.

A 63
Cushman
The second: I suggested that he get a chairman other
than himself because the Governor ought to be in a
position to stand away from it, and he doesn’t have
that much time. He gave a great deal of time to it,
however, but at the same time...
F--He got mired up in it.
C--That's right.
And the third thing was that the commission, if it
were dependent solely on the prestige of a Governor,
couldn't succeed because what you're talking about
is something so broad in its concerns that you needed
a commission of roughly the size--40 to 60--of this
[earlier] commission.
Sure it had to have a steering
committee and an executive committee, but it had to
have the involvement of the people.
We had the chairmen of each of the subcommittees, and
the three co-chairmen, as the executive and steering
committee of this group.
But at the same time there
were quite frequent meetings of the total group which
were amazingly well-attended when you realize that
some of them had to come down from the Upper Peninsula
to go to Lansing.
Our meetings were essentially held
in the Kellogg Center at Michigan State during that
period, so it took quite a bit to get that group there.
However, Governor Milliken proceeded with his program
and it did not succeed.
It didn't even succeed in
winning the help of a number of people, including
myself, who were not in favor of some of the things
that came up in the K-12 proposal.
F--How important were the vocational and occupational
training objectives in the enhancement of higher
education in this period, 1958 to 1970?
C--0nly with respect, I believe, to the development of
the community colleges but not with respect to the
four-year institutions or the graduate institutions.
Unless you want to call professional preparation part
of it, but I don't interpret your question that way.
What it did do was to provide for the two-track
system in the community colleges.
Those programs

A 64
Cushman
which were vocational and technical and terminal.
F--Ok, but there was the direct point that state support
for research, although badly attacked by the older
members of the Legislature, still received support
for really the first time.
Is that part of this?
C--Yes, but in all too limited a fashion.
Somehow or
other we have never been able to make it clear that
research is an investment in the future of the state
that's so vital that it deserves more support than
we have given it.
This is a state that is a well-diversified state in
its economy, but not diversified enough.
The auto­
mobile industry--as you know I still serve as a
director of American Motors and am not apologizing
for the industry--and its suppliers tend to dominate
the state too much. The auto industry is bound to
have, as a durable consumer-goods industry with its
products deferrable in terms of purchase for many
people, a degree of change that occurs with the
business cycle that adversely affects the lives of
many people when there is a downturn.
To a much
greater extent in places like Detroit, Flint,
et cetera, than is wise and desirable.
F--So what you're saying is that it would have been a
good public policy to have encouraged diversifica­
tion of Michigan industry into less cyclical
industries while still not turning our backs on the
automotive.
C--That's right. Not only would it have been desirable,
it is still desirable.
F--What about the growth of culture and the arts? Do
you think that had any importance in the mind of the
policy-makers as they looked at enhancing higher
education?
The temptation, of course, is to say yes, but I don't
have the feeling that it existed.
C--You described my delayed reaction very well.
This
state has many advantages culturally indeed. But the
state is not one that has been as devoted to this as
one might expect.

A 65
Cushman
When you look at Detroit with its resources, not only
of the university, but with the Institute of Arts,
and the Library, we have a number of these activities
that are very actively pursued and attended.
But on the other hand, we have only one legitimate
theater really operating in Detroit. You look around
the state and if it weren’t for the universities and
those communities which are fortunate enough to have
them, there is a real dearth of...
F--It's not easy to talk about this because of the civic
do-goodism, but I ’m from Massachusetts and legitimate
theaters, operas, symphonies, art museums exist without
the protection and sustenance of higher education
institutions. Higher education institutions supple­
ment them, they don’t supply them.
And in this state, which is rich enough, it is the
seventh richest in the Union, we have no opera, we
have a precariously funded,marginal symphony orches­
tra, we have very little legitimate theater, we have
few art museums, and we don't seem to have a tradition
of public philanthropy for these things.
It may well
be that Michigan's people don't have that same devotion
to the arts and culture that they do have to higher
education and learning.
C--It appears that way.
F--It looks to me that the higher education institutions
have had to support and succor a culture as part of
the educational programs in order to find examples
for it. where it didn't exist in the outside society.
It's just astonishing to take a look
the theater program of Wayne as part
how many millions? Some two million
There are hardly any alternatives to
program.
That's not the case in New
or Philadelphia.

at the role of
of a city of
here in Detroit?
Wayne's cultural
York, in Boston,

Would you concur with that kind of an attitude?
C--I regret to say so.
F--I have already alluded to "what were the positions of
labor." Did you want to amplify what you thought the
position of labor was?

A 66
Cushman
C--As I indicated, labor has traditionally favored higher
education.
On that Blue Ribbon Commission, as I
mentioned, one of the co-chairmen was Irving Bluestone.
There were several others, Alex Fuller, who was the
President of the Wayne County AFL-CIO...
F--Were Scholle and Reuther putting the muscle in behind
these men?
C--Yes, no question about that.
Ivan Brown from the Upper Peninsula UAW; Woody Ginsburg,
who was the Research Director of the UAW in Detroit
at the time; Earl Wolfman of the United Bakery and
Confectionary Workers Union.
F--This is a difficult question I want to askyou
What is the role of industry?

now.

It's my experience that Michigan industry has very
rarely deeply cared about higher education in terms
of the institutions. Now, that's in contradiction
to your remarks pointing out the automotive contracts
for the attainment of additional skills.
C--Well, more than that.
Let's take the University of
Michigan, of which I am an alumnus and a member of
its President's Club--which is a fund-raising organ­
ization.
The University of Michigan "margin of excellence"
program has been one that is widely acclaimed and
envied throughout the nation. The sesquicentennial
drive netted something close to $80 million, which
was in excess of its objective at the time. A great
deal of this money came from industry: the automobile
companies and in other cases from the leaders of
business and industry.
F--So you feel that there was a strong espousal from
industry in very direct ways.
C--Yes, I think so. But I don't want to indicate to
you my satisfaction with that. We are talking about
a question of degree.

A 67

Cushman
I think that there is still some tendency on the part
of corporation leadership throughout the state to feel
that it is not a primary concern and that the amount
of monies that can be provided is somewhat limited.
We still have
some, for example, that refuse to make
contributions
to public institutions, and do so
essentially through back-door rather than overt and
clear arrangements.
F--What about the role of commerce? I've had the
feeling that one should separate themin their views.
Do you feel a
different attitudeon the part of
commerce?
I think I've specifically asked that because of the
role of Seidman and the Kent Bank in Grand Rapids,
and the number of commercial people that were on
your commission.
It was really instructive for me
to see people like Heavenrich and the like. They
weren't really a part of the industrial aristocracy
but yet they seem to have come in and had a focus
somewhat different.
C — I don't know that their focus was that different.
These are men of education and concern who served
representing commerce.
I'd say that many of them
have, as you look at the state, a local interest to
a degree, the welfare of their community and of their
businesses.
F--That harkens back
about that strong
commercial people
industrial people

to what we talked about earlier,
sense of local pride. Maybe the
had more of a local sense and the
like Gerstacker more of a national..

C--Carl Gerstacker of Dow Chemical, that's an inter­
national company.
The folks from the automobile
companies, these are all international companies.
The people from these retail establishments are
peculiarly local in their focus, but we were
fortunate in having people with broad experience
and attainment.
F--So then, in a sense, a very useful way to regard it
was that commerce was more locally oriented and the
industry more nationally and internationally motivated

A 68

Cushman
C--Yes, I would say so. Although I don't know that it
made that much difference to this particular study.
F--What about the role of agriculture?
negative, positive, nonexistent?

Was that

C--It was relatively minor and I would consider that one
of the deficiencies in the work of that commission.
We had people from around the state who were in agri­
cultural areas, but we didn't really have as an
effective and concerned representative of agriculture
as we should have had. That was partly my fault, as
I worked with the Governor in the selection of the
members of that committee.
F--Although it is worthwhile to observe that in the
Legislature today, of 148 members, only one member
lists his occupation as agricultural. Whereas,
probably when you first became interested in state
policies the number of agricultural members of the
Legislature was significant.
C--Wasn't there one fellow there [in the Legislature]
who is still active in the Farm Bureau?
F--Not now, that I know of.
What were the pressures and influences in the deter­
mination of public policy, if any, that you could
observe from the federal government?
C--Are you talking about at the time of this commission
or are you talking about at the present time?
F--I'm thinking about the whole period.
C--I'd say that throughout the period the role of the
federal government was--until recently--an expanding
one. One that influenced markedly the kind of
programs and financing that existed. As you will
recall, after Sputnik, you had the tremendous emphasis
on science and technology, and you had the research
grants particularly in areas such as...
F--And then there was the higher education facilities
commission and the scholarship...

A 69
Cushman
C--...and the construction and scholarship aid, you see,
and so forth...
F--But they really didn’t ask you to model your programs,
did they? They really left it in an entrepreneurial
way, whereas the federal input into social services
sets mandates of performance.
Were there mandates of performance that you felt or
observed from the federal government for higher
education?
C--Well, I would say that there was some with respect to
certain student financial aid programs.
But essen­
tially I ’d say that there was a very high degree of
autonomy that institutions had under the federal
grants, not that they weren’t audited and all the
rest of it.
Certainly this was true in sharp contrast
with the tendencies on the part of the State of Michigan-ever since you got involved with it and since--of much
more detailed evaluation and control.
F--You’re not going to get a response from me out of
that because it's gone a lot further than I'm
comfortable with.
What about the pressures and influences in determin­
ation of public policy, if any, from the private sector?
All through this period we had the gradual decay of
the religious schools.
I wondered if there were
defensive mechanisms or pressures from the private
sector of higher education in this period that you
observed.
C--Not really.
Let me say that I served for many years on the Board
of Trustees of Kalamazoo College, which is a small
1100 some-odd students, liberal arts college of some
quality and some demonstrated ability to experiment
with various approaches to higher education--one of
the oldest colleges in this state started by the
Baptists. There still is a small contingent, I ’ve
forgotten how many, two or three or whatever it is,
that serve on the Board of that institution, but
it's predominantly nondenominational. There is no

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Cushman
particular relationship other than that token
representation on the Board.
Now the feeling I have is that private higher educa­
tion has been caught in a very real squeeze finan­
cially; which is extremely unfortunate because colleges
like Kalamazoo can experiment, innovate, try a lot of
things when there is money because of their size and
their limited objectives.
F--You didn't feel pressure, for instance, from University
of Detroit over the growth of Wayne at the time of the
Blue Ribbon Report?
C--No, not at all. But you see that was a period, don't
forget, of great expansion for private and public
institutions.
The drop-off in student population in
higher education is of fairly recent origin.
F--Well, maybe the effects of it, but they've been
declining about one percent a year during the
period of this study.
What in your opinion were the regional pressures to
expand higher education in one location rather than
another?
Obviously you had the Saginaw issue, and the Grand
Valley issue.
Some speak of a Traverse City initia­
tive; which I haven't been able to ascertain yet,
but it has been mentioned.
C--Well, I think you have identified them pretty well.
There's also the question of these branch campuses.
As you know, we took the position in that report that
branch campuses were a desirable way of initiating
new institutions, but that it should be done with the
idea that the umbilical cord ought to be cut at some
appropriate date; and that there ought to be a
separate board and separate budget, until the insti­
tution was separated from its parent. Obviously,
that board should be subservient to the governing
board of the total institution and its administration.

A 71
Cushman
I don't know that this is very well received even
today.
I know the Chancellor of the Dearborn campus
does not agree with it.
F--I don't believe that is true. As a matter of fact,
the next question is: What in your opinion were the
reasons for the failure of the branch campus system?
If you take a look at Wisconsin the major university
spawned a set of subsidiary enterprises.
In Michigan
that attempt died.
The attempt, for instance, of
Saginaw Valley to affiliate with Michigan or Michigan
State did not come to pass. Oakland was constructed
to become autonomous from virtually its first days;
Dearborn, which has existed in some great degree of
potential rather than actuality, is beginning to grow.
Except for the strong political nature of the Flint
espousal I doubt that ten years from now we will see
any branch campuses existing.
Why do you think that they failed?
C--Well, I think it was for a variety of reasons, but
I'll start out with some of them.
University of Michigan did not itself desire to have
its Dearborn campus. When the Fords wanted to see
something created there I think that the fact that
John Hannah at Michigan State would have grabbed it
if Michigan didn't is what led Michigan to accept it.
Mr. Hannah then promptly created Oakland branch at
Oakland.
That was because he didn't want to be up­
staged, essentially.
I don’t happen to agree with
your comment that at that time he intended to see it
spun off because my discussions with him did not
indicate that. He didn't know what ought to be done
with it. You may have talked to John Hannah, or you
will, but my impression is, and it may be inaccurate,
that the primary motivating influence was the competi­
tion with Michigan and the Dearborn campus.
Now Michigan never gave the Dearborn campus anything
other than its name, really.
In fact, if you talk to
Bill Stirton, the first director of that campus, he
will tell you that he was under instructions to have
no publicity for his commencements when they occurred.
He felt banished from Ann Arbor to Dearborn, in effect.

A 72
Cushman
The Flint thing was entirely, shall we say, influenced
by some peculiar political relationships.
F--Whatever Mr. Mott wants...
C--Whatever Mr. Mott wanted he got; got from either
Michigan or, if I may say so, from the Legislature.
Well, in any event, since it didn't have a plan, since
there wasn't a commitment really to it, the Dearborn
campus didn't amount to anything. Now that the
decision had been made that it will be a four-year
college, that it will be spun off at some later date,
and that there is real support to the new Chancellor
in that connection, it's moving apace. There are
other factors too.
F--Two additional questions.
time.
Why in your opinion
the coordination of
after 1964?

did an
higher

I know you are pressed for
institutionalsystem for
education notcome about

C — I would say because nobody
really wantedit. The
institutions didn't want a strong central mechanism
and the arrangements that existed had led to a rather
good result.
F--As I said earlier using the term subtle, the institu­
tions really are accountable in very many ways to the
public sector. Don't you feel that way?
C--I do. As I say, that's what I got out of the two years
of study that I had in that commission.
I started out, as I indicated, with the idea of a strong
central group.
I ended up with a realization--I like
your word subtle because I think it does describe it-[that] there are so many checks and balances and forms
of accountability that exist both within the institution
itself and in terms of its relationships to the various
branches of state government --executive branch in its
various forms, and the Legislature which has been
increasingly interested and concerned and involved,
the general increased interest in the part of the
public and their involvement in these institutions--

A 73
Cushman
all of these have led to, I think, some real feeling
that the institutions are quite accountable.
A second factor has been the financial crunch--Earl
Cheit^ called it the depression in higher education-which has forced faculty, administration, governing
boards, as well as the executive and legislative
branches of state government, to give more and more
attention of a detailed character to the programs and
the effectiveness with which they are carried out.
F--I have the sense, Ed, that in other states the reason
these coordinating boards came was they had the belief
in the public sector that the institutions were not
accountable.
In Michigan I do not have the belief
that public officials and opinion makers believe that
that is the case.
C--Let me put it this way. The period of the sixties was
a period of great disillusionment, concern, and worry
about all of the institutions of our society, including
higher education.
But I think it is significant, and
I don't think it is very well recognized, that the
recent attitude surveys of the past year have indicated
that second only to medicine and its mystique is the
confidence of the American people in higher education
and its leadership.
F--And I think particularly so, Michigan citizens.
C--That's correct. Once again, this stems from the long
tradition that we talked about earlier of this state.
F--Do you have any people that you
the ones you have mentioned who
the significant opinion leaders
Obviously, Dr. Hannah had to be

would like to add to
in your opinion were
in higher education?
one of the people.

C--Oh yes, John Hannah certainly.
I would think that the
recently retired President of Western Michigan, Jim
Miller, has been a key figure. Ed Harden can give you
g

Earl F. Cheit, The New Depression in Higher Education:
A Study of Financial Conditions at 41 Colleges and
Universities, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971) .

A 74
Cushman
some insights from his experiences at Northern when
he was there. He would be easily available to you.
All of those people come from the Hannah group.
Obviously Bob Fleming could give you some insights.
And Allen Smith, who, as you know, is now retiring
as the Academic Vice-President at Michigan.
Bill
Pierpont can give you some insights from that point
of view.
I don’t know who is involved in the Michigan private
colleges but you really ought to pick up your thought
about the private institutions and talk to somebody
there.
F--Father Steiner, you think?
C--He has gone on to life eternal.
If you can reach him
you are pretty good.
Father Carron, who has taken
over, would be a pretty good person to talk to for
that point of view.
F--Anybody at Wayne you think in this period?
C--Well, most of the people...
Clarence Hilberry was
President and Keast^® was here for part of that period
F--Henry made his reputation outside the state really,
did he not?
C--Well, he got a reputation at the beginning here and
then he was with NYU, but he really made his reputa­
tion at Illinois,
Ruthven 1 is gone. How about
Harlan Hatcher? You ought to talk to Hatcher.
F--Thank you, Ed.
9

Wilber Kent Pierpont; Vice-President, University of
Michigan.
^William Rea Keast; President, Wayne State University
11

Alexander G. Ruthven; President, University of
Michigan.
x

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
IRA POLLEY1

F--Dr. Polley, what in your opinion were the reasons that
led to the expansion of higher education in Michigan
from 1958 on?
P--Jerry, first of all the youngsters were here. We had
had a substantial increase in the birth rate with the
return of the GI's. That sizeable increase in the
birth rate continued on into the fifties.
If I
remember correctly--I do this from memory--the highwater mark was 1957. So point number one, there were
youngsters here to be educated; point number two,
there was not the existing capacity in 1958 to accom­
modate these youngsters.
Thirdly, there has been some competition between and
among the principal institutions in the State of
Michigan, notably MSU and the University of Michigan.
I think this was an added factor.
Some people deplore
competition; in this case I think it probably served a
larger public interest.
But there were many other considerations.
I recall the
Kalamazoo Decision was rendered in the case of Michigan,
standing for the proposition that local districts can
spend public funds to establish and operate high schools.
I cite this only for this reason: I think that this
state for a long period of time has had a pretty
sizeable interest in, understanding of, and commitment
to, education.
I don't think one wants to minimize this.
This state
had one of the very first universities: the University
Ira Polley; State Controller, 1960-62; Executive
Director, Michigan Council of State College Presidents,
1962-1966; Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1966-1969;
now Assistant Provost, Michigan State University.
Interview
conducted April 10 and 15, 1974.
A 75

A 76
Polley
of Michigan.
It had the first teacher normal school,
or teacher-training school west of the Alleghenies in
Eastern Michigan University. We had the first land
grant institution.
Really this institution [Michigan
State University] was established, legislatively
speaking, in 1855--if my memory is right--some years
before the Morrill Act.
You could say, ’’Well, why did the people of this state
have this commitment? " Well, many of the people who
came into this state had come from New England origi­
nally. They came into this state from New England and
New York.
In those states there was developed facil­
ities for higher education, to be sure.
In those states,
mostly private.
In this state there were not these
private institutions and for many reasons they never
got the toehold.
These are the kinds of considerations...
F--This is a bit of a diversion, but I'm struck by your
remarks because Governor Williams--whom I have a great
deal of respect for--talked less about organizational
structure and more about Michigan's tradition, much
the way you have...
P--We haven't rehearsed it...
F--No.
I've been trying to aim at why Michigan is different
from Ohio, Illinois, Indiana.
I'm struck by the fact that the wealth of both states-Michigan and Ohio--is similar. Michigan's rank in
higher education, up until the fifties, was first, I
think.
In the elementary and secondary it has been in
the leadership position of first or second right to the
present, in terms of dollars spent and the like. And I
said, "Why did it occur?"
I was struck by your remarks about why it came.
I
wondered if, because of the trails of migration through
the Erie Canal from New York and New England--the host
of towns in this state named Boston and the like-whereas Ohio's immigration came from Virginia.
P--I think there is something different about these states.
I think there really is.
F--I don't know what it is, and I don't know if I'll be
able to get a handle on it. But certainly even the

A 77
Polley
fact that we have had an honest public service--which
has not been a midwestern tradition except for
Wisconsin--is hard to fathom.
P--I would add Wisconsin and Minnesota are in the Midwest,
too, but Wisconsin being the pioneer in this.
I would
say one other factor here--but I think those are the
principal ones--I don't discount the role of the
dynamic, the strong leaders in this.
Let me mention a
few of them--there are both Democrats and Republicans.
In terms of academic leadership there was John Hannah
at this university.
I think unquestionably one of the
most able university presidents that this nation has
ever had, at least in a large university president. He
was here and he had visions; he believed in moving
forward rather rapidly.
At the same time in this state, or in most of this state,
there were some other really giants. There was Ed Harden
at Northern Michigan University, there was Victor Spathelf
at Ferris State Institution, there was Paul Sangren--a
delightful man--and his successor at Western Michigan
University.
All these people.
But I'd want to add there was also
G. Mennen Williams, who had education with a high
priority in his scheme of values. And then the whole
budget-making process.
Education and mental health were
always sensitive and delicate areas that he favored.
I would say, too, that the Porters and the Beadles, who
served on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and
Arnell Engstrom^, reflecting values of Michigan, had a
sympathy and a real understanding for education. Maybe
this is too many words but this gives you...
F--I know that, and I too share your attitude, but it
always was a puzzle to me--and I don’t know that w e ’ll
ever come to this as a conclusion--how some of these
men could go so far beyond their origins and beyond
the parochialisms of the regions that they represented
to have a broader state view.
Certainly the Thumb,
suburban Traverse City--Porter came from Adrian and
Lenawee, that area.
These have not been necessarily
2

Arnell Engstrom; Republican Representative from
Traverse City.

A 78
Polley
areas that had a strong public position in favor of
education since or before.
P--I'm not sure either. Of all those people, though, some­
body like a Beadle is a giant among state legislators I
think at any time in history.
I just added the name,
too, in more recent years, of Garland Lane, who also,
you know, has education as a high priority. And I think
it is also with Charles Zollar.
I'd say one other thing about the appropriation process
in this state: The people in the 17 years I've been in
this state who served on the Appropriations Committee
are people who have a take-charge attitude. They are
informed, they are hard-working, andthey gather all the
facts and they try to make judgments about those facts,
and they know what they are doing.
The Legislature is not in a state of drift insofar as
appropriations process is concerned.
This has been true
and this is true of the top Democrats and the top
Republicans on those committees.
F--I don't want to drift away from the point, but you are
by training and experience and career a political
scientist.
P--Yes, indeed.
F--Isn't it really something to observe in this time that
in Michigan we've really had, not a preponderance of
power, but a sharing of power.
The executive prerog­
atives were never as finely strung as they were in
Washington.
The committees really had a responsible
way to go and acted that way. We haven't seen the
drift to the bureaucratic or the executive as we have
in the other states.
P--I think this is an extremely important point that you
have made, Jerry, and is frequently overlooked.
In
this state--although we have had powerful governors
going back to, say, the Groesbecks, the Williams, and
Romney, and there are others too--to the best of my
knowledge and belief, we have never made a mistake
that's been made I think frequently in terms of the
national scene: We have never deified the governor,
or the office of the governor.
We have respected the office, we have looked to the
office for leadership, but as you have said, Jerry,
there has been a recognition that if government will

A 79
Polley
work at the state level in this state, it will work
only when the governor and when the key leaders in the
Legislature work together.
God knows this is true.
F--What were the social and economic factors, besides the
facts that you have just observed, that the children
were there, that led to the significant growth of
higher education? You commented about leadership also.
P--As you suggested, my earlier remarks intruded on this
area, but I think there are a couple of other things
that one might mention.
I don’t have the data at hand, but I have a hunch on
this [and] I think my hunch would be borne out with
data.
I think the educational level in a state like
Michigan has been higher than in many other parts of
the country, particularly in the Middle West, and the
mountain states and the South.
I have a notion that
people who have education aspire to have those educa­
tional opportunities for their sons and their daughters.
I think that is one factor.
Secondly: the income levels in the state. The family
income or the income per individual in the state is
higher than in any other state in the Midwest and in
the South.
It seems to me that wise and informed
people, when they have resources, spend some of those
resources, invest some of those resources, if you like,
in education.
I think also the fact that this state developed the
automobile and has important companies in the chemical
and pharmaceutical industry led many people in the state
to realize that a modern commerce, modern industry,
modern government can be operated effectively only with
informed citizens, only with well-educated people.
So it seems to me that all of these factors contribute
to the social and economic environment.
There may be
others, I ’m sure there are, that I ’ve not mentioned.
I would guess probably there's another one.
I ’ve spoken
of the educational levels and I think that’s true and
that was a plus. There is another group of people in
this state that did not have these above-average educa­
tional levels: the immigrants in this state. But I
think that the immigrants, and those I've known that
have come from various parts of Europe in particular,
have recognized sometimes more quickly than some of

A 80
Polley
the native Americans that education is a way toward
social and economic mobility.
In most cases the immigrant parents I've known have
urged their sons and their daughters to go on to
education.
That's true in the case of my mother who
had only a third-grade education; she hammered at her
two sons all the time to go off and get a college
education.
F--Just as an aside, many people take a look at the scene
of our state and our nation and bemoan its precarious
situation.
I myself have always been struck--as a
historian coming from immigrant background myself,
Russian immigrant--how really strong that society is.
I'm curious what you think about this. Our major
minorities in this state are ethnic--Slavic groups and
Blacks--and both share what I call the Horatio Alger
dream: that education will get you ahead.
I think much
of my Boston, Massachusetts origins, where the Irish
did not have that aspiration.
I think our state is
quite fortunate with the social engine that exists in
it for improvement.
P--I think you are absolutely right.
I think the Polish
citizens, for example, and the Blacks that you mentioned,
and the other people from Central Europe, I think they
recognized all too clearly that they were not likely
to acquire a large estate to leave to their youngsters.
But if they can encourage their youngsters to finish
the elementary schools and to complete high schools
with respectable grades and move on into colleges,
they knew that then their sons and daughters could
move up into positions of responsibility in industry
and commerce and in government.
F--And that's where I guess I'm trying to come.
I have the
sense that there are those political issues that divide
men, and that here education was not an issue that
polarized our society, but rather brought it together.
P--I think you are absolutely right.
I think it has been
a very unifying effect. Unquestionably so.
F--I wanted to come back and test your observation about
another thing, a little bit of a digression again, but
as you talk to people you enrich your sense of under­
standing .

A 81
Polley
You talked about Michigan’s dedication to education.
I ’m struck that when we have gone through several of
the major reforms (I think particularly about 1962 with
Con-Con) there is a strong dedication in our society,
and I’m not talking necessarily about leaders, but
citizenry, not to allow the spoils system to come,
which was much the part of the landscape of political
America in the Midwest and in the East.
It strikes me,
the fact that we didn’t want a spoils system and went
out of our way, is the other side of the coin of good
education for government.
P--I think, again, Jerry, you are right.
I don’t always
find myself so comfortable agreeing with somebody, but
I think that you are right.
I think really, looking backwards, that the experience
citizens of this state had with civil service reform
in 1937, '38 and '39, really was a plus. That experi­
ence led to establishing in the Constitution one of the
most secure merit systems anywhere in the country.
I often have addressed myself to this comment.
I had
some people from Indiana visit with me a year or two
ago and were asking lots of questions about the
Department of Education and its role before Con-Con
and after Con-Con.
One of the themes that I had to
develop for them--and it was easy for me to do it
because I know the Indiana scene until recently.
I'm
not sure it has changed, it has been a spoils state
just like Massachusetts has, just like Pennsylvania has.
Indeed if I were to name four of the principal spoils
states in the country they would be those three, I
guess, plus Illinois.
F--I was just going to say something to you. Just to
refresh your mind, the first man who ever gave me a job
in the public service was you. You gave me the job of
relating with the other 17 midwestern states...
P--Right, you saw these states.
F--And I couldn't get over...
P--Dick Wells.
F--Wells was the Superintendent of Public Instruction in
Indiana, and Page was in Illinois... How every decision
was virtually political and almost none of your decisions
were political, in the spoils-system sense, was aston­
ishing to me, and instructive.

A 82
Polley
P--Well, I pointed out to these people that visited me
from Indiana that one of the best things that the
Department of Education had going had nothing really
to do with Con-Con as such, but was the fact that
before, when we had the elective superintendent, you
had a very strong civil service merit system. You
continued to have the very strong civil service system
with the board replacing the elective superintendent.
And this is true in so many other areas.
Let me say, sitting here visiting with you, I remember
other people who pointed this out.
Some of Williams'
speeches in the late fifties on state government paid
his respects to this matter of a merit system.
You can’t operate a real modern government with, what,
40,000 employees or whatever the figure is--55,000--on
the spoils system and do it intelligently and econom­
ically and effectively.
The only losers of the spoils
system are the poor citizens, really.
F--I'm trying to get at what were the policy objectives
that underlaid this expansion.
P--Well, when you say policy objectives, in my mind you
raise a question of who had them and there is implied
the notion that there is some premeditation in here.
And I ’m skeptical about the premeditation...
F--So might I be, but go ahead.
P--But let me look at these questions from the point of
view of policy objectives.
Let's look at--as Aristotle would say--let's look at
the small part of this. Let's look at the trees rather
than the forest and maybe we could make some sense out
of the larger picture.
It is pretty difficult to jump
at the larger picture and fully understand it.
But let's stop, stand back and look at two people.
I
just think of these two, and maybe we'll look at some
others.
John Hannah, for example, what were his policy objectives?
His policy objectives were to make Michigan State
University one of the largest, one of the best, one of
the most highly diversified institutions in the country.
He built I think the largest dormitory establishment
anywhere, not only in the United States, but in the

A 83
Polley
world. And he built it properly with people like
Emery Foster3 and others. Had he not done this we
would not be able to accommodate the enrollment growth
that took place here.
You can say the same thing about many of these other
people I mentioned earlier: the Millers, the Sangrens,
the Spathelfs, the Hardens, people like that. You can
look at the point of view of policy objectives from
Williams, who was Governor, and later Swainson, and
Romney, and Milliken.
Despite the political differ­
ences, in terms of Republican or Democratic philosophy,
I don't think there's really great differences here, on
this issue, among these people.
I think their objectives were really to be, if you like,
the guardian of, the executor, of the kind of basic
ideas that I tried to identify in my response to the
first question. Here is a state that is going to be a
state that meets the needs of its citizens, that's going
to be a state that has a proud history.
It's citizens
are going to be able to achieve as much appropriate
education as possible.
You have these governors, and
all of them, I think, were strong governors, subscribing
to the view that education must have a very high priority
in the scheme of things.
F--These questions aren't necessarily as precise as one
would like because you talk with the diversity of people.
P--Right.
F--Let me push you a little bit further here, Ira. I
suspect that your observations about premeditation and
a clear-cut policy in the planner's sense of the word
never occurs virtually anyplace.
I have not discerned
as yet in my investigation that such was the case.
But I do have the feeling, and it doesn't come out well
with the people I talk to, that the conflict between
Michigan and Michigan State, which I believe was quite
sharp...
3

Emery G. Foster; Manager, Michigan State University
Dormitories and Food Services.

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Polley

»

P--Yes, no question.
F--I know most people won't speak to it much. Dr. Hannah
viewed an arriving kind of market and took an offensive
strategy and mobilized the forces of society to win
that support. Michigan took a much more defensive
strategy to enhance what it had, to preserve what it
had, rather than to gain.
P--Yes, let me put it this way.
I agree with you, in a
sense, if I can use some words rather with considerable
inexactitudes just to convey an impression of flavor.
In a sense Hannah was populistic, in a sense the people
at Michigan were elitist.
I don't want to overstress
this. This just conveys the flavor and restates in
somewhat different words, I think, what you were saying.
Hannah wanted to make Michigan State University, if you
like, the people's university. Again the people at the
University of Michigan knew that they had unquestionably
a very great institution and, as some of its critics
have said, they wanted to prove again that it was the
Harvard of the Midwest.
There is nothing wrong about
being the Harvard of the Midwest.
F--You noticed that my question number 6 asks if you regard
this as a key issue of this period--popularism.
P--Yes, ok, I see.

It's very interesting, yes.

F--I guess I put it another way, because I gather that a
part of your hesitancy when you convey the flavor is the
question of quality.
I have frequently put it this way.
I had the feeling that this institution wanted to
graduate elites rather than to admit them. By that I
mean to convey we would take those less able and actually
enhance them and they would come out to be a new elite.
Whereas Michigan at that time... I think it's changed,
because of the competitive nature of the marketplace
and with Dr. Hatcher's departure.
P--Yes.
There is a lot of difference too. You see, if
you look at these enrollment figures in several of the
years in the late fifties and early sixties. Michigan
State might be growing, oh, this would not be uncommon
growth at all, 1500-2500 some of these years. Michigan
in some years was almost static in growth or it was
growing very, very slowly.

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Polley
I had the notion, but I have no proof of this, that the
people at Ann Arbor were not greatly concerned about
this disparity in growth because one [should] look at
this from the simplistic budget formula at that time.
The people in Ann Arbor might say, ok, we have enough
strength in the Legislature, there is enough general
recognition in the Legislature that w e ’re a great
institution and we have to be appropriated for properly
and if we hold enrollment rather steady, there will be
a per capita--that phrase was frequently used in the...
F--Let me interrupt because I had that same sense and as
I listen to you, you help crystalize my own thoughts.
It strikes me that we at Michigan State were playing
the aggregate total dollars game, and they were playing
the net state appropriation game.
P--Both could be winners depending on what your premise

is.

F--And their premise was they wanted to enrich the dollars
of support per pupil. And we, every time we took more
than the appropriation it attenuated the dollar of
support so the gap became quite large in one sense of
the budget year’s gain.
P--But, I would argue, at least for a moment, that in one
sense although they were acting from different premises
and receiving somewhat different treatments, they were
both gainers. How so?
Michigan State wanted to grow. Michigan State had a
less demanding set of admissions criteria, but as you
said, Michigan State was turning out a very good product.
This enabled Michigan State to grow. Hannah knew, and
that’s another point here, Hannah knew that if he took
2500 kids, say, and he had. led the people in the
governor's office and the Legislature to think that
maybe he would only take 1500, he knew that he might
be the loser for one year but when he came back the
next year he would say, "Well, we have now 27,800 kids."
or whatever the figure might be.
If he had not taken
the extra thousand he would only be able to say
"26,800." Let me say that these figures I have are
purely hypothetical to illustrate.
On the other hand, I think Michigan in a sense was the
winner because Michigan was concentrating on the

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Polley
professions: medicine, law, social work, natural
resources, public health, and the graduate program.
You need more money for that kind of a student mix.
I'd also point out that another reason why there is not
this rapid growth in the future for the large institu­
tions.
I think the key legislators have said to about
four of the largest universities, "You are large enough,
thank you," and, "We want to increase the enrollment of
institutions like Saginaw Valley and Grand Valley,
Oakland and Central, et cetera."
F--And hence, therefore, the qualitative game is the only
game to be played now.
What were the key issues that resulted in partisan and
parochial conflict in the attempts to attain the above
policy objectives?
P--I don't know, Jerry, really how to deal with that kind
of a question in terms of how I've approached particu­
larly [question] number 3. Give me a try at this in
terms of something more specific and let me see.
F--During this period we had the Flint issue, we had the
branch campuses, we had the Grand Valley and Saginaw
Valley attempts for regional pressures for autonomous
institutions. We had some degree of difficulties with
community colleges of freestanding versus K-12 control.
We had the pressures by legislators to take strong
attitudes about the enhancement of the vocational
program because of the concern about technology and
Sputnik.
I guess what I'm trying to see is where were the areas
where there were solid areas of disagreement.
I per­
sonally feel, for instance, one of the areas that I had
a sense was the attitude of elitist versus populist as
an area of conflict was Dearborn, where in fact frankly
Dearborn didn't flourish, but was a defensive strategy.
P--So was Flint...
F--So was Flint, in a way, to operate its mechanisms to
prevent Michigan State's sort of imperial drive and
blunt it.
P--You see, after, I guess the year was 1956, in one very
short period of time the two giants--I refer to the
U of M and Michigan State--announced gifts and grants.

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Polley
In the case of Michigan from the Ford estate and in the
case of State from the Wilson estate out of General
Motors money.
F--No, she was a Dodge...
P--Was she Dodge?
F--Yes, she was married to John Dodge.
P-- Ok, Dodge money. You have several hundred acres of
prime land being given to Michigan State at Oakland
near Rochester, and some buildings and some very
expensive real estate in the city of Dearborn being
given to the University of Michigan.
F--I guess I'm after one other thing. At Con-Con, Ira,
there was a very strong attitude inside the educa­
tional committee with George Romney to come up with a
California-kind of plan. And John Hannah won on the
floor for a more autonomous system. Obviously there
were focuses and strains there between people who were
trying to order the public policy.
P--Well, let me just say one thing. Before we come to
Con-Con, let me say that in 1956 after these announce­
ments of gifts and grants from Mrs. Wilson and the Ford
family to the universities, the Legislature became con­
cerned about branch campuses and about the resolution-and I think you know about this--saying that in essence,
before any more grants and gifts are accepted, this has
to receive legislative approval.
The Legislature knew
full well that if the two largest universities were
permitted to go their own independent way that complete
policy-making could, for higher education, be made by
the two largest universities without any really
gubernatorial involvement, without any appropriations
involvement.
So it seems to me this had a salutory effect and this
was carried over by some awfully vigorous debates-never really publicized--in the Michigan Council of
College Presidents.
You know much of this story. Then
the Michigan Council of Presidents, together with the
Michigan Public Coordinating Committee for Higher
Education, which is an instrument consisting largely
of board members, appointed the so-called Davis
Committee who made a study of the branch campuses and
this dissolved that issue.

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Polley
F--I was thinking about the Davis Committee, but one of
the things I was particularly impressed with, and I
want to remark about, is that boiler-plate language
that you talked about in '58 is still in the act,
continued year after year.
P--That is right, and has been year after year, to become,
as you say, quite broadly so, boiler-plate.
F--Dr. Polley, you said you wanted to make one additional
remark about question number 1, about the nature of
the controller since Governor Sigler.
P--Yes, I think, Jerry, that it is significant that
beginning with Governor Sigler in 1948 the governors
appointed as their state controllers people who had
considerable interest and experience in higher education.
For example, in 1948 Governor Sigler named John Perkins,
who at that time was Director of the Institute of Public
Administration at the University of Michigan and was a
Professor of Political Science.
A year later the new governor, this time a Democrat,
Mennen Williams, named Robert F. Steadman, who was
serving at the time of his appointment as a Professor
of Political Science and Public Administration at Wayne
State University.
Mr. Steadman remained in that position I think until
1954, or maybe it was 1953, at which time Governor
Williams named John 0. Lederle, again of the University
of Michigan, as Mr. Steadman's successor.
Lederle, like
Perkins, had been Director of the Institute of Public
Administration and a Professor of Political Science.
Then in 1954 or 1955 Governor Williams appointed
James W. Miller of Michigan State University to the
position after Mr. Lederle had served for 14 months
and decided to return to the University of Michigan.
Jim Miller, like Steadman, had a very long tenure,
serving until May or June of 1960, at which time I was
appointed by Governor Williams and reappointed by John
Swainson.
When Governor Romney came into office in 1963, he, to
be sure, did not name an academician, but he named
Glenn Allen who had his baccalaureate degree from

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Polley
Amherst College and his law degree from Columbia
University, and whose temperament and training and
attitude was really not dissimilar from his prede­
cessors in that position.
I mention this because I think all of these people had
some substantial understanding of higher education,
knew something of its potential, something of its
promises, and were sympathetic about the area and who
believed it should receive support.
I think that had
the controllers, for example, been people who were
political hacks or even not hacks but seasoned politi­
cians, their interests might have been considerably
different from this long stream of controllers that
I 've mentioned.
F--Ad.ding emphasis to your remarks is that Governor
Milliken has appointed Dr. John T. Dempsey, who was a
political scientist from the University of Michigan at
Dearborn, as budget director.
P--Yes, I think that's a good point. We're talking about,
how many years of history, 26 years of history? I doubt
there are many states that can duplicate this. From
time to time Pennsylvania state government has called
upon people from one of the universities, and a few
others have, but very typically this key position of
the principal budget officer has gone to a political
ally of the incumbent governor.
F--Did any of the policy goals for the enhancement of
higher education have as their objectives the
destruction of class and culture barriers?
P--Well, I think the support that has been given to higher
education by state government, in particular in the
last 20 years, say, assumed that the more education
that was available to the greatest number of people
that we would increase social mobility; that people
who were essentially poor, uncultured, if you like,
could move from the poor man's status up into the
professions and into government; and as they were
moving up could trade their poverty for some measure
of affluence.
I often think of Lyndon Johnson's comment about his own
education.
He said that his higher education was his
passport from poverty.
I can only remark, rather wryly,
it was a very effective passport. It seems to me
he
left about $15 million at the time of his death.
That's
a little better passport than many of us have had.

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Polley
F--We have already talked about your attitudes and view­
points about popularism in education versus elitism in
higher education in the context of the first question.
Do you want to add anything to that, Ira?
P--Let me say that I think that the fact that this state
invested heavily in the community college movement,
particularly in the last ten or fifteen years, shows
that this state is interested not only in maintaining
a great university like the University of Michigan and
a great institution like Michigan State, but that this
state has the resources and the interest in providing
educational opportunities for people in the community
colleges.
I think that people generally who have been in the
governor's office and in the budget's office, and the
appropriating committees, I think they would say, you
know, really, this is not an either/or matter. We want
to have the very best graduate and professional educa­
tion in our largest institutions, but we also want to
provide a good education for the man in the street, if
I may use that phrase.
F--Rather than seeing it as a contradiction or a conflict,
between one and the other, it might be more fruitful
to regard it as attempting to broaden the entire base.
P--Precisely, precisely.
I think that’s been the whole
history of higher education in the United States and
the classic example of this history is in the State of
Michigan. We commented upon this.
Deep into the nineteenth century higher education was
for the rich and well-born. With the establishment of
Michigan State University in 1855 there was a recogni­
tion there are other classes in society: the agricul­
tural class and the mechanics as they were called then.
More recently, especially in the fifties and sixties
[with] the burgeoning community colleges, the state
again said we are going to widen the access to higher
education so that everyone who has an interest will find
some opportunity for post-secondary education.
F--0ne other thing that I'm attempting to get a feel for.
In some of the states the role of the rich is very
powerful.
I think about Illinois, I think about
Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
I have the sense here
that in Michigan the power of the arising class was a

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Polley
good deal more significant than it was in some of the
other states.
I don’t know why, or if that’s even a fair observation,
but I think of the role of the rich institutions of
society and the like. We don't seem to feel their
political power in spite of the fact that the Secretary
of Defense Wilson said in Eisenhower's administration
that GM was right for the country, or some such phrase.
We don't seem to have had that attitude here.
P--I think you are right.
I really think that perhaps more of the people in state
government, whether they be in the executive branch or
in the legislative branch, would probably change that
phrase of Mr. Wilson's around and say what's right for
the greatest number of people is right for Michigan.
I think that the great diversity of institutions we
have--Ferris Institute, or now as it is called Ferris
State College, for example--is an excellent example of
this. This institution grew from, what--just a few
hundred in the early fifties--to a number, I suppose,
approximately 8,000 by now. This institution has been
supported quite sympathetically by all members of the
Legislature, Democrats or Republicans.
People who in
themselves had college degrees and people who didn't
have college degrees.
I think this illustrates the
point that you've made, Jerry.
F--How important were vocational and occupational training
objectives in the enhancement of higher education?
Ferris certainly was a prime example of one of those.
P--I think Ferris was an example. You can cite many other
examples.
It depends on how one wants to define the
words vocational and occupational.
To the extent that some people say that medicine and
the law and engineering, for example, are vocational
pursuits, we've had vocational training in the state
for a long, long period of time.
However, a number of other people say that the word
vocational and the term occupational really are limited
to the more modern semiprofessional pursuits such as
cosmetology or electronics, or TV repair, or car repair.
I think there has been a commitment in this area.

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Polley
I think that frankly maybe there should have been a
more emphatic commitment but there has been a commit­
ment and it’s been illustrated in several ways.
I ’m
now speaking in terms of the more modern semiprofes­
sional pursuits.
The fact that we have had establish­
ment of the community colleges is one piece of evidence.
Not just merely the establishment of the community
colleges, but in the course of their establishment the
people who supported the establishment of the community
colleges emphasized in each case that, broadly speaking,
these new institutions should provide not only college
parallel programs but should provide terminal programs
in various occupational undertakings, various vocational
undertakings.
Still more recently the Department of Education and some
other forces in the late 1960's urged that the funding
of the community college programs in the occupational
areas recognize that this is frequently, not always,
but frequently, a higher cost area of instruction.
The
point was that there should be a differential paid.
You'll recall that the Legislature finally adopted this
proposal.
F--And they were willing to do it, too.
What about the position towards the growth of culture
and the arts? Was there some concern about that?
P--Well, I think the fact that there has been some
democratization of culture and the arts in Michigan
and other states perhaps has led most reflective people
in strategic positions in Michigan government and educa­
tion to believe that education in itself is desirable,
even though there may not be the kind of education that
prepares one for a precise job.
This argument continues and there are some extreme
positions.
There is, for example, the view in some
circles that all training should be precisely tailored
to provide the given student, be he, the student, a boy
or a girl, a job.
There is another view that higher education can train
the mind and develop some verbal skills that will equip
many people for jobs, but that the immediate employer
will need to provide on-the-job training in the
beginning period of the employment.

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Polley
But I think that further than this the fact that we have
had this very widespread use of the colleges and univer­
sities not only by traditional students, the 18-24-year
olds, but by older citizens, has done a lot to increase
the public understanding of things of a cultural nature
and created an interest in the arts that you would not
have had without this democratization of education.
F--What about the position of labor?
P--Well, I think that in labor you go back, what, 130-140
years.
Labor was, to be sure, much, much less influential
then.
But if I remember some of the early textbooks on
labor history, labor was very influential in the Jackson
period and at that time increasing the opportunities
for elementary and secondary education.
I think labor
has pretty much continued this philosophy and by-andlarge I guess labor unions have been optimistic about
what can be achieved in higher education.
I remember sitting over in the legislative chambers one
time when Governor Williams had convened a group of
people to talk about the future of higher education
appropriations.
There was Gus Scholle, whom at that
time I did not know, but who I heard say that higher
education should be available to everyone.
I think that if one were to press Mr. Scholle a little
bit he would have responded, but he was talking about
all kinds of post-secondary education and not just, say,
a liberal arts education.
I think this point illustrates
basically the attitude of labor and labor has been
sympathetic to the institutions as they have sought
appropriations.
F--It has struck me that the major social institutions in
Michigan--labor, industry, commerce and agriculture-have not, in fact, been opposed to higher education.
P--No. As a matter of fact as some critics who have, and
I think misread some of the data, sometimes concluded
that really, education, higher education, is still not
as available to the poorer classes as it might be.
I
wondered from time to time, have been amazed from time
to time, at the fact that the labor unions, the United
Automobile Workers, the AFL-CIO, have supported the
quest of the university administrations for adequate
appropriations with which to run the institutions.
I

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Polley
think that the labor spokesmen have not been misled.
I think they recognized that in our kind of a society
education is perhaps the single most important factor
in democratizing equality of opportunity.
F--I haven't been able to come across strong attitudes
for education from industry.
Generally, Michigan
industry has, over the period of this study, positioned
itself frequently against things, such as the taxation
policies which were quite bitterly fought. Yet at the
same time that they really haven't been in a strong
way pro higher education, I haven't come across them
being negative.
I think it is sort of a benign
neutrality.
P--Well, I think that your summary is correct, Jerry.
I
don't think that industry can be put in the same
category as labor, and perhaps for a very good reason.
But clearly big industry in this state could have
played a decisive and perhaps a disastrous role in
curbing the growth of higher education in the fifties
and sixties, and they did not.
As a matter of fact, if one talks with individual
members you find that there was a good deal of support.
For example, some years ago--I think this must have
been in the early sixties--John Hannah, who was then
President of Michigan State University, organized a
meeting with some people like Walter Patenge1
^ and
some others from this area to exchange views.
In
those sessions these industry and commerce spokesmen
seemed to me to have a generally positive attitude.
To be sure, they would ask some good questions.
But
these questions should always be asked.
This kind of
question: Is the dollar being spent as effectively as
it might be? Those questions were asked and they
should have been asked.
But I think that industry and
commerce have been generally sympathetic. As a matter
of fact, I think industry and commerce are perfectly
well aware that in one sense they are the big con­
sumers of education.
4

Walter F. Patenge; President, Wohlert Corporation,
Lansing, Michigan;
served as member of Michigan Higher
Education Assistance Authority.

A 95
Polley
Some years ago, I've forgotten quite the reason, but
I was asked to testify in a Federal Court case down
in Detroit before Judge [Fred W.] Kaess on this
matter.
One of the points I tried to make was, just
try to imagine a society that does not have the
benefits of higher education. How could big industry
operate, how could big commerce operate, how could
big government operate? If you could establish a
model that we would have a moratorium, for example,
on all of higher education for ten years, who would
be victimized? All of the youngsters who didn't
get education would be victimized; but my point is
that industry, commerce, big government, any large
organization would be victimized and it would be
plain and it would be painful.
It seems to me that industry and commerce recognize
this very, very plainly.
General Motors, Ford, Dow,
Upjohn, they use university graduates--accountants,
chemists, scientists, public administration, business
administration--they are the great consumers of
higher education.
F--Well, I guess I ’ve been led to believe by these inter­
views and research that there is a peculiar difference.
The labor espousals seem to have been statewide in
terms of public policy and very strong in advocating
ways.
Certainly Gus Scholle and Walter Reuther seem
to have been able to take the high ground.
Industry seems to have been more related in regional
ways.
I think about the support that Michigan Tech
received from the natural resource industry; the
support that big industry gave in local terms for
Oakland, Saginaw Valley, University of Michigan at
Flint, and at Dearborn. Again, not much in terms
of a state policy, but very definitely related to
their peculiar interests as they related to commun­
ities where they were housed.
If that's the case,
that's a very strong position for the support that
industry gave in a way that wasn't as easy to see
or feel.
You were a close observer of many of these things,
did you feel a support from industry for these
institutions?

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Polley
P--Well it is very clear from what you said that these
regional institutions, if you want to call them that,
and I suppose the outstanding examples that you
mentioned, all have support from the business and
commercial interests in that area, but I think that
Saginaw Valley has intense support.
But it's also
true of Grand Valley; it's true of Michigan Tech in
a kind of different way; and you suggested it is also
true of Oakland and clearly is true of Flint.
But your point of industry is an interesting view in
that industry didn't seem to take a global or statewide
view on higher education--it seemed to support individual
institutions but not necessarily the cause of higher
education, like labor [did].
This is a very interesting
observation and I hadn’t thought of it in this way.
I would guess that some of our industry and friends in
commerce might say something like this: "We recognize
that higher education had its own spokesmen in terms
of the university presidents, in terms of the boards
of trustees, in many cases in terms of the alumni, in
terms, as you have said, of labor, and in terms of
some political interests." In some sense the argument
might be, "Excuse us, why should we be carrying coals
to Newcastle? We recognize that the institutions were
going to grow, that all these other forces were going
to make them grow, and we really didn’t think it was
necessary for us to adopt any statewide stance on this."
Now somebody might say, "Polley, what are you doing
here developing an apologia for business and industry?"
I really don’t think so.
I really don’t think so.
F--No, because there is another statement to add to this
observation: When industry wanted to fight something,
they sure knew how to do that.
P--Yes they did, and they did not really interpose at
any point and really engage in anything like warfare
on higher education.
As I said, it would have been
a very painful development had they done so.
F--Governor Williams observed the world of John Laughton
of the Michigan Manufacturers Association. He said
that this man was in truth really a political boss of
the old style. He was quite taken with the power of

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Polley
interests to make his role difficult. Hence one of
the strategies of the Williams administration was to
go for the citizens commission, to reach beyond the
Legislature to build public support. So it strikes
me that industry and commerce had the power before
1964 to have prevented those appropriations and to
cut away the need for increased taxation.
What about the role of agriculture?
P--I think that agriculture has been especially sympa­
thetic to some of the smaller institutions, and to
Michigan State University.
I don't think that it has
been unsympathetic to, say, the University of Michigan.
Again, though, I don't believe that agriculture has
taken generally a statewide position, at least in the
last 20 years, on broad issues.
Individual spokes­
men perhaps have, but to the best of my knowledge and
belief I don't think that agriculture has had the
advancement of higher education as one of its top two
or three causes.
But again, I'd want to emphasize
pretty forcefully that neither has agriculture decided
that it would seek to arrest the development of higher
education.
And, of course,
very solicitous
University, and
the Cooperative

I want to say that agriculture has been
about the future of Michigan State
particularly the Experiment Station and
Extension Service.

F--What were the pressures and influences in the deter­
mination of public policy, if any, from the federal
government?
P--In most of this period I think the federal government
did not play the role that one might have expected
that it would have.
Sure, the situation is different, but you compare the
role of the central government in England with the
role of our federal government in this period; I think
it is fair to say that Whitehall played a lot bigger
role than the federal government. Of course, part of
this, in all honesty, is traceable to the different
political and governmental structure, but the federal

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Polley
government, at least in this early period, really
wasn't playing very much of a role at all.
Sure there was the GI Bill of Rights, which perhaps
really had more significance than the mere providing
of educational opportunities in the years 1945-1949.
I suspect that the idea caught the imagination of
many people--and it still does. The GI system is
still cited for this or that particular scheme of
some people. ..
F--I put this question in a more hesitant way than I did
some of the others. When I observed in Michigan the
effects of federal social policy on the health and
welfare system...
P--No comparison.
F--They were directed, in spite of the fact that the
federal money may have been only fifty percent, or
less in some of them.
In higher education Governor
Williams, yourself, and others have pointed out the
real key social effects of the GI Bill.
Governor
Williams talked about the role of federal research,
and others have talked about the role of HEFA,
Higher Education Facilities Act, which really came
to be institutionalized in your superintendency.
But at the same time one has the feeling that it was
supportive rather than directive.
P--Unquestionably so, and really not nearly as supportive
as it might have been. You noted the Higher Education
Facilities Act, this didn't get passed until 1963, if
my memory is correct, and this is rather deep into
your area here.
You note that Governor Williams mentioned some research
activities.
This is true, some fact-gathering, but I
still think it is rather surprising that the federal
government has not moved in this area, even now in 1974,
as much as a lot of people would like it to. The whole
area of financial aids is the more dramatic example of
recent activity on the part of the federal government.
The loan program, the work study program, and the
opportunity grants, but...

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Polley
F--That's the key to the point I'm trying to make.
In
social policy participation the federal government in
return for participation mandated the quality of the
eligibility, whereas in return for federal aid for
scholarships they didn't mandate, in many cases, the
eligibility of the quality of the enrollment mix,
which I imagine they could have done if they had put
their minds to it.
P--You are quite right. The direction was minimal, if at
all.
In some cases you didn't find it at all and I
suppose there are lots of reasons. Maybe one is that
in America the notion that--stated most simply and most
simplistically--that education and politics do not mix.
You recall that in the last 20-30 years from time to
time one of the classic topics of high school debates
has been, "What should be the role of the federal
government in education (or in higher education if you
like)?" Part of the argument of the people, at least
on one side has been, "Well, we don't want the federal
government moving in the area of education or higher
education because the whole history of government is
that when it moves into an area it brings with it
controls and education is a kind of activity that
shouldn't be subject to controls, political controls
especially, and particularly controls from a far-off
government down in Washington."
F--Let me get to a subtle point.
I'm not sure it is a
valid one, but I want to explore it with you. There
has been a strong conflict over the coordination role
in higher education in Michigan, between the institu­
tions, and between some governmental theorists about
the coordinating role.
I'm struck by the fact that in the Johnson administration
the policy of block grants--and in the Kennedy admin­
istration partially--attempted to encourage coordinating
agencies to distribute block grants in many areas of
social and public policy.
I'm struck by the recollection that there was some
attempt to force the designation of a coordinating
agency for higher education funds.
In spite of that
bureaucratic espousal it still never came to the point
where the conditions of receiving federal funds forced
this state to resolve that issue as a requirement.

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Polley
Was the federal pressure there? I have the feeling
that the pressure was there, but not in any deep and
pervasive way, the way Wilbur Cohen's Department of
Health, Education and Welfare brought it in social
policy.
P--I think there is a great deal of ambivalence in this
area: ambivalence in Washington among politicians,
among the bureaucrats, and in the state.
Let me see if I can put it this way.
I heard of all
of this argument when I was in the position of
Superintendent. A number of people, looking at the
issue in the abstract, support block grants.
They
say--particularly the state people--to national govern­
ment, to the Department of Health, Education and
Welfare, to the United States Office of Education,
"You should give money to the states and let the states
distribute these funds because we in the states know
what the highest priorities are, we know what the unmet
needs are that are the most pressing."
That argument is very frequently made, but even among
people in the states there has been consistently a
pretty sharp difference of opinion on this.
Let me
illustrate: The Council of State Chief School Officers
is an organization that has been in existence for 30
or 40 years now, and most of the people in that organ­
ization are people who have come out openly for the
block grants and they say that this means less federal
controls.
There has been a very vocal group in the Council of
State Chief School Officers who are skeptical of this.
Why are they skeptical? They are afraid that the
political arrangements in their own state are such
that the needs that are the most urgent would not really
be met with block grants. The money would come into the
state capitols but the funds really wouldn't be as
wisely spent.
So I guess I am saying there is a good deal of ambiv­
alence.
By the way, I understand there is still,right
now in the month of April, 1974, some activity in this
area, and some efforts in some particular areas to
develop the block grant.
Revenue sharing, I think, is
the more modern term.

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Polley
F--I'm also struck by what you say about the strong con­
tinued political clientele for the categorical grant
in the school aid bill.
P--You put your finger on it.
F--In spite of many of the technocrats who workfor the
Department, who talk about the basic grant for school
aid, there was always a political public for the
categorical rather than the foundation grant.
P--The categorical grant system itself builds up some
vested interests right away.
It builds up the interest
in terms of the immediate recipients of the funds, but
more than this it builds up a very articulate group of
bureaucrats.
These people are very well informed,
usually, at least about their own problems.
They can
make very, very convincing
cases to the
statelegisla­
tor. They can also go out
and talk to their
Congressmen about this very, very convincingly.
F--It comes down, again, to the fact--as with the whole
area that we are talking about--that frequently the
sum of the parts have more power and influence than
the totality itself.
P--Yes, indeed, in this case.
F--What were the pressures and influences in the determin­
ation of public polocy, if any, from the private sector
of higher education?
P--I think that the private sector has played some very
key roles in this area.
Let me cite one that may be
overlooked.
I think I ’m correct in saying that the
state scholarship program probably would not have been
adopted in 1964 without the very vocal, very hard­
working support of the private colleges and universities.
Keep in mind when I came into this state in 1956,
Governor Williams had urged a state scholarship program,
year after year. Governor Swainson, his successor,
advocated the same public policy, a state scholarship
program.
Sometimes one of these governors recommended
a very sizeable amount, on another occasion it was a
more limited amount, and good faith efforts had been
made to get this point established [but] it didn’t

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Polley
get established.

It didn't get established until 1964.

It got established then, if I'm correctly informed,
because private colleges saw that their students could
win state scholarships and come and use those state
scholarships in the private institutions. As you say,
their survival, they thought, depended on this.
I
think there you have a very constructive effort on the
part of the private sector that's really helped, not
only the private sector, but the public sector.
F--That's a positive approach.
I wonder if there aren't
any negative approaches? It strikes me that every time
one made a move to enhance the public sector, the private
sector, which had been strong, would have to decline some.
P--Well, I don't know about the negative but there was a
good deal of controversy about the tuition grant pro­
gram which was established in 1966.
It, of course, was fully distinguishable from the state
scholarship program.
In the case of the state scholar­
ship program the student who wins the state scholarship
can use this at the institution of his own choice, if
you want to put it this simply.
In the case of the
tuition grant program, the program was limited to
students who select a private institution.
The private sector has also been aided, and immensely
so, by the Higher Education Facilities Act. As you
know, that has been litigated and found constitutional
as recently as what, a couple of years ago?
F--There are no state funds in that.
P--There were no state funds in that, but there were
federal funds in this. Without these grants from the
Higher Education Facilities Program it is [not]
difficult to imagine that Alma College would not have
expanded the way it has. Just one example.
F--And many more can be made.
What was the nature of regional and local pressures to
expand higher education in one location rather than
another?

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Polley
P--Well, we've touched upon the branch college contro­
versy.
I don't want to get in that again, but just
let me say that--and you know this very, very well-each one of the institutions, Northern Michigan
University, Michigan Tech, Ferris, Grand Valley, has
its supporters. As we said earlier the people in the
western part of the state secured the establishment
of Grand Valley College to meet an unmet need there.
You know the history of the Jamrich study of that
area, you had a similar study of the Saginaw Valley s
area in the establishment of Saginaw Valley College.
You've had intense, as your earlier remarks have
indicated, support from industry, from labor, in the
Flint area for the continuation of the Flint branch
as a part of the University of Michigan.
These are
some of the comments that come to mind.
F--So therefore, somehow, w e ’ve moved toward a sort of
double strategy, so to speak. A strategy where we had
statewide institutions that were super-regional like
Michigan, Michigan State, Wayne. Western, I would
suppose, has come through that process. And then very
definitely also the very strong desire to have local
institutions, and to have the idea that no geographic
area could do without.
P--To take a more recent example of this. The State Board
of Education appointed a very prestigious group to study
the future of the branch.that Michigan Tech University
has at Sault Ste. Marie.
This study committee had
John X. Jamrich. A new college; a report to the
Legislative and Citizens Committees on the eight-county
study of higher education needs in Allegan, Barry, Ionia,
Kent, Montcalm, Muskegon, Newaygo, and Ottawa counties.
(East Lansing: Center for the Study of Higher Education,
Michigan State University, 1959). Higher Education in the
Saginaw Valley; a report to the Legislative Committees on
Higher Education Needs of Arenac, Bay, Huron, Iosco, Midland,
Saginaw, Sanilac, and Tuscola counties. [Lansing?] 1962.
^The Future of the Sault Branch of the Michigan
Technological University: a report to the State Board of
Education by the Advisory Committee on the Status of the
Sault Ste. Marie Branch of Michigan Technological
University (Lansing, Michigan: The State Board of Education,
Department of Education, 1966).

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Polley
really very able people. You just check it: Francis
Kornegay , Mildred Jeffrey , Alvin Bentley, I think.
Some other people very, very well known, very honorable
people, very able people. They came up with the con­
clusion that the branch should become a freestanding
institution.
I want to say one other thing about these local
pressures.
I think that we all need to recognize that
no community college was ever established without having
a local referendum, if you like, and I think this...
F--...and a commitment to support it.
P--...and a commitment to support it. Of course you had
many cases where that commitment had been demonstrated
and that interest had been revealed and you had this
rapid expansion of community colleges.
Frankly,
probably a few were established that shouldn’t have
been established, really.
F--It wouldn’t surprise me, thinking about the past 20
years, perhaps in the next decade, to see another
institution of higher education come, based on the kind
of political and social model, in the Traverse City
area and the Macomb area. Those are frankly the last
areas which are sort of locally unrepresented.
P--Yes.
I think that this may be.
I used to kid Arnell
Engstrom when he was alive about a four-year institu­
tion in Traverse City.
I really felt that perhaps
Arnell would want to push for a four-year school.
I
don't think he really did, but I think this is a viable
area.
Let me say, in expressing my own views, that it may be
that the state would be well served with some Ferris
7

Francis A. Kornegay; Executive Director, Detroit Urban
League; Member, Boards of Trustees, Virginia Union University
and Florida Memorial College.
O

Mildred Jeffrey; National Committeewoman, Democratic
State Central Committee; Chairman, Michigan Advisory
Committee on the Status of the Sault Ste. Marie Branch of
Michigan Technological University; Member, Citizens
Committee on Higher Education.

A 105
Polley
State-type institutions in the greater Detroit area.
Macomb might be one of these locations, but there are
others.
Keep in mind that Detroit has, what (?)
1.6 million population (?), something like that.
I
can’t believe that the educational needs of Wayne
County are really being met as fully as...
F--That's a very perceptive point that y o u ’re making.
P--...they might be by the Wayne County Community College.
F--I sort of suspect that if one is going to finally sort
of, as I put it,’’complete the circle," one would have
to create a Ferris Institute model in the urban area
to reach for the nonacademic part of the curriculum in
that area.
P--Yes, and I think that Ferris deserves much praise for
the successful way that it has melded together the
occupational, vocational, and the academic area.
F--Ferris has proved that this type of institution can
succeed.
P--Can do it, and Ferris has an excellent pharmacy school;
it has a good business school.
I think much can be
learned from the success that Ferris experienced under
Victor Spathelf in particular.
F--What in your opinion were the reasons for
the failure
of the branch campus system that had begun to be
developed in Michigan with Oakland, Flint, and Dearborn
You have already alluded to some of that in another
context.
P--Well, I think that branch campuses start with a very
serious liability and one could indicate several
specifics, but let me indicate perhaps only two.
First of all, at least in the case of the Dearborn and
the Flint Branch, the decision-making took place at
Ann Arbor, not at Flint and not at Dearborn.
I think
this was a fair statement.
It seems to me that a
healthy organization cannot develop if decision-making
is taking place at a scene other than the location of
where the principal action should be.

A 106
Polley
The other specific I'd like to mention is that since
decision-making proceeds this way, you do not develop
a really local constituency. What commitment need the
people of Dearborn or Flint have to an institution if
the principal decision are going to be made at another
location? If the purpose of the University of Michigan
were to have viable institutions at Flint and at
Dearborn, it made a great mistake in the manner in
which it handled the delegation of authority.
Now, Michigan State didn't make quite the same mistake
in its relationships with Oakland, and Oakland faired
better, if fairing better can be measured.
Enrollment
growth is certainly one factor, one fair measurement.
But even there it seems to me that once Oakland became
a freestanding institution, it developed some optimism,
some exhilaration, a future of its own.
I just think
the problem of delegation and the failure to develop
enthusiastic homegrown supporters are the two most
serious drawbacks of the branch campus idea.
Let me say one other thing, and I think I'm right about
this.
In the case of both the Flint branch and the
Dearborn branch, these were upper-division branches.
That is to say, there was no freshman, sophomore...
F--That's true about Dearborn.
I can't recollect about
Flint, but that may be true there too.
P--I think that was true about Flint because you had the
Flint Community College there.
I'm 100 percent sure in
the case of Dearborn that it was limited to juniors,
seniors, and graduate students.
F--I don't think it was abandoned until 1968.
P--Very recently.
F--But the proof of the point is that in terms of enroll­
ment, mix of degree offering, physical plant, the
Oakland campus is far superior to Dearborn and Flint
still to this day.
P--Right.
Let me say another word about the branch college
controversy which may put this in perspective.
I'm now talking about the years '63 and '64 in particular.
I think that almost all the presidents who were members
of the Michigan Council of College Presidents, with the
exception of Dr. Harlan Hatcher, had the view, rightly
or wrongly, that the University of Michigan was not

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Polley
interested really in developing viable institutions on
these several branch campuses, but was interested--in
the phrase that was used--in political overkill.
These colleagues of Dr. Hatcher concluded, again
rightly or wrongly, that the University of Michigan
was interested in developing political support from
the local senators and local representatives in the
areas in which these branch campuses were located.
I remember once [hearing the argument] that if the
University of Michigan has a branch campus at Flint,
and at Traverse City, and at St. Joseph, and at
Port Huron--and many of these locations were mentioned-in a sense it would have, if this were successful, all
kind of political support from these areas.
F--In 1964 the new State Board was elected, the first one.
Due to political accidents, I suppose, they elected
eight Democratic members.
I don't think it had been
anybody's expectation that they would have a 100 percent
monopoly of the members.
There was quite a good deal of
courage, I would call it courageous but perhaps not
political sagacity.
They took on the Flint issue right
straight on.
Do you think that that decision and the antipathy it
resulted in with the Legislature prevented the
Department of Education from being able to be successful
in the coordination of higher education? Because, so to
speak, it came out of the box, took its first fight, and
got licked.
P--No, I think that's a pat theory but I would not subscribe
to that for many considerations.
Let me elaborate.
First of all, as you say, no one would normally have
expected that the new Board in its first term would
turn up eight members of one party or eight members of
another party. Let me say that shouldn't have been
really as surprising as it may seem.
I think people
were sort of shocked by it.
For example, the Republicans had some very respectable
candidates running that year.
If I remember right
Bob Briggs (who in more recent years has been the
Banking Commissioner) and Alvin Bentley were candidates
on the Republican ticket as well as...who is the
president of Washtenaw County Community College?
F--Ponitz.

A 108
Polley
P--His father Henry Ponitz was also a candidate.
But
perhaps the two best known ones, if my memory is
correct, were Alvin Bentley and...
It's too bad, Jerry, you cannot interview Alvin Bentley
who passed on tragically several years ago and who, as
I said, was a candidate for the State Board in 1964.
I
just want to say this one parenthetic thing, and then
I'll come back to this simple question of the State
Board and the Flint branch controversy.
Mr. Bentley, as you know, headed a subcommittee of
Governor Romney's Citizens Committee on Higher Education.
The Bentley subcommittee produced a report which the
Michigan Council of College Presidents reproduced to
the tune of a couple hundred thousand copies, I guess,
and sent statewide.
Let me say that Mr. Bentley later became a hard-working,
courageous member of the Board of Regents at the
University of Michigan. He and Otis Smith9 , I think it
was Otis Smith, played a very key role in selecting the
very able Robben Fleming.
Well, coming back to the question, did the State Board
walk into a trap in 1965 and really impair its useful­
ness in serving as a coordinating instrument for higher
education by, you might say, the premature fight on the
controversy on the Flint campus? I think that sounds
nice, but I don't think that's a very realistic assess­
ment of the situation.
Let me explain.
First of all, let's look at 1964.
The fact you had
eight Democrats was a function of the Goldwater debacle
and the high tide of Lyndon Johnson's victory.
This
has been the history when the one party is winning
statewide offices they win everything.
If you want to
use a term from bowling, all the pins fall. They all
fell this time into the Democratic lot.
The Board had some very, very difficult periods because
the Board members, with the exception of a couple of
q
Otis M. Smith; Regent, University of Michigan.

A 109
Polley
members, were not really seasoned in the area of higher
education.
Don Thurber had served as a member of the
Board of Regents at the University of Michigan. No
other member of the Board elected in 1964 had really
had any substantial degree of experience in any admin­
istrative or governing capacity in higher education.
. [Carmen] DelliQuadri, to be sure, had taught at Michigan
Tech, he taught at the University of Detroit before
that.
[Marilyn Jean] Kelly had taught at Eastern
Michigan University and at one other institution.
Charles Morton had taught. But, by and large, that's
about the extent of the experience in this area.
I
guess I'm saying experience as a teacher, I'm not
sure is comparable to experience as an administrator
or a governing member.
The other thing is the Board took office in January
but the incumbent superintendent held his office until
July 1. I don't know how widely known it is, but the
fact remains that the relationship between the new
Board, all of them were Democratic, and the incumbent
superintendent, who also was Democratic, was very
uneasy.
I don't know how well you know this, but it
was a very uneasy one. That's stating it very gently,
as a matter of fact. One very important ingredient
for successful living together is mutual respect and
I guess there was not really mutual respect, speaking
very candidly here.
I don't profess to explain or
try to analyze why this was true.
F--But I think it's forgiven so...
P--But it was a fact.
There were people who were counseling the State Board
of Education that it should really duck the Flint
College controversy, that really about as much that
could be said about this was said by the Davis report.
The argument went further; that whatever decisions
would be made in this area, they would be made by the
Legislature.
Now, this will get us pretty close to the truth. The
reason I don't think the State Board struck out, so
to speak, on the Flint College controversy was it
didn't have anything really from which to strike out.

A 110
Polley
Despite the opinion that Mr. [Eugene] Krasicky10 wrote
for Mr. Robinson11 very early in the career of the
Board. This opinion needs to be read very, very
carefully.
You can read the opinion two different ways.
Some
people, as some members of the Board, read it to mean
that the Board had an unquestioned superintending/
planning/coordinating role. One can read it that the
opinion merely said that the Board has an advisory role.
Most of the Board members read it to mean that they had
a very decisive role as a planning instrument power.
In some private conversations with a couple of the Board
members one time, I said I really didn't read the
Krasicky opinion in this way. One of the members, dis­
appointed in my remarks, turned to me and said, "Ira, if
that is true, then it would be my impression to resign
from the Board." This actually happened.
He was so
disappointed at what I had to say. He also thought maybe
I wasn’t kidding when I made this observation to him.
I guess, Jerry, what I'm saying is the fate of the Board
of Education as a planning instrumentality of some
consequence was sealed long before the Flint College
controversy.
I always felt it was sealed in at least
two ways.
It was sealed first of all by the fact that
they were given a very ambiguous grant of authority in
a sense subtracted by another section saying that really
the governing authority resides with the local
institutions.
And secondly, I think that it was in a very precarious
position because the Board was an elective board and
I have given a lot of thought in this matter.
It was
a mistake to have an elective board.
I thought so at
the time.
I think so now.
If you are going to have
one, you should not have one where people are nominated
in conventions and run statewide.
10Eugene Krasicky; Assistant in charge Education and
Retirement Division, Department of Attorney General.
^ Edward Robinson; Democratic Senator from Dearborn.

A 111
Polley
If you looked at the state boards of higher education,
none of them, or few of them, combined all the elements
that this Board did.
It was elective, they were nom­
inated in statewide conventions, and they ran on a
statewide ticket on a partisan ticket.
So I ’m saying
a lack of power, the nature of how they were selected
and how they ran, together with the fact that you had
some very well-established institutions.
Winston Churchill said that he did not become the
King's Prime Minister to preside over the liquidation
of the British Empire.
I would guess the people at
Ann Arbor and East Lansing and other institutions
were saying that they did not witness the election
of a State Board of Education and the establishment
of a new Constitution to sit with folded arms and
see a political apparatus in the capital city direct
university institutional affairs.
F--I have some observations about what you say.
I did
not approach these questions in the way you have stated
them.
I had thought one could draw a more causal
relationship.
I am struck by one observation that you make.
In
Massachusetts, where I'm from, running statewide, even
for positions without much power but much visibility,
led to other higher offices.
I think the real political
test of the strength of the State Board is that no
member of the State Board, in all of the eight years
it has existed, has ever gone on to greater political
office from that statewide base.
P--Well, let me say yes to that.
But let me say that had
Leroy AugensteinlZ lived, I think there is a very good
chance that he would have been a Republican nominee.
I counseled with Augenstein, for whom I had a lot of
respect and a lot of affection.
But I really thought
that he shouldn't have started this.
I remember sitting over in the Kellogg Center one day
and saying, "You know, Roy, this guy Hart is going to
be awfully tough for anybody to beat." This was a full
year ahead of the election of '68 and Roy smiled and
said, "Ira, I worry about one party at a time," meaning
12

Leroy G. Augenstein; Member, State Board of Education.

A 112
Polley
that I'm not going to worry about Hart, I ’ve got my
problems getting the nomination.
Of course, you know
that Miss Kelly thought of running at one time for
the Senate, and of course Mr. Brennan^ at one time
aspired...
F--He ran for judge.
P--I don’t know whether you know this story, [but] he also
aspired for the post of State Supreme Court Justice.
Some powerful people put some cold water on that and he
was not able to develop any support for a campaign for
a Supreme Court position.
There is one other point I wanted to make about the
Board that I think ill-favored it in one way. The
Board was given too much to do--despite the tidiness
that is suggested by a single board with responsi­
bilities for elementary education, secondary education,
vocational education, higher education, the whole bit.
It looks very tidy to some political scientists and to
some people who like tidiness.
They say this permits
good articulation between the elementary, the secondary
education and higher education (whatever the hell the
word articulation means). These theorists say that
this is a good system.
I think you need a specialized board for a specialized
function.
I know the spokesman for elementary and
secondary education agonized when the Board spent a lot
of time in higher education.
I know some of them were
concerned about my appointment.
They felt, mistakenly
so, that I would be an errand boy for higher education.
I remember Helen Fields of the Association of State
Local Boards, coming to me and saying, "Well, I ’m just
delighted that you haven’t moved this way," and then
adding, "but your Board is sure fascinated by higher
education." And conversely, I ’m sure that people on
the college campuses were saying that the Board is
spending all of its time on elementary and secondary
education.
13

Thomas J. Brennan; Member, State Board of Education.

A 113
Polley
F--There was a certain class of opinion that said that
they needed someone to reflect the interests of
elementary and secondary education. And there is
still, I suppose, that opinion. To this day, from
1964 to the present, there hasn’t been a superin­
tendent that was of the flesh and blood of the
elementary and secondary area.
Coming back to what I was saying, I have believed
there could be a more casual approach, but when you
read the text you'll find that Governor Williams and
Governor Swainson both leaned very much, I think, to
your view that it was not possible to "put the cork
in the bottle."
P--Ok, that's a good way of saying it.
I would say one other thing.
Several of these board
members I'm speaking of, for example, a man like
Leon Fill1^, I liked a good deal.
Some that I had
differences of opinion with I liked, but I really
agonized sometimes picking up the paper--this was
before I was appointed--and one of the board members
was quoted as saying: "We will bring the University
of Michigan to its knees." This presumably was a
direct quote.
This was said, I'm sure, in the heat of some argument.
Comments like that proved very, very unhelpful.
This
sent shivers through campuses, you know. When I'm
talking about through campuses, I'm talking about
universities, presidents, vice-presidents, their
boards and so on and so forth.
F--And I think that’s what Governor Williams meant when
he referred to the fact that Michigan had a long
tradition that appreciated the independence...
P--That's true, he's absolutely right, he knows.
Let me
tell you a story you may not know. At one time when
Miller was controller he asked for the internal budgets
of the University of Michigan.
The order came back
•^Leon Fill, M.D.; Democrat from Huntington Woods;
Member, State Board of Education, 1965-67.

A 114
Polley
over the signature of Harlan Hatcher demurred, and
said that the University of Michigan had the consti­
tutional status.
Miller, a political scientist, thought about this for
a moment and he thought, "That’s interesting, I know
that's true, but Governor Williams also has consti­
tutional status and Governor Williams sees that the
laws are faithfully executed and prepares the budget
and so forth." So he sent another letter off to the
University of Michigan pointing out that Governor
Williams has constitutional status.
He never did get the budgets. You know who got the
budgets, the Beadle, Zollar, Lane group finally got
the budgets, the internal budgets, from both the
institutions. Michigan State gave theirs much more
readily.
F--Well, I suppose the last question, why in your opinion
did an institutional system for the coordination of
higher education not come about? We have discussed
this.
I suppose the history, the long traditions of
independence, the fear of big government, these are
some of the themes.
P--Could I add another one? You know I ’ve been on probably
as many sides of this kind of an issue as anybody; as
a budget examiner for higher education, as a controller,
as an executive director of the Michigan Council of
College Presidents, as a State Superintendent of
Higher Education, and here at Michigan State.
If
loyalties were the simple measurement, then I suppose
I wouldn't be able to give any answer at all.
But there is another factor here that needs to be
stressed, and I suppose it does reflect somewhat my
present location, the fact that I am in the academic
world.
I've given a lot of thought about this, but
candidly, the case for, say, an Illinois-type board
of higher education has not been made unmistakably
by anybody that I know of. Let me state it a little
differently.
I think most people would [submit], say
a man like Paul Dressel^^^ f0r example, that there is
15

Paul L. Dressel; Assistant Provost, Michigan State
University.

A 115
Polley
a case for coordination.
There needs to be some
coordination.
But people like Dressel, and others
I would hope, would identify very clearly that in various
ways a very substantial measure of coordination is
achieved without an Illinois-type board of higher
education.
F--Dr. Cantlon^ calls it a subtle system for the competi­
tion for resource that creates the coordination by the
legislative process.
P--This is right.
I don't know what his
are in this area, but Miller has long
to the view that the coordination, if
to be any, is going to be achieved by
through the appropriating process.

current views
ago subscribed
there is going
the Legislature

F--Coordination is a dangerous and unsettled word because
frequently the advocates of it really meant control
rather than coordination.
P--Yes, yes. One other thing the purest people I don't
think have really recognized, Jerry, is that once you
have established something like the Illinois board-I'm not saying this with any tone of derision--it also
immediately establishes a goal for itself.
The goal
of that agency is to survive, and one way that bureau­
cratic agencies survive is to get into more areas of
action and engage in growth.
I think that the people who willy-nilly say that we
need something like the Illinois Board of Higher
Education need to rethink the situation. Maybe Illinois
needs it, I don't know.
I don't think Michigan needs
it, and I'm not fully satisfied with what we presently
have.
F--Did you want to make any observations who in your
opinion were the significant opinion leaders in higher
education in Michigan in this period?
P--Let me mention a few. We're talking from 1958 to 1970.
Well, I think that you would mention your governors in
■^John E. Cantlon; Provost, Michigan State University.

A 116
Polley
this period, all of them, and for different reasons.
I ’m talking about Williams, Swainson, Romney, Milliken,
all of them.
I think you would mention several of the college presi­
dents.
I would mention Hannah, I'd mention Spathelf,
I'd mention James Miller, but I would also mention
people like Ed Harden.
Somebody might say, "Ed Harden?
Well, why?" Well, the answer is very, very simple. He
did at Northern pretty much what Spathelf did at Ferris.
He took an institution that had less than a thousand
and by the time he retired it had something around
seven to eight thousand students. Harden, I think,
espoused very vigorously the right to try, you know.
He, in this period when many institutions were moving
more and more toward selective admissions, was taking
the view that youngsters who graduate from high school,
maybe with indifferent records, should at least have an
opportunity to enter a four-year college and try out.
I would mention Alvin Bentley, especially for his role
in the Constitution, but especially for his role in the
Blue Ribbon Committee.
I guess I've mentioned somebody
like Miller who served not only as a president, as I
said, but as a controller, and in other advisory
capacities.
17
Let me mention the name of William Schunck
in
connection only with the establishment of the Wayne
County Community College.
I think he played a decisive
role on this.
Check Harry Salsinger^ of the Detroit
News, he played a very decisive role.
F--I guess that surprises me because I don't remember
Schunck around at all...
P--Let me say in one sense the notion of establishing a
school and forgetting about the taxes, established by
the Legislature, is essentially Schunck's idea.
Schunck had had a person on the Committee of 100, I
think. You know, this very prestigious group.
I think
that somebody from the United Automobile Workers,
17

William A. Schunck; Superintendent of Schools, Wayne
County.
18

1961-

Harry G. Salsinger; Education Writer, Detroit News,

A 117
Polley
maybe Leonard himself, was the chairman or co-chairman.
Schunck was involved in this but let me come right back
to this business.
In terms of the actual lobbying on
this, Dan Manthe, Schunck’s Lansing man, played a hell
of a key role in lobbying for the establishment of this.
I ’m sure there were others and I don't mean to slight
them, but I think I ’ve mentioned the key ones.
F--Were there any people that were influential on you that
you would care to cite in your public role?
P--Well, you know I think everybody that you have some con­
tact with has some influence.
I would mention Miller who
was Controller when I came into the Department of
Education.
I ’d mention Williams and Swainson, and I
would mention Bentley.
I'd mention Schunck.
Schunck and
I had many conversations about Wayne County Community
College.
Spathelf, Harden.
I guess, really, all of my
bosses in the period when I was with the Michigan Council
of College Presidents, each bringing different views on
it, on particular issues.
F--Thank you very much.
with you.

It has been a great pleasure to talk

P--Well, I've enjoyed this, Jerry.
I'd be interested in
seeing what you come forth with.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
JAMES FARNSWORTH1

F--Jim, what in your opinion were the reasons that led to
the expansion of Michigan higher education from 1958 on
Fa-Number one, Jerry, I would have to say that the tre­
mendous surge in the population, particularly the
young people that were being born, certainly influenced
that. Without a doubt there were just more bodies
there and more pressures for higher education.
And then I noticed, if I could jump ahead to [question]
number two: "What were the social and economic factors
that led to this significant growth?" I don't think
there is any question at all but what the people simply
had higher expectations for their children from that
period on than perhaps they [previously] did. Parti­
cularly you mentioned social factors.
I don't think
there is any question at all but what a larger group
of our population had higher expectations for their
children.
I just have to go back to my own youth to sort of empha
size what I mean.
When I got through the eighth grade
my parents were through educating me, because they had
done more for me than what had been done for them.
F--And when you graduated probably you were the person in
your family who had gone to school the most.
Fa-I had gone to school at least three or four years
longer than my parents had.
I think that's been the
pattern.
Obviously, as more and more people graduated
from high school... they more and more then wanted
their children to have a little better preparation than
they had--more education. And so the pressure was
there to send them on to a higher education institution
James S. Farnsworth; Republican from Plainwell; State
Representative, 1962; Delegate to Constitutional
Convention, 1961-62; Vice-Chairman, House Appropriations
Committee.
Interview conducted April 16, 1974.
A 118

A 119
Farnsworth
F--These were the children of the GI Bill parents.
Fa-Yes.
This whole thing that parents are continuallywanting to do more for their kids than what was done
for them.
I think that process will continue.
F--My discussions with many people lead to the indications
that you point to: the aspirations of our citizenry for
more education--the generation that came back from the
war and the first generation of many who went to college
through the GI Bill--they wanted more for their children.
There are two other things that I want to get to here.
One is, in other states--Ohio, Illinois, New York,
New Jersey--they had the same kind of upward aspira­
tions and their states did not make the investment in
higher education the way we did.
Fa-Well, that’s true.
The states vary, but some of those
states you mentioned have some very adequate private
institutions that Michigan did not have.
I don’t believe
that you can make that comparison, at least too much.
Certainly another factor that entered into it is just
the fact that, really from World War II on, more people
could afford to go on, they were more affluent, the
resources were there.
F--Do you think it was a deliberate public policy in this
state to lower the cost of higher education?
Fa-No, as a matter of fact it has not
been lowered. As
a matter of fact it has increased.
I believe it was
a deliberate public policy to slow down the rate of
increase.
In other words to hold tuitions to a very
low level in order that everybody, or nearly everybody,
that wanted could afford to go to college.
F--I recognize, Jim, that tuitions have gone up in dollar
amounts, but in real terms they haven't.
Fa-In real terms they haven't.
In real terms they are
lower than they were before.
F--That's what I mean.
Fa-I think that has been a deliberate public policy.

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Farnsworth
F--Tuition at Michigan State is $600.
Fa-Right.
F--When I went to college the tuition in a private school
in the East was $800.
I was hard-pressed to make $800
in the summer because the minimum wage was 75<f. Six
hundred dollars appears to me to be easily obtainable
by student work in the leisure period.
Fa-No question about it.
It hasn't been uncommon at all,
particularly for the boys who wanted to go to college,
as far back as '58 and [the] early sixties, to save
$1,000 from the summer's work. You could go out now
and save $2,000 from the summer's work. A little
different for the girls, perhaps.
F--But that's an important point, isn't it?
Fa-Yes, I think it is.
F--The number of girls in this state going to school has
increased significantly every year over the previous
year.
Fa-Yes.
Certainly it was a matter of public policy that
we expanded the student aid as we have, and supported
them with tax money in Michigan. That was just to
make it possible for even the low-income family kid
to get a higher education.
F--From your vantage point as Vice-Chairman of the
Appropriations Committee, you know that every dollar
has a suitor for it. Yet, in this period--from 1958
to 1970--higher education appropriations increased from
$80 million to $240 million.
It doesn't seem to have
been difficult to allocate that money.
I'm kind of
curious why the other vested interests who use tax
money didn't fight it.
Fa-As a matter of fact, my belief is that this old family
objective of giving their kids more than they had has
just been there, and nobody in the Legislature is going
to vote against that sort of thing.
In other words, if you are representing your consti­
tuents, your constituents are simply saying that
"higher education is one thing that we want for our
kids so you have to support it."

A 121
Farnsworth
F--So what you are saying is that it was broad-based
public support across all kinds of member districts.
Fa-Across all kinds of member districts, whether it was
a poor district of low economic groups, or whether it
was the more affluent groups such as East Grand Rapids.
They simply wanted a place for "My son or daughter" to
be in a higher education setting.
For many years we went along and each year funded any­
where from 15 to 20 thousand additional students over
the prior year.
I've often tried to put that in per­
spective by simply saying to people: "Now look, every
year we have funded higher education to an extent that
we expanded it the equivalent of the entire student
body of Western Michigan University, for instance."
Each year we were doing that over and above what we
were doing the year before.
F--I'm glad you said that because that's a point that
slipped away from me.
In every other budget category
of government, if you spend over the budget estimate,
you don't get additional money.
But yet, in higher
education, every year when they overexceeded their
enrollments the next year they were compensated.
Fa-They were not only compensated for it, but remember we
had to build the buildings to house the kids.
It has
been a tremendous effort, there is no question about it.
Now, I want to go just a little further; that thing
went on through the sixties to be sure, but if you will
look as we started into the seventies--and you spoke of
other pressures--I believe you will find the legislative
support of welfare programs was creeping up a bit at the
expense of some of the programs such as higher education.
I think if you want to look at that you will find that
while we've continued to finance higher education in
ever increasing amounts, the percentages dropped a
little of the total, whereas welfare has increased as
a percentage of the total.
So there is some general
competition there.
Along with that, of course, the number of students in
the last couple of years has dropped off, so the demand
is not there for the buildings that was there before.

A 122
Farnsworth
F--What were the policy objectives, Jim, that underlaid
this expansion? What were the state policy-makers
trying to accomplish? You mentioned the tuition and
you mentioned also the scholarship aid. Those had
direct intentions.
Can you think of some others?
Fa-There were other influences, obviously.
Industry of course had an ever-increasing demand for
people with higher skills as we got into more complex
manufacturing processes.
To mention just one: the
computerization of industry.
For instance, where they
computerize an entire assembly line. Obviously that
took a different type of training than the old assembly
line did. Any factory you want to go into you see that
thing working.
So there was a demand there.
Certainly the space program.
Sputnik way back in [1957]
certainly had an influence, particularly in the field of
science. We saw that spill over into federal aid not
only for public colleges, particularly in science, but
we saw it spill over into federal aid for private colleges
and universities.
Those influences I can think of quickly.
F--What were the key issues that resulted in partisan and
parochial conflict in the attempt to attain the above
policy objectives?
Fa-I touched on this a little bit before, but certainly
the great mass of laboring people became more affluent.
I don’t know as you could say this is partisan in the
sense of party partisanship, but certainly between the
former poor and the rich that might have been a partisan
thing.
I just don’t know what you are driving at.
F--Let me tell you what I'm thinking about.
It has struck
me that in many other states education has been the
source of legislative conflict between parties.
In
this state it does not appear to have been.
Fa-I believe there is a reason for that.
I believe that
the Democratic Party in Michigan has been virtually the
same as the labor organizations --they are pretty much
one and the same--[and] the Republican Party has been
traditionally representative of the middle class,
upper-middle class, and the very affluent.
Both of

A 123
Farnsworth
them had a reason for wanting to support higher educa­
tion, particularly the growth of it, because they all
wanted a place for their son or daughter to be in that
kind of a setting.
F--Beside the fact that the parties didn’t fight about
this--and from 1958 to 1970 w e ’ve had two Democratic
governors and two Republican governors--and education
was non-partisan, we also have the fact that, in my
opinion, Michigan labor, Michigan industry, Michigan
agriculture, and Michigan commerce didn't fight about
the questions of education.
In Illinois and others
that came...
Fa-Michigan, being an industrial state, industry didn't
fight it. Obviously not, they needed the product.
F--So I guess when I'm talking about parochial conflicts
in other states, I think they fought about whether
they should allocate the money.
In this state we seem
to have fought about who should deliver the service,
rather than whether we should have the service.
Fa-Well, I believe that's true. And then we fought also
about who was going to pay the money in the way of taxes,
and we had some pretty good partisan battles over that.
F--We had questions about the taxes, whether we should tax,
we had bitter conflict.
Fa-But when it got to allocating it, as to whether we
allocate it to higher education or something else,
there never was any partisan conflict as far as I know.
F--No, whereas in welfare one could always make a very
good political stand against that.
Fa-Always, always.
Then you had the affluent pitted
against the poor, but not so in higher education because
they all had a stake. The poor wanted to better their
lot, for their children; the rich needed to maintain
their manufacturing plants, and so forth, and to have a
place for their...
F--But the rich, Jim, could have afforded alternatives
like private sector schools, and the poor benefitted
the most, and yet neither side fought about it.
Fa-Well, we didn't leave the private sector out entirely
on making it possible for the poor to get in. We had
tuition grant programs and all that and we spent

Farnsworth

A 124

a considerable amount of taxpayers' money.
it was non-partisan.
F--Certainly one of the
gram was to continue
Do you think another
their student bodies
private schools?

And, again,

objects of the tuition grant pro­
to make the private schools viable.
object was to change the mix of
so that the poor could go to these

Fa-I think both of those objectives were there and partic­
ularly to give the young person a wider choice of where
he went.
F--So that he could pick from fifty institutions instead
of just fourteen.
Fa-Well, that's right.
For instance, there's a wide range
of people that have some pretty serious, deep-seated
religious convictions of where they would like to have
their kids go.
I'll just mention particularly Christian
Reform with their Calvin College, and the Reform Church
with Hope College.
These parents are really pretty
intent on having their kids go to that kind of setting.
And still, without tuition grants or something, many of
them were being sort of priced out of the market. You
could say the same thing for the Catholic schools with
their University of Detroit, and Aquinas at Grand Rapids,
and so forth.
F--Did any of the policy goals for the enhancement of
higher education have as their objective the destruc­
tion of class and culture barriers?
I think particularly what occurred in this very room
in 197 0--the appeal for the community for the creation
of Wayne County Community College--had very definitely,
I think, that agenda.
Fa-Well, I don't believe there is any doubt but what labor,
for instance, particularly the UAW, has had [that] as
an objective.
They, of course, have supported higher
education and I don't think there is any question but
what one of their objectives was to break down cultural
barriers.
That’s only one of their objectives, but
probably an important one.
I don't think when you say destruction of class...I
wouldn't want to speculate that they were intent on

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Farnsworth
the destruction of any particular class, they are
more intent on moving their people up to a little
better class.
F--That's a better way to put it.
Fa-But at the same time breaking down cultural barriers
in order to do it.
F--I don't think I meant by the question, Jim, to imply
that they wanted to destroy the upper or middle
classes, they just wanted to create entrance.
Fa-They simply wanted to get aboard.
F--Right, and that's a very healthy attitude, in my
opinion.
Did you regard as one of the key issues in this period
popularism in higher education versus elitism?
Fa-Oh, very definitely.
there, but not much.

I ’ve seen a little conflict

We saw it at the University of Michigan, for instance,
particularly from the University of Michigan alumni,
when the University had some trouble with their black
students, and pressure was brought on them to increase
their percentage of disadvantaged students. We saw a
reaction from the so-called elitist groups who were
saying: "Look, you're lowering your standards. A
degree from the University of Michigan is never going
to mean the same hereafter in this process." And, on
the other side, we were seeing the disadvantaged
people and their proponents saying: "We've got to
break this thing down, this is not just for the elite,
this is for all of us."
F--Ok, that's a good point there because that occurred at
that time when, as I recollect, the Senate was Republican
and the House was narrowly Republican.
I believe
Mr. Waldron was the Speaker. And yet there wasn't any
significant preponderance of legislative support to

A 126
Farnsworth
turn their back on broadening the base of Michigan, as
I recollect.
Fa-On the contrary, there was a great deal of sentiment
in both the House and Senate against the University
of Michigan yielding to those demands.
Now in the final analysis it did not reflect in reduced,
or even holding down, appropriations.
But the feeling
was there, and the threat was there all the time. There
was a lot of discussion regarding whether the University
of Michigan in fact should be forced to take, say, seven
percent, or ten percent, or whether they should just
take those that could afford to come.
F--So you're saying that if the University of Michigan had
succumbed to alumni pressure they would have had a much
rockier road with the Legislature.
Fa-That's exactly what I'm saying.
I'm sure the Legislature
reflected the alumni, but they just didn't carry it to
the point where they were vindictive about it in dollars.
F--How important were vocational and occupational training
objectives in the enhancement of higher education?
Fa-Well, I would think that the record of Michigan in
vocational and occupational training sort of speaks
for itself.
I believe that when I was in the Constitutional Convention
we had some fifteen community colleges as against twentynine that we have now.
They just didn't come out of a
vacuum, they came as a result of a demand from almost
every area of the state where people wanted an oppor­
tunity for their youngster to acquire something beyond
high school and perhaps something short of a four-year,
higher-cost institution.
They wanted to commute, for
instance.
F--The decision to build Ferris came from that same kind
of attitude, didn't it?
Fa-Originally it did, yes--or the decision for the state
to take it over and expand it. There has been a tre­
mendous demand for that type of thing. And [it has]
had excellent support from the Legislature, which is
simply reflecting what the people themselves were
willing to support.

A 127
Farnsworth
F--Dr. Polley offered proof in a recent interview. He
said that the fact that the Legislature was willing
to pay for vocational-technical differential in the
state subsidy was proof of their recognition of this.
Fa-Another example, yes. We pay more for credit hours in
that field than we do others.
F--And that was a legislative mandate, rather than an
executive or bureaucratic one.
Fa-And while w e ’re discussing only higher education, I
would have to point out that through our kindergarten
through twelfth grade program we have, we and the local
taxpayers,have supported this type of training right
down in the grades, to the point where I believe we
have now some 16 so-called area vocational training
centers.
F--And the categorical aid for vocational education for
K-12 has increased too as part of that same...
Fa-I think it is reflecting the attitude of the people.
It is the only reason I mentioned it, as it is not
higher education.
F--What about the growth of culture and the arts? Did
they have importance in the dialogue over the growth
of higher education?
Fa-Not that I detected.
Certainly the growth in knowledge
did, but when you say just the growth...
F--No, I want to make that distinction between knowledge
and culture.
Fa-No, I did not detect the growth of culture and arts as
having any, or at least having any real consideration,
in the growth of higher education.
F--I’m not discomforted by that.
Fa-If it did have, I didn’t detect it.
F--What was the position--you've already talked, Jim, about
the position of labor--with regard to higher education?
I've often thought that Reuther and the UAW broadened

A 128
Farnsworth
the base, I ’m not sure that labor is the right term
to use for the reason that in most states, except I
think about Minnesota, labor was an interest group.
Here in Michigan, as in Minnesota, labor wanted to
rule and they were really a political rather than an
interest group.
Fa-I never thought that labor wanted to rule higher educa­
tion.
Labor certainly fought and won an important
place in government.
And they certainly won a place
in higher education as a result of collective bar­
gaining, which made it almost necessary that they train
young people into that art and in [the] industrial
relations field and that sort of thing.
F--I’m not trying to suggest, I hope I ’m not trying to
suggest, that they were attempting to rule, but it
happens that in many states labor was very bread-andbutter oriented. Here they had interest in the social
welfare system, in pensions, and education.
Fa-I think that they just simply set their sights a little
higher.
Particularly in the UAW.
I think they set
their sights higher, addressed themselves more to broad
social considerations, and this was only a part of it.
F--What about the role of industry? I can't recollect
that I ever saw real political pressure from industry
to create educational opportunity, but at the same time,
I never saw a negative attitude, the way they felt about
taxes.
Fa-Well, it’s true you didn't find industry in the Legis­
lature promoting higher allocations to higher education.
But you did see many, many instances where industry did
a great deal in their own way and with specific insti­
tutions to promote higher education.
Let’s just cite one that is going on right at the moment,
here in the year 1974.
The University of Michigan is
wanting to expand their Engineering School and came to
the Legislature and said:
"We believe if you will build
us a new facility that will cost maybe 35 or 40 millions
of dollars that we can go to industry and perhaps promote
as much as 20 million dollars of that." They came back
and reported to us that industry had organized, that
Ed Cole was heading up that committee and that they

A 129
Farnsworth
have already raised somewhere between 4 and 5 million
dollars and they are well on their way to raising that
money.
So industry has made a contribution, although
they didn't put pressure on the Legislature.
F--Now I guess I want to come back to a thing we kind of
sidled by.
In labor I had the feeling that they pushed
for statewide objectives, whereas in industry one felt
the pressure from industry very much in local terms.
I think of Saginaw Valley, I think of the University of
Michigan at Dearborn, I think about Oakland reflecting
automotive interest and large industry.
I think about
Grand Valley having all the support from the business
community, Old Kent Bank and the support of Seidman,
the CPA.
Fa-Well, let's take them one at a time. Let's take
Oakland. As you well know, that got started by a gift
from a very wealthy family, and Michigan State of course
took advantage of the gift.
I often wonder whether that
was local pressure from that area that started that, or
whether the gift really triggered it off and then the
local people took hold of it and promoted it.
F--I think it was probably that way, but still, they did
come by after.
Woody Varner was skilled in building that.
Fa-Particularly the Grand Rapids area felt for a long time
[that] they didn't get their proper share of higher
education support.
That became a very hot political
issue as to whether they got a college over there or
not, and they finally did get it.
F--Do you want to add anything, Jim, to the position of
commerce in regard to higher education?
Fa-Well, of course, I put commerce right in with industry,
they are part of it.
I think their attitude was much
the same as industry, that "We need these trained people
and we are simply willing to pay our share of the taxes
to have them."
F--What about agriculture?
It's somehow hard, you know,
people talk about agriculture and say Michigan State.
Of course, Michigan State had received the State
support for the agricultural experiment and co-op

A 130
Farnsworth
extension services throughout the state, [but] were
there other interests that agriculture had for educa­
tion that you could identify?
Fa-Oh, very definitely, in particular in the last few
years. As you said, they have always been interested
in the research that goes on, in the Cooperative
Extension Service which communicates that information
out to the agricultural community.
But more recently,
as agriculture has sort of evolved into what they call
agribusiness, I'm certain that more and more they look
to the University to train people,not in the techniques
or producing--they still want that, they want to
increase yields and all that--but more importantly they
want to train them to operate a big business, the agri­
business, a business that takes a tremendous investment
so that you have to know something about marketing, you
have to know something about finance, you have to know
a great deal about budgeting, for instance, planning.
F--Is that one of the reasons, for instance, for the really
widespread off-campus business curriculums that exist
in places like Troy [and] Benton Harbor? Western
Michigan has a program, I don't recollect where, but
they have one.
Fa-I don't believe that agribusiness, agriculture itself,
has contributed much to the demand for so-called offcampus studies.
I'm inclined to believe that that
pressure comes more from the liberal arts.
F--Pressure comes off the campus from liberal arts?
Fa-That’s my opinion, yes.
F--What were the pressures and influences in the determin­
ation of public policy, if any, and notice I say if any,
from the federal government?
Fa-Well, let's go back to Sputnik again.
I think there
was a pressure and an influence there that put, or at
least hurried up, the process of the federal government
needing higher education.
There was a tremendous demand,
almost hysteria, for a while as to whether we were
behind the Russians sciencewise, spacewise.
F--Governor Williams spoke of that too.

But I've been

A 131
Farnsworth.
coming at this a little bit differently now. You are
quite an expert, because of your legislative assignments,
on the social welfare system.
Fa-I'm only an expert when I'm away from home, and I'm home
now.
F--And I think the federal contribution in social welfare
and social services has mandated many state policies as
the basis of participation. Now federal support for
education seems not to have come with the same degree
of mandates for the delivery.
It didn’t seem to mandate
the admissions, or the size of institutions, or their
expenditure ranges.
Fa-I believe there is a reason for that, as against the
comparison with social services, for instance.
Insti­
tutions, as you well know, of higher education are
extremely sensitive about their own autonomy.
I
suspect that when Congress got into the business of
aiding higher education they were very much aware of
that, and would be most reluctant to infringe on an
institution of higher education to the extent of trying
to dictate any kind of policy.
F--Much has been made by the people I've talked with about
that--not only from Michigan but also from the national
scene--of the sense of tradition of history, of some
basic fabric of the Republican idea.
Fa-I think more basic than that perhaps. You have to
remember that Congress is made up of people that were
formerly in state and local government so they were
well aware when they went there of this sensitivity.
But it seems to me, beyond that, that even politicians
occasionally will be statesmen long enough to be most
reluctant to have legislative bodies get into any kind
of position where they can from time to time influence
what happens on a campus of higher education.
I think back to the McCarthy period when there was a
tremendous urge for legislative bodies to rule out the
possibility of any person with communistic leanings
from teaching, for instance, at the university, or
speaking on a campus. That hysteria was carried so
far that there was a proposal put through the Michigan
Legislature putting on the ballot the proposal relative

A 132
Farnsworth
to Communism and actually put this proposal to the
people and the people voted it into the Michigan
Constitution--the old Constitution, the pre-1963
Constitution.
But some way higher education resisted that, and
successfully.
That taught me one thing: that I ’d better
be very, very careful in legislating that I don’t break
down this autonomy that universities have.
This freedom
to teach what they want and to try to teach all the
truth.
I just think that in their saner moments in Congress
they felt much the same.
F--We have talked in another context, besides the inter­
view, about the hysteria of McCarthyism, and its effects
on Michigan and your concerns about it. And, as you were
talking, I was recollecting in my mind that we even had
some statute on the books--that I think is still on the
books--that says a faculty member must take a loyalty
oath.
Fa-Yes.
F--And send the loyalty oath to the Superintendent of Public
Instruction.
Fa-Yes.
F--I think that the fact that that law hasn’t been enforced,
has been ignored, is probably proof of your point.
Fa-I believe it is.
If there is any segment of our society
where they have to resist these temporary periods of,
for lack of a better word, hysteria, obviously it is
our institutions of higher education.
F--So you detect, Jim, that there is a willingness on the
part of legislators, legislatures, to protect that
special responsibility to truth.
Fa-Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Even the politician who will
use those things back in his district to say, ’’Well,
I introduced a resolution," or, "I’m going to cut that
budget because they did this, or they did that." When

A 133
Farnsworth
the chips are down I just don't believe he quite
believes that way.
F--So, therefore, we might say that on the floor of the
House, the failure of individual members to add these
political and emotional amendments to the bills failed
because of that basic sense.
Fa-That's my opinion.
F--Even though frequently they had the votes in many
other cases when those same conditions came about.
Fa-Yes.
F--I sort of concur too, but I think that faculty members
and educators don't have that same sense because they
look at the rhetoric and don't see how the votes come
out.
Fa-Well, I can understand how faculty members would get
concerned when they see the rhetoric and the press
releases, and particularly if they see a legislative
body in action in one of those periods.
But I think
their fears are unfounded.
F--What were the pressures and influences in the deter­
mination of public policy, if any, from the private
sector?
I've been trying to ascertain if the private sector
attempted to prevent the growth of the public role
because of their fear of competition.
I haven't been
able to find that at all, I found rather that they
seem to have shared a common view about expanding
the total base.
Fa-Well, in the past 13 years that I've been exposed to
it I have not once seen anywhere where the private
sector in higher education has brought any pressure
at all to retard the expansion of public-suppcrted
higher education.
Now, I have seen, and been a party to, very recently,
some... I wouldn't say pressures... I'd say desires,
on the part of the private sector to participate more
fully in state support. Very recently, for instance,

A 134
Farnsworth
we passed a measure to give all approved private
institutions compensation for degrees that they produce.
F--This is the old McGeorge Bundy-Hannah plan from
New York, but I think the explanation that I saw that
might be valid for that was --harkening back to your
earlier remarks in this conversation where you talked
about the desire to continue choice--to continue the
alternative.
Fa-That is one of the objectives.
That was one of my
objectives.
In fact I introduced the Bill.
But another one of my objectives was to be as sure as
I could that they were going to continue in business
as viable institutions so that we do have a mix, and
we do have a choice.
And third, I just thought it was good business if you
could buy a degree for $100 a year rather than $900 a
year minimum at a public institution.
F--I was educated myself in a private school and I think
I've made a contribution myself to the public good,
even though I was educated in a private school.
So I
think we must look at where our citizens are prepared
in the end.
Fa-What you're saying is that it does serve a public
purpose.
F--And they have always been subsidized from the beginning
by the public by the fact that they didn't have to pay
taxes.
Fa-Right.
F--We've already talked a little bit about some of these
regional and local pressures to expand higher education
in one location rather than another.
I think particu­
larly about Flint, I think about Dearborn, I think about
Grand Rapids, Saginaw, Sault Ste. Marie...
Fa-Well, let's take Saginaw, for instance. Now, how was
Saginaw born? You had Delta College over there, and
Delta College was a community college, and they wanted
to become a four-year institution.
The Legislature

A 135
Farnsworth
said, MNo, we're not going to promote 29 community
colleges into four-year institutions, we're simply not
going to do it." But still the people over there were
saying, "Well, we want a four-year institution."
I can only tell you what my thinking was at the time-and I'm sure several others of my colleagues:
"We've
got a choice, we are either going to have to yield to
that pressure and make Delta a four-year institution,
and if we do then we set the pattern and we'll have to
fight this all the way down through 29 other community
colleges, or, we go out here and set up a four-year
institution for them." And we took the latter course.
F--Ok, that's an interesting point, because I was an
observer.
I taught at Delta in 1964, when this happened,
and I detected then and now the desire not to have the
community colleges become carbon copies of four-year
institutions, because legislators and public policy
officials had the belief that they had an additional
role.
Fa-That's right. Now, whether our belief is valid or not, .
that belief did exist and still does.
F--Well, the question that I don't know, and hopefully
will have to ascertain, is what have been the effects
of the two-year degree programs in the industrial and
technological and terminal training in this contribution
to society, or in fact do all these people just go on
to earn degrees?
Fa-All I'm certain of is that we had a fear that if we
turned Delta into a four-year institution that in some
period of time then we would not have the vocational
and technical opportunities...
F--That adds some insight back to an earlier question:
"What were some of the public policy concerns?"
Certainly, therefore, there was the desire to have a
multiplicity of opportunities.
Fa-That's right, that's right.
F--Jim, what were the reasons, in your opinion, for the
failure of the branch campus system that had begun to
be developed in Michigan with Oakland, Flint, and
Dearborn?

A 136
Farnsworth
That was certainly brought to a halt by legislative
activity.
Fa-No doubt about it.
It is my belief that the Legislature--and again
reflecting public opinion, because I believe that
legislatures do reflect public opinion-- [responded to]
the fear of concentration of control over molding
minds.
There is a fear that if you have one institu­
tion, for instance, and only one, that sometime in
time that institution can influence many, many minds
to their own philosophy.
The belief is, and whether
it is valid or not, that if you have many institutions
the likelihood of that sort of thing happening is
minimized.
I suspect that the experience in Germany with Nazism
probably was very much on people’s minds and I suspect
the Russian experience is very much on people's minds.
They fear having, whether it's government or a univer­
sity or what, that kind of control in the development
of people's minds.
F--You and I had talked earlier, when we were going through
some introductory preparations for this conversation,
about some of your Con-Con experiences.
I had addressed
the question to you about what were the policy objectives
that underlay this expansion. As you recollect, Jim,
you responded to me that certainly in your opinion one
of the strong bases was the keeping of the major big
three to a certain kind of definable size. You talked
about 40,000.
Fa-Yes, again we are talking about that same issue of
bigness.
For instance, if you could have three insti­
tutions with 20,000 students, it would be three times
as difficult to get control of those young people's
minds as it is in one institution with 60,000 students.
That's the theory.
F--And I guess I want to put this on the record, because
it strikes me that the California system, where they
had 110,000-150,000 people in one campus system, was
very definitely not an objective of Michigan, and the
contrary was true.

A 137
Farnsworth
Fa-That's right.
F--They wanted to create a large number of small insti­
tutions. Michigan citizens, as you observed from your
constituency--coming from the conservative Christian
Reform Dutch country--were afraid of big government.
Fa-They definitely are.
F--And still are to this day.
Fa-They definitely are.
F--And they are afraid of all kinds of major large insti­
tutions.
For instance, we talked in this context about
your experiences and observations about the human
services agency.
Some of those reservations have come
to the fore about the fear of...
Fa-Definitely so, my local board of commissioners, for
instance; passed a resolution against the consolida­
tion of human services.
I asked them why and they
said it's just too big.
F--And so therefore, the attempt to have two state univer­
sities with 12 or 15 branch campuses was very definitely
against the spirit of, from your observation, Michigan's
intentions.
Fa-Yes. Again I would say that the Legislature, in my
opinion, simply reflects public attitudes.
F--Do you think that was a solid theme in the Constitu­
tional Convention too? You felt that there when you
were a member?
Fa-Yes, very definitely.
F--And that's why, you suspect, the determination for the
State Board's power to direct and coordinate was so
muted by the education committee's revisions so that
the institutions also were given autonomy in another
section, Section 8.
Fa-No.
I don't think that the fear of bigness had much
to do with that.
I believe the fear on the part of
the big three universities themselves losing some part
of their autonomy had more to do with that.

A 138
Farnsworth
I believe John Hannah, for instance, and Harlan
Hatcher, and President Hilberry at Wayne State wanted
to be doubly sure that no coordinating board or any
board of any kind, or the Legislature, or anybody
else was going to infringe on their autonomy. As a
matter of fact, it was Delegate Hannah that intro­
duced the proposals that you speak of on the floor
and eventually had them adopted.
F--...and he couldn't win those inside the education
committee either.
Fa-That's right, he couldn't get them in the committee,
but he could get them on the floor. He was a per­
suasive personality.
F--The next question, Jim, is what, in your opinion, were
the reasons an institutional system for the coordin­
ation of higher education did not come about? We've
obviously talked about some of these matters.
Fa-I think in answering the last question that we
answered question number 17.
I think the answer is
exactly the same.
The power of the big three, with
their alumni organizations, plus this thing that we
talked about of politicians occasionally wanting to
be responsible and not wanting to really destroy
autonomy for fear of some time destroying a univer­
sity itself, simply ruled out getting any system of
coordination. As a matter of fact, there is a com­
mission working on that thing now and they are going
to make a proposal.
F--And I personally don't believe that that proposal
will succeed either.
Fa-It probably will not, for the same reasons that
others have failed.
F--And that's one of the bases for the study.
I thought
I could identify the real issues and get through to
them.
Let me speak to you a little bit about organi­
zational theory, Jim.
There somehow seems to be the
attitude that executive government is somehow cleaner,
purer, more acceptable than legislative.
For some
reason, and I don't know why, ...

A 139
Farnsworth
Fa-It's an attitude with the idealists.
That attitude is
not prevalent amongst all the people.
F--Ok, I think that is an important point.
Further, you get what I call the technocrats. They
like everything tidy.
They like to draw boxes, and
charts, and draw these very neat packages for attempting
to deal with what they call the control and distribution
of power.
It strikes me as I look at these charts and
their constant pushes for them [that] the latest
Governor’s reform commission is going to come up with
another set of boxes.
What we are dealing with is the fact that the bureau­
crats in other states' legislatures do not want to deal
with this conflict. And therefore coordinating boards
are brought to tidy it up and to order it.
I don't
have the sense that Michigan's legislatures --and every
legislature exists for two years--have had that desire
to tidy up, and in fact, as Dr. Cantlon--who is the
Provost of Michigan State--said, "We really do have a
coordinating system in Michigan.
It's the subtle
competition for resource that brings everybody in the
end to be accountable in a very real sense."
Fa-Well, I couldn't agree with that statement of his,
because the fact is we have a considerable amount of
what I consider unnecessary duplication in our insti­
tutions of higher education.
I would agree that
competition brings some of it about because one insti­
tution doesn't want to lose students that they get aid
on to other institutions simply because they can't
offer that particular course.
I am amazed at the amount of waste that the American
public are willing to pay for in order to protect some
things that they hold very, very dear.
Let's take
education, for instance.
They so value the right to
determine where their kids are going to go to school,
whether they are going to go into the trade school or
whether they are going to go into some other higher
education setting, that they are willing to put the
kids in on the front end even though somebody could
judge right then that they are going to fail, and put
them through that process and pay for it to protect
that kind of choice.

A 140
Farnsworth
That kind of choice doesn't exist in Russia.
of choice doesn't exist in England.

That kind

F--I find what you are saying a little hard to accept,
based on all of your public postures over a long time.
I'll say it very directly. You've always stood for
the right and spoken very strongly about the values of
independence versus efficiency. And yet, and you've
talked about that strong sense of independence in our
people, are you telling me that you think that we're
beginning to have an intolerable amount of competition?
Fa-No, No, I'm not saying that at all.
Let's get back into just general government now, and
whether you are going to have appointed, well-trained
people, or whether you are going to elect every city
clerk, every city treasurer, every city manager, etc.
People feel so strongly about their right to vote and
determine whether that person is going to be there or
whether he isn't, that they are willing to put up with
incompetence in many, many cases rather than trained
specialists, in order to protect that right. And that
carries right on through to the educational process.
We seem to abhor waste in our rhetoric, but we simply
tolerate a lot of it in order to protect that sort of
precious right to vote somebody out of office. We
don't do it very often, but we want to always have it
there.
I'm not speaking for myself now, I'm telling you what
I've observed.
F--I guess maybe I've fashioned this question badly with
you, Jim, but I had sensed all along the strong desire
on the part of Michigan citizenry to be able to deal
with institutions through the legislative process,
rather than turning that right over to a bureaucratic
agency. And, I do not personally observe, over studying
the history of the period from 1958 to 1974, any real
willingness still to this day to create an intervening
agency which will regulate higher education.
Fa-I guess what you are saying is why does that great
desire to retain their power of the vote stop just
short of the university.
But it doesn't entirely stop.
Now watch this next proposal that the Governor's

A 141
Farnsworth
commission is going to make when it goes on the ballot-when they are going to advocate that the governor appoint
the members of the governing boards of the big three
rather than elect them.
I believe you will see a reaction
there and the people may very well vote to continue to
vote those people to office even though they don't know
who they are or a thing.
Now, let's go back to the Constitutional Convention on
this very issue, not of higher education, but people
wanting to retain that power.
I think almost any student
of government would agree that we don't need a state police
force and a sheriff, but you ought to read the debates
that Hale Brake^ made on protecting county officers, and
particularly the sheriff. They had him way back when, to
fourteenth century England, he's the only thing standing
between us and liberty.
F--Ok, now you've raised some good points.
For the reason that American people seem to have always
built, and been willing, rather than the French and the
Russians, to stand a certain amount of governmental
inefficiency which we have hallowed by the name of balance
of powers.
The local sheriff is a balance against the
state power.
And isn't it really the desire of competitive institu­
tions to prevent the Legislature, or in fact a state board
for coordinating, to amass preponderance of power?
Fa-Yes, yes.

Same thing.

F--Do you think the Legislature is in fact in a position,
and of a mind, to create coordinating authority outside
of the current structures?
Fa-Yes, I think the Legislature would go through the motions
of creating a coordinating body for higher education, but
in the process I would suspect that it would have very,
very weak powers.
The word coordination wouldn't mean
much when they got through with it.
F--So there is a difference, you see.
I talked to Ira
Polley about this just the other day, about the difference
between coordination and control.
Fa-Right.
2

D. Hale Brake; Republican; President Pro Tern, State
Senate, 1941-43; State Treasurer, 1943-54.

A 142
Farnsworth
F--And many of the people who used the word coordination
really didn’t mean that, they meant control. And in
Illinois and California the coordinating bodies were
controlling bodies.
Fa-Right.
F--And I do not detect in the peculiar political and social
geography of Michigan...
Fa-If you are going to coordinate, you have to have somebody
that is willing to be coordinated. And the institutions
in Michigan are not willing to be coordinated.
F--Why should they?
Fa-Because they have to be competitive.
If they are going to
keep their student bodies up, they must be competitive.
F--You do penalize them when they fail.
Fa-Right.
F--Who in your opinion were the significant opinion leaders
in higher education in Michigan in this period?
Fa-Well, no question but what the big three people were.
I
particularly say John Hannah, I put him at the top of the
list. And I ’d have to mention Harlan Hatcher, of course,
of the University of Michigan. A1 Bentley, no question
but what A1 Bentley was a leader.
Roscoe Bonisteel down
at Ann Arbor.
Nobody had thought of him in a long time
but he was a Regent down there and certainly very pro­
tective of this autonomy thing.
3

Paul Goebel from Grand Rapids, Steve Nisbet from Fremont,
to name a few.
I would even put George Romney in there
as a leader, although he was more visible I guess in the
K-12 thing.
But he was a leader in getting support for
higher education, there's no question about that. Those
are the people, there probably were many others, Charlie
Anspach perhaps, but to a lesser degree.
F--Any other institutional leaders that you can think of?
Fa-Well, Leonard Woodcock certainly from UAW. He was on the
Board at Wayne and a very valued member there.
3

Paul G. Goebel; Republican; Regent of the University of
Michigan, 1962-71.

A 143
Farnsworth
F--What about any legislators that you think of that were
deeply influential?
Fa-In higher education, no, not really.
I would say that
there certainly are several of them that made a contri-,
bution.
Certainly in the past few years Senator Zollar ,
in my opinion, has made a contribution to supporting
higher education, I don’t think there is any question
about that.
But when the chips were down he has always
supported them.
F--Who were the influential individuals whose insights were
of the greatest significance to you?
Fa-Well, of course, I still have to go right back to John
Hannah as far as real insight was concerned.
I always
had a feeling that John Hannah was thinking about all
the youngsters out there and not just a few of them.
I didn’t always feel that comfortable with Hatcher.
Maybe that was because of the two institutions they
represent.
I had a feeling that George Romney had a
feel for all the people rather than just the elite.
F--You know people regard George, because he came out of the
automobile industry and was a self-made man, although
people don't see it that way, as a member of the elite.
Fa-No, not at all.
But George, if you look into the way he
acted and lived, was a man that was very much an upward
mobile man and came from poor origins.
He very derinitely had an empathy for disadvantaged people
and I'm not thinking just about Blacks.
No question about
it. Steve Nisbet I would put in the same class.
I think
that thing is reflected--the Hannah influence, the Nisbet
influence--is reflected right out here at MSU.
I think it
is the kind of institution it is as a result of people
like that.
F--One of the things I'm trying to get at, and I'm hoping to
be able to explicate--I don't know if I have enough
ability to do it--is this sort of widespread sense of
community that has existed in this state where divergent
interests, Blacks, Poles, rural, suburban, agricultural
people have all kind of pulled together to try to create
a condition of life in this state that in my personal
opinion is outstanding.
^Charles 0. Zollar; Republican; State Senator from
Benton Harbor; Head, Senate Appropriations Committee.

A 144
Farnsworth
I'm dealing, Jim, with higher education, but I'm from
Massachusetts and the conditions of comparisons: not a
mile of toll road in this state; fantastic numbers of
parks; a good educational system K through 12; community
college; the dedication of significant amount of monies
being put into recreation and the DNR [Development of
Natural Resources] program...
Fa-Doubling our capacity to train physicians in ten years'
time.
F--I think that is all part of the ambience of this state
that makes it different from its neighbor states, and
that is something I'm going to try to explain.
Fa-There is one thing I can't understand and have never been
able to understand about higher education institutions.
Notwithstanding this tremendous support we've given to
them, tremendous support, there is an annual affair that
never misses.
Every time the governor's proposed budget
is announced recommending always higher appropriations
than they had the year before, a press release always
comes out that the governor cut our budget.
F--You know, I think that is part of the charade.
I don't
honestly believe anybody believes that, do you?
Fa-Yes, many
thousands
of higher
all, they

people do. Many students believe it. Oh,
of students believe it, thousands of proponents
education in Michigan believe it. Well, after
saw it in the papers and they saw it on TV.

F--It may be that I'm too close to what the real expecta­
tion is to understand the effect of the rhetoric.
Fa-I'11 show you the next round of letters, if I'm here
another year, and show you that they believe it.
F--Thank you very much.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
ROBERT CAHOW1
F--What in your opinion were the reasons that led to the
expansion of higher education in Michigan from 1958 on?
C--Well, I think, Jerry, that you've got to recognize that
one of the most significant factors came on the scene
prior to '58 but it still had an impact. That was
Sputnik.
That shook up a lot of people.
We were also still coping with the problems of large
enrollments as a result of the GI Bill of Rights after
World War II.
Thirdly, we had a very positive attitude toward the value
of higher education, the value of an education beyond the
traditional K-12, the value of an education in the liberal
arts as well as an education that prepared you for the
world of work.
F--Bob, are you suggesting that the citizenry had a different
kind of view of higher education than K-12, and that it
might be a reason for some of the strong urges in Michigan's
community colleges to disassociate from the K-14 school
district and create autonomous community colleges?
C--On that point, Jerry, in terms of the role of the community
college as we know it today, the junior college truly was
and should be recognized as a junior college, beginning
with Grand Rapids in 1914.
The movement at that time by community leaders, the farseeing educators--1'm talking about the Bill Atkinsons at
Jackson, the Fred Eshlemans at Henry Ford, Ben Buikema at
^Robert D. Cahow; Executive Secretary, Michigan Council of
Community College Administrators, 1965; Staff Director,
Higher Education Facilities Commission, 1964-65; Finance
Supervisor, Michigan State Board of Education, 1955-64.
Interview conducted April 18, 1974.
A 145

A 146
Cahow
Grand Rapids, and Loomis at Traverse City--those individ­
uals in a leadership role in education, all of them being
K-12 superintendents, combined the interests and the
efforts of community leaders to make it possible for a
young man and a young woman to attain a higher education.
At that time they were concerned with the 17-18-year-old
high school graduate.
There was some concern, as I recall
it, about the student who maybe finished high school, who
went to work for a year or two, but was still a young
person.
I ’m trying to establish the contrast between a
typical student at that period and what we see in the
community colleges today. A typical student today is
26-27 years of age, married, has a family, working full­
time, and is coming back for an education.
In the early fifties we were still, I think, concerned
with making it possible for an individual to complete
the first two years of a baccalaureate-degree-level
program and then transferring to a four-year institu­
tion, public or private, to complete his education.
F--Then in regard to the second question, "What were the
social and economic factors that led to the significant
growth?", you’ve identified the GI Bill, you've talked
some about Sputnik, the desire for Michigan citizenry
to have a higher education, and you've just now identi­
fied your thoughts about the desire to create higher
education for people who couldn't afford it by having
the local schools educate...
C--There was great concern at that time, Jerry, about access
to four-year institutions.
I well recall the pressures
that were brought to bear on the State Board of Education
when it was the governing body of the four regional
universities as we know them today, the pressures to do
more in the way of assisting students with housing,
resulting in dormitories and married student apartments.
F--As a matter of fact, from '58 to the present we probably
doubled the number of higher educational institutions.
We've got some 44 now and in '58 we probably had 15?
C--I've got to go back.
Grand Valley?

When did we create Saginaw and

F--They were created in the sixties.

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C--In the sixties.
During the fifties the state assumed
the responsibility for Wayne State and Ferris.
F--Dearborn and Flint were created in the early sixties.
I was wondering how many new community colleges came
after '58.
C--Well, I'd have to go back and look at the record.
But
there were a number of them that came into existence
in the late fifties and the early sixties.
F--Which addresses the question you were talking about of
access.
C--Right. There was great concern on the part of parents
and community leaders in terms of accessibility. All
of the existing four-year institutions had more students
than they could adequately handle with the facilities
that were available to them.
During that period of
time we went into the very extensive building program.
F--There also seems to have been a sense, say at Con-Con,
that Michigan citizens didn't want to have the institu­
tions grow to these megalithic sizes like California,
where one system had 165,000 students. They didn't
want Michigan or State to go above 40,000.
C--I don't recall that being stated as such in the discussion
or debate at Con-Con.
I recall sitting in on committee sessions and the question
was at what point do they become difficult to manage and
operate because of size alone.
They seemed to think about
somewhere in the 30,000 range was the magic number, but
nobody really knew.
It was the Legislature that came
forward with this 40,000 concept.
I remember talking with John Hannah about it one after­
noon. We used to ride back and forth to Washington quite
frequently when he was on the Civil Rights Commission and
I would be going down there on HEFA business. As we rode
down, we got talking about the enrollment growth at
Michigan State and I recall asking him what the optimum
size was. He was very pensive and finally said, "Bob,
I really don't know where that point is at which I feel
that I've lost control and contact as the chief executive
officer."

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Now, it was an honest answer. There was a man who had
tremendous capacity. He amazed me constantly by his
knowledge of the operation at Michigan State, even though
he was gone three to four days a week. The administrators
that I was working with at State told of many instances
where there would be a traditional breakfast meeting on
Monday morning and he would depart for Washington, come
back on Friday, and pick up the conversation where it was
left the previous Monday.
F--Yes, that was quite a fantastic style.
C--Let me comment on that point.
In Michigan I think that
we're extremely fortunate in that we had in our fouryear institutions, as well as in our community colleges,
some outstanding leaders.
F--Who were they?
C--There's Hannah and Ruthven followed by Hatcher at Michigan.
Hatcher was quite different in his style and method of
operation, the way in which he related to others, but
again his influence on higher education in Michigan, I
think, has been very significant.
You had Hilberry at Wayne who was a very quiet individual,
a gentleman in every sense of the word, who contributed
a great deal, especially in southeastern Michigan.
You had Elliott at Eastern, who had many years of experience
here in Lansing as Superintendent of Public Instruction,
following Munson as president.
You had Paul Sangren at Western who was one of the great
men.
The vision that that man had!
And you had a number of young men that were coming up. You
had Niehuss, Pierpont and Alan Smith at Michigan.
Out at
Michigan State you had Cliff Hardin and Ed Harden. A
number of men that were there with Hannah had moved on to
other presidencies. This is also true of the men who were
at Michigan.
Lederle, for example, from Michigan went on
to Massachusetts.
F--Charles Odegaard went to Washington.
C--Right.
There was Spathelf who charted a whole new course
in delivery method in Michigan at Ferris. And, of course,

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Cahow
Anspach, Foust, and Woody Smith at Central. As you look
at that period of time, these were the individuals who
were involved.
F--Could you name some community college executives that
you were in connection with?
C--Yes, of course. Atkinson at Jackson whom I've already
mentioned.
Buikema at Grand Rapids, who was superintendent
of the entire system but who had a keen interest in the
junior college concept. He saw what was coming in the
community college as we know it today.
Dwight Rich here
at Lansing.
There was Max Thompson over at Macomb; he's gone now. He
sat on the Macomb board, served as chairman of the board
for a period of time.
You had up in the north country the real pioneers, men
like Stan VanLare at Alpena and Bubaker who was superin­
tendent at that time.
Of course, at Port Huron you had
a man by the name of Jim Browning who is now deceased.
In the Detroit area, Fred Eshleman, of course, at Henry
Ford, being the first in that group in southeastern Michigan.
At Flint there were a number of individuals.
They had
quite a turnover in superintendents there as well as deans
of the college.
I would say the individual who perhaps
contributed the most, first as a faculty member, then
athletic coash, and then chief administrator, was Donnely
who is now head of the system in Arizona.
F--I think about Max Smith at Michigan State, Max Raines,
and...
C--Now there's a group that I haven't even mentioned, and
I should have.
F--I was thinking also about Ferris Crawford in the Department
of Education.
Some of these people who weren't at insti­
tutions were also important, were they not?
C--Very much so, Jerry.
I did not mention them because I
was concentrating so hard on college presidents. We
cannot overlook faculty members of major universities,
the graduate universities specializing in education,
the Max Smiths, the Raymond Youngs, the Norm Harrises
at Michigan.

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Ferris Crawford of the Michigan Department of Education,
who in that period of time contributed so much, was very
deeply involved in creating the first community college
as we know it today in Michigan--Northwestern. Ferris
did the staff work for what started out as a five-county
feasibility study for a college in that area.
It finally
ended up, and there were reasons for it, that only one of
the five counties went ahead with it: Grand Traverse
established Northwestern Michigan College.
Loomis was superintendent, but the names of the board
have gotten away from me.
In the community the only name
I've retained is Biederman.
Les Biederman for years has
been very active in Traverse City affairs. Then men like
Max Smith, who came out of K-12, a very successful super­
intendent at North Muskegon, Niles, Highland Park, and
then was brought to State by Hannah in a special-role
assignment in community college growth and development;
again Hannah had the foresight.
And at Michigan, Ray
Young and Norm Harris.
F--And the men at Wayne, I can't...
C--Rizloff, and there was another one at Michigan by the name
of George Hall.
F--What were the policy objectives that underlay this expan­
sion besides the ones we've identified? You've talked
about the desire for access and the desire to respond to
Sputnik. Are there others you'd like to add to the ones
you've already spoken to?
C--At what level? Let's
try to address it at theterms of
the state level. The
decision was made in the late forties
and the early fifties--while I was still with the budget
office--that the state was going to recognize as part of
the higher education operation of the state what were then
known as the junior colleges.
It started by permitting
the inclusion of thatenrollment for the first
time in
the state-aid formula.
Prior to that they had been excluded.
F--What, Bob, were the key issues that resulted in partisan
and parochial conflicts in the attempt to attain the above
obj ectives?
I think of, for instance, the clear-cut state decision-after a long fight at Saginaw--not to permit community
colleges to be enveloped and become all four-year institu­
tions.
I regard that as a clear-cut statement that the

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Cahow
state wanted community colleges to have a distinct function
and not evolve to four-year institutions.
C--Well, that is correct, Jerry. There is much misunder­
standing regarding the intent of individuals connected with
the community colleges on this four-year college issue.
You had two four-year colleges established by the
Legislature at the urging of local interest groups. The
State of Michigan has always gone the referendum route as
far as community colleges are concerned. One exception
has been Wayne, and really that was in part referendum.
We went statutory because we couldn't referendum the tax
matter.
F--After getting beat three times.
C--Yes.
But you know as well as I that when Delta College
was first being established, it was the thinking of the
individuals involved that ideally it should become a
four-year institution.
They sought out an administrator
who was committed to that concept. And, it was my under­
standing that he came to the state with the understanding
that that was to be his assignment, his role.
F--I can add testimony to that. You may not remember that I
worked at Delta. When Dr. Marble recruited me they told
me they were going to become part of Michigan State.
C--I never heard that.
I always understood it was to be a
separate four-year entity.
F--Well, then they went out the next year and created the
private school.
C-~Now at Northwestern at the outset a four-year institution
was not in the picture, as I understand it, but individuals
within the community began to argue that this is the
direction that they should go.
I've said for a number of
years that within my lifetime I will probably see a fouryear institution in that section of the state and it could
very well be at Traverse City.
F--That's interesting.
I've always expected state baccalaureate-degree institutions at Traverse City and the Macomb
area as logical fulfillments of the access and regional thing.
C--I must say this regarding Northwestern.
The leaders of that
community, and I'm including all sectors of the society,
have wisely kept the college on the community college level.

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Cahow
They have not promoted extending it to the baccalaureate
level.
I don’t believe there's any undercurrent today
to do it.
I think they recognize the fact that it
eventually may come to be because of population growth.
F--That doesn't preclude the fact that there could be two
institutions.
C--There could be two of them. And I would agree with you,
we will probably see another one in the northeastern
Wayne-Macomb area.
F--Well, what are some of the other issues?
I regarded that key issue--which was with some degree of
heat--as not a negative opinion to prevent the community
colleges from fulfilling the status model, but really an
affirmation of their value to society and a desire that
they continue to be such.
C--There's another area, Jerry, and I'm not sure just how
to describe it or comment on it, but it's the relation­
ship between the public two-year institutions and the
private two- and four-year, nonprofit, nonproprietary
institutions.
I'm not concerned about the proprietary.
F--Let's talk about that very quickly for a moment.
I'll
talk a little later about what were some of the stresses
and strains.
Weren't the Walsh business university groups--not the
private colleges, but the business schools--quite
frightened about community colleges as an attempt to
impede their growth because of their fear of the direct
competition?
C--I'm not aware of any definite action on their part, Jerry.
I'm aware of their concerns. Again, my work with Budget
and the State Board brought me into contact with those
people.
I can recall discussions with Weimar Hicks of
Kalamazoo College.
F--And Hicks was a very important man in this state.
C--Right. A very able person and an excellent educator as
evidenced by the program at Kalamazoo College. No question
but what it...
F--I guess I was thinking about Davenport...

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C--We didn't have many contacts with the business colleges
like Davenport, Cleary, and Walsh. Walsh was an unknown
as I recall it. Davenport and Cleary, yes. There were
very few contacts with them.
The contacts were with Hicks at Kalamazoo, Albion, John
Dawson at Adrian, Gorton Riethmiller at Olivet, John
Kimball and the Sister at Marygrove. At Nazareth
Sister Mary Bader has just announced her retirement-and just an outstanding person--Sister Danatha at Madonna,
Mercy, Siena Heights, and Calvin.
Those individuals
sensed a change coming in higher education.
On the one hand, they were expected to continue with the
traditional liberal arts program that had been developed
in those colleges but they were doing very little in the
way of technical education. A couple of them had nursing
programs, and a couple of them were offering work in the
business areas so a student could gain some knowledge in
the use of office equipment and so forth, but as I recall,
they had nothing in the way of one- or two-year programs.
But the handwriting was on the wall in terms of private
colleges having to compete with public institutions in a
time of rising costs. They sensed at that time that the
interest on the part of--what do I want to call them,
members of the faith?--young men and women to come into
the order and make it their life was declining. We began
to see more and more recruitment of lay people as members
of the faculty.
F--But this comes to a point that you have just briefly hinted
at. The institutions, I think, saw that they were not
competing with the public sector in the traditional ways
in the liberal arts but had to compete for a new constit­
uency: a more vocational, more trade-oriented group of
people who had never had any aspirations for college.
A place like Albion certainly had no concerns about its
excellence in liberal arts, but business machines, business
programs, and applied engineering were new constituencies
for the small liberal arts schools.
The same kind of
disabilities were faced by Michigan and it occurred just
as the community colleges discovered them also.
So it was
public versus private; it was really a change in the market
for curriculums.

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C--Yes, you’re right. Let me go back again in terms of
considerations by community colleges and their relation­
ships with the public colleges.
I can recall many, many discussions on the maintenance of
standards and quality of baccalaureate-level programs so
that if the student, for reasons of his own--they could be
financial, they could be personal--chose to start his
collegiate-level work at a community college and wanted
to transfer to Albion, he could.
If we were doing the job well, we knew--the ones responsible
for the program, the faculty, the counselors, and the
administrators who had enough information about Albion’s
program and what was expected of a student at the thirdyear level--he would have acquired a level of proficiency
and training the first two years at a community college
that would permit him to transfer and be as well-prepared
as a student who started at Albion.
F--You raised a question with me that nobody has brought up
in conversation that I think is important.
I come from
the East and the power of the accrediting agencies and
their methods of controlling access were quite significant.
In Michigan did we not pass an act that said that any
graduate of a state-subsidized institution, community
college or four-year, could transfer to any other state
institution and that virtually by the fact of being a state
institution your credits were acceptable at another?
This unusual act really gave the opportunity for students
to migrate.
It was that migration and the capacity to
transfer which built that sort of linear system.
C--Jerry, I don't recall that piece of legislation.
I can
recall many discussions on the desirability of legislating
that opportunity, but I don’t recall that it was ever done.
F--I'll have to check.
I recollect when I was with the State
Department that there was a statute that said something of
that nature.
Ed Pfau would be the man to talk to, I think.
C--Right.
7

I don’t recall it, Jerry.

Ed Pfau; Project Coordinator, Northern Michigan College,
Marquette; Bureau of Higher Education, 1966.

A 155
Cahow
F--Are there any other issues that you wanted to raise about
parochial and partisan conflicts in the attempt to attain
the public policy objectives?
C--Well, let me take it in terms of partisan or political,
Republican versus Democrat.
Throughout this period of time, in my opinion, there were
no differences of opinion between Republicans and Democrats
about the goal. This is one matter in which they were
united.
I'm referring now to the front office as well as
the Legislature.
F--This is a very interesting point.
I talked to Jim Farnsworth
about that.
I have not been able to detect that higher educa­
tion was at all captive to party interest.
It seems to have
been deliberately removed from that focus, as has not been
the case in states like Illinois.
C--Right.
Under the Williams administration, community colleges
had all of the support and encouragement that you could
possibly ask for.
It was there in the Romney administration
and on both sides of the aisle in both Houses throughout the
fifties and sixties.
F--You had major figures like Arnell Engstrom, Gar Lane,...
C--You had individuals with this intangible quality of out­
standing leadership, Jerry. The Beadles, the Engstroms-I'm confining it now to those who are no longer here. A
man that had a great influence and was not well known was
Bill Conlin when he was a member of the House Ways and
Means Committee and responsible for education; a man by
the name of Richard Thompson who was out of Highland Park
and sat on that committee; and there was an individual
from the Upper Peninsula by the name of Einar Erlandsen,
a diamond-in-the-rough, if you like.
F--I think we'll call him a colorful personality.
C--A11 right. On the Senate side you had the senior Milliken
and Frank Beadle.
F--So, in fact, we really did have a fortunate situation.
What about inter-institutional conflicts, like between
community colleges and four-year institutions, the private
sector? That's what I'm trying to get at.

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Cahow
C--Well, Jerry, it's been my observation that the differences
have been very minor at the board and chief-executiveofficer level. The problem areas have been within,
primarily, faculty ranks.
It's that old hack; you and I can both be teaching
Political Science 100, but I'm personally convinced that
my students are better prepared than your students are
because I'm doing a better job than you are. You and I
disagree philosophically on some matters and this colors
my thinking. Here's a student that wants to transfer from
the institution where you are employed and I say, "Well,
wait a minute, he's not as well prepared as my students
are."
F--But you do raise a problem which I think is a valid one.
It's a problem not of the institutions or the constitu­
encies, but of faculty and the very frank role of status.
C--Right, and we still haven't done a good job, Jerry, of
developing an interrelationship and understanding among
faculties. We lost a great deal when the Michigan Academy
of Arts and Sciences and Letters went belly-up.
It pro­
vided a forum. What we knew as the Michigan Education
Association, before the advent of collective bargaining,
provided another forum.
F--There aren't really any anymore, are there?
C--No. We tried to do it with the MACU, the umbrella group,
Michigan Association of Colleges and Universities which
joined together public and private [sectors] out of
necessity--because of the problems of the sixties--the
revolting sixties as I'm beginning to call them now, the
seventies will be known as the litigating seventies.
F--That could be.
C--The presidents and boards found themselves spending most
of their time on administrating matters.
Not much time
was spent at those meetings on academic issues.
F--And that's probably where the issues were the least
successful.
C--Right.
Now, it's coming, Jerry, slowly. We know, and
you're aware, of efforts on the part of the individual
faculties of the colleges and the four-year institutions

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to get together professionally.
You were involved at the
community college level in the instructional deans
Project Focus. There are certain disciplines--the biol­
ogists have got a very active group going. The geography
boys had one, but I don't know whether there are enough
left now to even have a meeting.
But that has been the most difficult problem to resolve
in terms of difficulty between institutions, and it applies
to the public as well as the private. We've talked many
times about setting up a system whereby we could exchange
faculty for a period of time, shift them from private to
public and public to private.
F--Although we've talked about it for a long time, that didn't
come about, did it?
Let me move right along because when you talk about these
things, so many things come up that it's hard to cover
all the points.
Did we have as one of the objectives in higher education
the destruction of class and cultural barriers?
C--I think we've always had that within our goal of higher
education: the belief that by this means we could do a
more effective job of removing the barriers that still
existed between classes and cultures.
F--I guess I've used the wrong word here--the destruction.
I have come to prefer to say we wanted to expand the
opportunity for access to the middle class. We wanted
to broaden entry, we didn't want to destroy class. We
wanted to give other people the opportunity to share.
C--Well, if I understand what you propose now, the answer is
yes. This was one of our objectives in both public and
private higher education, moreso in public than private,
I think.
F--What about popularism versus elitism in higher education?
There's certainly some conflict between the Michigan
stance about quality and, say, the alternative at Michigan
State of offering opportunity to the broadest number.
C--Well, we tried to do two things.
I want to use elitism
in its best sense, meaning outstanding performance. We

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are elite in that sense. Certainly our major universities
are; Michigan, Michigan State, Wayne, and I would even
include the regional universities. Michigan Tech, for
example, was elite for years in its area of specializa­
tion- -engineering , mining.
So were our private colleges,
I think, going back to the Albions and the Hillsdales
and so forth.
Well, how do you broaden that? How do you make it
possible for more individuals to avail themselves of
the opportunity to study under those circumstances?
You’ve got to do two things. One, you've got to make it
possible for them in terms of financial assistance.
There
are some that just cannot afford it. But I think more
important, Jerry, you've got to convince them that they
can do it.
F--So you raise the question, therefore, if one of the public
policy tools was the tuition and scholarship programs.
C--Yes.
Tuition and scholarships and, I would say, the very
generous support on the part of the state.
F--And certainly the construction policies, too.
C--I would include the construction of the physical facilities,
equipping of the physical facilities, and providing
resources to recruit the necessary staff, both faculty and
support people, to do the job.
We could have gone in the other direction, Jerry. We
could have worked under a policy of very tight, closeddoor operations and by some means decided, out of the
thousands of applicants, who among the three hundred
were going to be admitted.
F--That's the way medical schools function today.
C--Well, you've got certain schools where the pressures and
the interests are so great.
I think this is one of the
difficult problems facing us today, Jerry. What do we
want our educational system to do? Do we want it to meet
only the manpower needs of society as best we can determine
them? Or do we want it to provide solely the educational
opportunity for the individual and let him do with his
education whatever he chooses?

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Cahow
F--Did the growth of culture and the arts have importance in
the dialogue over the growth of higher education?
C--That one’s difficult to answer, Jerry.
I think it was
taken for granted.
I think technical education, as we
understand it today, had more of an influence.
Many people have difficulty, even today, looking at a
baccalaureate degree in a general field, with maybe a
major in the social sciences, as preparing a person for
a job.
There have been literally thousands of individuals pre­
pared in that fashion who have found their place in
society.
They have, in that process of four years,
learned the existence of many different tools. They’ve
learned how to use them, whether they be statistics, a
knowledge of languages, or of the various scientific
areas.
F--So what you’re saying is that they sort of implicitly
expected institutions, by the very nature of the higher
education process, to encourage that, but it wasn't a
clear-cut objective.
C--No.

It was to maintain it.

I think we already had it.

F--But on the other hand, because of what you have mentioned
about Sputnik, in the vocational and occupational area
it was very definitely to increase it, to broaden it.
Dr. Polley talked the other day about the clear-cut
decision by policy makers to create a differential for
vocational/technical education as proof of the recogni­
tion of its value and desire to encourage its growth.
C--Well, I recall that one very well, Jerry. As community
colleges were explaining their programs to both the
executive office and the Legislature in justification
of their request for financial assistance, one of the
things that was quickly pointed out was that in the
technical areas, for the most part, there were increased
costs.
We could draw the same comparison in the scientific fields
in terms of the cost of establishing a chemistry, biology,
or physics laboratory in contrast to a room in which to
lecture to 300-400 students in Western Civilization, for
example.

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Cahow
So, repeatedly during the fifties, although I was with the
State Board and not directly involved with the colleges, I
was aware of the justifications being submitted in support
of their budgets.
That was recognized, finally, by the Appropriations
Committee. And the man that recognized it was Lane.
F--I was involved in some of that, as you recollect. But,
certainly, Bob, the decision to encourage vocational and
technical programs was very definitely, from my vantage
point, made because they saw that the community colleges
would do that job.
Four-year schools were not doing that,
perhaps because of the makeup of their curriculum, they
weren't having as many application-oriented curricula.
They looked for the community college to do that as a
separate and unique task.
C--That is right.
F--What about the position of labor in higher education? I'm
trying to see if some of the societal forces, like labor,
industry, commerce, and agriculture, had strong positions
for higher education.
C--I would say so. The organized labor groups, I think, had
a very strong voice in the development, especially of
community colleges. They were very supportive in their
own communities.
3

F--I think about Stan Arnold of the AFL-CIO and their desire
for itinerant programs to train plumbers, carpenters, and
electricians.
I think about industry with GM giving Delta,
for instance, just a ton of equipment.
C--Both organized labor and management have been interested,
extremely helpful, and generous in their support in terms
of willingness to serve on advisory committees, Jerry.
You look back in the records.
I don't recall a single
study committee that did not include representation from
both sectors.
F--What about commerce?
3

Stanford Arnold; Member, State Construction Safety
Commission, 1965; Member, Residential Builders and
Maintenance and Alteration Contractors Board, 1967-

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Cahow
C--Let me go back iust a minute.
I remember a man by the name
of Clinton Fair2*' who was with Williams in the executive
office.
Clint was one of the forerunners in support of the
idea that local two-year educational institutions had
greater responsibility for one- and two-year technical
programs, contrasted with those of baccalaureate-degree
level.
F--What about agriculture? You know, when people talk about
agriculture they think about Michigan State, but I ’ve been
trying to deduce if the agricultural people, concerned
about the outward migration of their children, were strong
to create local institutions as a way of keeping children
at home.
C--Those connected with the Farm Bureau, 4-H, and ag extension
at Michigan State University have played a very key role in
the formation of the outstate community colleges, Jerry.
F--It is harder to ascertain their support for regional bac­
calaureate institutions.
I ’ve had the sense, and want to
talk to you about it, that agriculture was particularly
concerned about the development of two-year, outstate
institutions.
C--Right now, among the trustees of the 29 community colleges,
I think there are eight who by profession are agricultural
extension people.
F--There are eight members on the boards?
C--There are eight trustees among the 200-and-some-odd
community college trustees that are agricultural agents
in their respective counties.
F--Oh, I see what you’re saying.

That’s interesting.

Do you have any idea how many of the some-200 are farmers
or make their lifework from agriculture?
C--No, I don’t, Jerry.
F--But it would certainly be many more than eight. That's
interesting. These are, therefore, employees of Michigan
State’s ag extension and co-op extension.
^Clinton Fair; Executive Assistant to Governor Williams,
1949.

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Cahow
C--There are two of them on the board at West Shore--two
different counties represented.
F--Bob, what were the pressures and influences in the deter­
mination of public policy, if any, from the federal
government? You'd have a sensitivity to that.
C--Well, there are really three different areas. One came
out of Sputnik with the federal government making funds
available for categorical assistance, especially in the
scientific fields and in health, medicine, and nursing.
The federal government has encouraged community colleges
to go much farther into technical education through the
Vocational Education Act and its amendment.
F--What about HEFA?
C--The first time federal funds were made available for the
construction of facilities was in 1963.
F--That's no longer available, is it?
C--No. No money is currently being appropriated. What is
available is a carryover from prior-year appropriations
and in one or maybe two more years it will be depleted.
F--But the program really ran from, what, about 1963 to '68?
C--It was enacted in '63.
It is still on the books but its
major period of activity was from '63 to '68.
F--What would you estimate was the dollars they put into the
State of Michigan? Do you have some kind of ballpark hunch?
C--Jerry, though I ran the program for two years, it's gotten
away from me.
The funds were pro-rated to the states on a
per capita formula.
If I remember correctly, in '63 or '64
we were able to pick up additional funds. At that time the
federal law provided that if there were any funds not used
within the original allocation to the state, they were
available for redistribution.
F--How did you pass out the money? Were there some policy
imperatives to create schools to enhance certain areas
or did you try to pass it out to everybody so that all
got a dip of the soup?
C--It's surprising how much the details get away from you in
ten years.
There were certain minimum requirements in

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Cahow
the federal act that had to be met and, as I recall, the
initial plan did nothing more than meet those requirements.
There was no clean-cut decision, Jerry, that we would put
the money into outstate community colleges or outstate
four-year institutions.
F--Then it probably got passed out in a sort of flat way.
C--No, because the federal requirements directed that it go
to those institutions that were experiencing a very rapid
enrollment growth, and to those institutions that did not
have adequate facilities measured in terms of usable
instructional space, age and condition of the buildings.
All very reasonable requirements.
F--The HEFA policy, because of the enrollment and adequate
plant criteria, created the opportunity to enhance places
that were located where the need was great.
C--Right.
F--What was the nature of regional and local pressures to
expand higher education in one location rather than another?
C--Well, three come to mind immediately: Big Rapids, Ferris
State College; Grand Rapids, Grand Valley State College;
Saginaw, Saginaw Valley College.
I was very involved when the state assumed the responsi­
bility for Ferris.
In fact, my name is on the transfer
documents. My biggest disappointment is that we were not
successful in seeing that the same concept resulted in an
educational institution somewhere in southeastern Michigan.
As for Grand Valley and Saginaw Valley, it was interesting
to watch a group of local people work to bring that about.
F--There's an interesting point that you talked about earlier
and I want to come back to it for a minute.
In many states
the government bodies and the bureaucrats create a plan and
sort of overlay it on the state.
In Michigan we haven't had that sort of thing. We've had
local initiatives, referendums and, as you've talked about,
the entrepreneurial energy of Michigan citizens creating
dowrys for Oakland, Dearborn, Flint, Saginaw Valley, and
for Grand Valley.

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Cahow
I talked to Governor Williams about that and he thought
the Legislature, in order to solve the problem of locating
it there rather than here, encouraged the financial
referendum and the public voting referendum.
I had the
sense he meant also to test the local desire.
If they
didn't want it, they wouldn't support it.
C--Well, that would apply to community colleges, Jerry.
I
question that it applies to the four-year operations at
Flint and Dearborn.
There's no way that the local com­
munity could support those operations.
F--No, but they did have to come up with money at Grand Valley
and at Saginaw Valley.
The sum they put together was
$2 million, I believe.
C--I think the Governor's analysis about that is correct.
It did not force the Legislature into making the decision.
If there was the interest, including willingness to provide,
initially, financial resources, it let them go ahead.
But
there was no referendum, as such, on it, as you have in a
community college.
F--No, but when I was thinking about referendum I was thinking
about community college.
I think about how Seidman and
those fellows in Grand Rapids worked immensely hard to
create that institution. And I think that that's an
important element that my study has to get to, to talk
about--the local pride.
I asked the second question: What were the social and
economic factors?
I think it's important to strike at the
point that you're making about referendums by citizens for
local community colleges, and also to talk about that civic
do-goodism that saw the value of school--which didn't occur
in other states--where they would go and raise money.
Yesterday Jim Farnsworth talked about the fact that Robben
Fleming was going to create an industrial program and
Ed Cole, the president of GM, had already raised some
$4 million. Jim pointed out that that was a sign of the
real commitment of Michigan industry.
I think that people
vote with the ballot but also with their pocketbook.
C--Well, my recollection at Saginaw is that the major con­
tributor was Wickes.
^Harvey Randall Wickes; President, Wickes Corporation;
Founder, Wickes Foundation for Higher Education.

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Cahow
F--Dow and Wickes.
C--Dow and Wickes.
I'm in doubt as to how much came from the
community as such.
F--Well, certainly $25 of my money.
C--And I don't know how much came from the community at Grand
Rapids and how much came from individuals.
F--Dr. Marble^ hired a
I never could quite
were called Ketchum
of humor--Ketchum.
raising group?
Do you
budget
having
create
campus
became

fund-raising organization in 1964 and
get over the name of the group.
They
. That always just tickled my sense
What better name is there for a fund­

have some observations, Bob, having worked in the
office, having worked on the State Board, and
worked for so many years with the attempts to
community colleges, why the failure of the branchsystem happened in Michigan? In Wisconsin it
the style and model.

C--Jerry, I think it's due to the realization that it becomes
too great a demand on the time of one governing board.
I
saw this very vividly under the old State Board of Education
when it was the governing body of four universities.
They
were initially normal schools, then teacher colleges, then
state colleges, and then universities.
F--They were the governing board for Eastern, Western, Central,
and Northersn.
You had a four-man board.
C--Under the old State Board of Education you had a four-man
board made up of three elected statewide, plus the super­
intendent of public instruction.
During the period of
time that I was with that Board in a financial capacity,
from 1955 until 1963, my office was adjacent to the office
of the superintendent, who had the largest office that was
used by the Board for its board meetings.
^Samuel Marble; President, Saginaw Valley College.
7

Ketchum, Inc., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; professional
fund-raisers for two fund drives of 1964-65 and 1970-71.

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Cahow
I can recall many times when I would have three presidents
in my office cooling their heels, waiting while the Board
worked with the fourth president.
The Board made an effort
to meet with them as a group, but there were few problems
in common that they could discuss as a group of four with
the Board. They had individual problems that had to be
discussed.
I can recall the frustration of the Board with the amount
of time required, and the frustration of the presidents
sitting and waiting.
I think the same thing applied to
the development of the branch concept.
For all intents
and purposes, as I understand it, Flint is operating very
independently of Ann Arbor.
I’m sure they had the same
frustrations waiting their turn to meet with the Regents
on problems that are unique to Flint and Dearborn.
F--But I think State, early in the game, tried to make the
breakaway for Oakland.
Probably if you take a look at
these branch campuses at Oakland, Dearborn, and Flint,
you have to find some reason why Oakland did better and
grew quicker.
Of all of these spin-offs that happened
in the fifties, Oakland has done the best, hasn't it?
C--I think they have, Jerry.
F--I think it's probably because they rapidly had that
sense of autonomy and of their own responsibility.
C--Oakland is so different. They're working with a different
clientele. We may see at Dearborn and at Flint one of the
same things that happened at Oakland--moving to the lower
division as well as the upper division.
In my own mind I
have reservations about that move.
F--I'm glad you suggested that. Let me ask you a question
about that, because few of the other people that I've
spoken to have addressed it. There had to be some kind
of hope, certainly at Dearborn, that a junior-senior year
and a freshman-sophomore year could coexist. At Henry Ford
Community College and at Dearborn they tried that. Do you
have some observations about why that didn't work? It
seems a logical, managerial-kind of solution.
It didn't
work at Flint in a sense either, did it?
C--I think maybe one of the reasons is maintenance of enroll­
ment.
I don't know the extent of it.
Is it a problem?
How much of a problem has it been?

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Cahow
F--Oh, I think so.
C--There's something that's taken place in higher education
that none of us foresaw accurately.
In all of the feasi­
bility studies, long-range planning and so forth, that I
was involved with in the fifties and sixties, at no time
did we give any thought or spend any time on how we would
handle and cope with what I'm going to call disenchantment
with higher education--the public outcry and criticism that
individuals are coming out of our colleges trained to do
nothing.
I never thought I would see in our major universities
student interest in the arts decrease to the point where
there's hardly a day goes by but what you pick up the
paper and read that this university or that university
had to release faculty that have been there for years
and had established themselves as very able.
But they
are specialists in their field, foreign languages, for
example. Where a college of liberal arts and sciences
might have had a foreign language department of ten,
they're down to one. And philosophy, geography, many
of the social sciences, and history are the same.
I
just never thought it would come about. We were never
concerned about it.
F--It may be that the decision for the free elective system
may have undercut the concept of the basic-foundation
kind of program and severely impeded the opportunity to
give people a broad-based education.
C--But I think those two, the enrollment problem and the
change in educational objectives and attitudes, have
forced those institutions that started out as upperdivision operations to try to be more relevant.
In all
our long-range studies of cost we also said collective
bargaining would never come to the public sector.
F--And it has and it has changed the relationship.
C--It's changed it drastically.
F--That's more so in community colleges, isn't it?
C--Yes, because we're in the forefront. We had a different
clientele in the faculty ranks.
It will just be a matter
of time now before we will see unionization to a far
greater degree in our four-year institutions, Jerry.
I'm convinced of it. You now have Central, Ferris,
Wayne, Eastern, and...

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Cahow
F--And Oakland for all practical purposes.
C--A11 practical purposes.
We missed completely, not only educational attitudes and
objectives, but also social attitudes. Jerry, I can
remember when we caught holy hell for opening up a dining
room in a residence hall for co-ed dining.
F--Really?
C--This just wasn't done. The girls had one dining room,
the men had the other dining room. We opened it up so
it was possible for them to have breakfast, lunch and
supper together. We thought it was a step in the right
direction to solve some of our social and cultural
problems.
F--We've come a long way in a short time, haven't we?
C--We have, to where we are now operating some residence
halls with no regard to mixing of the sexes. We just
assign them as they come.
In a dormitory you may draw
a male neighbor, or you may have a female neighbor.
It's changed drastically, and this in turn is a result
of changes in our educational objectives and attitudes.
I'm very fearful that in our educational objectives we
have lowered our standards of what we expect of the
student.
I'm concerned that we have made it too easy.
F--Well, it may be, you know, that as you move along in
this democratization and popularization and bring the
benefits of higher education to lower levels of aspira­
tion that the nature of the schools change. We cer­
tainly have many, many more people in higher education.
I recognize what you said earlier about the difference
in the age breaks that we never dreamed of in the fifties
when we planned much of the modern Michigan higher educa­
tion system.
C--In the community colleges we were thinking in terms of
the traditional college-age students of 17 to 21.
F--It's not that way anymore, is it? You know, it's hard
to believe with the population of some nine million
people that we have some two million in K-12, some
350,000 in four-year, some 160,000, if you skip the
FTE, at community colleges.

A 169
Cahow
C--We've got 150,000 to 160,000 on a head-count basis.
F--You probably have another 40,000 in private colleges.
Then, if you take the people who are 0 to 5, and you
take those people retired, 65 to 100 or whatever age
they are, you've got just the most phenomenal segment
of the population outside the work force.
A third of our people, virtually, are in school. Now,
you'd never dream that that would be the case. And I
suppose that's probably one of the answers to the question
about popularization.
The answer probably, you know, is
yes and we've succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.
American people are funny. After they attain a goal,
they're not happy with that, they then begin to aspire
to something else.
C--It's going to be interesting to see what transpires in
the balance of this decade and in the eighties in terms
of the senior citizen and what he is going to ask of
our educational system.
F--Have you been to Kentucky and seen their program where
they pay tuition for every retired citizen?
C--I haven't seen it, but I

know of it.

F--It's pretty impressive.
I heard of alady, 85, graduating.
That's certainly not the enhancement of manpower, but I
think there's a value to that and that may again broaden
the market.
I, myself, don’t believe that the enrollments are doomed
to go down.
I think they're going to broaden but the
programs again have to broaden.
Jim Holden, chairman of the coordinating board for higher
education, said in a Nielsen survey in Illinois that
something like some 650,000 people wanted to have addi­
tional higher education, and some small percentage would
pay for it no matter what the cost.
Those are the people who aren't currently being
reached,
and the senior citizens that you identified are certainly
a huge market.
It may be that it may be located in
community and regional institutions.
C--I think they will be, Jerry.
If this trend continues
whereby we can make it possible for an individual to

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Cahow
spend 30 years and at an average age of 55--30 and out.
It's really frightening to think that if they go into
the work force at age 20 that they’re out at 50.
F--Then w e ’re talking about second-career work.C--We’re talking about second careers.
I'm amazed at the
number of individuals I have been coming in contact with
now who have taken early retirement at, say, 62 or 60,
and are in another career.
I don’t think societally that that's bad at all.
It's
interesting. How did they get there? They enrolled in
a college and they took some specialized work.
F--Let me ask the last question. What in your opinion were
the reasons that an institutional system for coordination
of higher education did not come about in Michigan? The
rhetoric was certainly there in the Con-Con, although
certainly more so in the Education Committee than on the
floor.
C--Jerry, I think there are a couple of major reasons for
it.
The first one is due to the fact that we resorted to the
political process for selecting a State Board.
We went
for elected rather than appointed boards.
I felt for a
long time that election was the best, even though in either
situation there will be periods when for one reason or
another you do not have a group of individuals that can
effectively work together and accomplish.
F--Then you're saying some of the weaknesses were in the
State Board itself.
C--Weaknesses in the State Board as a result of the process
by which those individuals were given the assignment.
F--Certainly. For instance, in 1964 the fact that not one
Republican got elected was probably a major disability,
wasn't it?
C--The State Board of Education has been given a very minor
position by both parties at state conventions in terms
of nominations.
The emphasis has been placed upon the
Regents at the University of Michigan, the Trustees at
Michigan State, and the Governors at Wayne.

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Cahow
Now whether or not it would work if we had a system of
selecting from a panel of recommended individuals for
the convention to draw upon, I don't know.
I've come round to the point of believing that the
appointment process is preferable, since I'm convinced
that you would be more certain of a reasonable, realistic
balance politically.
I think even more important is that
by the appointment process we would have a better oppor­
tunity of inducing individuals to serve who had back­
grounds and experience to draw upon.
F--Any other observations you'd like to make, Bob?
C--In terms of coordination, the other thing that's got to
be done we've not done in Michigan.
I recall conversa­
tions with Lynn Bartlett in his office when Con-Con was
put to bed to the effect that if we're going to make
this work, the one essential ingredient is a very able,
qualified staff.
Where are you going to find those people in terms of
education?
Ideally, the majority of them will come out
of education.
They will have had the background, the
experience, the practical knowledge. Now to get those
people, Jerry, you've got to be able to compensate them.
You can't do it under a civil service system and compete
in the market.
F--I appreciate what you're saying.
Thank you for sharing your insights.

TRANSCRIPT - INTERVIEW WITH
JAMES MILLER1

F--What in your opinion, Jim, were the reasons that led
to the expansion of higher education in Michigan from
1958 on?
M--Well, there is the obvious--the population explosion.
The productivity of World War II veterans was just
tremendous and with all that growth you had to have
places for young people to go to college. Michigan
didn't begin to have the private educational
resources, for example, that Ohio had and has, [or]
Indiana. We're more like Minnesota and Wisconsin
in the sense that the magnitude of the growth was
such that only the public sector could take it in
any appreciable way.
Michigan's total history has been one of a deep and
abiding commitment to the societal as well as indi­
vidual benefits to be derived from education.
The
thing that always impressed me was that when I was
looking at budget figures on higher education--and
this would be for the last 35 or 40 years that I
examined rather closely--it was Illinois, California
and Michigan: These were the states that were doing
well, year in and year out, for higher education.
The John Dale Russell study came at a fortuitous
time for higher education in general and for the
community college concept in particular.
F--Before we get to some of that, Jim, as a historian by
training I’ve been fascinated by this long historical
tradition which many have talked about in Michigan.
It has encouraged the peculiar rights of the institu­
tions and strongly supported this growth. Yet other
James W. Miller; President, Western Michigan University,
1961-1974.
Previously served as State Controller and in
various other state administrative positions.
Interview
conducted April 18, 1974.
A 172

A 173
Miller
states--I think about Indiana, Ohio, Illinois--which
were much like us economically, didn’t have that.
I wondered if you had some thoughts about why this
state may have had that long tradition. And I go
right back to the earliest days, because if you look
at the history of higher education, this is the first
state in the Union to create the agricultural and
mechanical school.
M--I suppose one would go into the sociological ramifi­
cations of that, I mean, the background of the people
who emigrated to this state. Apparently [they] had
this commitment. You find it, for example, in reading
Willis Dunbar's book on the history of higher educa­
tion in the State of M i c h i g a n . 2
It's rather remarkable the interest in the University
of Michigan in its founding period.
This interest
was very real.
I just don't know [about] Indiana.
F--What were some of the social and economic factors
that led to the expansion of education in Michigan,
Jim?
M--Well, here again I'm looking at it more recently, but
certainly the development of the labor movement in
the State of Michigan, and possibly even Henry Ford
and the development of the motor industry and the
better pay, began economically to bring higher educa­
tion as an opportunity for working men's sons and
daughters.
It made it more of a reality and it seems
to me that has steadily grown and developed.
And then of course the whole development of Michigan
State University as essentially a school of oppor­
tunity.
But you know there's more to it than that.
You take Ferris, for example.
Ferris was very
definitely set up as a special school of opportunity.
You know from your experience in the Legislature
there is still the strong feel to keep the Ferris
tuition low, to keep with the tradition of making
higher education available--and as a catalyst really-12

Willis F. Dunbar, The Michigan Record in Higher
Education (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1963].

A 174
Miller
for allowing people to move from the working class
[previously] limited to high school [but] now expanded
to college and graduate school.
But the early establishment of a university, or college,
in which the agricultural people of the state could
take pride and the increased mechanization of the farm
were important factors focusing greater public interest
in higher education.
F--Ok, so you have the extraordinary large pay that the
automotive industry had compared to other...
M--Well, relatively.
F--Well, it certainly did compared to other nonskilled or
low-skilled industries in America.
Coal mining, for
instance, has sort of kept people without the oppor­
tunity for upward aspiration. And you're also suggesting
that the economic changes that made the 40-acre homestead
unable to support more than one child on the family plot,
was a factor in the look for additional ways to broaden
the base.
M--Yes, and of course 40 acres is nothing now.
I mean, you
couldn't do anything with it if you were seriously going
to engage in farming.
F--There was that, and others have suggested the GI Bill
and the large number of people who wanted to come. You
suggested also the lack of private educational oppor­
tunity for the growth of the public sector.
M--You had a number of factors throughout the country.
You can't escape the total American commitment for
years to "my child's future" is tied socially and
economically with college education.
I mean, that's
been very real.
I'm concentrating on Michigan, and
sure, the government has in a variety of ways encour­
aged it.
We've mentioned some of them here in Michigan in the
sense that the takeover of Ferris by the public sector
occurred, oh gosh, that was...
F--1948, I believe.
M--I was going to say by the fifties they were into it
because they had had that disastrous fire up there.

A 175
Miller
7

But here again it was a governor--Ferris --who was
tremendously committed to higher education.
In fact,
I think Michigan has been blessed with governors who
have shown a real interest in higher education. You
can go back to Ferris, and possibly even before that.
The tremendous presidents that emerged at the University
of Michigan.
There have been some strong presidents in
this state, particularly at Michigan (with a longer
history). But you find them emerging in places such as
the University of Detroit.
F--You were on the governor's elementary and secondary
reform commission.
I was much surprised to find out
that Governor Milliken's grandfather on his mother's
side had been president at Central--Grawn, the middle
name of the Governor, William Grawn--and I think that's
a demonstration of the kind of interweaving that's
occurred.
What about the policy objectives that underlaid this
expansion? Certainly the aspirational aspect...
M--Well, the concept that every child capable of and with
an interest in higher education should have an oppor­
tunity for higher education. That's been very, very
real, very pronounced in Michigan's history.
The latest, most articulate spokesman on that subject,
from my standpoint, was John Hannah.
John Hannah, for
what, 20 to 27 years, constantly drove that home: the
societal as well as individual advantages that accrue
from having higher education open to any and every
child capable of and with an interest in higher education.
F--I just wonder if, earlier in the nineteenth century, the
Kalamazoo Case--when we were the first state in the
Union to create the free public high school--wasn't part
of the same sociological theme.
M--The sociological aspects of this would be fascinating
to go into in considerable depth, probably more depth
than you'll be able to go into in this.dissertation.
Kalamazoo was a combination of Dutch--fairly inter­
esting group--Scottish, English, and German people.
Woodbridge N. Ferris; Governor of Michigan, 1913-16;
Founder of Ferris Institute, 1884.

A 176
Miller
These were people who had already demonstrated a
desire to improve themselves.
Improve themselves,
not simply materially, but improve themselves as
educated, cultural human beings.
I think it's very
real. You can say, well, you had large groups of
people from these and other stocks in other states.
That's true, but they apparently formed a very
effective coalition of interests here in this state.
F--I've observed that in other states education could be
partisan: There could be differences of view between
one party and another; the things that separate the
various population groups would in fact cause stress
over education.
But it hasn't happened here.
It
seems that education has been an influence that's
caused our people to cooperate.
M--That may simply have been the acumen of political
leaders that this was an issue that cut across party
lines, cut across religious lines, and was a common
thread of interest.
Really, from a political stand­
point, there was no point to trying to produce a
division where there was a community of support.
F--In this question, "What were the key issues that
resulted in partisam and parochial conflict in the
attempts to obtain the above policy objectives?", I
guess I did not mean to suggest Democratic versus
Republican because I don't have the sense that that
existed.
M--I don't have that feeling.
F--But I'm curious about what were some of the issues.
One could feel the strain between Michigan and
Michigan State.
I wonder if the private versus the
public sector was an important strain, the two-year
versus the four-year, the regional interests versus
large schools, the branch campuses? I'm wondering
what were the conflicts?
M--I don't think the conflicts between the private and
public sectors were very severe in Michigan.
In Indiana,
frankly, the presidents of the private and public insti­
tutions pretty effectively killed off a community
college thrust.
There was an effort at accommodation in Michigan.
With only a few exceptions I've never noted any strong

A 177
Miller
antipathy between the private and public. Weimar
Hicks at Kalamazoo College would extoll the values of
private over and against public education, but I always
wondered about his thrust in this direction.
It seemed
to me that it was more an attempt to appeal to prospec­
tive givers to his institution.
I really can't say
that I ever detected any strong antipathy. We used to
meet with them regularly and we got along famously as
a group, I thought.
F--I have the feeling--based on a lot of discussions,
reading, and study--that in Michigan the conflicts were
over process rather than over the entire commitment to
the effort, whereas in other states they fought about
the effort itself.
There could be differences of
agreement, differences of opinion, but that didn't seem
to separate people from cooperating towards common
obj ectives.
M--I don't think, Jerry, that we were ever regarded in
the public sector as a real serious threat to the
private.
There was a commitment on both sides that
the dual system of higher education was a viable and
desirable system.
There was a period when there was
considerable consultation vis-a-vis the private and
the public.
F--I suppose the fact that they cooperated together to
create the scholarship grant programs, the tuition
program.
The public schools did not fight the recent
act that was just promulgated--of institutional support
per degree earned in the private sector. That it
wasn't fought by the public schools is, I think, proof
of the kind of a goodwill that's gone on.
M--Yes.
I think that if you take a look at the presidents
of the institutions in the public sector, you'll find
that many of them were educated in private, liberal
arts-type institutions.
Probably equally importantly,
their boards of trustees came from private as well as
public institutions.
I feel there was a genuine commitment that higher edu­
cation is in and of itself important in terms of
society's needs, in terms of the individual needs, and
that the dual system was important and there should
not be an encroachment.
Now, this state has been pre­
dominantly public higher education for a long, long
time.

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Miller
F--Virtually always, hasn’t it?
M--Virtually always. As long as I can remember it was
always in the [ratio of] 70-30, 75-25, and of course
with the tremendous growth, it dropped around 82-18.
F--Let's talk about another source then. Do you have
some attitudes about why the conflict between Michigan
and Michigan State didn't get unseemly? One talks a
lot about that stress because of the tremendous growth
of Michigan State. And yet, I have the sense that that
conflict didn't really get out of bounds.
M--No, it didn't get out of bounds. There were lots of
people who made things of it; the football rivalry
and that type of thing.
But certainly once the Legislature acted on naming
Michigan State what in fact it was, a university,
there was a pronounced fight against that. That is
why, I'm sure, the University of Michigan took no
effort at all to oppose naming Eastern, and Western,
and Central, and so on, universities.
F--The fight had already been lost.
M--Yes, the fight had already been lost. Then again--you
read in Willis Dunbar's history--Michigan was the
university, the parent university.
Understandably with
that background--the prestigious nature of their total
enterprise, not only in the State of Michigan, but
throughout the nation and throughout the world--it's
probably not unusual.
And then they lost the branch fight at Delta, and
that was a hairy struggle for a short period of time.
But once it became apparent to the University of
Michigan that legislators and key educational figures
at other institutions throughout the state were anti­
branch, for the reason that if entered into on a large
scale it would become a very vicious struggle and
empire-building and that type of thing, [they submitted].
It would have been counter-productive and it would have
had a tremendous impact on the emerging development of
the community college concept.
There were those in
that sector who believed that this would virtually
destroy that total concept.

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Miller
F--It's a little hard to come to a feeling for Dr. Hatcher.
People who have talked to me have been very laudatory
about John Hannah, as they rightly should be. They've
always been a good deal less praiseworthy, quite care­
ful in their remarks, about Dr. Hatcher because they
see this sort of polarity between the positions.
And yet I'm struck by the fact that with the power the
University had, with its national reputation, with its
relationships with Michigan industry and commerce,
that they had to have taken an unrecognized statesman­
like approach in some ways because they could have
exacerbated the fight.
In other states the major
university has sometimes muscled the competition out.
It might not have been possible for Michigan to have
succeeded, but it certainly might have been possible
for them to have decelerated the degree of challenge.
I wonder if you have some observations, from your
experience, that the Michigan people have some sense
of— I don't know quite how to put it delicately--not
wanting to exacerbate the situation so that the enter­
prise would be able to proceed forward.
M--I know for a fact that John Hannah did not want to
exacerbate the situation, and took a number of steps
to try to reduce any friction that was developing.
Well, you can say he had a selfish motivation.
I
think he had more than a selfish motivation.
I think
that John Hannah was very far-seeing in terms of the
ultimate development of higher education in Michigan
and felt that, you know, all would be hurt if [the]
two could not find accommodation.
One may say, well, you sat in a prejudicial position
on that matter. Well, not entirely, because I was
named president of one of the universities and I was
the Chairman of the Michigan Council of State College
Presidents at the time when the University of Michigan
was pressing for branch status for Delta Community
College. The University of Michigan was beaten and
beaten badly on the question of branches.
In the
Delta case in particular.
F--That's a key event.

We'll come back to that.

Did any of the policy goals for the advancement of
higher education have as their objective the destruc­
tion of class and culture barriers?

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Miller
M--I wrote here in my notes, naturlich (naturally, of
course).
F--I think that's a good answer.
Somehow we haven't been a state where our budget docu­
ments, and our Governor's materials in the legislative
processes, have come out with the kind of John Gardner^
..., what I call "$5 rhetoric."
But it seems you have to measure the state, not by what
people have said, but by what they have done.
I find
it hard to point to any documents to say, "We're going
to create an upward mobile class, we're going to open
the doors of opportunity and expand the middle class
and create colleges of opportunity rather than colleges
for those who have already demonstrated by their aca­
demic records that they can perform." I don't find
the rhetoric there, but I find the action there.
I think that makes it difficult for me as a historian
to cite the documents, but the facts stand there easy
to see.
I think the community college system which
got created in this period was a deliberate act, [but]
didn't have anything to point to as a document or study
that said we would do this as a master plan.
M--You did have the actual location of these institutions
of higher education dealt around the state. Again,
[manifesting] an interest in the communities themselves
to have an institution of higher education which was
an aspiration for greater cultural goals. And again,
these goals are for all, not for a single class.
F--I want to come back to that later.
It strikes me very
much that the fact that local groups, the citizenry,
the business, the Rotarians, the commercial people and
the churchmen aspired for an institution for their
regional area as a part of civic fulfillment tells
you something about Michigan.
You didn't find that in
other states to the degree I think that you found it
here.
^John Gardner; Secretary, Health, Education and Welfare
under President Lyndon Johnson.

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Miller
M--You have to include the private sector because when
you think of the influence that Hope College has on
Holland and the surrounding area, [it's] very real.
It is a cultural center for Holland. When I first
went down to Western as President [I took] one of
the first occasions I had to get down there and see
what they were doing and note the number of people
from the community that were coming in. They took
great pride--that's their college.
Kalamazoo with
Kalamazoo, Albion with Albion, Alma...
F--Calvin, the same way; and U of D, too.
M--U of D too, very real.
F--I'm struck by the influence that Father Steiner and
now Father Carron have had in very statesmanlike
ways too.
M--I don't know Suomi College [Hancock, Michigan] that
well, but Suomi has a very important significance so
far as Finnish people are concerned.
F--I was there when they kicked off their fund-raising
drive about a year ago.
It has only 800 students,
I think, but it was remarkable for the impact there
for the Finnish people.
M--And look at the Soo. The growth and development of
Lake Superior has been due in some large part to the
community interest in having a college which they
could point to and have as a resource for their
cultural development.
F--Certainly. Lake Superior is a good example because
their citizenry ran rummage sales and donated paint
and things of that nature.
What about popularism in higher education versus
elitism?
M--Yes, very definitely.
Your question poses it for
this particular period of 1958-1970.
Remember that
Michigan kept its tuition extremely low for a good
part of the period about which we're speaking.

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Miller
F--I personally regard the tuition as still low.
M--Well, certainly if you contrast it with the State of
Ohio.
F--I was going to contrast it with Massachusetts.
In
1954 when I went to Boston College the tuition was
$800. Today, in 1974,Michigan State's tuition is
$600. Then a boy was hard-pressed to make his
tuition in the summer, but today no boy in the state
would find it difficult to earn his tuition.
M--Well, Boston College is a parochial school.
F--...but I guess in Boston there were few, if any,
public alternatives to the private sector until maybe
four years ago. As you recollect, the University of
Massachusetts did not even come to Boston until prob­
ably 1968.
M--Yes. When I went to college in '35 I paid $400 tuition
at Amherst.
I don't know what it was at the University
of Massachusetts but the University of Massachusetts is
way in the western-most part of the state and was the
only one that was public.
F--It was the only credible public...
M--Bridgewater had a normal school, which as a normal
school was good enough, but...
F--But not in the way that we think of them today.
Fitchburg the same way.
How important were vocational and occupational
training objectives in the enhancement of higher
education? Governor Williams talked about Sputnik
and the shock of that.
M--Sputnik itself had its
thought of it, looking
importance that it had
cept. This is where I

influence nationwide.
I
at the question, more as the
on the community college con­
followed the question.

F--As a matter of fact, that's probably where the answer
is.
I'm not sure, though, when I framed the question,
that I was there.
I thought about Western with its
paper technology and aircraft technology, and I thought
about packaging at Michigan State, but I ’ve been led,
as I've discussed this with people, to think more about
the community colleges and the Ferris model.

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Miller
M--Yes. The Ferris model was very early and that was
technical, occupational, and opportunistic in the
sense of a very low tuition and a great interest in
taking people who did not have a high school degree
but were of an age who would be embarrassed to go
back into the high school. Here was a way to come in
and complete the high school requirements and at the
same time view a variety of technical and occupational
opportunities that possibly they had never thought
about before.
Western got into occupational therapy, for example,
oh, back even in the twenties they were thinking about
this.
In the thirties and by the forties these were
pretty well established programs --and speech pathology
The paper [technology] came in just about or a little
before your 1958 period, sometime in the early 1950’s
as I recall.
F--So you think the real focus of the occupational and
vocational programs came much more in the intention
to create community colleges, and in fact they are
probably their preservation with the Delta branch
case.
M--Taking your own language with your question, Jerry,
you said vocational and occupational training objec­
tives.
I would say that that was predominantly
significant in terms of the community college concep­
tual development.
It’s a rather unique one, really,
to try to blend together a liberal arts preparatory
program side by side with an occupational and voca­
tional thrust.
F--And it has worked, too.
In foreign countries, particularly I think about Afric
they've specifically developed technical institutions
separate from academic and liberal arts programs.
M--I suppose you had a pre-run to all of this in the
sense that the so-called teachers’ colleges, or at
least Western, got involved in a fairly substantial
number of two-year programs that have since been
siphoned off into the community college.
F--Let me ask a question about that. The normal schools
in Michigan--were their vocation teachers two-year
teachers, graduates of two-year programs in manual
training and the like? Or were they just sort of

A 184
Miller
natural outgrowths to that?
kind of handicraft basis,

The normal schools had that

M--Yes.
Of course the normal schools started out with a
two-year teaching certificate and then the policy changed:
namely, that people entrusted with this type of responsi­
bility should have four-year training.
So we went to
that.
But they had experience with two-year certificated
programs at a very early stage in their development so
probably it wasn't at all foreign to them to look at the
vocational occupational areas and say, "All right, maybe
certificated programs of two years make some sense here."
We, for example, went into two-year secretarial programs
and had a very good one. Two-year technological programs
in aviation mechanics, automotive mechanics, distributive
education.
Some of this was an outgrowth of what has been
called manual training, and then industrial arts and then
industrial education.
So it's been a rather natural
growth and development.
F--You tend to forget that because they're no longer part of
the scene.
The community colleges have taken that con­
stituency over.
M--Yes. Western is sort of atypical in the sense
that it
was concurrently running four-year programs as well as
two-year programs. And frankly, there probably would
have been a demise of the two-year program at Western
anyhow, but the community college really hastened it
for the simple reason that a student coming in and
getting the certificate--we found that in some areas as
high as 95 percent of those students--were going on and
not stopping with the certificate.
They would take the
certificate but then they would go right on and take
the full four years.
F--What about the growth of culture and the arts?
Did that
have importance in the dialogue over the growth in
higher education?
M--I think there were two factors.
I think there has been a gradual development over the
years in the arts, but I think it got accentuated when
we started getting to the 40-hour week, and then the
talk of the 30-hour week, and then the talk of, "What
does one do with one's leisure time?"

A 185
Miller
I think then the question came up [about] the quality
of that leisure time. With all due respect to fishing
and hunting and golfing and the like, you can’t put
all of your leisure time in even lifetime sports:
badminton, table tennis, fly fishing, golf, tennis,
swimming, and so on.
I think that tended to have sort of a catalytic impact
in the sense of giving added impetus to the develop­
ment of the visual arts: music, dance, theater. That's
a development that I thoroughly applaud.
F--I well know that, but you know back home where we're
from there was a strong societal base for cultural
institutions outside of the university: the museums
and symphonies and the like back home in Massachusetts.
Here in this state it really isn't easy to take a long
look and see that there is a cultural tradition as
amply supported.
Rather one finds that the institu­
tions of higher education have kind of become the
places to nurture and support it.
I just wonder if there was some intention that the
institutions of higher education become sort of
launching pads for broadening the culture base of the
citizenry.
M--I think the citizenry were thinking in these terms.
The thing that always impressed me at Western, and I
think this is true both in the public and the private
sector, was the number of community people who find
out what is going on at the university.
It wasn't
so much the university going out and saying to the
community, "Come on in." It was as much the citizen
outside saying, "Well, something's going on at this
university that I'd like to find a way to become
involved with, if no more than as a spectator at
plays and the like."
F--When you established the theater program at Western,
were you surprised at the amount of community interest
that existed?
M--Yes, I was. Of course, I think that Kalamazoo is
frankly a little atypical in this respect: the fact
that they have their own theater as a community;
they have their own music in terms of a symphony,
although it draws heavily upon the colleges and

A 186
Miller
universities in the area. Those people I found had
been following university theaters for a long time.
There was, I noticed, the audience,
F--In a sense, was that like the Hannah approach to
athletics, broadening the base of support for the
university?
M--There's no question that it did do this.
I guess I'd
have to say that it was pretty conscious.
F--Oh, certainly, Jim, at Western it was conscious.
M--It was conscious, but it was conscious not in terms
of wanting to raise the annual giving for that partic­
ular year. This made sense if one was going to be an
integral part of the community. You see, here's where
the ivory tower is breaking down: the idea that somehow
we're apart from the community in which we live.
F--At Oakland I always had the feeling that Woody's
approach was in the most cold of cold blood to build
a base. He could just as soon gone to football...
M--Or basketball, which is even cheaper to run. But good
gosh, that wouldn't begin to have the appeal to the
people who wanted to identify with something cultural.
F--The reason I'd lead this question [is because] it seems
to me that frequently people derive the wrong lessons
from events.
A lot of people who think they understand the higher
education enterprise say, "Well, John Hannah built
Michigan State because he went for athletics and now
that I'm going to build my school at Slippery Rock or
Snake Creek, I'm going to immediately hire a football
team."
It strikes me that one of the ways you build an
institution is to broaden its base of value to the
community.
It doesn't necessarily just have to be
oriented to athletics, it can be for a lot of ways.
M--You're going to talk to John Hannah and he'll answer
for himself, of course, but my feeling was that
Michigan State has long had a wide, diverse involve­
ment in intercollegiate athletics and that his thrust
was to get identified with a conference that was

A 187
Miller
superior in academic accomplishments.
Getting into
the Big Ten meant more, I feel, to Michigan State in
terms of association with the academic and cultural
developments that those institutions involved in the
Big Ten [possess] than simply attempting to be a part
of the supplier of flamboyant, outstanding... athletic
achievements.
F--If you're referring to the consortium of faculty and
students being able to...
M--The consortium was a later development.
In the
beginning I think that it was John Hannah's desire to
have Michigan State grow as a contributor to and one
of the leading universities in the country, and that
you can't do on football alone, or basketball, and
the like. Better have a summer camp, you know, and
give these fellows Spartan discipline to put them on
the Chicago Bear roster or the Green Bay Packers.
F--What was the position of labor in regard to higher
education?
M--Walter Reuther I think demonstrated a very real
interest in education.
I don't know whether you've
been to that fabulous Black Lake? It's really a
wonderfully equipped continuing education center.
It's a place for people to have an opportunity to
improve themselves intellectually, culturally.
F--I've never been there.
M--Oh, you ought to visit it.
I was just so impressed.
They have works of art made by artists from Europe
that are just as fabulous as you would find in any
museum in the country.
F--What about Michigan industry? What was their position
in regard to higher education?
Certainly in the Williams' administration one always
felt their opposition to increasing the tax situa­
tion, but I can't recollect that I've ever felt
opposition to expanding the appropriations base for
education from industry.
I can't say that I've been
able to discern the same broad societal view that
labor had. But in parochial and regional areas,
industry supported specific institutions.

A 188
Miller
M--You have the Ford Motor Company Fund, separate from
the company itself, which has been assisting educa­
tional projects and cultural projects. You have, of
course, the Kresge Foundation and the Kellogg
Foundation.
These all came out of industry, whose
leaders must have had an interest in education for
the simple reason that they put a large portion of
their fortunes into foundations.
You can go on, the
Kellogg Foundation, the Relm Foundation, the Dow
Chemical Company has been supportive of higher education
in a variety of ways.
Certainly Carl Gerstacker at Dow
Chemical--Chairman of the Board--has been very active
personally in the private sector at Albion College, ...
the Mott Foundation. When you stop and think of the
State of Michigan, it has some very outstanding founda­
tions, the funding of which came from industry.
F--That’s a good point. You know one loses sight of that
because some of our foundations have become so out­
standingly wealthy that they’ve taken national rather
than regional roles.
Particularly one thinks about
Ford that way, but that's a good point.
What about commerce?
M--Well, how do you define commerce here?
F--I guess I tried to make the distinction between heavy
industry. When I took a look at the governor's Blue
Ribbon Commission--Romney's--1 noticed that people
like Heavenrich from Saginaw were on it.
I began to
wonder if Michigan commerce might have had a slightly
different focus.
M--I don't really think so. The name that you mentioned
rings a bell with me: Heavenrich, tremendously ardent
supporter of higher education.
Here again, probably not as
and certainly not as large,
been quite real in a number
dollars.
Certainly, I know
the contribution from small
been quite considerable.

sustained, systematic,
but their support has
of ways in terms of
in our annual giving fund,
industry or commerce has

F--What about agriculture, Jim?
M--I think agriculture was conditioned very early in
the sense that it established an identity. They've

A 189
Miller
already had their Farmers' Week over here.
I don't
think anyone could ever go through Farmers' Week in
East Lansing without recognizing that the farmers of
this state really do make the trek to East Lansing
and to the Michigan State campus. Of course the
extension program which brings the results of the
university out...
F--Was that support also for other institutions as well
as for Michigan State?
M--Well, again, I can state best for Western. We've had,
on a much more modest scale, of course--nothing like
Michigan State, we don't begin to have the programs-but we've been involved in a variety of types of
agricultural programs. And yes, support was good.
They think about us.
For example, a man has a number of seedlings.
This
man didn't know me and he called me and he said, "I
have all these seedlings. Would you have any use
for them at the university?" My gosh, we did have
use for them.
Being Johnny Appleseed, I was delighted.
The Burpee Seed people gave us 25,000 bulbs for
planting.
Now admittedly it was the end of the season.
They
didn't want to destroy them, they wanted them used.
Well, the fact that they would get on the telephone
and call Nellie Schrier and say, "Nellie, what could
you do with all these bulbs if you had them? We
know you like flowers."
F--Who was Nellie?
M--Nellie Schrier was one of our Bachelor of Science
graduates who took to grounds-keeping and just loved
it.
It was atypical in the sense that one has a
college degree, was the grounds-keeper, and had stu­
dents work for him.
I always felt they probably got
as much tutelage from Nellie Schrier out there taking
care of the natural environment of the campus as they
would have gotten in many classrooms.
F--What about the pressures and influences in the deter­
mination of public policy, if any, from the federal
government?

A 190
Miller
M--The federal government's influence has been tremen­
dous. You've been exposed to it, as have I, in terms
of certainly the brick and mortar aspects. But then,
when you come to things like speech pathology, physics,
biology, librarianship, these grants are very real.
The thing we have to watch, however, is that they
provide soft money.
They have a habit of starting
things and deliberately phasing out.
One has tokeep
one's mind active in terms of what are we prepared to
do in terms of these grants later down the road.
F--Well, perhaps.
But I'm not as concerned about soft
money as some.
It seems to me you shouldn't take
something you don't really need or want, so they
really became in a sense opportunity grants. The
people who acquired them without the commitment to
build on them were more often burned
than those
people who saw them having a use and
then taking
those things they needed.
M--Yes, they get burned, Jerry, for the simple reason
that this is just a matter of getting more money and
more programs without having fixed in their minds
whether the program is truly important.
For example,
I'm sure that we could have gotten grants for nursing
at Western Michigan University, but when I discovered
that Grand Valley was into nursing, and Eastern was
into nursing, and Sister Mary Bader of Nazareth
College...
F--But I also have noticed that in the long history of
Michigan, when the federal money left, in many, many
cases the state's money replaced it.
M--If the program can be justified in terms of whether
you have the unique strengths to operate it and
there's a justifiable need in the state, sure. And
that's the way I would assume the Legislature is
going to analyze it.
Here again it's like anything else. You can get over­
extended.
I think that many places got overextended.
I think the prime example in the country probably is
Southern Illinois University.
They had a president
there who was very adept at going out and getting
grants and getting programs started.
F--Now, I want to come to that point.

A 191
Miller
Yesterday I was in Chicago at the American College
Personnel Association meetings where I was on a panel
with Jim Holderman from the Eli Lilly Foundation, who
was formerly the head of Higher Education Coordinating
Council.
They talked about Dwight Morris’s $1,400,000
president’s home.
That kind of startled my mind, Jim, because I ’ve always
been struck by the fact that Michigan's presidents, all
of them--and there's a greater variety of talent and
skill than you'll ever meet--had a sort of private
sense of probity about the degree of opulence that
they were going to live in. Most of them lived in a
great deal of what I'd call circumspection.
The first time I saw Dr. Hannah's office, I had expected
a princely palace and found a plain office. Your office
surprised me when I came to see you because you could
have written your name to any voucher and had just about
anything you wanted.
I was struck by Fleming's office,
again, quiet and workmanlike.
The fact that the presidents did not build these
mansions has something to say about their skill and
their sense of themselves as public servants.
M--I think, and again I don't know it in any detail, but
the Southern Illinois University--there was something
wrong there.
I remember, for example, when they
mounted 34 doctoral programs all at one time. That
just said to me that they had no concept of what it
meant in terms of resources required to nurture and
develop.
Could you really justify that number of
doctoral programs?
I just had a hard time believing
it. That's why I went so carefully at Western. My
colleagues were very supportive if we would go at a
modest number.
F--It might have been a question of if you were in for
the long haul or the short flashy show.
I think our
people have had a larger sense of the long haul because
certainly we could have taken more programs on when the
romance was heavy. Most of our schools haven't really
overextended themselves.
M--It's another thing, too, of analyzing what your
clientele expects out of you.
For example, I trust
that when you came to Western, just as you went to
other institutions in this state, you weren't

A 192
Miller
expecting to walk into a wondrous, spacious bit of
opulence.
That wasn't why you were at the institu­
tion. You were basically at the institution to view
its programmatic developments and if you were being
thrust into sort of a French chateau type of opulencej
you'd say, "Well, what is the sense of value at this
institution?"
F--As a matter of fact, I always regarded when schools-and they did it very rarely--attempted to entertain
me in that kind of French chateau style as an evasion,
and in fact an answer to the basic question.
Personally, I always had great antipathy to the
priorities of people like the Detroit School Board,
which could manage not to afford to put money into
breakfast programs for children because they didn't
have money, but could mount ten chauffeur-driven cars
for their senior executives.
I always found that
personally hard to tolerate.
M--I had the advantage of being the State Controller
before I was a president and that was my training.
I'm sure that John Hannah's thrust for an administra­
tion building was always on the bottom of the totem
pole (they finally got to it). I worked in that
building in which John Hannah worked, and many other
people worked.
It was an old frame building with an
outer coat of brick, but a job was done there.
It's
been my experience that some of the best programs are
often conducted in surroundings that are far less
opulent than one might normally expect.
There's another concept, too.
I think there are some
presidents who feel they ought to entertain in a
magnificent home.
I think in Michigan the feeling is
we entertain in our communal rooms.
In other words,
I would take small groups to the house but anything
that was 30 and above would go over in the president's
dining room at the Student Center. John Hannah for
years entertained in the Green Room in the University
Student Center and then in the Kellogg Center.
You
expose your visitors to the communal rooms and decor
of the university rather than exposing them to one's
personal home.
I think that increasingly you're going to find that
the president's home is just that: it's his family

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Miller
home.

It's not essentially an entertainment center.

F--You don't think that's wrong, do you, Jim?
M--I think that's all right.
I think that's absolutely
the way it should be. Western has that beautiful
Italian Renaissance home that is an architectural
beauty, a historic piece of architecture--I think it
should be preserved if at all possible--but it should
become more communal.
The president should probably
have a family home in the community so that he and
his family would be a part of the community.
F--What were the pressures and influences in the deter­
mination of public policy, if any from the private
sector? You've talked about that in a positive way.
I was wondering if there were negative forces.
I
have not found them, but I am in the pursuit of the
elucidation of opinions for the interview.
M--The main thrust here was, of course, to have a state
assistance program that would begin to meet with the
needs of the private sector that had to have a tuition
rate considerably higher than the public sector.
F--But the public sector didn't fight that, did they?
M--No, no. As a matter of fact, in the Council when we
discussed this we said, "Heavens, this makes emminently
good sense.
It's obvious that they need a greater level
of support."
F--But in other states, Jim, they said, "If the revenue
pie is only so big, and if we let somebody else into
the soup bowl, we won't have enough ourselves and
therefore it's in our self-interest to fight putting
more mouths in." That doesn't seem to have happened
here.
M--I think in the public sector, particularly in the
period that you're analyzing, that the growth factors
were such, and the support for the young in the
Legislature was such, that really our needs were being
met.
It would have been, I think, pretty unfair of us
to be picking on [the private sector]. And with the
growth--we were growing in tuition dollars [and] we
were growing in public treasury dollars--how could you
espouse the dual system of higher education and be
party to opposition to their survival?

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Miller
F--You know, I ’m struck by the fact that from '58 to '70,
in spite of all the institutional rhetoric, the support
for higher education in this state was continuing and
generous.
M--I said earlier I think that Illinois and California
and Michigan have enjoyed more sustained good fortune
in terms of support from the public bodies, the
Legislature and the Governor, than any other state in
the Union. Now, obviously, New York is putting a lot
more money into higher education, but I'm talking about
the long haul.
This is a recent development in New York.
F--Yes. As a matter of fact, I understand that when Bob
Fleming made the decision whether to come to Michigan
or Minnesota, the historical tradition that Michigan
had had over a long number of decades of solid support
was the final and concluding influence upon him to come.
M--Well, this was always my argument to the good faculty
member who would come in and say, "Jim, I've got an
offer from such-and-such an institution and it's
several hundred dollars above what I'm getting here."
I said, "Well, in the short haul you're going to make
more money.
The question you have to evaluate is what
does the historical trend tell you in terms of what
you're going to get in the long haul? I maintain it's
better for you to stay in the State of Michigan."
Sometimes I was persuasive and sometimes I wasn't.
I
remember when Florida took a man away from us for $5000
more.
It was so interesting; that man wanted back seven
years later. Wanted back! Another man went to a
private school out in the East for more money, less
work in terms of number of preparations, number of
courses, more money for his research, but didn't sell
his house after he listened to me, and a year later
he said, "I'd like to come back." And I said, "Well,
that's sort of interesting.
You were getting more
money out there and you had less preparation." He
said, "Yes, but I wasn't getting the stimulation."
And I said, "Well, that's what I'm trying to tell
you." He was interested in medieval studies and we
developed in that area.
F--As I remember.
What was the nature of regional and local pressures
to expand higher education in one location rather than

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Miller
another? I guess I ’m trying to get a handle on
Grand Valley, Saginaw, Dearborn, Flint, Oakland,
Lake Superior...
M--I think the regional and local pressures were very
great in terms of the western-middle side of the
state. With Grand Rapids being the big city, they
wanted to have their own four-year, degree-granting
institution.
I think that was very considerable, the
fact that they raised what, a million dollars to show
they were sincere?
F--And they didn't regard Kalamazoo as close enough to
serve them in any way.
M--No.
They would regard Kalamazoo as another community.
It's 45 miles away and that wouldn't satisfy them. As
a matter of fact, it didn't come out satisfactorily
for a lot of them. There are many of them that had
wanted the college in Grand Rapids itself. Many of
them felt the ideal thing would have been to expand
the Grand Rapids Junior College into a four-year
school so that it would be a truly urban university.
F--I never could fathom why they located the school
2 0 miles away.
M--I think the givers, the people who put up the money,
probably had some influence in that respect.
Gus
Langius 5 worked very closely with them in terms of
new sites.
I think they had a dream of starting anew
with new land.
I've never gone to Grand Valley State
College the same way twice, roadwise.
F--Let me tell you, until they put a train or a transit
there, I can't see it really serving the people who
live in the City of Grand Rapids.
Western was very
much in and of the community. You know, the main
street went virtually right past your campus.
M--I wonder if Grand Valley will, over the years, develop
in that direction.
I don't know.
F--What were the reasons, Jim, in your opinion, for the
failure of the branch campus system in Michigan with
Oakland, Flint and Dearborn? You've talked about it
in terms of Delta.
^Adrian N. Langius; Secretary, State Building Commission.

A 196
Miller
M--Dearborn became a reality with the gift from the Ford
family. Matilda Wilson and her husband, particularly
Matilda, was very anxious to have their estate devel­
oped into a campus.
The contribution that they were
making in terms of the land and buildings, in partic­
ular, was a handsome inducement.
I think at that point, then, the fears started to grow
that there was going to be a wide-open scramble for
a branch concept, one in Traverse City, one in
Battle Creek, here and there and all over the state.
That naturally upset other four-year, degree-granting
institutions who said, "This isn’t the way that it
should be done."
And, it was just at that point that the John Dale
Russell study was under way and approaching completion.
The feeling was really not to have branches in competi­
tion with community colleges.
F--I can’t see how you could have had in Michigan a branch
system survive and have community colleges and regional
schools at the same time.
M--No, you couldn't.
I mean, they're incompatible.
The
Michigan Council of State College Presidents, while
told from time to time that this wasn’t our business,
were solidly against branching in higher education
with the exception of Harlan Hatcher. Harlan left
our meeting when the subject was brought up for
discussion.
F--I’m told by an observer at that meeting that it was
his view, the observer’s view, that Hatcher made a
significant mistake leaving that meeting and should
have stayed. He didn't think that if Hatcher had
stayed the motion would have come out quite the same
way. He also indicated that he...
M--Well, no, I don't agree that his staying would have
changed it, but I think it solidified the position.
I think the position of the Council would have been
the same: that they were opposed to further branches.
And then it went to the Coordinating Council and at
that meeting Harlan Hatcher did come and did stay
throughout, with Gene Power and one or two other
Regents.
They argued vigorously and from their

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Miller
standpoint persuasively, but not to the total member­
ship of the Coordinating Council.
[In] the Coordinating Council--at that time made up
of all the presidents plus one or two board members
from each one of the boards--the consensus clearly
was that the vast majority were opposed to the
development of branches.
F--I spent some good deal of time talking to Jim
Farnsworth about this question, particularly since
he's represented, you know, a Dutch area of the state
and was a Con-Con delegate.
I have a lot of admira­
tion for Jim as a solid man.
Jim made strongly the case to me that Michigan's
people liked the pluralism, didn't want to see superlarge agencies of government or education come to be.
He indicated that one of the strongest problems with
the concept of the current Human Services Bill is the
people's fear of big government.
They didn't want to
see a school that could control and monopolize the
education of their children with one central entrepot
and fifteen campuses as was happening in California.
They wanted schools that they could understand and
comprehend and be part of.
M--Well, the feeling was very strong.
I suspect that
this tended to bring presidents of public institutions
and private institutions a bit closer together, too,
because obviously the private sector wasn't interested.
After all, a Hope College would not want a University
of Michigan branch in its area. Now, whether that was
ever contemplated I wouldn't have any way of knowing.
F--But once you started that pattern of going to Port Huron..
M--...or Benton Harbor...
F--It's hard to draw the line where you'd go next.
M--The feeling was very strongly expressed by the presidents
of the private institutions that, "You people in the
public institutions develop continuing education pro­
grams. Why don't you consult with us when you develop
one in our area." That's a good point.
Traditionally
the private schools haven't been thought of as being
very active in the continuing education field.

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Miller
F--Yet your remarks about Hope seem to indicate that they
were very vital.
M--Yes.
F--What do you think, Jim, were the reasons for the failure
of an institutional system for the coordination of
higher education? Why didn't that come about in '64?
M--Oh, because the institutions, the four-year, degreegranting institutions in Michigan are laissez-faire
in attitude.
I don’t think I have to say too much
about that to you. They’re like political leaders in
many respects.
They understand how the present system
works and to go into some form of coordination worried
them.
I remember, for example, Ed Harden. Now you would have
thought Ed Harden might have--being one of the so-called
have-nots in the system for a period of time--been
interested in coordination that might have conceivably
given him a more equitable share of money coming from
the state treasury.
But Ed Harden, like other presi­
dents, had sublime confidence in his own ability to
compete in the legislative arena for more adequate
funds for his institution.
Whenever I, for example, explained that one way we
could effect coordination was by getting together as
presidents for a week--totally isolated from our
offices and telephones and the like--and just pound
out a division of the pie.
In other words, if you
take a circumference of 360 degrees and you say, "All
right, this is where w e ’re presently placed in this.
Whatever we get, this is the way we will divide it.”
Then, we would all argue for higher education in toto,
explaining to the Legislature that w e ’d already agreed
on a division.
This is actually what happened in Indiana. But Harlan
Hatcher said it couldn't happen in Michigan because
whereas they had four institutions, we had--I forget
at that time--nine or ten. We're now up to 13 or 15.
I thought it was interesting that Harden took the
position, too, that coordination talk was really
rhetoric and that the laissez-faire system produced
the best results.

A 199
Miller
F--I suspect, Jim, that the schools really believe that
coordination really meant control and they didn't see
any need for that.
I don't sense any desire on the part of Michigan
legislators to move toward coordination.
M--They enjoy dealing with each separate entity, with
each university or college president.
F--They haven't seemed to have difficulty in handling
the conflict of the diversity of interests.
I don't
see any sentiment on the part of the legislators...
M--I thought they did it rather well in the field of
medicine, for example.
In the field of medicine they
set up the Blue Ribbon Committee to ascertain: One,
should there be a third medical school; and if there
should be a third, where should it be located.
I
thought that was an admirably good way.
I'm surprised
the Legislature hasn't done that same thing in the
field of law.
F--Oh, I suspect that the reason is that in the situation
about medicine the answer was less well known.
I've
come to the sense now, which is different from when
you and I talked some months ago, that the answer about
law is clear-cut.
It's just a matter of coming through.
M--I think that it is pretty obvious that there is commit­
ment to Michigan State.
I don't see anything wrong
with this except that at some point they've got to
come to grips with the geography question of the
western side of the state.
F--Jim, who were some of the influential people, opinion
leaders, in higher education in the period?
M--Well, I just jotted some down off the top of my head.
Certainly Steve Nisbet as Chairman of Con-Con and as
24 years--as I recall--a member of the State Board of
Education, and then later a Trustee at Michigan State,
and a confidant and advisor to George Romney in the
setting up of the boards of control for the new insti­
tutions.
That is, the new arrangements for the
institutions such as Eastern and Central...
John Hannah would immediately come to mind.
I think John Dale Russell's entry into the state at a

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Miller
particular time, certainly was an opinion molder.
A former Congressman, Alvin Bentley, was one of the
most pleasant surprises to me of any individual in
the state.
I always had him categorized as an indi­
vidual who was ultra-conservative and really not that
interested in higher education--surprised me no end.
And of course here’s another industrialist who put a
substantial amount of his industrial earnings into a
foundation, the Bentley Foundation, which has supported
a large number of youngsters in higher education.
Certainly the governors, Mennen Williams, Romney, and
Milliken. You could say, well what about Swainson?
Well, Swainson’s time was a two-year slot and these
other men have had longer periods and therefore had
a bit more influence.
Roscoe Bonisteel was...
F--That’s interesting.
I hadn't heard his name until
yesterday when Jim Farnsworth mentioned him, and now
you.
M--Roscoe Bonisteel and John Hannah are the ones who had
a large input in terms of representatives of two major
universities.
Both were on Con-Con and were out to try
to resolve the question of some type of coordination.
The language in the present Constitution I think can
be attributed pretty largely to the accommodation that
John Hannah and Roscoe Bonisteel reached.
F--Are there other people that you would mention that
would come easily to mind?
M--Yes, Irving Bluestone from labor. Wilson and Woodcock,
Bob Briggs.
I don't think one should ignore Frank
Beadle, Charlie Zollar, Gar Lane on the Senate side;
Arnell Engstrom, Bill Copeland, Farnsworth in the
House., There could be others but... Ira Polley, Dick
Miller I think had some input here.
Then I jotted down in general category, governors,
state presidents, state controllers, the Senate and
Richard L. Miller; formerly served as Assistant Speaker
of the House and as Assistant to Governor Swainson; currently
Executive Director, Michigan Council of State College
Presidents.

A 201
Miller
House appropriations chairmen and members, the budget
examiners on the executive side, and budget examiners
on the legislative side. All of these.
F--Right. Nobody has mentioned what I call the backroom
boys.
I personally have always felt, for instance,
based on my own experience, the role of someone like
Sturtz ' was just paramount.
I have tremendous admira­
tion for Sturtz.
M--Yes, Sturtz has probably got the most agile mind, the
most complete mind, of anybody in the budget process
now. People like John Perkins as a State Controller
and Frank Landers as Head of the Budget Division, I
think had influence.
Bob Steadman had some input in
this area.
F--And I think C. J. McNeill^ too.
M--Yes, yes.
F--C. J. was much taken with the need for vocational
education.
M--Well, after all, this was a significant part of the
general fund budget.
There was input all along the
line here.
Q

F--From all of these people.
I think about Art Ellis ,
too. But most particularly Sturtz. The technocrats,
the politicians, the educators, ...
M--Gus Langius in terms of the construction area.
F--They all had the sense of societal value of the
enterprise, and we were lucky.
Well, I appreciate your time, Jim.
7

Charles F. Sturtz; Director, Bureau of the Budget,
State of Michigan.
O

Charles J. McNeill; Director, Legislative Service
Bureau.
q
Arthur Ellis; formerly Director Legislative Fiscal
Agency; now Vice President Public Affairs, Central
Michigan University.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
ROBERT E. WALDRON1

F--What in your opinion were the reasons that led to
the expansion of higher education in Michigan from
1958 on, Bob?
W--I've been thinking about this since you handed me the
questions.
I think it was just a general attitude
that has been, let's say, extant in America from its
beginning, with the public school system that
Jefferson promoted, and the beginning of the Morrill
Act that set up Michigan State University--that kind
of concept.
I think that was aided and abetted by the GI Bill of
Rights--in which I participated.
I think about 1958,
if this is when this explosion happened, was about the
time that the guys that were beneficiaries of the
GI Bill of Rights began to come into some sort of
position of influence, and they recognized the worth
of education.
As Americans, we're always struggling to understand
ourselves, and we thought that more education was the
answer to all the ills of mankind.
I think that had
a lot to do with it.
It was a sort of attitudinal
thing on the part of an awful lot of people.
F--What I'm trying to get, Bob, is at some of the feelings.
In some states higher education was a partisan issue.
In this state, in spite of the fear of communism and
Robert E. Waldron; Republican, of Grosse Pointe;
member, Michigan House of Representatives, 1954-70;
majority floor leader, 1963-64; minority leader, 1965-66;
Speaker of the House of Representatives, 1967-68; Wayne
County Republican chairman, 1964-66.
Interview conducted
April 19, 1974.

A 202

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Waldron
the fear of the left which was prevalent in the
McCarthy period, we didn’t have higher education being
subject to political penalty. We seem to have had all
of the various social forces in our state: labor, the
Blacks, the ethnic minorities, the small business man,
the large industry, all cohering around higher educa­
tion .
What do you think were some of the social and economic
factors that led to this kind of aspirational attitude?
Can you identify some of these?
W--Well, I don't know that I can.
I don't know that it
was partisan in other states.
I have no knowledge of
that, but the fact that it was not particularly
partisan in Michigan I think was somewhat traditional.
When you can get eight Republican Regents of the
University of Michigan to hire a Democrat as President
of the University, you know that politics doesn't enter
into the picture very much. And I think that's the way
it's been.
I think the University of Michigan has set the tone, to
a degree, for the level of competency of education.
Michigan has been willing to spend its money on the
University of Michigan to make it the excellent insti­
tution that it is.
F--And other institutions, too.
W--Yes, all of them.
Look at Michigan State, the way
that went literally from a cow college to what it is
now. Probably one of the first issues I faced in the
Legislature was making it a university.
That was not
over my objection, I approved of that thoroughly, but
over my objection we did make the other four-year
institutions universities.
I still think that was a
mistake.
F--But that happened in Con-Con, didn't it?
W--No, that happened in the Legislature first, and then
Con-Con recognized it. But that's an indication of
what you're trying to find an answer for. That's
sort of begging the question.

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Waldron
F--What were the policy objectives that policy makers
were after in enhancing higher education? What were
you trying to do?
W--I think we were trying to give everybody as equal an
opportunity as we possibly could to obtain a higher
education.
For instance, our policy was basically that if the
person couldn't afford a higher education, there
should be some place to obtain a loan at a very low
interest amount. Everybody that wanted a higher
education and was competent to receive one should be
able to get one, not at zero cost--there's a difference
of opinion there--but at least he should be able to
borrow the money
and obtain it.
F--Therefore, there
was a very
definite policy, Bob,to
expand the number of people who could have higher
education. When
you were a boy, obviously it wasn't
the case that a great number of people could aspire
to go to college.
In Michigan, along with other states,
we changed that, didn't we?
W--Yes.
I think the educators themselves had a lot to do
with that.
I think there were all these different
reasons.
I think the educators realized that this was
an area where they could really build a kingdom.
F--How did they build this kingdom? The states always
had diverse interests.
Obviously in order to create
any kind of consensus in a political structure, you
need 51 percent. How were they able to do that?
W--We go back to the first statement I made.
I think
educating our children has always been a very important
factor in America: the idea of a guy pulling himself
and his family up by the bootstraps, the Horatio Alger
story, all that sort of thing.
I think that's part of
the American dream: that everybody, regardless of where
he starts, has the opportunity to be President of the
United States--and he supposedly should have a college
education to do that.
I think there's something to
that.
F--I've used the term the Horatio Alger dream so I don't
find that discomforting at all.

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Waldron
What were the key issues in this period, that you can
recollect, that led to partisan and parochial conflict
in order to obtain these things? I wonder about, you
know, the conflicts between institutions.
Certainly
in your time in the Legislature we had industry fighting
about tax policy and yet they didn't seem to fight about
the expenditure of dollars for education, which almost
directly led to their having to face new taxes.
You think about Governor Williams going through all
those immense difficulties when they tried to change
the tax structure.
There were tremendous conflicts.
And yet, I'm not aware, but it may be that the auto­
motive industries, and other major sectors of Michigan
industry like Dow, never fought the expenditure of
money for higher education.
W — I don't know that they did specifically, but I think
that there has been something that hasn't surfaced,
and you probably know more about this than I. There
had to be some balancing of the budget in the
Appropriations Committee and there was some [discussion]
back and forth there as to how much major universities
would get, how much the community colleges would get,
how much the other four-year institutions would get,
what the capital outlay would be for each, and what
the tuition level would be.
There was a struggle in this particular time, partic­
ularly with Michigan State, because John Hannah was
sort of obstreperous and went ahead and did things
and then got appropriations for them afterwards.
So
I think there was a little bit of a struggle between
the Legislature and the constitutional autonomy of
the big three. However, they won all the time.
F--Why do you think they won?
W--I think there was a basic support and I think there
was a basic pride in the institutions that we have
in Michigan.
They didn't win completely, but at
least they were treated equally.
F--I think that pride is an important element and we'll
come back later when you attempt to ascertain why
coordination and state control didn't come about.

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Waldron
I'm struck also by one other thing, which is: In spite
of the tremendous rhetoric of martyrdom as part of the
educational dialogue about how they are being badly
treated, how they're at death's door fiscally, in this
period the budgets went from $80 million to $280 million.
That's awful nice to be treated that badly.
W--Yes, it sure is.
I thought that during the process they should have
relied more heavily on tuition.
There was a little
fight there, but I was in the minority.
We did not go
the California route, nor did we go the New York route,
we're somewhere in between.
F--So there was strength to increase state dollars and
keep tuition dollars down or limited.
That was part
of the policy objective, was it not?
W--Well, I think so, but I think there was a compromise
in there because we literally forced some of these
institutions to raise their tuition at times.
F--What about the fight between Michigan and Michigan
State? How did that come about?
W--That was a lot of baloney. What happened was that
Michigan was just jealous of wanting to maintain its
position as the only university in the state and
Michigan State had become in fact a university.
It
w a s called a college and Michigan came out with a
lot of specious arguments on that. We had a big
rhubarb that was stirred up by the respective alumni
but was finally resolved in the right way.
F--And in a sense when that argument was over, permitting
Michigan Agricultural College to have the title of
what in fact it was, a university, some of the fight
just went out of the whole issue, didn't it?
W--I don't know whether any fight came out of the whole
issue.
I just think we faced the reality.
It was that year or the year after--I think that very
year--that we made Wayne State a state institution.
So we went from the big one to the big three.

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Waldron
F--Were there fights about that? In my time, which was
almost ten years later, it was my understanding there
had been solid difficulty about taking over Wayne.
W--When I got to the Legislature, Dr. Ruthven had just
filed his report --either the year before or that year,
very recently--and his report was that the state should
take over Wayne and make it one of the three institu­
tions because its mission was quite different than
Michigan.
The Legislature bought this.
F--It was my understanding--! wasn’t there and I don’t
know if it was true--that in return for taking over
the municipal College of Detroit there was some under­
standing that the City of Detroit would handle community
college education, which it didn't do. And that later,
when we fought the Wayne County Community College
issue, there was some antagonism over the past.
W — I don't recall that at all.
I don't remember that
there was any understanding one way or the other.
It might have been in the report but...
F--It might have been inside committee of some kind.
W--It might have just stated that they'll do it when they
can. At the time we created Wayne State University
there were one or two community colleges. There was
Highland Park Junior, maybe another one, and that
about handled the demand.
F--Bob, did you see that any of the policy goals for
higher education had as their objective the destruc­
tion of class and cultural barriers?
Certainly low tuition, certainly the expansion of
schools all over the state, certainly this aspirational aspect for the GI Bill, and what you talk about
as a Horatio Alger dream, were some of them. But I'm
trying to explain how the Blacks and how labor, two
of the plurality of groups in our state, got behind
higher education.
W--In the beginning I think all of that was a positive
thing.
I don't recall this coming forth as a partic­
ular legislative issue in terms of bills and that sort
of thing. The only thing I recall is that that came

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Waldron
forth as an internal policy of each particular
institution. Certainly the very essence of the
general philosophy that the Legislature had, as you
point out, in a nonpartisan way, tended to do that.
F--Do you regard as one of the key issues of this
period popularism in higher education versus elitism?
I'm having trouble getting a hold of that for the
reason that it is very easy to say Michigan was the
quality institution and the other ones were diminishing
the quality.
Some ascribe the success of Michigan
State, Northern, Ferris, and the community colleges to
creating the chance for people to try to succeed.
Michigan had a different clientele and the support
came to these other institutions because of the
strong support for broadening and democratizing
education as widely as possible.
W--I think that's true.
I don't know that there was a
big struggle between elitism and what you call
popularism.
I suppose that some of the University of
Michigan people opposed the expansion of the others
to their level for that reason, but that was a small
minority.
It's getting back to what we talked about
before.
I don't think there was much in that.
F--Did you go to Michigan?
W--Yes.
F--Let me have a slight digression.
It's sort of my feeling from reading the history that
Ruthven was a man of immense stature and widely
respected and admired by all kinds of people.
People
are delicate in the academic world, and we seem in
Michigan not to enjoy conflicts or grudges and so
seem to pass from them.
I have the sense, however, that Hatcher was not well
thought of.
I understand he was a formal man, a
colder man than Ruthven was, but people somehow seem
to imply that this man was the stereotype, the arch­
type of elitism and that much of the ground that was
made against Michigan's defensive posture was made

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because of that.
Governor Williams, not saying what
I said, said, "I was an alumnus of Michigan and I
regarded Michigan's opposition to Michigan State as
unseemly."
W — I did too.

I told them that too.

I told my constituents that, and I had a very elite
constituency.
I probably have as many Michigan
graduates as any--Grosse Pointe--and I just told them
to get off my back, that Michigan State was a univer­
sity, that's the way it should be, and there's no
confusion in the name.
This was a spurious argument
all the way down the line. But that faded immediately,
I think.
F--I detected tremendous change of attitude in 1968 when
Fleming came. He may have stood for, and I think he
does, all the principles of excellence and preeminence
that makes Michigan a national and international
university, but somehow his attitude was warmer.
W--Yes. I don't think you can pin that on Hatcher though.
I think it was as much the alumni body as the president.
F--Then the alumni changed somehow, didn't they?
W--Yes.

The alumni, I got it from the alumni.

F--Why do you think they changed?
W--I think they recognized it.
F--It's hard to get a handle on the alumni thing but it
does come forth...
W--It isn't if you were on the receiving end of their
phone calls and their letters.
Some of them were
diehards.
One guy I couldn't get to vote for me for
over ten years after that--over the name change.
It
was absolutely ridiculous.
F--Passion is an important element in understanding how
people move.
How important were vocational and occupational training
objectives in the desire to build higher education?

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W--In the early part of this surge, if you want to call
it that, was not as important.
I think that began to
get its foothold at the community college level.
That happened about a decade afterward when we began
establishing the community colleges and giving
authority for the development of the community college
districts, that sort of thing.
I think that's when we were talking about the vocational
as opposed to liberal arts and professional education.
I think in the beginning we were thinking more of
liberal arts and professional education and now we're
talking more about training for a specific job.
I
think w e ’re shifting...
F--Some have talked about the impact of Sputnik. Were the
automobile companies, for instance, concerned about the
technological lag and hoping that the major universities
'could help and enhance their capacity to broaden
Michigan industry's base? Was there some of that?
W--Oh, I think that was here all along.
I think that was
there, not in the junior college level, but in the
college level. There was this definite attempt by
industry to aid and abet programs that would develop
the talent that they needed in the engineering area,
the marketing area, and that sort of thing.
I think one of the leaders of that was the Dearborn
branch under Bill Stirton. He went into companies
and found out what they needed and designed courses
for them.
F--As a matter of fact, Stirton, unfortunately not well
publicized, built the evening technical programs for
the advancement of people who worked at Ford.
I think part of the problem is that the question isn't
good enough, Bob. Vocational and occupational seemed
to strike at the heart of the community college, and
technical and research more at the research and
graduate institutions.
I think they were separate
markets.
W - -Yes.

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F--Did the growth of culture and the arts have importance
in the dialogue over the growth of higher education?
W--I do not guess it had as much as...
F--Your temptation for the record is to say, oh yes,
everybody was in favor of that. But I don't have the
feeling that we had that societal commitment to ballet,
theater, dance...
W--The Council of the Arts didn't come into being until
Romney got here.
F--As a matter of fact I've put a great store in the
appropriations for the Council of the Arts as an
indicator because it's remained consistently an
insignificant part of the budget.
W--But that is an American tradition, in a way, as opposed
to the European tradition.
It's crazy.
I was thinking
about that the other day, that the one thing that we
really ought to nationalize, if anything at all, is
that area and keep our damn hands off the petroleum
industry and the automobile industry. They're perfectly
competent to run themselves.
But symphonies, ballets,
and that sort of thing...
F--They're competent to run themselves artistically but
they can’t find the financial assistance.
W--Exactly.
So it seems to me that the European system of
commissions and subsidies is worthwhile for the whole
community.
F--But there was not legislative enthusiasm for that, or
executive or societal pressure.
W--That's right.
F--What was the position of labor in regard to higher
education?
It struck me that through a lot of places in this
country, labor was very bread-and-butter oriented.
It seems that the UAW and Michigan industry were much
broader based and had stronger aspirations.

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W--Yes, I didn’t notice any opposition to...
F--I guess I was thinking not opposition, but strong
espousal for it?
W--I think they were always pushing to make sure that
the adult education program went along.
The community
college program started and they got into that a little
bit.
F--MSU picked up Stevens on the Board.
I don't know quite
how that came about, but there was obviously a sign
that labor had moved in behind the Republican agri­
cultural institution.
W--I think it's fortunate for education in Michigan--and
this just came to me--that the Democrats didn't get
control of these universities until labor had matured,
until labor had become less militant.
For instance, there was no big upheaval when Woodcock
was on the Board at Wayne State University.
But had
Reuther been on it 15 years earlier, we might have had
a lot of trouble.
Had Reuther been on it 15 years
later it would have been about the same as Woodcock.
In the early days, when the Republicans were running
these institutions, they did not use them politically
at all. With the ascendency of the Democratic Party
in Michigan, had they captured these boards at that
early time, it could have caused a lot of trouble,
but when they did start controlling those boards, they
were a little bit more mature and they remained pretty
much nonpartisan.
F--And on the other hand, when the Republicans controlled
the boards, and there were a lot of what I would
personally call mastodons on some of these boards, they
didn't punish Democrats or liberals who were on the
working staff.
W--No, no. And I know some of those guys who were on the
boards and if politicians put their nose in the door
of the Board of Regents, they'd get kicked out just as
fast as possible.
They didn't want any part of that.

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F--And they didn’t succumb to political pressure from
the appropriations process, did they?
W--Not at all.
F--Jim Farnsworth, whom I talked to and have a great deal
of respect for, talks about that sense of Michigan
citizens that you’ve got to protect, the American
tradition of academic freedom and allow a different
kind of institution to pursue the truth.
W--Right.
F--I was observing to Jay, my graduate assistant, that
faculty who believe the worst of politicians would
find his remarks, and I think yours, surprising,
because they feel threatened frequently by what I
call the nickel-and-dime rhetoric of people making
cheap shots on the floor of the House.
But in
practice I have found it very hard to notice the
punitive nature of the legislative process.
W--There's one issue that has gone through the
Legislature over the years that's never been com­
pletely resolved, and that's the difference between
the tuition of the nonresident and the resident
student. The Legislature has been inclined to magnify
the difference and the institution has been inclined
to minimize it.
F--Did you want to add anything, Bob, to the position of
industry in regard to higher education? I've remarked
that institutions like Dearborn, Flint, Grand Valley,
Saginaw Valley, and Oakland came into being because of
regional interest.
I thought about those being impor­
tant to industry and espoused by them, although not
with any major policy I could ever ascertain.
W--I think that's true.
I think, as you point out,
Dearborn and others... what's the college up near
Midland?
F--Delta, Saginaw Valley.
W--Yes.
I think industry has pushed this and so has
labor.

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F--What about agriculture?
It’s always clear that agriculture supported Michigan
State because of the agricultural extension and cooper­
ative extension services.
I wondered if some of the
regional schools received support from agriculturalists
as a way of keeping their children at home and the like.
They were certainly concerned about the migrational wave
as the farms no longer could support their children.
W--I’ve never really considered that.
I just knew that
Michigan State is one of the finest agricultural
schools in the world.
I noticed that a lot of our
farmers in the Michigan Legislature are graduates of
Michigan State and they are very protective of that.
F--Do you think commerce had a different position than
industry? I thought there might be but I...
W--Commerce?
F--Yes.
I looked in Romney’s commission and people like
Max Heavenrich and other merchants were in some of these
groups.
W--No, I don't think so.
F--The small business man and the merchant had similar
attitudes toward higher education.
W--Yes, I think so. I think now, though, there is a
movement toward vocational education rather than the
other.
F--What were the pressures and influences in the determin­
ation of public policy, if any, from the federal
government?
W--As I pointed out in the very beginning, the GI Bill of
Rights did an awful lot and that was a definite policy
of the federal government.
I think the policy of the
federal government was as I stated.
F--I guess I ’m saying it somewhat differently.
Let me put
it this way.
I do not believe, and I've couched the
question hesitantly, that there was federal control.

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But in social policy, in return for every dollar of
money we've got in welfare, to continue to receive
them there were constraints, requirements.
It appears to me that federal money came to higher
education and research in the tuition support, in the
construction support for the higher educational
facilities commissions in the state, and in the
GI Bill, without mandates on the way institutions
function.
It has certainly not been our experience
in this state with the social...
W--No, or even highways.
F--That is true, too.
W--You know, you've got to design a certain way and if
you don't, you get the funds cut off. Just all kinds
of different things. You're right on that.
F--I was wondering if you had observed that there were
federal constraints.
I can't see them.
W--Possibly there weren't because the basic policies of
the institutions across the land are somewhat similar.
F--Someone said that most congressmen have familiarity
with local government and state government and they
knew the institutions wouldn't tolerate that because
they had a sense of independence.
W--I don't think that's true.
In the era that we're
talking about, I think some of these institutions
would have done almost anything they wanted them to
for a good solid grant.
F--Yes, I suppose that's always true.
That's one of the
problems about taking soft money, because sometimes
soft money isn't in their real interest.
W--That's right.
F--What was the nature of regional and local pressures to
expand higher education in one location rather than
another? Did you see coalitions like Grand Rapids,
Saginaw, or Oakland?

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Waldron
W--Oh, yes.
F--Was it a logrolling thing against you?
W--Against what?
F--Oh, against the will of the government to keep a
certain kind of budget base, or against the senior
leadership of the House or the Senate.
W — I suppose that happened occasionally, but I can’t
remember an incident. Maybe you can.
I suppose that's one of the reasons all these fouryear institutions became universities.
Everybody
voted for that, but I don't know that that was any
kind of a gubernatorial policy.
I don't know what
the reason for that was.
It might be politicians
trying to do something for their local universities.
F--Ok, now that's an important element.
W--Yes, and they all do that. They all watch out for
their particular institution in their backyard.
I
remember a dramatic fight that Hal Ziegler2 put
up for the Jackson Community College.
F--As you may recollect, I was the one that did the
staff work on state policy in regard to tuition that
Ziegler was fighting against.
It strikes me that the big three have gradually come
to be supraregional institutions but they don't
really have the identification of their local legis­
lators.
They're really looked on as state resources
Frequently legislators from the big schools like
Harold Hungerford3 coming from the Lansing area,
2

Hal W. Ziegler; Republican, from Jackson; member,
State House of Representatives, 19663
Harold W. Hungerford; Republican, from Lansing;
member, State House of Representatives, 1955-64; member
Michigan State Senate, 1967-70.

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didn't feel any reason or desire to support Michigan
State.
But you take a look at the men who represented the
small schools, the community colleges, they would
never have dared to do that because the pride and
the identification of the local people was so strong.
W--I think now that the students vote, the big institu­
tions might carry a little bit more provincial weight
with our representatives than before.
F--It’s hard to predict that yet because it's still so
new.
W--Yes, but I think that might be so to a degree.
F--Well, all the schools have to develop mechanisms to
deliver that in some way.
W--Right.
F--They haven't, however. The alumni pressures, as you
have indicated, could be quite severe, could they not?
W--Yes, yes.
F--I wonder how Michigan State was able to get up on that
ground since all the lawyers, all the doctors, all the
publishers, and all the bankers had come from Michigan,
in the beginning.
W--That statement is not quite all true. Michigan State
was headed by a genius in building a machine and he
knew the power of constituent persuasion of the legis­
lators.
The alumni association of Michigan State
worked hard and long and diligently on all the
representatives across Michigan to make sure that
Michigan State grew.
F--How do you think they built that machine?
W--How they did that?
F--How did they do it? The power structure was certainly
identified with Michigan.

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W--Yes, but Michigan did not organize its alumni into a
lobbying force.
From the legislator's point of view
we'd be invited to Michigan and we'd learn something
and it was done in normally good taste. We'd be
invited to Michigan State and we'd have a big, thick
steak brought in on a flaming platter and everybody
would be as obsequious as hell.
It was nauseating.
I only went to one of them.
We would go down to Michigan to a football game and
we'd eat in a tent. We'd go to Michigan State and
they would have the carpet rolled out and all that
sort of thing. Then the alumni would hire a train to
take you down to see the Notre Dame-Michigan State
football game, which I didn't think was in good taste
at all, but certainly I was in the minority.
They
marshalled their alumni together and the alumni paid
for a lot of this activity.
F--Do you think that diligence to constituent relation­
ships helped?
W--Helped? Yes, it helped a lot.
Don't forget that their
graduates tended to be all over the whole state as much
as Michigan's did. They were in the farm community and
this sort of thing.
F--Bob, what were the reasons, in your opinion, for the
failure of the branch campus system--that had begun
to be developed in Michigan with Oakland, Flint, and
Dearborn--not to happen like in California or Wisconsin?
W--I don't really know.
I think maybe it was the advent
of the community college system that [created an
attitude of] "Ok, let's make this a community college
deal and let's have it local and not have a guy from
some other place in here." Because, you know, we had
Michigan State University at Oakland, and a few others,
and they became independent.
F--I'm glad to hear you say that because as you talk to
people, each person gives you a little bit of a
refinement of an insight.
Yesterday I talked to Jim Miller who was president at
Western. Most people, when you talk about the conflicts
of the major institutions, the desire for an institution

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that can be comprehended, the desire to have something
that civic pride can address as a reason for regional
institutions, the fear of thought-control from the big
three, and everybody focused on that conflict between
the big schools. Yesterday Jim Miller said that the
community college itself satisfied some of that demand,
so when you raise that it interests me because I think
that no answer is ever a clean-cut answer.
W--No, I agree.
F--What, in your opinion, were the reasons that an insti­
tutional system for coordination of higher education
did not come about after '64?
W--Well, as y o u know, the Governor's Commission on Higher
Education^ came out with their report yesterday and
didn't recommend that either. They recommended a
different structure but they didn't recommend any power
of coordination.
They just recommended advisory
coordination.
I guess the reason that that hasn't come about is that
the diversified system that we have has worked. When
you couple the fact that it has worked, with local
pride, then there's no reason to change.
I think that
has something to do with it.
But if it hadn't worked, and if there were blatant
examples of duplication, it would have come about.
F--A graduate student who is writing a dessertation spoke
to me the other day. He's at Michigan and he said h e ’s
strong for coordination--it *s the tidy way.
W--It's the tidy way.
F--This is not a subtle way and it’s not the way Michigan
has worked.
He said to me, "Don't you think legislators will demand
coordination as a way to stop the conflict?" By coor­
dination he really means control.
I said to him, "My
4

Governor's Commission on Higher Education, "Building for
the Future of Post-secondary Education in Michigan" (Interim
Report, April, 1974.
Final Report, October, 1974).

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best judgment is no. Legislators are happy with the
situation because the schools really are responsive to
the public interest and the competition for resource
acts as a coordinating force.” It was my sentiment
to him that legislators were happy with the system
and saw no need to change it. And also, the schools
were.
What’s your response to that?
W--When we discussed this thing, we realized that if we had
put the power to coordinate, rather than the power to
advise coordination, it would be politically impossible
to get the support of the big three and all kinds of
other groups.
They don't want that kind of thing.
F--Some of the observers didn't think that Michigan citizens
had any mind to see this kind of a control mechanism
established and that they wouldn’t support it.
W--I think that’s right.
F--And that's what you were saying.
W--That's exactly right.
F--Bob, who in your opinion were the significant opinion
leaders? Who are the people that you’d look to and
say, "Well, these are the people." Certainly you could
suggest John Hannah as one.
W--John Hannah, yes.
I was a little bit of a Hannahphobe
in those days.
I'm a Hannahphil now, and have gradually
become so over the years, but not in the beginning. And
then there was Ruthven, of course.
Frank Beadle, I think,
had a lot to do with it--with broad stuff in the
Legislature.
Joe Warner, up until the time of his death,
and then his son Jim Warner5 , was a great advocate of the
University of Michigan.
I can't name them all. Jim
Miller, whom you mentioned, was certainly a significant
force.
I think the governors were, in their way--all of
them.
Joseph E. Warner; Republican from Ypsilanti; State
Representative, 1922-30, 1936-57.
James F. Warner;
Republican from Ypsilanti; State Representative, 1957-64.

A 221
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F--You've got to mention the governors, I think you have
to mention the House and Senate Appropriations
Committees, you've got to mention the presidents of
the big three.
Even if the man were an idiot, the
fact that he commanded such a mighty social engine
would make him influential,
Who were some of the other people that people look to?
W--Art Neef isn't mentioned. He should have a little bit
of play in here. He was the Provost of Wayne State.
And Dean Scott at our Med School down at Wayne State.
F--What about Niehuss?
W--I didn't know him.
I'm going to his lunch next
Wednesday, but I didn't know him very well. But he
was a big factor and I think on the right track on a
lot of his stuff. Maybe you could name some others.
I don't know the names of all of them.
F--One of the things I was after, you know, there's
always a front man, but behind every front man there’s
always people that did a lot of the work.
I was trying
to see if some of these people could be identified.
For instance, I don't know much about Romney, but
certainly he's a major, major figure.
I assume that
Dr. Orlebecke had to have been of some importance here.
W--He might have been, I don't really know.
F--And I was thinking who in the Legislature were the
people, and the executive office, and the institutions,
and the professors.
Some people mentioned Bill Haber
as influential.
In some other circles Wilbur Cohen
might have been, but he was more involved in social
policies.
W--I didn’t get to know the names and numbers of the
players because I was not on the Appropriations
Committee.
F--Then it really is true, in spite of what you say about
Hannah and the MSU alumni machine, that the conflict
and the contest really has stayed very much inside
the appropriations process, hasn't it? The other

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legislators have not been involved in these fights
except in the most extreme and unusual...
W--Yes. We were with Michigan State as it reached its
maturity, but from then on, not.
F--So therefore the influence on education by the appro­
priations legislators was keen. Have you some
observations and conclusions about why our substantive
committees in the Legislature never really had much
influence, like the education committees, on higher
education?
W--No, I don’t know.
I tried to break that when I was
Speaker--I don’t know whether you know this or not-[but] it would take a number of years to do this.
I think it's a feeling of "let George do it." In
other words, if the Appropriations Committee is going
to do this job, and it's a hard job, let them do it.
This is true in every legislature in the country.
I
don’t know of any legislature where the appropriations
committee doesn't have more power than it ought to have.
I guess this power is held because it is the purse
strings, it is the committee system, and people don't
like to buck the committee.
That particular committee
has every legislator by the throat. Maybe that's it-it's set up itself that way.
F--I guess I understand what you're saying. This is a
subject for another kind of a dissertation.
Bob, you were Speaker of the House and I worked in
the House, I can't tell you right now without going
back, who, I remember Arnell Engstrom as chairman of
appropriations, but I can't tell you who was chairman
of the education committee.
I can't even vaguely...
W--Well, I can.
Cliff Smart was. When we had our schoolaid bill it stayed one hour in the Appropriations
Committee and they worked on it for two months in the
education committee. And that worked, you see, so
that the substantive committee took care of it.
F--That wasn't true in colleges though.

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W--Listen, I could only do it in a couple of committees,
but we did it thoroughly in education.
I told Pete Kok^
to do it and he did it on mental health. The substan­
tive committee had a different idea what it ought to
be and he took it to the floor and won.
F--Did you have a colleges and universities committee?
Or was that a creation of Mr. Ryan?
W--I think we did have one but it didn't get any bills.
F--And it didn't have the higher education piece either.
W--Probably not. But I discussed this with the head of
the Appropriations Committee--all that sort of stuff-and I tried it with education and with mental health.
This is a hard thing to crack.
If I'd been Speaker
again, I was going to try it with a lot more of them.
F--You need a lot of energy on the part of the substantive
committee to make it work though, don't you?
W--You need a lot of energy there and Pete Kok had that
energy.
The proof of the pudding was that he over­
rode it on the floor when it came out and beat the
Appropriations Committee.
You know they were all mad at me for urging him to do
that.
I was urging one member of my caucus to fight
other members of my caucus.
F--That's a hard thing to do.
W--The only way you get it is to have a whole majority
or the whole House say, "Look, this is the way it
works. You guys on this committee are synthesizers
and not substantive issuizers."
F--It's my recollection and conclusion that when you
were Speaker some of the difficulties in the caucus
that made it a little difficult for you were because
Peter Kok; Republican, from Grand Rapids; State
Representative, 1965. At this time he was serving
as Chairman of the Mental Health Committee.

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of some of that. But you also had a thin majority
though, didn’t you? You had, what, two votes?
W--No. We had 55-55 and then we got 56-54.
think so, they knew what I was doing.

I don’t

F--You didn't suffer a penalty.
W--I don't think so.
F--That's good.

Thank you very much for your time.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
GARLAND LANE1

F--Gar, what in your opinion were the reasons that led
to the expansion of higher education in Michigan from
1958 on?
L--Well, it was the number of young that were wishing to
go to college.
[Also] the organization from the
teachers’ institutions, run by a constitutional board
of three under the Board of Education.
V

It was abolished, of course, in the Constitution. The
Constitution made each institution autonomous so that
they got some strength within themselves--I ’m talking
about the four normal schools.
F--Eastern, Western, Central and Northern were the four
institutions.
L--Yes, they were all under the Board.
F--I have observed that the budgets went from some
$84 million to $270 million, roughly, in this period
of time from '58 to '70.
L--That would be twelve years. There was a great growth
of students. The University of Michigan and Tech and
MSU came down in their out-of-state enrollments in
percentage, even though the percentage was set and
running at about 20 percent. They were increasing so
fast that it still meant more from out-of-state as well
as from in-state.
F--Some have said that the GI Bill, and the desire of
these citizens who had come back to have higher
Garland Lane; Democrat, of Flint; State Senator,
1948-75; Member, State Senate Appropriations Committee.
Interview conducted May 1, 1974.

A 225

A 226
Lane
education for their children, was a very important
factor in the growth of the institution.
L--I don't think at that point because the GI Bill had
already been over with.
F--No, not for the GI Bill guys, but for their children.
L--The children of the GI that had had a first chance,
and economic conditions which enabled a family to
set their goal to that of higher education.
That's
true.
F--I think about you in a personal way. You came back
from the war, got married, had children. Wasn't
Gar, Jr. the first member of your family to go to
college?
L--Yes, he was.
F--As I am the first member of mine to go to college. My
folks never believed that a man could go to college-that was for the rich. That changed, so I think that
that's what I'm trying to say.
L--Well, I'm saying the same thing: The stimulation of the
person who came back from the service, who had got
education and travel, and by being in different spots
doing something different than he normally would have
done. Unlike a printshop which was run in the family,
or a factory that you could only work at in Flint.
The families of the veterans made a more alert type
of society.
F--What were the social and economic factors that led
to this growth?
The fact was that this state was willing to put a lot
of money into higher education.
There had to be
reasons for that willingness^--obviously the people.
You have represented a working class district all of
your time in the Legislature.
L--That's correct.
F--Your citizens, or the voters, were they enthused?

A 227
Lane
L--Always were enthused, always were enthused, except
that they didn't feel that they should have taken
care of as many out-staters.
But when you sent in a
percentage, they accepted the percentage and worked
the out-of-state [students] up to a point where they
were paying more towards the actual cost than they
were in the early years of the program.
F--What were the policy objectives that underlay this
expansion? What were you trying to do?
L--Well, we were undergoing at that point, just about
'58, the growth of some new schools: Flint in 1956,
Oakland in 1957, Dearborn in 1957, then Grand Valley
in ...
F--I think 1963 for Grand Valley.
L--About 1963 they put me on the committee --because w e ’d
had to do with Flint and had to do with Oakland and
had to do with Dearborn--to select where it should be.
Of course it was more or less just to stimulate the
people that we were there, because we never made the
decision where it should be.
F--You're talking about Grand Valley?
L--Yes, Grand Valley.
F--I guess what I'm thinking about, Gar, is this.
Obviously you had to have a decision not to go the
California or Wisconsin route. You had some sense
that you didn't want the major institutions to get
too big because you encouraged Grand Valley, Lake
Superior, Ferris, Saginaw Valley, the community
colleges--you built 15 community colleges in this
period of time--you built Dearborn, you built Flint,
you built an entire new campus in this time for Tech,
and when we start in 1958 the enrollment at Northern,
for instance, was only 700. So it seems to me that
one of the policies must have been to encourage
regional schools.
L--That, plus the fact that we changed their status and
name from a college to a university.

A 228
Lane
F--Do you think that was important?
L--I think it was important to the youngsters.
It was
important probably to the administration.
The faculty
didn’t get too much out of it, but it did stimulate
them to go out and get some more money from their
alumni and more gifts from the private sector.
F--Governor Williams said that the fight really didn't
happen at Con-Con, it happened in the Legislature when
Michigan fought Michigan Agricultural College from
becoming Michigan State University. Once the
Legislature indicated that they were willing to have
the name changed, he said, it just came for all the
rest.
L--This was the truth.
I think
imously.
I was the one that
Senate.
It was only because
so much that I just rebelled
and voted opposite it.

it passed almost unan­
voted against it in the
the alumni pressured me
against that pressure

They would plug up my lines and the office on the
weekends--five lines.
If I were going to go out and
see a customer, they’d get my appointment where I was
going to be. The girls would tell them where I was
going to be, they would call--it was important, life
and death--and when you got to it, it was only, "we’ve
got to change our name from MAC to MSU.”
F--Were there other objectives, vocational programs,
that you were looking to create?
L--Well, of course, putting Ferris in the state system
in 1949 took up some rouding out of the programs that
we didn't have before.
And then the decision was made that the junior colleges
that were in existence should not be primarily in the
academic, but should be primarily in the vocational.
Possibly we weren't quick enough and fast enough and
strict enough. Then they got the building underneath
that, the layer of skill centers.
If we would have started with more muscle, some of
the needed state policies...

A 229
Lane
F--What you're saying is if the community colleges had
fulfilled the intent of doing the vocational job,
probably the whole new system of skill centers
starting to come would not have happened.
L--Would not have happened.
F--Because in a sense that was duplication, wasn't it?
L--A total duplication, not only of building but of
program.
They could have put the two programs within
one building and maybe paid for the pre-twelfth grade
vocational education.
F--What were the key issues that resulted in partisan
and parochial conflict in the attempts to bring about
these objectives?
I am curious, if there were fights between the fouryear schools and community colleges and how you solved
the fighting between Michigan and Michigan State?
L--Well, Michigan and Michigan State was always a rebel
thing. Michigan State wanted to be up with the amount
of money behind each student the U of M
had. The
programs were not that parallel so they weretrying to
bring their appropriations and also some programs up
to the parallel.
Now, they didn't do it and they haven't done it. They
took in that tremendous amount of undergraduates
starting when the U of M was going down.
In fact MSU
went up in enrollment and passed Wayne so that Wayne
became more of a parallel to the University of Michigan.
F--In the construction of graduate programs, you mean?
L--Yes, the construction of graduate programs, even though
there were no sports at Wayne.
F--I haven't asked this to anybody else but you havejust
triggered me.
Do you think the competition to create
sports programs was an important thing in helping
schools to build public loyalty?
L--I think particularly with MSU because they
teams.
Like I told them, more people knew
Michigan State by their football team than
by the changing of their name.
They could

had strong
about
they will
never equal

A 230
Lane
the international status of the University of Michigan.
F--What about the rivalry over branch campuses?
L--There is none really. We, here in Michigan anyway,
never really had them in a big blooming type. Now
they're starting to catch hold. When they were first
established they just wanted a nice little school with
not too many students, and the students weren't ready
to go there.
F--But it seems to me there was some kind of deliberate
policy decision not to copy the Wisconsin system where,
say, Michigan State would have had campuses at Oakland,
maybe Port Huron, Saginaw; where Michigan might have
had one at Dearborn, Flint, maybe the Soo, perhaps
Muskegon, Grand Rapids.
There was some decision not
to encourage that, was there not, or is that wrong?
L--Well, not in these years.
In fact, these years brought
it more into the focus because of Dearborn and Flint
with the U of M, and MSU with Oakland.
But then the boards never could give enough time to the
branches to really help the branches in the administra­
tion.
That's one reason that Tech and its branch were
separated and made into Lake Superior.
Oakland and
its separation from MSU was by the administration asking
the board of control to separate them because they
couldn't give them enough time to give them guidance.
F--But I think from 1968--when I came to work for you-to the present, 1974, it's pretty clear to me that
Dearborn and Flint have both grown probably five times
as quickly as they did from '58 to '70.
L--Yes.
F--And it strikes me that that was a deliberate legis­
lative pressure on the Board of Regents and the
university in order to encourage that because Dearborn
sat there and was nothing. When I came to work in '68
it was just a hole...
L--They had a dean there [but] the Legislature insisted
on a chancellor.
They got a chancellor in there.
He was different than the old dean. The old dean

A 231
Lane
was given orders under President Hatcher: "Let's
just accept Ford's gift and buildings, have a nice
little program."
2

The guy that was put down there was Bill Stirton .
He was one of Romney's friends, a nice fellow, an
engineer and administrator, but he just wanted to
sit there the last few years and ride it out with
no increase of extra curriculums on top of what he
had in the co-op program.
Ford gave us this and closed up their own building,
so Ford gave the University of Michigan the Dearborn
campus, and used its product in its own factory,
whereas General Motors still kept General Motors
Institute as a private institution.
F--The other thing is that in the boiler plate of the
appropriations bill, there is language that you can
no longer accept a gift without the permission of the
Legislature.
L--That was because of the fact that the University of
Michigan was about to move into Saginaw and Midland
wanted them. People in Saginaw didn't want them.
In that tri-city area there was a real fight.
Possibly, if they had accepted it, they would have
had a much better population figure today.
F--Now, let's see. You're saying it could have developed
if there had been some better system.
L--I think with the know-how of a big university--MSU
or U of M--their know-how, the know-how of the
Regents, has a tendency to have a growth factor
faster than a separate entity, independent and new
without any alumni.
F--Well, you know, I guess I hadn't thought about this,
but my observation--in watching all of the schools in
2

William E. Stirton; Vice President, University of
Michigan.

A 232
Lane
the state in the time I worked for the committee-[was] that the smaller schools really don't have a
lot of talent in management.
It all gets down into
the personality of the president.
L--It is, that's all he's got.
F--And in a place like Michigan or Michigan State you
have people like Bill Haber, and you have people like
Niehuss, and you had Smith, and you had deans of the
various schools like Fedele Fauri^ and Wilbur Cohen4 You just had a lot of strength.
L--And you get some national figures. National figures
can bring to you, as a legislator sitting there, a
little more know-how, a little more guarantee that he
knows what's going to go on.
[Although] he may even
waste more money than the guy who is a tight-fisted
individual just running a little school.
F--The object really wasn't to save money, it was to
serve the people, wasn't it?
L--That's right, that's right.
F--Did any of the policy goals for the enhancement of
higher education have as their objective the destruc­
tion of class and cultural barriers?
By that I mean to suggest were we thinking about the
poor, the black, the blue-collar types in the creation
of. . .
L--Oh, absolutely, we did. Every time that we saw the
colleges go up in tuition and fees we expected so
much to be retained for scholarships for those that
they were forcing out by the increase.
^Fedele F. Fauri; Dean,School of Social Work,
University of Michigan.
4

Wilbur J. Cohen; Dean, School of Education,
University of Michigan.

A 233
Lane
At the same time, and it’s a parallel to this, we
were growing so fast that we were smothering the
private colleges and we did not want to lose them.
And so we put this...
F--Tuition grant program.
L--No, not the tuition grant program, that was the
second one. The first one was the scholarship pro­
gram. The scholarship program was for the survival
of particularly the private college but it ended up
only a boon for the public schools in higher education.
But it permitted some smart young men who could pass
an examination and didn't have the wherewithal to go
to school to have some support from the state to go,
with other types of programs that the university may
have had to help him, and then the loan program coming
by--or maybe the loan program being there at the same
time.
That didn’t salvage the private colleges.
The very
percentage that was in the higher education, by
adding both the private and public, that same per­
centage was in the scholarship program.
Therefore,
we did not do anything for the private.
And then we went to the tuition grant program, which
was the second attempt to save them, and which
evidently has been the one that is doing it.
F--In a sense, there’s no such thing as a private school
anymore, is there? Because the private schools
couldn't survive without the state's money that comes
to them from the tuition grant and the scholarship
program.
L--That's correct.
ten years ago.

They would have folded up, oh, some

F--And probably it's still not enough, is it? In 1971
and 1973 you passed this program that gave the main
impetus to keeping the law and dentistry schools for
U of D. And you've just passed this bill to give
the grants to private schools for each degree granted.

A 234
Lane
L--Yes, for each degree, so this is beyond that of the
tuition grant.
F--But then there’s the deliberate public policy, as you
see it, to keep the private schools alive and serving
the people?
L--I thinlc we should keep the public colleges on their
toes.
F--You've been a Senator since 1948. The majority of
your interest all through these years, some 26 years,
has been education.
L--On the main part, yes.
F--Most of your activity has been with education, the
construction of plant for them, the growth of medical
programs, and the like.
L--First year I was here I forced accepting Ferris as
an institution.
F--Have you been satisfied, Gar, that higher education
has served the people and made this a better state?
L--I think we could have done a better job. I'm not
satisfied that they're doing the best job they can,
but they're doing a better job than some other states.
Some other states are doing better than we.
F--Which states do you think are doing a better job?
L--Well, I think Ohio possibly is doing better than we
for the amount that's being appropriated, but only
for the amount that's being appropriated.
F--I guess I wouldn't agree with you, as you would
suspect, for the reason that in Michigan, we have
made a decision to try to take as many people as
possible.
We may be taking 60-70% of all those
people of age to go to college.
In Ohio they do not
do that and large numbers of the citizens don't go
to school.
L--Although if you're a person from Ohio, you know that
if you register to go to college you get admitted if
you've got a high school diploma.

A 235
Lane
F--That's true.
L--It doesn't say you're going to stay there more than
three months, but it means that you're going to be...
F--Don't you think, and I've thought
the policy of admitting everybody
them out really gives these large
who fail a sense that they're not

a lot about this,
and then throwing
numbers of people
adequate?

L--Oh, yes.
F--And it creates in the citizenry a large group of
people who don’t have the confidence or the belief in
themselves.
The Michigan system that didn't run that
circular door of trotting them in and then throwing
them out may be better in terms of each man's capacity
to contribute.
L--By far, because of the fact that Ohio doesn't have
enough institutions to take care of its population.
How can you have a law like that and then just really
pack your class the first quarter and then thin it
down to the ordinary size that it should have been
in the first place by denying the young man and young
lady because they were not material for college?
F--There are a lot of people, as I know and you know,
who develop slower.
You've talked to me frequently
about young boys from your district who did poorly in
the first year and then better in the second and much
better in the third and then much better still in the
fourth. And then, you say, this boy deserves a chance
to go to a professional school.
If he lived in Ohio,
he'd never have that chance.
L--That's right, that's right.
I'm only talking about the production of the FTE from
the standpoint of the faculty.
I know that I can't
compare anything to our system and say it's better
than our system, excepting certain parts.
I was only
talking about certain parts.
F--Well, then you're saying that the costs are better in
other states.
But in fact, if money is to be spent,

what better way? You've always been in favor of
investing money for good public purposes.
-I have done it because there is no other way that I
have found that we can be fair about it and do it.
-We've already talked around this several times. Did
you regard as one of the key issues of these twelve
years, from 1958-1970, popularism versus elitism?
What I mean by that is that you frequently hear when
you talk to people that Michigan stood for taking the
best and the brightest and graduating them and Michigan
State and the other regional institutions were going to
take...
Governor Williams talked about Ed Harden
creating the school for opportunity, Ferris being an
opportunity school.
-It's a second-chance school, say.
-The first question is, do you regard that issue, the
democracy of letting everybody in versus only admitting
the elite, as a key issue?
-I think that you've got to have certain schools that
are popular schools, and the high-cost schools, and
the professional schools.
They have got to have
standards, and good standards, so that when you plug
somebody into those programs, they stay because they
have the ability to stay. You don't plug them in and
kick them out like we were talking about in the Ohio
plan.
It's too costly to have them there. There's
no way that you could pick up somebody and push them
into those slots.
-Do you think that Michigan may have slipped a little
bit during Hatcher's time in the competition against
Hannah because of the fact that Michigan was an elite
school?
-Too elite.
I think that they were possibly too elite.
But you couldn't keep up with the students if you were
not elite.
Now it's just like when Oakland was established.
There was going to be nothing but intellectuals in

whatever course they were taking. Woody Varner,
himself, was that intellectual-type of a guy, and if
you want to use the old expression of egghead, an
egghead who's going to have a school of eggheads and
graduate all eggheads.
-Ok, but that's a good example for the reason that the
committee in 1969 and '70 forced the school to become
less so. You remember Romney was all for the Woody
Varner approach of being a very elite school.
-Elite school, academic excellence, society-oriented,
with all of the entertainment of Meadowbroolc and such.
-But it was committee policies that forced that to
expand.
The other thing is that Fleming, whom I personally
have a great deal of admiration for, changed the
university's attitude towards taking the poor and the
Blacks and in his presidency Dearborn and Flint have
grown.
It seems to me that the international reputa­
tion of Michigan hasn't softened even though it has
become more oriented toward becoming a more popular
school and giving poor people and less-qualified
people opportunity to attend.
-It has not because you can't destroy an international
reputation that has taken 150 years to make. You can't
destroy it in a couple of years. You can have some
dents in it, maybe, but it straightens itself out.
All of those others of international reputation also
had to do the same thing because the people demanded
it. The givers and the alumni demanded it, the legis­
lators on the appropriating end demanded it, and the
federal government made it possible in a lot of ways.
-How important were vocational and occupational training
objectives in the enhancement of higher education?
-It was a must. We were lacking and lagging very badly.
One thing you can say for New York, even if they didn't
have a university 2 0 years ago, they had a damn good
trades program. A man could always, if he couldn't
get a higher education, get the education of at least
a good tradesman so he could go out and make a good
living.

A 238
Lane
F--So the committee and legislators had the policy not
only of creating the career ladder toward the Ph.D.,
but also a ladder of picking up job skills so a man
could become an apprentice, or a master, or a skilled
tradesman.
L--Very definitely.
F--Did the growth of culture and the arts have importance
in the dialogue over higher education?
L--The culture and the arts have not been--what should I
say--prominent in Michigan.
Within the university,
yes, it is cultivated.
F--I come from Massachusetts.
There was a lot of community
support for culture and the arts, not necessarily
through the state, but through the private sector,
through public gifts and philanthropy.
Except for
Flint, where you come from, it's very hard to identify
a lot of community support for culture, art museums,
theater, opera.
I guess an academic man would like to
say the people are interested in culture and the arts,
but I don't have the feeling from any of the interviews
and from my own experiences that Michigan people have.
They have a love of higher education institutions and
that history you talk about of 150 years is important
to them.
That's one of the reasons I suspect we'll
never have a statewide coordinating system, because
the people treasure their independence and autonomy
and they want that.
I don't have that feeling except in regard to culture.
I have the feeling that the only culture that has
existed has to some great degree been protected by
the institutions, but that the legislatures and
governors didn't put money in to build these programs.
L--That's right.
F--They weren't important or they were a lower priority.
And you didn't get public pressure.
L--You didn't because of the fact that my town has a lot
of hillbillies.
Gene Autry could pack the IMA to the
rafters, two or three appearances in one day. You
could take a large band of renown and bring them in

A 239
Lane
and you couldn't even fill up the first three rows.
F--That's the way it is in Lansing, too, isn't it?
L--Yes.
The thing of it is that rich givers are no longer
available. Either the government is going to have to
do it or the colleges are going to have to do it or
it's going to have to be done [by] both. But it's got
to be done in good taste.
It can't be done in good
taste if it's going to be done on the campus with some
of the things that the students want...
F--So you're making a distinction between what I'd call
popular culture--the rock bands and the like--and the
more heavy...
L--That one Broadway show, what the hell did they call it,
where everybody runs around nude?
F--Hair.
L--Hair.
F--I think that appeared

at Western.

L--Well, I know it appeared at the University

of Michigan.

F--One of the questions, it's a little bit out of sequence
but I want to come to it.
It's my sense that the
bureaucrats, the planners who build these plans with
all these organizational charts and boxes and the
like will not succeed in this state because the system
of coordination in this state is very subtle.
It's a
subtle process in the competition for resource with
the committee making the case rather than going through
a departmental or executive office commission.
I have the sense that the legislators are pretty well
pleased with the way the system works and that the
people are willing to stand some competition because
they have a great sense of pride over the quality of
institutions like Michigan and their international
reputation.
And I don't have the feeling--I'm curious what your
view is since you've been through so much of this-that there's any real sense in the Legislature that
there is a need for a coordinating structure.

A 240
Lane
L--There used to be on the four normals or the teachers’
[colleges] from the State Board of Education--totally.
I think I gave you to believe that MTU was in there
too, but it wasn't.
They were not, they had their own
board.
But the only thing they've ever done really was to
have all the professors pay at- the same level, or
bring them all up to the same level. They really
didn't coordinate because of the fact that it gets
back to the point that it takes money to do things
and the Legislature really gives the autonomy by how
much it gives in money. Autonomy is only as far as
the bucks reach.
F--What was the position, Gar, of labor in regard to
higher education? It strikes me that Michigan labor
was more pro education, a little less bread-and-butteroriented, and that they were involved in a lot of
social issues and supported education and pushed it.
L--Yes, they did all of these up until just recently.
Now they are starting to be concerned about the real
high costs, real high costs of the professor--not the
other workers around the university.
That this guy doesn't work as long as I do in a year,
he doesn't work as long as I do in a week, and he's
got that kind of money, and how come he should have
that kind of money.
They see, especially in university
towns, the guy next door,who didn't go to work until
9 o'clock, mowing his lawn when he gets home at 3:30.
How can a guy make that kind of money and be mowing
his lawn before I get back from work when I went to
work three or four hours before he did?
You find these [issues] in the university towns because
they're more concerned than the labor of an area that
never sees a university in action.
F--Do you think the UAW was more strong for education,
for instance, than the AFL-CIO, or did they share that?
L--The UAW, when it was the UAW-CIO, was very, very much
for higher education.
Now that it's the UAW, I would

A 241
Lane
think it's almost the same. We're talking about the
leadership, and not the rank and file. He's the one
that's more concerned.
F--What was the position of industry? You come from a
strong-industry town.
I have the sense that industry
was interested in institutions in communities, so that
industry in Grand Rapids or in Saginaw or in Flint or
in Oakland County supported the individual schools.
But they didn't put pressure on for programs that
they...
L--Not for the broad...
F--Not for the broad?
L--Not for the broad education, as you
was limited to wherever they were.
Motors.
There was a General Motors
started the cultural development in

say. Their interest
It's like General
millionaire who
Flint.

F--But I make a distinction there, Gar, because I think
C. S. Mott represented his view of the world and not
GM's.
L--Oh yes, it was strictly his.
F--It was his money and his view.He wasn't saying, "This
is what GM should do." He was saying, "This is what I
should do."
L--No, but he was not the chairman of it. He stood in the
background.
He might have helped push.
F--But did you ever seepressure from people
like Wilson
and the people at GM? I could neverrecollect
seeing
any.
L--No, only individuals that talk to you on the street or
in a restaurant as you'd see them.
It's an individual
thing, excepting with industry.
Outside of its function
of helping the local community college, and if it's got
a four-year college, the four-year college.
They only make contributions to that which betters
industry at the campuses of the University of Michigan.

A 242
Lane
L--No.
In fact, if you will check at MSU, the school of
agriculture is so small that it's probably the most
costly subject taught at MSU. Now, being a school for
which the federal government donated the land that they
were supposed to sell, keep the money, and use the
interest.
It wouldn't pay for 20 minutes of running
the university.
F--If I remember, and I'll have to check this out...
L--$98,000.
F--I think we used to put in the Bill, until you and I
decided to junk it, a land grant interest of $300,000.
L--Was it that much?
F--Out of MSU's budget, which is probably for all things,
$200 million.
So $300,000 is just pennies.
L--They get experimental expenses for agriculture from
the state, and some help from the federal and the county
agents.
The extension service is financed from the
federal and the state...
F--The county gives some, too, don't they?
L--The county in some instances gives an agent, or maybe
some space, or gives them some travel expenses.
It
varies, but it doesn't amount to a great deal of money.
F--Gar, in the determination of social policy, the federal
regulations have been very severe. Every time they
gave you a buck, they had a requirement.
I can remember
that the Appropriations Committee in '69 had the
Secretary of HEW, Secretary Wilbur Cohen, come to speak
to them in private session.
I have not been able to find, if there were, federal
requirements in education like there are in social
welfare.
So I've raised the question, what were the
pressures and influences in the determination of public
policy, if any, from the federal government?
L--None.
Sometimes they led the way for awhile on a pro­
gram but they would drop it. When we needed doctors,
they gave some construction money, they gave us some

A 243
Lane
You know several things that they've done, in engineering
mostly.
Safety, you know, safety...
F--There was a highway traffic..,
L--Highway traffic, those kind of...
F--That was the state, but the point is there.
L--No, no, the three of them donated a building down there.
I think it's called traffic safety, or construction
safety.
F--That's on the North Campus you're talking about.
L--It's on the campus.
It was a gift and guaranteed every
five years, on negotiation, that amount of money
necessary to run that institute.
F--What about the role of commerce? I thought perhaps people
like Heavenrich from Saginaw were involved.
Did commerce
have a different attitude?
L--Yes, but I guess I can only speak for my time. Commerce
did have an attitude that was different than industry,
excepting that industry was part of the congress group.
F--You would separate them?
L--Yes.
In Flint the cultural development area received
from General Motors a building for the community college.
Mr. Mott gave one for a community college. You must
contribute $25,000 to get into the cultural development
committee.
With every $25,000 that's donated you get a
chair in the board committee of cultural development.
And commerce, as well as industry, but not for the state
as a whole, contributed.
F--0k, so you're still saying that commerce's concern was
local rather than broad-issue support.
L--Yes.
F--What about agriculture? Michigan State had support from
agriculture through Co-op Extension and the ag station.
I was curious, did agriculture bring pressure on the
Legislature and the Governor to develop other institutions?

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operating money for special projects.
But you see,
always on a program, a direct written program from the
university right to the federal government, with the
Legislature not knowing anything about it.
F--What about HEFA? That doesn't seem to be unbalanced
or anyway near as influential as its publicity.
L--We're talking about the HEFA grants for construction.
It gave the state commission so much money and the
state commission really built it up...
F--Except for the fact that some of that went to private
schools.
L--Oh, yes.
In fact we sometimes would not give a building
to a university or a college just so the private school
that had a certain amount of points coming up next
could get that. And we would postpone it and bring in
the state school or building the next year to pick up
the HEFA rather than deny the private school.
F--Soeven there, we have again that public policy to
protect the private...
L--But that was the Legislature's tip. We would try to
get the scores of what the buildings were for the
private school, and how badly they were needed, and
how solvent it was in their operation.
F--We've talked a lot about the role of the private school
and the Legislature's concern.
I've been attempting to
ask what were the pressures and influences from the
private sector? I've been curious to know if the private
sector was opposed to the growth of the public sector.
I haven't really found that the private sector did any­
thing but attempt to broaden the base of education.
I
haven't found that people from Kalamazoo or University
of Detroit fought the public schools in the Legislature.
L--No.
In fact, the only way that the Legislature helped
the privates was by the privates coming up and having
lunch and telling us their real troubles.
They asked,
you know, how can we straighten them out. Then after
they got a little help from the state they put a
coordinator here so that maybe sometimes on a Bill we
could structure it in some language to permit them to
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F--You*re talking about someone like John Gaffney.
L--Yes.
F--I guess what I was thinking about also, Gar, is that
in some states, the Council of State Colleges would
fight state grants to private colleges, saying that
that will thin the pie.
In this state you just ran
this Bill through.
The public schools didn't fight
it at all.
I think that's a measure of the coopera­
tion that exists between both groups.
L--It's because of the fact that Michigan is north of the
cross-country route.
Because we're north of it, we
did not get the great percentage of private schools
that the other states have. And our state, when it
was young, took the attitude that we're more interested
in the public schools than in the privates.
F--What was the nature of regional and local pressures to
expand higher education in one area rather than another?
I think about the Saginaw situation being very messy.
L--Well, it's because of the fact that the University of
Michigan was willing to go up there if the local
community gave them any encouragement such as the land
and the buildings.
That set neighbor against neighbor-whether they wanted the University of Michigan all over
the state or whether they didn't.
If you go back to the Constitution of 1837, you will
see that the University of Michigan was assigned seven
locations.
They started out as the University of
Michigan and there were seven branches supposed to be
established.
Only one was established and that was in
Detroit and it moved to Ann Arbor.
I think it was
because of some problems with Canada.
They were scared
there was going to be a war and they moved into Ann Arbor.
The issue in Saginaw ended up as a private school for a
while, as you remember.
It was because of the community
itself which was blocking the University of Michigan.
F--What about in Grand Rapids?
L--Grand Rapids did not want any big school affiliation.
Grand Rapids wanted to be independent and they wanted

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to be able to serve about twelve counties. Their
chore would be educating the young that could drive
to the college and back, but they found out really
that they couldn't do it on a commuter basis.
F--I've already asked you about the reasons for the
failure of the branch system and you have talked about
the fact that they couldn't get the attention and counsel
from their own Board of Regents.
So I guess I'm going
to move on from that question because we've talked about
that some.
Gar, what in your opinion were the reasons that an
institutional system for higher education, a coordinating
system--although it's hard to draw a line between what
they meant by coordinating and what they meant by control--did not come about after 1964?
One of the things I want to ask you about is a tough
question.
It seems to me that there might have been a
possibility, although I wouldn't say a high one, that
there could have been state coordinating when the
Constitution was first established in '64, except that
the State Board immediately picked the fight with you
over Flint.
L--Right.
The first assignment they were given was the
University of Michigan, Flint, and expanding the fresh­
man and sophomore classes, because Flint was estab­
lished to pick up those from the junior college.
Really, the University of Michigan wanted the community
college of the city of Flint, which would have been
ample space to take care of 7,000 people to start with,
before they'd done any more building.
But we said no,
we're going to keep our junior college--at that time it
was a junior college--and we will accept you on the
3rd and 4th year classes.
Now, when I got that Bill through, it was the breaking
of a tradition of long standing. You didn't establish
a campus, and you didn't establish any branches.
When
that happened, Wilson did it for MSU and Ford did it
immediately for Dearborn.
They were all done in about
a year or a year-and-a-half.
But the State Board went there and said--even though
you planned before we came into existence under the

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Lane
Constitution--MW e 111 let you have the first and second
year, but you shall phase it out and you shall go to
another structure." The city of Flint said, "We want
the University of Michigan structure.” It meant, by
picking the fight with me that it was a head-on
collision constantly for about four or five years.
Everybody saw it, and looked at it, and said it really
wasn’t what they wanted.
F--You know, it strikes me that probably nobody ever
expected when they picked the State Board members that
either party would have won all of them.
L--I guess you're right.
F--We ended up with some members of the State Board who
were not as strong as some of the Republicans that got
beat.
I understand Alvin Bentley was running.
If the
Board had had a broader base and more wisdom and more
experience...
Bentley then went on and served on the
Michigan Board of Regents as an extremely valuable and
wise man.
If they had not picked that fight with you, do you think
that could have brought about...
L--It would have survived and it probably would have
functioned.
F--In the coordinating?
L--Yes, because we would have appropriated some people for
them to do the job.
F--In certain kinds of ways, like in the fights over law
schools and medical schools, you probably would have
been willing to turn some of that jurisdiction and
staff work over to them.
L--But the fact is that the presidency of the Board was
won by one thing--you establish the last two years in
a medical campus and he can be president.
Then he was
president and he'd vote for it, although he didn't
want it.
F--I don't know what you're saying.

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Lane
L--I'm saying the guy that was the tie vote wanted to be
President of the Board of Education.
F--You’re saying he swapped programs for...
L--He swapped programs for position.
F--Legislature can do that.
State Board.

They don't need that from the

L--That's right. When it ended up they got the approval.
There was nothing wrong with it, but it just diluted
them.
They got so they couldn't get along even with
each other.
F--What medical campus are you talking about?
L--State.

State?

Yes.

F--I did not know that.
L--Yes, the third and fourth year.
F--Who, in your opinion, were the key opinion leaders in
Michigan in this period?
L--Opinion leaders?
F--Who were the leaders of higher education?
L--I think you can't leave out Porter as one.
leave out Frank Beadle as one.

You cannot

F--You already mentioned Spathelf, of course.
L--Oh, Spathelf was a good one. There's several presidents
that were responsible for it. And I think the strong
leaders within the Legislature had more to do with it
than the Bureau of the Budget or the Executive Office.
F--Well, then you're suggesting Frank Beadle, yourself-you're not suggesting that but I will add that--Arnell
Engstrom.
L--Arnell Engstrom was only a captive of MSU.
F--Who were some of the other leaders you are thinking
about?

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L--I think you pretty well got them--three or four and
they've all been on the Senate side.
F--Initiative was with the Senate.
L--Yes. Now if you took before '58, then you'd have to
bring in Vanderwerp.
But you're starting at '58 and
Vanderwerp was already defeated.
F--What about institutional presidents?

Hannah?

L--Hannah was a good con guy. Ed Harden was a bigger con
guy but with a smoother way.
Hatcher and his aloofness
had something to do with keeping the University of
Michigan strong, but I think he was also weak because
of some of his staff. Pierpont had too much to say
to run him, and even though he is a good man, he
doesn't always make good decisions. He stopped the
University of Michigan dead still for a period of five
years with no buildings...
F--Over a planning fight.
L--Over a planning fight.
F--Are there others you would mention?
L--Miller was one.
F--Any labor people?

Reuther, of course, is dead.

L--Walter Reuther always was for education.
I don't know
of any other labor leaders who steppedforth, outside
of Gus Scholle who helped put somecoalitions together
to make sure that we got some money and some help.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
NEIL STAEBLER1

F--Mr. Staebler, what in your opinion were the reasons that
led to the expansion of higher education in Michigan
from 1958 on?
S--The pure demographic pressure, the increase in the number
of young people, was the central source of the change.
Second was economic.
Michigan was conscious of its
economic vulnerability.
It was very heavily dependent on
the automobile and other heavy industry.
It was very
conscious that the economic system of the country was in
a state of flux, moving toward some more technical
industries, and that Michigan was being left out of that
race.
So we felt under a double pressure: the need, in any case,
to accommodate a lot of young people; [and] the need to
accommodate them in a way that would help to guide
Michigan toward a more modern industrial plant.
F--You were able in the period from ’48 on to build a
broad-based Democratic Party in this state.
From 1850
on there have been only five Democratic governors in
this state. The Legislature has only been [Democratic]
controlled 12 years in the House and six years in the
Senate since 1907.
You were able to build a broadly based party...
S--Before you go on, let me make the picture a little
worse.
There were two sessions of the Legislature in
1
Neil Staebler; Finance Director, Michigan Democratic
Party, 1949-50; Chairman, Democratic Michigan Central
Committee, 1950-61; Member, Democratic National Committee
for Michigan, 1961-64, 1965-68, 1972; Congressman-atLarge, 88th Congress, 1963-64; Associate Committeeman,
1968-72.
Interview conducted May 5, 1974.
A 250

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Staebler
this century in which there was not one Democrat in
either House.
So it had been a one-party Republican
state for a long time.
F--And in 1946 you had obviously begun some of that organ­
izational work.
I believe it was the lowest Democratic
strength since the thirties. There were something like
four members in the Senate and 10 or 15 in the House.
Obviously the Democrats were successful because they
were able somehow to identify with rising expectations.
S--Let me give you another reason that we rose rather
rapidly.
Democrats were there--not during the 100
years, but they were there for a lot of the time prior
to 1932, and certainly all the time after 1932--but
there had been no means of getting together.
When Williams came along his encouragement drew a lot
of people together. We worked hard, we finally dis­
covered how to create a political party that would be
sufficient to counter the entrenched Republicans.
F--Isn't it in this level of rising expectation that highe
education had to have had an important part in the
political program of this new coalition?
S--It was one of the issues in front of us all the time,
one of the most conspicuous items in our platform.
But let me enlarge on that just a little.
It never became the very highly polished item of the
platform that education is often thought of: "So many
people are interested in education, there's so much
talent that's involved in education, so surely educa­
tion must have been a real gem in the platform."
It
never became that because the battle on education was
always conducted on a kind of broad, almost a crude
level, that is, that the need for education was obvious
The reluctance to vote for educational money was greatthe reluctance growing out of the composition of the
Legislature which was drawn from the areas of the state
that didn't have the new population pressure.
These
people just couldn't see the need for education as
being pressing, and so the battle was conducted in a
very simple form. We saying, "Look, the problem is
huge, apparent, we don't have to refine it or pretty

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Staebler
it up, it's there and just recognize it."
develop it in any fine way.

We didn't

F--Ok, but there are some issues that draw people together
in a political spectrum.
I've always suspected that
housing and health are two of the good issues.
Although people have always identified housing as a
devisive issue, I've not personally believed that of
health or education.
It strikes me that education didn't receive, particu­
larly higher education, the cannonades of reaction from
industry, for instance, or from conservatives. We were
able to build a middle ground for education.
S--Well, there was much more recognition of the need for
education than there is for most changes in the social
life.
It grew out of some of those factors that I
mentioned.
The vulnerability of Michigan industry was
recognized by all segments of the population and the
need to update ourselves, get into a position where we
had hope for the future.
There was the feeling at that
point that the auto industry was closer to extinction
than it later turned out to be.
Now, since the fuel crunch, we may be a little closer
to stagnation than we imagined, but at that moment,
there was the feeling on the part of business as well
as labor [that] we need education to guarantee us a
future.
F--In 1946 there was some opinion in conservative circles
that we would probably go back to a 1939-style base.
There was some talk about a return to a depression
kind of modality.
Is it to that, do you think, that
education was looked at as an escape to prevent the...
S--No, it was really in their not looking back but looking
toward the future.
See, Michigan was the fastest
growing population of any state east of the Mississippi
at that time--later it was overtaken by Florida--so we
were one of the four or five most rapidly growing
states in the country.
We were a very young state,
the population was young, so that we were producing
kids at a terrific rate and that pressure was very
apparent to anybody who looked.
But the Legislature was in the astonishing position
of resisting change, almost irrespective of the facts.

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Staebler
Year after year we were pushing for higher budgets, for
balanced budgets, for new taxes. The Legislature-really the Republicans in it--for a number of years
was just taking it year by year: "Well, we got by this
year without new taxes." One year they used up the
Veterans Trust Fund to avoid new taxes. Another year
they shifted the date of the corporation franchise tax
to balance the budget. Another year we used up the
liquor revenue.
It was just hand-to-mouth delaying
tactics that were used.
We were screaming and pressing and pushing for a broad
program, recognizing the state's needs and pointing to
education as one of the most obvious spots where the
people could agree there was a need.
So it was the
forefront of the campaign, but always in a rough and
tumble way and not much refinement as issues.
F--What were the social and economic factors that led to
this growth, besides the ones you've talked about?
Do you want to add to those? Certainly growth,
certainly aspiration.
S--There was a different perception of education between
the parts of the state that weren't growing and the
parts that were growing.
Now, remember what the old apportionment did to the
state.
It gave a majority in the Legislature to the
parts of the state that were least populous and we
were way over-represented in rural areas and small
towns, under-represented in the cities and especially
in the new suburban areas.
It was in those suburban areas where education was,
of course, most warmly welcomed.
In the cities it
was mixed.
The leadership in the cities saw the need
for education.
The cities, where a lot of the
Democrats were, kind of went along with the idea that
education was good, [but] there was not a great per­
ception of it as being something that was important.
There was not, for a long time, the realization that
the black participation in education could only be
improved greatly if we had more education.
Frankly,
we were improving that percentage, but slowly, even
without corresponding improvement in the overall
education.
The Blacks felt so left out of education
that they didn't get caught up in the furor about the

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Staebler
increase in total education. Their percentage was so
low anyway that they felt their grievance wasn't even
related to the total solution of the problem.
F--I'm going to skip down.
I asked a question about
regional pressures.
It's my thought as I talk with you
that many of the institutions went into rural areas.
Ferris was built in the earliest days of the Mennen
Williams' administration. That was in Big Rapids.
Later in the sixties came Grand Rapids, the college at
Grand Valley, Saginaw Valley--which at that time was
represented by people like Begick, who would fit my
view of a conservative, indeed. We had Dearborn and
Oakland. We had a large number of community colleges
that were built in the sixties in rural areas.
I think
about one in Scottville, West Shore; one in Roscommon,
Kirtland.
These happened most after 1964, of course,
when the one man-one vote changed the political land­
scape indeed.
But the first people to profit from that
were the rurals.
S--Yes, because remember how long we were in getting the
community colleges in the Wayne County area. We had
a terrible fight to get in there. But there was quite
a fight for the community college too, because that
didn't come automatically and it was very much in the
line of what we were pushing for.
I noticed that in
'64 in my platform I encouraged the growth of the
community colleges, especially in urban areas, by the
state at least matching local and federal contribu­
tions in construction costs.
But regionalism was a factor.
I think Democrats were
especially conscious of, not only in education, but
in taxation and in other areas, the discrimination
against the cities. We were trying to remedy that.
The plight of Detroit was becoming apparent by the
mid-sixties.
Even before the riots in '67 we were
trying to do things.
In fact, we felt we'd started
so much we were surprised by the riots, but there
was that much impatience.
F--That was a good point because I came to the job with
the Legislature in '68. I sensed an amazing degree
of astonishment that in this state--when we had the
idea that things were well compared to other states,
like Indiana or Illinois or Ohio and the southern
states--over this impatience.
S--I could tell you how greatly surprised we were from
a little incident.

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Staebler
I had an old friend, who was a professor at the
University of Texas, and his wife who were visiting us
in *67 in July. He was a liberal in Texas and we were
talking about development of liberal parties.
He had
lived in Michigan, in fact in Ann Arbor, while he was
getting his degree. We talked about the development:
I was telling him what a great leadership the Blacks
had developed in Michigan with the aid of a lot of
other people and that Michigan wasn't going to have
the troubles like New York and Washington. We were
immune to that.
He left Sunday morning and on his radio in his car as
he left he heard the news about Detroit.
Of course,
I picked it up as soon as I turned on the radio.
It
was totally contrary to any of the expectations.
F--I drafted all of the legislation that created the
community college and went through the crisis--I
drafted the tax legislation against the advice of all
the tax lawyers.
I observed the floor fight for it.
It's instructive to know that all the rurals fought us.
All the rurals fought us because they were opposed to
a community college that would take away their share
of the pot. We frankly did it with building the Wayne,
Oakland, Macomb axis.
There were enough votes then to
be able to do it that way--and going through a very
bitter floor fight.
S--We really had left quite a mark on the state from that
narrow apportionment that existed for a long time.
What it permitted was the persistence in the Legislature
of the status quo mentality a lot longer than the facts
would otherwise have warranted. And we were fighting,
we didn't feel bitter on sections, we just were
fighting the old stick-in-the-mud attitude that you
didn't need change.
F--Were Democrats disaccommodated in 1964--when you
finally had the kind of franchise which you had hoped
to have all along, that Mennen Williams votes had
proved existed for statewide offices and things like
the Auditor General and the Superintendent of Public
Instruct ion--when the suburban Democrats came in and
allied with the rurals on many issues?
S--Now, you’re saying in '64?

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Staebler
F--Well, there was really no Democratic majority before
that in the Legislature.
S--No, no. We are accustomed in the Democratic Party, I
guess in both parties we are accustomed to it, we
rather more than the Republicans, to a lack of disci­
pline.
There isn't any such word in the Democratic
Party.
We are aware that having a much wider range, much wider
spread of people in the Party, that we're hard to hold
together, harder to encourage to follow a given line.
We aren't as surprised by defections.
We hope that if we lose people on one issue, we get
them on another.
But I'm not especially conscious
of this in education.
F--I guess it's been my sense that this state is divided
in thirds--rural, urban and suburban--and that you
can't rule this state without picking up two out of
the three.
It struck me that we've had the rurals
against the urbans, with the rurals holding a slight
preponderance because of malapportionment, and the
urbans holding the strong position, but still less
than they deserve though, with legislative supremacy.
In '64 when they had the great victories, when large
numbers of suburban Democrats came in, I think there
was an expectation that the suburban Democrats and
the urban Democrats would move together to move a
lot of the programs, but it didn't happen.
S--Well, a lot of us had been reading the polls more
closely than that and we never divided it up in those
three ways. We had been looking at the division: On
economics we got a majority, on social matters we had
not.
There is
Michigan
with the
economic
matters,

a lot in common in that respect between
and the U. S. Congress. The South will go
North--with northern Democrats --on a lot of
and international issues, but come to social
it used to divide the other way.

And so we saw that in our own support, we saw it
beginning with the first poll we took--which was 1954-when a third of the people who called themselves
Democrat disagreed with us on our social program.
So
it's rather more a matter of battling to bring people

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Staebler
up to date, to bring them along out of their old
states of mind and prejudices and get them to
recognize current facts.
F--And that's why the role of the Governor, who has the
capacity to command the media, if he uses it skill­
fully, such as Mermen Williams did, and Romney did...
S--That’s terribly important.
Romney didn't use it. Remember what Romney did?
Romney was selling complacency.
I had three debates
with him and in the second one I pinned him right to
the wall and pointed out all the shortcomings in
Michigan's social outlook.
Romney couldn't counter
except by saying, "Michigan has no unmet human needs."
That was 1964.
F--I find that hard to believe.
S--Yes, it's incredible that a man should say that.
F--What were the policy objectives that people were
trying to get at to handle this expansion beside the
ones you have cited about the tremendous number of
children and further...
S--Let me go back. The heart of the problem, of course,
was taxation.
It always is. We spent our first ten
years trying to unlock the treasury, the people's
willingness to tax themselves.
We kept trying to get
the progressive income tax. Williams began with that
in 1948 and it wasn't until we got the new Michigan
Constitution that we got an income tax at all.
That was one reason why some of us wanted to favor
having a Constitutional Convention. We thought we'd
get some progress and that was the most important
piece of progress we secured. We didn't get the
progressive tax and haven't gotten it yet, but it
opened up the income tax. That was a terribly
important thing because the state was simply hog-tied
previous to that time trying to meet its needs.
F--I suspect you couldn't have succeeded with taxes-watching all the bitter fights that have occurred-except that the income tax was pay-as-you-go.
It's
sort of installment financing since the majority of
Michigan's people pay their taxes weekly.
It seems

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Staebler
to me that that's probably the most important element
about building an adequate revenue base.
S--It was really the terrific propaganda resistance.
Even some of the brightest business people objected
to an income-tax.
It took a long time to convince
Bob McNamara . Business was so adamant on the income
tax. Business feared that once there was an income
tax it would be called upon to carry the undue pro­
portion of the burden.
F--And yet they didn't fight the appropriations process,
did they?
S--Yes.
It got fought a great deal of the way. And then
there was always the realization if you didn't have
the money the appropriations couldn't get very far
out of line.
That's where the crazy expedients were
resorted to.
And you remember, we tried at one time to dramatize
the need by letting the treasury go dry. That was a
very sad mistake from the standpoint of the Party
position.
It was the most damaging thing we ever
did to Williams.
F--You lost that propaganda fight, didn't you?
S--Yes, they utilized that magnificently.
They had the
propaganda tools and they talked about Michigan on the
rocks.
It was the very fact that there was need that
they dramatized--that we spent more than we received.
They won that, and nationally it was devastating for
Williams.
F--He never really recovered from that, did he?
S--Not nationally, no.
F--Well, I've raised the question about what were the
partisan and parochial conflicts to obtain this higher
education.
Obviously, the taxation one is one that's
in your mind because if you limit the amount of money
the till takes care of itself.
2

Robert S. McNamara; Ford Motor Company Executive,
1946-61; served as President, 1960-61, until appointed
Secretary of Defense.

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Staebler
What about other conflicts? Certainly regional ones
were there to create schools here rather than there?
S--Yes.
There was the desire to have the branch colleges
and that ran into all sorts of cross fire.
I remember
when the University of Michigan proposed to ally with
Delta [and] Saginaw Valley, and when MSU first estab­
lished Oakland.
These were moves toward branches and
the Legislature got very suspicious of that.
It ran
into all kinds of difficulties.
First, the broad feeling this was going to result in
too rapid an increase in education.
Second, the
competition between areas got rather keen and a
little bit of log-rolling got started.
It wasn’t until we had a number of branch colleges
in various places that there got to be a feeling that
we had passed the point where you had to fight for
another one in your own locality--after we got some­
thing in Grand Rapids, and that's still under­
represented.
I guess the community college situation helped also
because that began to take pressure off local needs,
and with the combination of the two, finally wiped
out the bitterness of regionalism.
F--What about Michigan versus Michigan State?
S--Well, that remained a constant battle growing out of
three or four different factors, but the most con­
spicuous one was the great political weight that
Hannah always enjoyed. He didn't enjoy it, he worked
at it and he was a very effective operator.
I always
thought he was the best politician m Michigan.
I
feared for the moment when he would run as a Republican
candidate.
I thought that he would cut a swath right
through the Democrats.
F--Let's come to that for a moment, because John Hannah
is certainly one of the key figures. He was regarded
as a Republican.
His alliances were with Republican
farmers, stretching way back, and yet he built a very
fruitful alliance with labor. Mennen Williams talked
of that.
S--Oh, everybody had to cooperate with John because he
was a very effective person in dealing with the

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Legislature, and that meant dealing with labor.
F--It struck me that Michigan State picked up labor
early on.
S--Oh, yes, and he worked with anybody who had influence.
John was a pragmatist of the first order. The Uni­
versity didn’t go from its earlier size to its present
dimensions without masterful handling.
F--He obviously had to have Democratic support.
was that from?
S--A11 over.

Where

He had it all the time.

F--Waldron talked a little bit about how he built this
massive alumni pressure that he found just immensely
difficult to handle.
S--I thought John's real skill lay in the close cultiva­
tion of the Legislature.
He used proximity well, he
serviced the Legislature well, when there were needs
he filled them. He entertained them well, he culti­
vated them.
It was easy with proximity to do things,
but John, stopping short of other blandishments, used
all his resources in a very skillful way.
We used to urge Wayne and U of M to copy more of his
methods because he broke down the feelings of awe and
some of the starchiness of academic behavior which is
used to intimidate legislators, who are generally not
very much given to academic achievement. John simply
wiped that out. You were on all fours between the
members of the staff and the legislators.
But U of M
and Wayne kept a little bit of the academic standoffishness evident.
F--I'm going to be talking to Dr. Hatcher, I hope.
But
it seems to me an important element, and I like the
way you pick that term, because Senator Lane used the
term "aloof".
I think "starchiness" may be a more
graphic term.
Do you think that Michigan, in this
president's starchiness, made it possible for John
to succeed?
S--I think they gave him more room to maneuver in. The
University tried to practice some of the cooperative
devices that encouraged the Legislature, but we used

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to do a little compensating knowing that the U of M
was clumsy at it.
For instance, in the Institute of Science, Williams
got on the phone and practically bludgeoned the
University into establishing the Institute of Science.
They didn't want to, but Williams said, "You better."
It was a logical place to have it, and if we're going
to get it through, now is the time.
F--That's a point of interest to me for the reason that
I've raised the question, "Did any of the policy goals
for the enhancement of higher education have as their
objective the destruction of class and culture barriers?"
Many have suggested that Michigan was elite, stand­
offish, snobbish, serving only the opper classes; and
that Michigan State was popularist, democratic, school
of the second chance.
Yet it's hard for me, and I thinlc there are parts in
this that are true, but it's hard for me to think of
a university with 40,000 people--probably 70,000 human
beings--as being elite in the sense that something like
Reed College, which takes a couple hundred people,
could be, or was, or Albion even.
S--The distinction breaks down a bit, too, when you
remember that Wayne and U of M share much of the same
fate along the line. Wayne prides itself in not being
elite.
It prides itself in being the poor man's
college and the city man's school.
I guess we men
better be careful about using that since...
F--The term "man" is useless these days.
S--But having been a U of M graduate, having done a lot
of work there, I saw what their distinction was, what
inhibited them. The University of Michigan for a long
time resisted the idea of the practical disciplines.
Then John established the hotel and restaurant school.
I remember the University of Michigan just looked down
its collective noses at that as being a great violation
of university tradition, ignoring the fact that nothing
is more tradesman than medicine and law. They were the
traditional professions, and when new ones came along
the University simply wasn't conceding that new pro­
fessions took upgraded education to make them practical.
They were stuck in the old idea.

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Staebler
John, that was another point, John used the needs of
the society and of the state to provide an answer in
many of the new curricula that he instituted.
U of M was sticking with, you know, classic terms and
the traditional definitions.
So, it took a long time
to update the University.
It's pretty well updated
now.
I think that it will always prize its emphasis
on graduate schools and excellence in that direction
and will try to fight hard for faculty that will
reflect the competition with the top half-dozen.
But
it went over to the Hannah approach to being useful
to society.
F--And obviously there was legislative and popular
support for that.
S--Yes.
F--And so the end of the conflict was that all the insti­
tutions became more susceptible to a public sector
rather than a classical model.
What about the question of using higher education to
break down class and culture barriers?
S--Well, except to break down the segregation, and to
get all elements of the population into the main
stream, we haven't been and we weren't particularly
conscious of using education directly as a device.
Now let me go back.
One of the things that we started
immediately when Williams came in, he used as one of
the sources of his appeal, was to get ethnic groups
aware that they had all the privileges that anyone
else had, [that there] were no reasons why they
shouldn't be in the center of things. He encouraged
[them] all the time to be part of his administration,
part of state government.
We appointed people from
every segment of the population in order to dramatize
that.
We hoped that education would be one of those segments
where they would participate. We didn't do anything
particular about it. We didn't try to get any quotas
of Poles or Cypriots or Italians.
F--That was a later mechanism.

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Staebler
S--Yes, but we did try to get people on the governing
boards to reflect the diversity. We did work hard
on segregation, or integration, to break down the
exclusion of Blacks.
F--I guess when I fashioned the question before I began
the interviews I had some idea of the sociologist’s
model of nine classes: lower-lower, middle-lower,
upper-lower, and so forth. Yet it strikes me that the
objective wasn't the destruction of class values, it
was the envelopment by the ever-widening middle class
of ending the upper class and certainly ending the
lower class.
So you had a state where 99 percent of
the population would be middle class.
S--We in the Democratic Party--at least the part that
looks at platforms and so forth--were very conscious of
the distribution of income. That is one of the things
we use as a benchmark.
We're also very conscious that
from 1960 to 1970 we didn't make one damn bit of progress
and we were disgusted with that, with all the things we did.
We have a bigger pie but the pie is sliced up in the same
old way. But over a period of time we were very conscious
of what government can do when we look at the 11 percent
of the population that's below the poverty line now. And
in 1930, just before the New Deal, when the percent below
the corresponding poverty level--now it's $4,400 a year
for a family of four, then it was about $1,200 a year...
F--What was that percent, then?
S--Sixty-eight percent.
It wasn't that a third of the nation
was ill-clothed; it was two-thirds who were ill-clothed.
We've gotten half the people out of poverty.
So we're
very conscious of that and one of the main motivations in
the Democratic Party is to keep moving in that direction.
F--One of the social engines certainly to create that was
higher education.
S--Exactly. And that is one of the devices that we think
of as being important.
F--What about vocational and occupational training
objectives in the enhancement of higher education?
S--We were enthusiastic about the community college and
the Party worked for it from the very beginning.
I

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think we feel that it's done more for the people who
have attended than universities can do in the way of
opening up possibilities to the people who attend
universities.
I'm saying it not to make any other
comparison except the great need that gets met.
F--But we do get into the model where the Ph.D. becomes
the status model.
Society to function needs men who
have pride in themselves, and I underline that, who
are good carpenters, good machinists, good printers,
and the like.
S--There's another significance in community colleges.
Community colleges serve part of the population that
would otherwise be trapped. The people who get in the
universities generally have enough going for them-their family's income or individual push--to make a
lot of headway, one way or another.
But the people
you get in the community colleges represent generally
the second chance for people who would otherwise get
caught.
So they're tremendously important means of
helping the people, the population, get ahead.
F--What about the position of labor in regard to higher
education?
S--Surprisingly favorable in Michigan.
always respected education--UAW.

The biggest union

F--Do you think that was because of Reuther himself?
S--Partly, and partly, I think, the traditions of the
people who believed in education.
They believed in the
good life and they wanted unions to help insure the good
life. They hadn't had the education for the most part,
and by God, they were going to get it for their kids.
F--You mean the factories were so bad that they thought,
"Gosh, I may be getting a good living but I sure don't
want to see my boys at this machine."
S--At least there was the feeling that you can get a lot
more realization in other means than in an assembly line.
F--You know, I've been struck here that labor in this state
had a much broader base, much more interested in social
issues than lunch-pail issues.
I've tried to fathom
that, because even while there was energy between, say,
Gus Scholle and Reuther, they seemed to cooperate here
very strongly.

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Staebler
S--They were never really very antagonistic.
It was
always on small jurisdictional things, and Gus1s change
of fortune due to the UAW going out of the CIO and that
kind of thing. But they were always good allies.
I
knew them both extremely well and had worked with them.
F--It struck me that Reuther, personally, was much taken
by the academic values because he, himself, lived
quite close to Oakland afterwards.
S--My own feeling is it was deeper than that.
It was part
of his philosophy. All of the Reuthers, you know, I
know three of them--Walter, Roy and Vic--and all of
them remarkable people, very broad.
F--The only ones that didn’t seem to cooperate in this
general alliance was the Teamsters.
The Teamsters is
the only union I’ve ever noticed not being in the van­
guard of being pro higher education.
S--There are some other unions that aren't terribly
enthusiastic about it, but overwhelmingly labor was
for higher education.
F--They seemed to have the idea almost like the Minnesota
experience of Democratic Farm Labor.
They were inter­
ested in broad issues to govern rather than lunch-pail
issues. Yet I never had that sense about business.
People will point out, "Well, think about this industrial
leader," or, "Think about that one." They will point
out Bentley or someone like that. You see these men,
and yet industry doesn’t seem to have had that same
broad interest. They were more regional in their
interest, the automotive people for Dearborn or
Oakland, or the business community in Grand Rapids.
They don't seem to have had that same interest.
That's
my suspicion.
S — I didn't find that that was very heavy.
It's always
easy to organize some extra concern about your locality
because there's another group of people who are just
making their living in that locality, the trades people
and so forth.
I can always understand that. That's the kind of
business I've been in most of my life. And so you can
get a little extra support for something that does some
particular good for your city.
But the big industry in
this state has not been parochial at all.

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F--That’s good to hear because I ’ve never felt that
support from big industry for higher education.
S--The one exception to that was Mott. Mott was so devoted
to Flint that he gave that extra impetus, and pushed for
the university there, and influenced enough legislators,
gave money to the university, so that he was a one-man
lobby for the Flint branch. And succeeded, of course,
very well.
F--I don’t know how to say this.
I have the sense that
Flint was a more closely held, closely run town than
others.
It looked to me like the power structure that
ran Flint was pretty limited and Mr. Mott could be an
extremely persuasive...
S--Yes, it was.
I would think several other cities would
run a close second.
Grand Rapids had a very, very tight
power structure in the fifties, and a very corrupt one.
With all those pious people up there we always thought
of it as sin capitol. Not the carnal sins, but the
fiscal sins. That was the seat of Frank McKay^ and
a lot of the shenanigans of the Republican Party.
F--They set a great store by authority and that gave a lot
of coverage for that.
Did the growth of culture and the arts have importance
in the dialogue over the growth of higher education?
S--Surprisingly little.
There were always a lot of people
in both parties who are interested in the arts and in
science.
Science got a lot more attention because of
Sputnik and the feeling that we had a lot to catch up.
The arts had to fight like the devil. To illustrate,
in the University of Michigan, a new school of music
was badly needed for about 20 years and it had priority
status in the university's list of things it would do.
It was right at the top for about 10 years, but the
Legislature always appropriated for some more urgent
thing.
It had difficulty trying to convey the idea
that art had a degree of urgency. We never did get
an appropriation for a theater in Ann Arbor.
F--No, the Power's one was built by philanthropic...
S--And prior to that our other theater by gift.
It was
hard. There was so much need for bread-and-butter
^Frank D. McKay; State Treasurer, 1925-30.

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Staebler
money, and so much need for justification of education
on a bread-and-butter basis, that the arts fared very
poorly.
F--That really does say something because people can always
afford the things they want.
S--We're hardly emerged from being a state of fender-benders.
We just barely appreciate, well, I'm a little too harsh.
There's a lot of feeling but the sense was one of a
little desperation, that, "Damn it, we're in jeopardy on
our financial base in the state, you'd better not fritter
it away with schools of music and theaters."
F--What was the role of commerce, if different in your
opinion from industry?
S--Well, it's almost indistinguishable.
It supplies a lot
more of the regionalism, but the Chambers of Commerce
are always nine-tenths local businesses.
F--And agriculture.
Do you have something to observe about
the role of agriculture? Were they statesmanlike...
S--We've always had this odd relationship in a modern
Democratic Party to agriculture because we were the
people who saved agriculture, or always were trying to
save it. Mostly it took the form of trying to cushion
the squeeze on agriculture, which was always being
forced out by its own ingenuity and impoverished by
new methods that were coming in, as we see now.
I used to say, if you produced one-half of one percent
less than was needed, you wouldn't have any trouble
about prices.
But you can never aim at creating a
deficiency because you are so productive, you are so
many productive units.
F--I suppose that's true.
I've never thought about that-but the Brannan plan and the like--you couldn't legis­
late out of existence the law of supply and demand.
S--Yes, we kept trying to help agriculture strike a little
better balance. Most of the farmers hated us for it
because first of all, it was something new and the
farmers were, above all, the traditionalists in every­
thing except how to grow crops. And second, it was
bookwork. Third, it was always carried on by some
city slickers, so...

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F--Did they want higher education? Excluding the agri­
cultural research and the School of Agriculture at
State, were they strong for other schools? Did they
want to increase higher education opportunity?
S--Well, they didn’t want to spend money at it. They
could never appreciate the need for higher taxes.
Bear in mind, there's one anomaly in the whole tax
system that makes farmers more resentful--that doesn’t
affect higher education, but it does lower--raising
so much of the cost of higher education from property
taxes hits farmers in a most irrational way.
F--Not higher education--elementary.
S--Elementary and secondary education hits them in a most
irrational way and they carry that over a little bit
to the feeling on all education.
So moneywise they
obj ect.
The farmers certainly have seen the benefits of higher
education... what it's done in farming practices.
Michigan State University has done a beautiful job in
its relations with farmers.
So farmers were not
directly an obstacle, they were just reluctant spenders.
F--What were the pressures and influences in the deter­
mination of public policy from the federal government,
if any?
S--Well, Democrats are always in favor of
and Republicans are always in favor of
I can remember my session in Congress,
through there because we got the first
college construction.

doing something
holding back.
we had a break­
subsidy for

F--HEFA.
S--We had to solve what to do about private colleges and
religious colleges.
We said you can’t use subsidy for
teaching of theology--and a couple other things asso­
ciated- -and you can’t have any expenditures in a public
building for theological devices or things or rooms
related to prayer and so on. So we solved that. And
we put in the subsidy for medical colleges and that
sort of thing.
But the Democrats were pushing for that, Republicans
weren't.
In general there's been a most astonishing

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Staebler
lag.
I find it very hard, and I'm a little impatient,
in trying to understand the reluctance on the part of
Republicans to spend money on education.
It always
seems so evident that it's going to pay well.
It's
funny we always emphasized the fiscal advantages of
education, not the social and the esthetic advantages.
It pays so damn well that you would suppose you could
make Republicans recognize the good investment.
F--I never could understand this.
I've done a lot of speaking.
I go to groups and talk
to them about the best investment you could possibly
make.
It would cost you, in recent terms, $1600 a
year to keep a boy at Michigan, $600-$700 at Wayne
County Community College, about $9000 at Jackson
Prison and about $10-$11,000 in a mental hospital.
I said from the last two categories you never got any
tax money back and from the others you made your money
back right quick.
It always strikes people as a
surprise.
I agree with you.
I never understand why there hasn't
been more of a willingness because it really fits the
Republican ideal of investment.
Higher education is
an investing rather than an expenditure-oriented kind
of public...
S--And we kept stressing that and having great difficulty
getting people to see it. It was really quite sur­
prising.
The idea of federal aid for students, of
course, came along.
That we had tussles with and
finally won.
Oh, and research, of course, and NASA,
and all the expenditures and health research and so
on. These became the invisible support of the
universities.
F--But I guess it's clear in research, biological sciences,
student aid, and construction, that the federal role
was significant. And yet it doesn't seem to have come
with the same degree of controls and requirements as
it did in the social welfare sector.
S--No, I can't explain why other than the fact that it
was conceived differently and passed out for different
purposes.
I am reminded of one battle that ought to be mentioned
and that was the attempt to get the cyclotron in

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Michigan.
I fought hard for that and I had a lot of
the skids greased. We got it down, out of all the
contenders, to Michigan and Illinois.
I had worked with
the President and with Congress and if Romney hadn't
been so damned intrusive in trying to take credit for
it, I think we'd have gotten it in Michigan.
But he
finally made it his special project and the administra­
tion then couldn't give it to Michigan without having
Romney claim that it was his doing.
So we lost it to
Illinois.
But that was part of this business of trying to get new
industry.
I was on the committee on science and astro­
nautics and we conceived this as spawning lots of new
businesses and lines of inquiry.
F--As a matter of fact, when you talk about that, coming
from Massachusetts --where we lost the textile industry,
where we lost the fisheries, where we lost the shoe
industry--a whole new host of modern industry grew
up around that golden circle, 128.
I could never
understand when I first came to Michigan and had my
own mental set of what an institution would be to
come down to Ann Arbor and see so little of it.
S--We've corrected that greatly now. Michigan has
spawned a lot of new technical industries and
Ann Arbor gets 60 percent of them.
F--If you think about Stanford and MIT, it should be
there.
But I hadn't had the sense that existed still.
S--We finally got smart enough to set up an industrial
park.
Once you give that opportunity of a quick
base it's a lot easier.
Now, one thing you haven't asked me is what about
Michigan's higher educational control? That I've
been in on a great, great deal.
F--I'm coming to that.

But you can answer that right now.

S--We looked at California and we looked at what had
happened when you put them all together and concluded
that you get an unwieldy situation in the first place.
The question was: Is Michigan with its separate
arrangement more unwieldy than that?
There was recognition that we ought to do better but
we ought not to get caught in the trap of having the

I

A 271
Staebler
Legislature control the universities.
They obviously,
in making appropriations, get awfully close to con­
trolling, but we ought to keep the Legislature out.
We ought not to get the one overall unwieldy control.
We ought to get some sort of coordination.
When Gene Power was a Regent, he spent a great deal of
time working with all the university presidents, getting
them together in a council. We thought that was going
to be a solution and I think maybe if Mr. Hannah hadn't
been so successful working independently it might have
worked.
But he could never, you could never quite get
him and the other two chief ones...
F--Wayne and Michigan.
S--...together. It's like the present state of Europe
with Hannah being Mr. DeGaulle. Hannah was so good
that he wasn't going to be bound down by the lesser fry.
So we never did get a really concerted operation there.
It got promising at times.
There were a lot of kinds
of cooperation where people using some of these new
expensive devices worked out cooperative arrangements
so all of them didn't have to have cyclotrons and...
F--I'm curious about that because that's one of the reasons
I was hired by the Legislature.
They just didn't know
how to handle--being a noncollege-educated committee-they didn't know how to deal with these requests for
cyclotrons.
The starchy academic coming in and telling
them, you know, they needed it or else...
Their desire in a very basic kind of way to do right
but still not knowing what was right and still get
the most bang for a buck.
It struck me that all the
institutions wanted each of these.
They wanted
pluralism in the universities.
S--Had the council of presidents been effective, it would
have worked out so there would not have been this
duplication.
They would have agreed on some priorities.
F--Let me push this along.
In 1964, much to everybody's
surprise, the political landscape went through a
tremendous crash here.
I shouldn't say crash, but
change.
You elected eight members to the State Board.
This was the first time they ran. They were all
Democrats.

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Staebler
Do you think that very success sealed the doom of the
State Board's capacity to coordinate higher education
because they didn't have any Republican [members]...
S--Well, we had wrecked it earlier.
Some of those first
people who got on did so much internal damage.
They
behaved like a bunch of children.
Our very first
people sealed the doom.
I think we've come back a little
waysince then.
This
committee on higher education, which helps a bit.
We
really haven't solved it in Michigan but we've sort of
reached a point where people can live with our differ­
ences .
F--It seems to me we've sort of dealt in a gentleman's
agreement or a modus vivendi. Michigan State does
not appear to me to want to muscle Michigan.
And
Fleming, who came very much to the fore, I think, as
a conciliator, doesn't want to muscle Wayne, and the
like. And so they sort of have an accommodation with
each other.
S--Getting Hannah in Washington was
enabled people to live together.

thegreat step.

That

F--The first time or the second time? He went to Civil
Rights and then the last time in sixty-...
S--I think the moment he went it took the heat off. He
began to have some interest outside Michigan.
And
then, uncovering some of the shenanigans... his and
MSU's...
F--You're talking about the land and Phil May^ and all
of that?
S- -Yes.
F--I find that a puzzlement personally.
It seems to me
that great power always brings great responsibility.
I handled just billions of dollars and the only one I
could never take care of was myself.
I mean, I could
get thousands of dollars for good projects but I
couldn't get 15<fr for myself. You could never plead a
case of need for other people if you didn't foreswear
any chance for yourself.
^Philip J. May; Treasurer, Michigan State University.

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Staebler
S--I find that the most amazing thing
pettiness on his personal affairs:
in the great role that a President
out how to chisel a little bit out

about Nixon is this
that he takes time
could play to figure
here and there.

F--And that just passes understanding for me that a man
would bank the nickels and dimes. And some of the things
like Phil May did--I had the same admiration for May that
I had for Pierpont.
These great innovative men who
created new kinds of financial structures that the old
types could deal with. The bonding mechanisms were
particularly astute.
S--I think that was the contribution of a man who just died
a month ago, Earl Cress.
F--Cress died? He was the Ann Arbor Bank and Trust,
They
had every school in the state locked in. They sold all
those bonds to sweet little old ladies who probably
would never have voted for a single dime for higher
education, but these were blue chips. And Cress was
the man that came ahead.
S — I think so. He was at least heavily involved, whether
he deserved as much credit as I'm giving him, I'm not
sure.
F--Well, the bank does, whether it was Cress or not.
They
had something like 97 percent of all the business before
it was done. And it was sizeable.
S--He was a Republican and he got started during the
Republican era. Had there been a little more competi­
tion, I think... but they did such a good job, then
nobody could dislodge them.
F--No, you couldn't dislodge them when the Democrats had
the Legislature even.
S--Nor was there any inclination to.
F--Not from the schools.

They were happy.

We're talking about the failure here, the State Board
never really did matter in the end. The cooperative
venture between the schools didn't work.
It seems to me that we probably had some acceptable
level of conflict and as long as the schools didn't

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go beyond that point, the competition for resource was
acceptable as long as the outputs were there.
S--I hear some faint reverberations to the effect that
cooperation will be tried again, or is existent to a
modest degree.
F--You hear that, but I wonder about the difference
between the rhetoric of what they say and what they do.
There have been very few cooperative efforts. Michigan
has probably made the most gestures, the other schools
have been studious in not saying anything about accept­
ing them, which is different from coming out against
them.
I don't sense that there's a climate for that
yet.
You talked about this earlier, but people looked at
California, they looked at Wisconsin, and decided to
keep this peculiar decentralized system in Michigan.
S--I think our situation is better served without trying
to get too much central control or any push toward
uniformity. Wayne is a different species.
They do
something different down there that they ought to be
encouraged to keep on doing.
It's awfully useful.
And MSU does its job in filling the niches in the
economic system beautifully and quickly.
F--In my opinion--you live in Ann Arbor--there's a place
for Ypsilanti to do a better job than it's done,
located right there in the middle of Ypsi-tucky.
S--Well, Ypsi is a kind of Wayne when you live away from
home.
It's again a poor man's college and a second
chance college
F--They're very blue collar.
S--And their requirements are a little more relaxed.
bad, but more relaxed.

Not

F--I've never been an elitist myself.
I figure anytime
you can convince anyone to take four years of addition­
al higher education you've got to enhance him some way
beyond where he was. Maybe he won't come out at the
same high level as Michigan, but he'll come out
infinitely better than he was.

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Staebler
S--Well, I think that keeping a little core of the old
concept of the university, sort of the monastic tradi­
tion of preserving of a lot of the old skills, is
worthwhile.
Some place needs to preserve the spirit
of pure inquiry, and there's some of it in every
university, fortunately.
But there's a little more
of it when you get some of the Ph.D. groups together
that we've got in Ann Arbor.
F--What about the private sector?
sector...

I never saw the private

S--We have an unusually small amount of it here in Michigan
and I've had explanations given me in the past without
catching up with it.
Compared to Ohio, we're insignificant, but quite good
ones.
I've paid attention because it figured very much
in the life of my wife whose mother and father were
graduates of Albion and Hillsdale and were the respective
tennis champions of their time and met on the tennis
court.
And so whenever I've gotten invitations to talk at any
of them I always go over and try to keep acquainted.
Hope is such a great place.
I got all my philosophy
from Hope graduates.
There was a tradition in Michigan
that the philosophy departments are run by Hope. And
I get over to Aquinas often and I'm impressed with what
they're doing.
I get into U of D at times and see what
they're aiming at.
So I'm impressed that there's a lot
of good work that gets done here.
I, curiously, never
get into Olivet, though I have the highest admiration
for everything I hear about Olivet.
But we've never solved their problems, we've done little
in the way of aid to students there.
They get help now
nationally from anything we do for education, at least
in construction and the student loans and so on.
F--And now, we've just passed this McGeorge Bundy-type
plan in Lansing that will give grants for each degree
granted.
It strikes me that in some states the fight between them
was divisive.
In Massachusetts, for instance, the private schools
fought the entry of the public school into the metro­
politan area.
In some other states, the public schools,

!_

i.

A 276
Staebler
being very strong, fought any kinds of grants to private
schools because it cut down on the size of the pot.
Here there seems to have been statesmanship on both
sides with regard for both parties, although the strength
of the private colleges every year was more attenuated
than it
had been the previous year.
I wonder if you have some observations about why that
was. Was it the men themselves, you think? Because
you can see the energy when you look at parochiaid that
the clerical efforts can bring to an issue. They never
did that. And you can see that over abortion.
S--I guess
I don't have any answer. One ought, presumably,
to givecredit to the breadth of mind
of the people
involved in the private schools, oughtn't we? They
were forebearing about the great appropriations advance
made by the public institutions.
F--I'm going to talk to Father Carron about that Thursday.
I, myself, am interested in that because I think that
there's no doubt that when the religious people in the
state build a political machine it's something to look
at.
I can already see the drums over abortion, that it is
going to be an immensely difficult issue. Parochiaid-they certainly mounted immense force. Even though the
public wasn't there, there was enough of it there to
matter.
S--And if any place we should have felt the heat, the
Democratic Party being half Catholic, and Williams
was Protestant, I'm a Protestant, but...
F--It wasn't there.
S--I think awfully wise Catholic leadership must account
for it.
F--I asked you what were the reasons for the failure of
the branch campus system. You've talked about that a
little bit already, about the concern about unwieldi­
ness.
Have you any other observations?
S--I keep pondering where the enthusiasm, the high excite­
ment about education has gone.
I see the sort of dis­
illusionment with the kids at colleges.
They in turn
were disillusioned by the war and we've got to wait

Staebler
until people spring back to some sort of normal attitude.
But the uncouth behavior, the unwillingness to listen to
differences...
F--It was a totalitarian attitude...
S--Yes.
It was very disillusioning to a lot of the enthu­
siasts for higher education.
I'm puzzled where we are
right now, how we'll get the train back on the track
again.
F--I guess my attitude is a little different than yours.
I'm a historian by training, and then had a good dose
of practical experience which tempered a lot of that
philosophical zeal or blue-skyism.
It strikes me that you've had in this country several
large
pulses of growth. The Morrill Land Grant Act
built
a large one. Then came the GI Bill that created
the idea that there was a place for everybody.
I'm
the first member of my family, for instance, to go to
college.
S--So am I.
F--My family never believed it was possible.
In the ethnic
neighborhood I came from, the only educated person was
the school teacher and the pharmacist. There were no
other people that had ever gone to college. And all
the employment companies used to say, stockboy wanted
HSG--which was high school graduate. When I graduated
from college it said, assistant buyer, BSBA--bachelor
of science in business. This was the same job, but the
aspiration of society and the aspiration of employers
had changed.
In the period we've talked about and that you were so
vital
in, we went from a society that had a small per­
centage of population in college to one that had
virtually 60 percent of the available market. We went
from schools that had 4,000--like Michigan State--to
40,000.
In this sense, maybe the enthusiasm has ended because
we're a mature institution.
The need level for broad­
ening the base is no longer the 18 to 22 bracket.
It's
for the elderly, it's for the retraining of people in
second careers.
It's for the enhancement of culture
rather than occupational interests. Work is less
important because it can be. Leisure is more crucial.

A 2,78
Staebler
And I think it probably means that higher education
has to broaden its focus beyond just training.
S--You*re saying what many of the younger people have
been saying, that the emphasis in the past was on
quantity and now we're shifting to qualitative aspects.
Nobody quite knows what quality is or how we agree,
whether it's even appropriate to get enthusiastic about
quality. Maybe you just have it, let it grow.
F--I think you've struck a very good point and I want to
come to that because I'm going to speak of this in my
writing.
A friend of mine said--and he is one of the chief civil
servants in the government structure--when a new program
comes and you have a large need for mass programs,
Democrats and liberals do a tremendously good job and
they are able to mount the public, fashion the program,
and create this tremendous desire and market for it.
Once you've fulfilled the demand you have to come to
qualitative, rather than quantitative, decisions.
That
creates a different style.
Liberals are less suited to
that, frequently.
He makes the observation that in higher education now
that we're to some great degree, certainly in Michigan,
satisfied with the quantitative thing, we must improve
the qualitative.
In many of our institutions,! suspect,
are still bare bones in the qualities of the arts, the
sciences, music.
S--This is very hard to put into political terms.
Kennedy
succeeded in doing it but very few people can because
it has an exclusionary aspect about it. You're glori­
fying one aspect of the community or life and saying
it's better than others.
So there is...
F--I think you're right. When you get to the qualitative
thing each man must follow his own soul and therefore
the identifications get smaller.
You and I want to have a higher education.
We agree
about that.
But perhaps you're better at sculpture and
I'm better at music, so we follow separate paths then.
It may be that we'll have to build a political rhetoric
that will value both of those separate tracks as
commonly good.
I don't know how you're going to do that.

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Staebler
S--My wife and I have a division of labor.
She's very
interested in the theater and directs, writes, acts,
and so on. She said, "You spend your time saving the
world, I'm going to spend my time making it worthwhile
to live in."
F--Yes, ok, but there's again a quantitative versus the
qualitative.
In conclusion, let me ask the last
question.
My problem talking with you, Mr. Staebler, is you're a
delightful person to talk to and I could see talking to
you for hours.
It's always good to talk to people who
have been able to get some richness out of the exper­
ience.
I find it difficult to talk to people always
involved in the process without some concern about
the entry point and the exit.
Who in your opinion were the main opinion leaders?
S--I tried to answer that as I drove off.
I'm very thin
on who I thought was important.
The several college
presidents all played a role, and the people who inves­
tigated: The Russells and Porters played a role. Lynn
Bartlett was the most important Superintendent of Public
Instruction, I think, at least of modern ones.
I don't
know the older ones. Williams played a significant role
F--Romney was certainly able to get a lot of political
mileage out of it.
I don't know where he was himself.
S--I don't think he made much difference.
run here as elsewhere.
F--Well, Mennen Williams certainly.
Probably John Hannah.

He was hit-and-

He had a long time.

S--Yes, Hannah very definitely.
F--But what about some of the backroom boys, people have
mentioned Jim Miller. What about--I think about some­
body like Haber.
S--Oh, yes, if you're getting down to... Jim Miller.
Certainly at Western they have done a remarkably good
job working, looking at their own establishment.
I
never came across much that he did elsewhere.
When he
was Controller he was right there with Williams and I
can't distinguish what he did from what Williams started

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Staebler
Haber was a great contributor to the popularization
of education, justifies it in all directions.
Another person I guess we ought to think of, especially
since we talked about private colleges--the head of the
U of D about three back--Steiner. I always thought of
him as practically jesuitical in his skills.
But he
was a broad guy and he was getting the community to
understand and trying to get people related.
So I'd
give him a great deal of credit.
A couple of others of the men there distinguished
themselves too.
I don't know whether at Wayne some
of the long-time guys get a lot of credit or not.
Henry was there for a long, long time.
F--But he built his reputation in Illinois after.
is one a lot of people have talked about.

Hilberry

S--I never bumped into their influence very much.
I can't
say much. My vantage point wasn't particularly good
at seeing the internal input.
It wouldn't get put into
me.
It got put in elsewhere.
F--I don't know how I'm going to write this, but... insti­
tutions look at the thing in a very parochial way.
They go from themselves to the Appropriations Committee.
It's a pretty straight pipe. And politicians generally
are member-oriented and they find it easier if they
represent a district like Ann Arbor or Saginaw or
Big Rapids to be oriented toward that.
It strikes me that somehow what Bob Waldron has said
to me--not on the tape--that there's 3 or 4 or 5,000
people in the state who are what you call opinion
makers, the people who colleague together to make the
dialogue. Where labor leaders or ethnic leaders or
business leaders, educators, industrialists, all sort
of get together to get some balance about the well­
being of society.
There certainly seems to be, to my
mind, a sense that there's a community spirit in
Michigan which I don't notice for instance in Indiana.
S--You need to enlarge that number.
I see it because I
get into parties and into the local groups and I can
see the opinion-making going on at lower levels. You
could get a layer of 4,000 here, but I'd make it 20,000.
The opinion-making goes on in every union.

I

“aep.-. -

A 281
Staebler
F--It gets to be very impressive, doesn’t it?
S--I am impressed with how much relationship, how much
effective work gets done person-to-person here.
F--That’s why I wondered about Reuther.
I've only met
Reuther a couple of times.
It seems to me that he
must have been a past master of that because you could
see Woodcock's difficulty.
They both seemed to have
had the same kind of philosophical vision but it looks
to me like Reuther had a better way of pressing the
flesh, so to speak.
I don't know, maybe that's wrong,
but it strikes me that labor is less...
S--No, in his time, you know, when you're in at the very
beginning--Woodcock was not far behind, but Reuther
was out in front then and the Reuther guys together
got just a bonfire of goodwill going.
F--You know, but it's the old "With Kennedy before
Wisconsin." Reuther could say, "Here, look, I've got
my head banged around by the goons from Pinkerton."
S--But he was eloquent on so many occasions, and so early,
and so many people were touched by him.
F--That, Neil, is what I mean about the capacity to build
this opinion as propaganda movement.
The fact that the
newspapers, the radio, the magazines, the unions, the
churches, all of these people seem to have colleagued
together.
You've got to be able somehow in order to
represent that community sense in the state, to be
able to talk about the skill of opinion makers.
Certainly it's been pointed out to me that Bentley's
change of heart was a crucial thing in bringing
Republicans along.
It's that kind of ambience that
created this generalized support.
S--Yes, and there were a lot of loyalties.
I think each
university's alumni played a rather great role here
because there is a wonderfully "salty" influence
among alumni.
F--Ok, but you were talking before...
S--Just take Bentley.
I beat Bentley, but I was always
his friend.
I serve on the board of historical collec­
tions with Mrs. Bentley--and Mrs. Bentley has just

i
.

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Staebler
given a half-million so that we can build the building-but there is that overarching loyalty to ideas, and
beyond the immediate things, worth fighting for.
F--That’s why I'm not pessimistic about the enterprise of
higher education.
I went through all state institu­
tions, generally when people leave an institution they
don't like, they have no loyalty to it. If you think
about the lack of identification to high school
reunions, the lack of philanthropic giving to school
districts.
You think about that immense loyalty of just hundreds
of thousands of Michigan people to their institutions,
they're really saying something.
They're saying, I
enjoyed the experience.
I'm grateful for it.
I have
nostalgia for it, I have pride for it. And I guess
that's why I'm not personally a member of the group
that is a negativist or doomsayer about higher educa­
tion.
I think it's probably well served the people
and the proof of that is that tremendous strength and
loyalty that people have to it. I can't think of an
institution in our society that has more broad-base
support than the enterprise of higher education.
It
must have done something right to have it.
S--They change people.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
WILLIAM MILLIKEN1

M--[In response to the] first question: "From *58 to
'70, the state funds appropriated went from 82 to
284 [million dollars]. What in your opinion were
the reasons which led to this expansion?"
I think you'd have to first acknowledge that we had
continuing population growth. We had a growing
feeling on the part of most people in the state that
they wanted their children to have the advantages of
college. We would certainly have to acknowledge that
the cost of education due to inflation continued to
mount.
Given the sharp increase in enrollments, given the
inflation, given the feeling that people had that
their sons and daughters should be afforded that
opportunity, I think the net effect was that the
demand was there and we responded to it.
F--Was there also some attitude that higher education
was an investment in the industrial sector to improve
our state?
M--I can recall a number of discussions and studies to
the effect that to the extent that the state invested
its dollars in higher education economic development
of the state would occur: that there was a direct
relationship between the number of students who were
in colleges and universities and the level of affluence
and development in the state, economically and otherwise.
Yes, I think that certainly was a factor.
1

William Grawn Milliken; Republican; Trustee,
Northwestern Michigan College, 1957-60; State Senator,
1960-64; Majority Floor Leader, 1963-64; Lieutenant
Governor, 1965-69; Governor, 1969. Interview
conducted May 8, 1974.

A 283

A 284
Milliken
F--I wonder about the national security aspects because
many have talked about Sputnik having a tremendous
effect, the people thinking, "Well, the Russians are
ahead of us."
M--That was the period when the Russians and we were
competing very publicly, very openly.
There was a
substantial investment, as I recall, at that time on
the part of the federal government in underwriting
scholarship programs that would enable students who
were willing to move into those areas to go on to
school.
F--There was a lot of money put into research and the
government still continues to do so.
M--Yes.
I think some of the programs have been terminated
but I think a lot of money was put into research.
So
you'd have to say that a combination of many factors
led to that.
F--What about vocational and occupational education?
I know that it's hard to separate that between higher
education and K-12, and I know your experiences were
much concerned with the K-12 part. But I think about
places like Ferris and the like.
M--In that period I think the thinking in the state was
changing--it's even changing now, at an accelerating
rate today--for the first time we were beginning to
say that we weren't technically preparing our students
well enough.
There was a greater emphasis on voca­
tional and technical education.
Ferris is a perfect example.
I don't have the figures
at hand--no doubt you do in your studies--but I think
they would show that we stepped up our support of
Ferris. We built an awful lot of buildings over there.
F--The reason I selected Ferris is that in 1946 or '47
it burned to the ground, virtually.
It was just a
wreck.
The decision was made to take it over and
almost all of the construction happened in the period
'60 to '70.
And you built during this period Michigan Tech, which
is sort of a phenomenal experience. We encouraged

A 285
Milliken
engineering programs at Oakland and we encouraged
the growth at Dearborn.
So it strikes me that there
was some of that.
M--I'm certain there was some of that. That would be
reflected in the stepped-up expenditures.
F--Although I know it’s difficult, Governor, to draw the
line between training at a four-year institution and
training in a K-12, there has also obviously been
much of that, too.
In your administration, for
instance--I don't have the numbers right handy for
the conversation--in the School Aid Bill, y o u ’ve
virtually doubled the vocational monies.
M--This, of course, was the period of the greatest growth
of community colleges...
F--I wanted to ask you about that.
M--...with their much greater emphasis on the vocationaltechnical aspect of it.
F--Right.
I recollect going and talking with Preston
Tanis^ at Traverse City and seeing the auto shops and
the like.
The community colleges were built in this
period.
M--That's right. Northwestern Michigan College I think
would be a pretty good example of what happened across
the board in community colleges.
I think that was the
first community college in the state, and it began in
the period ’53.
It began with an enrollment of some
60 students and its period of greatest growth would
have to be in this '58 to ’70 period.
F--0ne of the things that makes it difficult to deal with
issues like planning for higher education is it doesn't
seem to me that Michigan's been the state to issue
these fancy plans that people can point to as Bibles.
The community colleges, for instance, really developed
with a sense of will and dedication, but not in a very

2

Preston N. Tanis; President, Northwestern Michigan
College.

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Milliken
public way. When I came in 1964 we had very few
community colleges--! came, Governor, to teach at Delta-and in 197 0 I looked at the landscape again and there
were 100,000 students.
There were tremendous programs
in places like Sidney and Petoskey. They began to have
a real effect.
Was this a deliberate policy without going into all kinds
of formal pronouncements? Was there a deliberate policy
t o.. .
M--You mean on the part of the state?
F--Right.
M--I would say the early emphasis really came from local
communities that decided they wanted to have community
colleges in every sense of the word, with a broad base
of local support.
Gradually the state matching support
came into the picture.
But the real incentive, if the college that I have
intimate knowledge of is any example, came from local
support. The efforts through tuition and through fund­
raising programs carried on locally, through millage
supports within the area served by that college, those
were the major sources of financial underwriting for
those schools.
And then, of course, the state involvement became stepped
up as time went on.
F--It was easy to do because it was popular.
M--It was almost a fad that took this state by storm. This
growth started in the early fifties and accelerated up
to the present time.
F--I’ve wondered about this.
I ’m from Massachusetts.
I do
not have a sense that the public had a strong support
for culture and the fine arts in spite of their dedication
to higher education.
It seems to me that there was less
of a willingness for that.
I know how much interest you’ve
had and how hard your wife has worked with the Arts Council.
It's not a popular kind of thing that you ever have grass­
roots support for.

Milliken
M--I think it's true.
I think we, today, suffer still
from a failure to attach enough importance to the arts.
We have a tradition, I think, in this country that any
public dollars that go into the arts through govern­
ment is somehow money poured down the rathole.
That,
of course, is a tradition that is entirely opposed
to the tradition you find in Europe.
F--Somebody said in another interview, "Well, this is a
state that is not far removed from being a fenderbender state." And I think there's something to that.
It's not nice to say but...
I'm struck by another thing and that's this: If you
take a look at Ohio, if you take a look at Indiana,
you take a look at many states virtually as rich as
we are, or in some cases richer, that dedication to
higher education and K-12 is not there.
M--It's far behind us.
F--Many have talked about that sense of history.
I know
you're close to that because you have family contacts
with Central Michigan University.^ You yourself have
been concerned about education.
Eastern Michigan University was the first teachereducation institution west of the Appalachians; MSU
was the first Morrill Land Grant school; we've built
the largest and one of the most effective community
college systems in this country quickly and without
public protest; the University of Michigan is older
than the state itself.
You know, people forget that.
During the period of McCarthyism the attacks at a
very delicate time were not successful in bending
the public love away from higher education.
When
you were first governor and we had the student
unrest--it was a very troublesome time for you as
I recollect--still the forces that were anti-education
were never able to prevail.
3

Governor Milliken's grandfather, Charles T. Grawn,
served as President of Central Michigan University,
1900-1918.

A 288
Milliken
Do you have some insights or suspicions--you've
talked to so many people in so many years--about
where that love comes from that's not true in Ohio
or other midwestern states?
M--I think we do have a very early tradition of public
support of higher education.
Unlike Massachusetts,
for example, where the tradition of private institu­
tions was very strong and the need for public colleges
and universities was not as great. We have relied
on from the beginning the publicly supported institu­
tions at the higher educational levels.
We have developed over a period of time the sense of
autonomy, particularly related to the big three in
the state, where there was a real separation, a
feeling of academic freedom, insulation from the
influence of government, tradition of believing that
the legislature could not properly encroach upon the
educational policy-making prerogatives of the governing
boards.
All of these are factors to give, I think, a sense of
pride, a sense of independence, and a sense of commit­
ment to public versus private. We have private
institutions but they're not nearly as strong in this
state as they are in the East or in your state in
particular.
F--Or in Ohio, either.
M--Or in Ohio, that's right.
F--And we were the first state that had public high
schools with the Kalamazoo case in 1870's.
What exactly, in your opinion, were the objectives
that elected officials had as their goal in view
of significant investment of public funds?
M--I'm not sure that I quite understand the question.
F--Well, I guess what I was thinking about: People
wanted places for their children, as you said.
They also believed that the way for upward mobility
was through higher education.
Do you think there
was a sense in the public elected officials-senators, representatives, the executive officers

A 289
Milliken
of these various administrations--that they had a
clear-cut idea of what they wanted to do, like make
a place for the poor, widen the middle class, train
more professionals, and the like?
M--I think they responded to the needs and pressures in
the area of professional training--lawyers, doctors-the needs that developed and the pressures that
developed throughout the state.
I think that perhaps more than anything else, they
were--if w e ’re talking about more recent times--they
were responding to an educational system which had
achieved over previous years a level of support and
excellence.
They were simply attempting to carry on
and to be responsive to education practiced at that
level.
F--And this goes back...
M--I don’t know whether you can say consciously.
They
had a philosophical view that they were responsive to.
F--You have never been "beat up” , to use the term, when
you recommended monies for higher education, have you?
M--You mean...
F--Every year you go
a certain limited
across more needs
my sense that the
fortable with the

through the difficult agony of taking
amount of revenue and spreading it
than there are dollars.
It's not
public has ever been really uncom­
recommendations that you...

M--I don't think so.
I think, basically, because the
recommendations have been at a generally high level.
Not by any means responding to all the requests that
were made, but they attempt to be responsive and
supportive.
And also because, Jerry, I think we were able to keep
the lines of communication open between our budget
process and the budget people within the colleges and
universities. We did not create the great voids
which had not been responded to or met so that when
the announcements came out, when the budget came out,
we certainly didn't agree but we weren't totally far
apart either.

A 290
Milliken
F--Well, after having worked in the appropriations
process, I make a great distinction between the
rhetoric of the campaign and what people's real
sense is.
It seems to me that institutions of higher
education in this state are pleased with what they've
received in terms of public tax support.
M--I think so. I think the public is generally supportive
and I think that support is reflected in their communi­
cations with people who are down here making the
judgments and decisions at the appropriations committee
level.
F--I guess that goes back to the earlier question about
the history.
I don't suspect that we would have that
kind of general support if there were a discontent
among the public that the institutions had not served
the public interest.
M--I think the institutions, by and large, have been
responsive.
Ferris, again, is a good example of meeting what was
seen as a need in the state, the kind of thing that
people supported.
The institutions have been respon­
sive in their professional schools. They're more
responsive all the time to vocational-technical needs
of the state.
They're always out of phase to some
extent, but I think because institutions have generally
reflected the public concern and need, they get public
support through elected representatives.
F--Obviously, Governor, in the construction of public
policy, conflicts among secular and regional interests
arise, as we know so well from our experience with
K-12 school reform. What were these interests in
higher education and what were their positions, as you
recollect them, in the attempt to modify or constrain
public policy?
I guess what I'm concerned about is where did you see
labor, agriculture, industry, the big schools against
the small schools, the privates against the publics,
and Michigan versus Michigan State?
I think, myself, that more has been made of some of
these energies than are real.
M--In the conflicts that still existed or the activities
of these various groups in support?

Milliken
F--I'm saying my own personal opinion.
That’s not a
good way to ask a question, but I have the sense that
much more is made of these conflicts because they’re
good news, they’re flashy, people understand issues
sometimes in terms of personalities.
I was curious what your responses were about the
conflicts between these people: where labor was,
for instance.
M--I think labor, of course, has been always very
supportive.
The community college development
program: I think they see this as part of the
upward mobility in which they have a great interest
on the part of their children and their members.
I really haven’t seen great conflicts in the interests
of labor versus business or other special interest
groups. Have you seen that kind of thing? I haven't.
F--No, I guess I really haven't, but people believe that
they have existed because of some of the kind of
rhetoric.
I haven't been able to find them and in
the interviews they haven't.
M--I see agriculture, for example, very supportive of
agricultural-type programs, obviously at Michigan
State University.
They're locally supported, they're
down here, but that doesn't necessarily mean that
they're really in conflict with other interest groups
around the state. Each in a way is supportive of its
own special interest.
F--Let me try something on you. Planners don't like
rivalry.
They think it's disorderly and untidy,
although I haven't noticed that untidiness is a
handicap to the political process.
People saw Saginaw fighting for a place; Grand Valley
fighting for a place; they saw what some saw as
imperialism with MSU moving to Oakland and Michigan
moving to Dearborn and Flint.
They saw some of these
rivalries. And there's been some curiosity as to why
the branch campus system, which existed in Wisconsin
and California, has not occurred.
Why do you think we turned our backs on the branch
campus system?

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Milliken
M--Based on my observation it really hasn’t worked
particularly well.
My impression, as I have talked with the adminis­
trations at Michigan State and U of M, is that they
seem, somehow, once they get a branch established,
to lose interest in that branch and the branch
becomes quite autonomous in its own right.
Their
esisential interest seems to be in the parent campus
itself.
More and more I see that detachment, that willingness
to cut off from the branch and let it function by
itself.
There's very little interest except at budget
time when the head of the branch and the head of the
parent school come down together jointly to plead
their case.
Beyond that, there’s very little interest
F--I go back to what you were talking about --Northwestern
Michigan.
One of our respondents used the term
"civic energy," i.e., the desire for people as a civic
pride to have an institution of their own.
I felt
that very strongly when we went to Traverse City when
bankers and all kinds of ordinary people--the druggist
and the like--came forward and spoke strongly for the
school and their need for it.
Jim Farnsworth said one of the reasons the Human
Services Bill was in trouble was that Michigan people
fear big government.
There's a sturdy sense of local
independence.
I wondered what you thought about that being a reason
for the failure of the branch campus system and the
desire to have a local school?
M--I think so.
I think you can see in Flint, for example
the local pride and local involvement.
That institu­
tion has been considered essentially a local product.
It isn’t considered to be a part of the large univer­
sity system.
F--And they really did select their own chancellor,
didn’t they?
M--Yes.
They did and he has become very closely tied in
with, as you say, the civic pride of that community
and involved with civic groups.

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Milliken
There just doesn't seem to be the kind of climate in
the state which is supportive of a very large and
impersonal system of higher education which all flows
back to a single parent.
Jim Farnsworth may be right. Maybe that's one of the
problems that we are encountering in the human services
effort.
F--And he talked to me about Con-Con and the fear and the
desire about people not willing to have institutions
of higher education get beyond 40,000.
Berkeley, for
instance, got to be in their system 165,000.
He said
people didn't want that.
M--I think that's true.
F--What about the Michigan State-Michigan rivalry?
got a lot of attention as a source of energy.

That

M--I suppose you could say the athletic competition was
one of the things that gave rise to the feeling that
there was a sharp competition.
There is competitive­
ness, there's no doubt about that, reflected probably
among the graduates more than between the administra­
tions and schools as they function.
F--Are you afraid of that competitiveness?
M--No, I think it may, up to a point, be healthy. Where
it becomes unhealthy is if the institutions want to
compete in program areas and as a result of it are
going out trying to get legislators and executive
support for programs that don't have to exist at
every institution so that we get an overlap and a
duplication.
To that extent, that kind of competition,
seeking to cover every discipline, is harmful.
That's
damaging, and it's an inefficient use of resources,
but I don't frankly see that as a destructive point.
F--It has a way of balancing...
M--It does have a way of balancing out.
F--And I don't know why or how, but somebody once said
to me it was a very subtle system of competition for
resources.
They never let anybody get too far ahead.
It seems to have been the case here too, hasn't it?

Milliken
M--I think so.
F--We’ve had a far-ranging conversation.
I want to ask
one last question and then I'm going to let you go.
Do you have observations about the need or desirability
of additional management or policy coordination
mechanisms for higher education in order to obtain your
administration's objectives? And further, do you have
any insights as to why coordination of higher education
failed in 1964?
M--I think as the costs of education continue to rise-obviously they will for many reasons even though we're
seeing a leveling off and even a decline in enroll­
ments --there 's going to be a greater need to attempt
to coordinate our educational offerings so that we
don't have this overlap and duplication.
I will be very reluctant to see a California-type
system, a very rigid system, imposed from the top.
I think in the process of doing that you lose some
of the variety and some of the competitiveness which
up to a point is healthy.
I do think we need some kind of coordinating body in
the sense that it would be beyond the State Board of
Education.
It would perhaps be a commission of higher
education which would have sufficient staff and
resources available to it so that by sheer force of
logic and soundness of argument you could so influence
the policy-makers, for example, at the executive office
level and the legislative level, that you could get a
sense of direction and cohesiveness out of our whole
higher education system to maximize the use of the
resources we have and avoid some of the fruitless
competition or duplication that otherwise could occur
and to some extent has occurred.
F--I don't think that the average academic has a real
understanding of how difficult it is to get adequate
information.
I can remember appropriating money into Detroit and
having no sense of it in fact doing any real human
good; having doubt about it, wondering if the repre­
sentations I would make to the committee members
were in fact accurate.
I knew the need but I didn't
know if the solution was occurring.

Milliken
It strikes me though that what you are talking about
is elevating the base so that we can deal on a more
factual basis.
M--I think that’s clearly a critical need. We really
don’t have now in the state, other than through the
legislative process itself, or the executive office
budget function, a means of developing information
and developing public support of understanding for
the effective and efficient use of our resources.
F--You're really talking about policy analysis rather
than... A perfect example, I suppose, is what I
regard personally as a preposterous suggestion that
three law schools be established now.^
M--Where do we resolve that question? If we bring it
down here it’s essentially resolved on a political
level.
The three law schools, or the proposal for
it, and the bill supporting it, came out of a
political process which was really unrelated to
the facts and unrelated to the needs.
F--I don’t know that I've ever personally seen the facts
in terms of need analysis.
I know that my institution
feels strongly about it.
I know that you recommend it.
Optometry is obviously another area of dialogue and
program competition.
One think I did want to observe: The cost of keeping
a student in an institution of higher education, say
at Michigan, our finest institution, is probably, in
terms of state funds, $1600. A cheap enough price
when you consider that we spend $10,000 to keep a man
in Jackson.
I think of that as a rather good investment to enhance
the people, but I ’d like to know more myself about
what would be the right way to get the most bang for
the bucks.
M--There are a number of ways you can approach it, but
it seems to me to make sense to create in this state
At the time of this study Grand Valley State College,
Western Michigan University, and Michigan State University
were all seeking state appropriations for a law school.

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Milliken
a continuing permanent commission of higher education
in the same way that the State Board of Education has
been dealing, although not as effectively as I think
it should, with K-12.
I find it difficult to believe that you can have a
State Board of Education, even though contemplated
under the Constitution, which can deal effectively
both with K-12 and with higher education.
But if
you have the latter, and if you did, as I indicated,
give it sufficient resources, sufficient staff, and
if the process of selecting the members of the com­
mittee was such that that process led to a really
top-flight, high-caliber, dedicated, experienced,
knowledgeable commission, and if by the force of
argument and of logic you can develop the rationale
in support of the school of optometry, or no school
at all, and the rationale in support of a single or
three or two or one or no additional law schools,
then I think you would have created for the first
time a mechanism by which these judgments can really
be made and effectively implemented.
We don't have that now. The State Board of Education
is not equipped and capable of doing it, in my
judgment.
It can even be said in the executive office,
management of the budget, or in the legislative or
appropriations process, that we don't have a mechanism
with sufficient exposure and acceptance to communicate
itself.
F--Well, let me ask a hard question.
I admire your
attitudes about this, but do you have the honest
sense that the institutions or the bureaucracy
themselves want it to occur?
M--I think to the extent that the institutions feel that
their autonomy would be encroached upon or that their
freedom of action to move might in some way be
restricted, to that extent they will be reluctant
to move in this direction.
I don't want to go all the way, as I say, to a totally
rigid system which imposes from the top in a very
arbitrary manner.
F--It would require a very delicate balance.

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Milliken
M--It’s going to require a very delicate sense.
F--There's a fine line between control and coordination,
isn’t there?
M--There is, and yet I ’m convinced that we can find that
fine line and make it work.
F--Thank you very much, Governor.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
MALCOLM T. CARRON1

F--Father Carron, what is your background with the
University of Detroit?
C--I was a student here, came here in *35 and graduated in
'39.
I have lots of memories of this place, from under­
graduate days, through the time that I came here 18 years
ago after I graduated from the University of Michigan and
was assigned to teach here, up to the present.
That's a considerable span and I've thought about and
even investigated, in many ways, our own history.
I
think some of your questions aren't too far off in terms
of some of the questions that I had.
As far as I can gather, in our earliest days we were
kind of just left alone, nobody in the other educational
circles really understood us much.
I think we had a
reputation as a kind of small enclave or kind of seminarytype school. That was back in the twenties and thirties;
that despite the big football team and everything that
we'd had.
F--I went to Boston College.
feeling of similarity.

I'm struck somewhat by the

C--Yes, you'll find similarities in the 28 Jesuit univer­
sities no matter what their size.
F--Was your school identified in the public mind as a school
for poor boys?
Malcolm T. Carron; President, University of Detroit,
1966; Member, New Detroit, Inc.; Member, Board of
Directors, Detroit Chamber of Commerce; Member, Board of
Directors, Detroit Educational TV Foundation.
Interview
conducted May 9, 1974.

A 298

A 299
Carron
C--Probably, [as a school for] sons and daughters of
immigrants. We were here first. We were here in
1877 and there wasn't any university in Detroit, or
any college.
There was what is now Wayne Medical
School but that was all. So we were doing what was
called the "Jesuit thing."
We came from different parts of Europe after having
a tremendous reputation over there. At one time we
ran 500 colleges in Europe, and a few universities.
When we came to this country I gather there probably
were a couple of ways to go. One might have been to
pool our resources and establish one huge university,
something like Notre Dame, but we didn't.
We sought
out the Catholics in the larger cities. Almost every
one of our colleges is in a major urban area, whether
it grew and got to be a complex university or whether
it remained small like Loyola College in Baltimore.
F--I think that's true, except that I never could fathom
how we had Spring Hill.
C--Spring Hill is probably the exception, and theone that
went out of business in Bardstown, Kentucky.
F--I've never heard of it.
C--That was another Jesuit establishment that lasted for
a few years and then went out of business, maybe
because it wasn't in an urban area. But, yes, Spring
Hill would be an exception to that.
Our schools were set up with a two-fold idea of giving
a good education: a kind of meat-and-potatoes, breadand-butter kind of education--there was never anything
fancy about it--responding to immediate needs.
Why did we start a dental school? There was one dental
school in the state, that was University of Michigan,
but come the early thirties and somebody said you have
to have another dental school in the state.
So we
started one.
We didn't start a medical school because one was here.
For some reason when Wayne got going they didn't start
a dental school. Without anybody agreeing to it

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Carron
formally, they said, well, we've already got one here.
So you have really an unusual situation for a large
state university, you’ve got a fine medical center and
no dental school. And we have a university that probably
under normal circumstances could have supported a medical
school. We don’t have one, but we do have the dental
school.
That's the way we kept responding. And then we had our
own kind of stamp we put on it and that was part of the
curriculum. As a Catholic school you took 18 hours of
philosophy and 9 hours of theology...
F--Do you think the Ratio Studiorum, with their curriculum
requirements, cut the capacity of the schools to grow
in more flexible times?
C--No, it's just because we've done all that.
The Ratio
Studiorum was principally a document for high school.
It was the plan for what was the European college or
lyceum, like the typical European middle school.
So
in a university you really didn't have to worry about
the Ratio Studiorum.
But there were national and
international plans for what ought to be in a Jesuit
curriculum.
They're kind of minimal liberal arts
things.
F--I can recollect the rigidity of the curriculum. We had
to take Greek, Latin, 18 hours of philosophy, rhetoric,
mathematics...
C--That's right, but not too different from the typical core
curriculum of the twenties and thirties in all the schools
of the country.
F--I can't say I have any regrets about it.
helpful.

I think it was

C--0urs had the added insistence on the philosophy and
theology, no matter whether you were in engineering, the
business school, or the liberal arts college.
F--How do you think private schools have faired in Michigan?
Has there been conflict with the public sector?
C--The closest thing, and you shouldn't even use the word,
was indifference, lack of communication until recent

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Carron
years.
It would have been unusual for Father Steiner-even as late as that--and the president of Wayne and
the president of Michigan to be real good friends.
They didn’t run in the same circle for some reason or
another. Now we do.
F--And yet it was my impression that it was a conscious
act to put through the tuition and scholarship program
as a way of keeping the private sector alive in this
state.
C--Part of that development came from my own interest.
I did my doctoral dissertation on the contract colleges
of Cornell University^ and I was very enamoured of the
way that the State of New York had encouraged, out of
its land grant beginnings...
F--The agricultural school.
C--Yes.
I spent a year at Cornell tracing the origin of
that relationship and then I came back to Detroit and
began to work in those areas.
First we worked in the
tuition grants and we thought that was about as far
as we could go in getting some indirect state help
for private colleges in Michigan.
The first thing I personally began to work on was the
dental school bill.
It was really necessary.
You
know, we got worried about whether we could sustain
that dental school. We had many needs up here on this
campus, we'd already spent a lot of our own funds and
did a lot of...
F--It was in 1969, as I remember, that the Legislature
ran that through.
C--Yes.
In 1965 we'd built the new dental school down at
McDougall after our old building was condemned for the
expressway across the street from our law school.
I went up to Lansing and I talked to Speaker Ryan, I
talked to a few others, and it looked like "Now is
Published as The Contract Colleges of Cornell
University: A Cooperative Educational Enterprise (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1958).

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Carron
the time to start something like contract arrangements."
We could draw a circle around the dental school. We
didn't see any church-state problems. As I told one
of the committees, there's no such thing as a Catholic
cavity.
They began to listen and we passed that with, well, you
were there. There wasn't much debate.
F--No, we were able to grease the skids on that very
quickly.
C--Yes, it was done very well.
The second time around--and this isn't hitting all the
schools yet--the state came to me and said, "How about
taking some more law students?" That's how we set up
the contract for the degree reimbursement for the law
school which is going to be in its third year next
year.
F--Were the federal funds that went to HEFA for construc­
tion of assistance to the private sector?
C--Yes, we built the life sciences building [but] it was
just a partial grant.
You mean through the authority of Michigan.
F--That's right.
But as far as I know there's been no
state aid for construction to any private sector
schools.
C--No.
F--I was the staff man for all of education, Father, and
I did the parochiaid bill.
I noticed when the forces
came to repeal that, [although] the U of D dental bill
was there and we were putting money into the tuitiongrant program, no efforts were made by the antagonists
towards attacking the private school in any way.
Do you have some thoughts about higher education why,
in that strong emotional attitude, the private sector
was immune?

Carron
C--I don't think it was immune.
I think it was the way
that the legislators and others began to think of the
private schools. They were looking on them as a rather
solid contribution to higher education in the state.
They didn't think they were all that religious.
The great weakness of the kind of argument that back­
fired on the forces that were pushing for parochial
aid was their definition of a Catholic school--which
was permeated with religion. You heard that word.
When you get into higher education you don't really
make that kind of claim. You have a right, for
instance, in a liberal arts college to have a theology
department but that doesn't have to...
F--We have a religion department at Michigan State.
C--Well, yes, as long as you aren't proselytizing and
teaching one dogma, people can understand these things.
That's what they're understanding in New York State.
But I could see an easy kind of relationship.
I think
the economies that were rather apparent in aiding
private colleges were very appealing to legislators.
We had little flurries, you know.
There was an article
in one of the Lansing papers about this degree reim­
bursement.
But it appeared once and quoted somebody as
saying, "This is certainly cracking the wall between
church and state." and then you never hear about it
again.
F--That's a good point, Father. We did it, and I never
heard much comment.
It was no secret.
I talked to
the press about it, explained what we were doing, and
there seemed to be something in this that said, "That's
a good idea."
C--"Different... it's going to help the state." You've
got one private university in the state.
I think that
people think that that would be a bad thing if we went
under.
F--Ok, now that's an important point.
I never had any
experience before I came to Michigan with the public

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Carron
sector.
I went to private schools: Boston College,
Boston University.
There's a real sense here that even though the private
sector is small--10-15 percent--it would not be in the
public interest to let it go by; that there's a need
for diversity, or as Staebler put it the other day,
pluralism.
Do you have some thoughts about that?
C--I don't think a monolithic system of education, to have
what you'd call government schools and have that the
only option, is very attractive to anybody in this
country.
I've never heard anybody proposing it seriously.
F--Do you think that there's a chance? The McGeorge Bundystyle bill-^ was just passed and it's, in a sense, a
contract because we're really not going to support the
student now, we're going to support the institution.
Institutions can't survive, in my opinion, without
institutional support rather than tuition support.
C--Are you familiar with Goal 4, that report from the
committee that I chaired--the total program for the
state support of private education in the State of
Michigan?
F--Are you talking about the State Board of Education
goals for higher education?
C--State Board's goals--they [also] have numbers 1, 2,
and 3--and 4 was that the state will encourage private
higher education.
Then the Governor says, "Well, how are we going to do
that?" My response was that we've already done some
of it with those tuition grants.
The rest of the plan would have two more stages that
it would go through.
The second, after tuition grants,
and after bolstering those--we increased them last year
up to $1,2 00.
3Public Act 75 of 1974.

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Carron
Well, number 2 of our plan was--and this was adopted by
the State Board--to encourage the degree reimbursement
across the board, not only go with professional schools
like dentistry and law, but we proposed a program where
we would reimburse the institution directly for every
bachelor's and master's degree at the rate of $400,
[awarded to Michigan residents].
We also had a thing in there for doctoral degrees but
since we're the only doctoral degree-granting institu­
tion, and it was a kind of point that nobody understood
very well, we dropped it. We may go back for it later,
but it was to be a negotiated sum for every doctor's
degree.
F--Although in the New York plan they do have a price for
the doctoral degree.
C--Yes, that's right, and they should have in this plan.
That was passed, you know, a few weeks ago, signed by
the Governor, and the money's been appropriated.
F--With no opposition from the public sector at all.
C--No.
F--None that I can observe.
C--No, no public difficulty at all. We're going to get
the money for this year's graduates August 1: $350,000.
F--That's going to be quite a... what is the budget of
the U of D?
C--About $16 million.

It's a modest budget.

F--$350,000?
C--No, that's not the [whole] story. Next year in direct
state aid we're going to get $1,100,000. We're graduating
two dental classes and that's going to be $600,000 at the
rate of...
F--But that's still cheap from the state's point of view.
C--0h, yes.

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Carron
Let me finish for your record because unless you go
back to that Goal 4 you won't get it. The best part
of that 3-point program is the third point. And this
is not direct aid to the institution, it's direct aid
to the student.
Here's what we asked for. We asked that you find the
line-item in the state budget for the state school
students. Western Michigan's going to get, let's say,
$1,800 per student, or $2,000...
F--It's going to be less...
C--Let's say $1,500. We're saying that every student who
wants to go to a private college gets $1,500 minus
$1,000 automatically. He starts with $500 just because
he wants to go to a private school. Then he starts
showing need and he could get up to $1,200.
You con­
tinue the degree reimbursements, and putting everything
together, the private colleges could do a very good job.
F--Father, what do you expect the impact will be of a
significant increase of funding base? Do you expect
enrollments to grow?
C--No, our enrollment I think will be stable. We're just
like all the private colleges. We've got problems, you
know, market problems.
We're turning away 2,000 law applicants.
We can only
take a class of 300. We have 2,700 applicants for 92
dental chairs. We've got 1,200 in our MBA program.
That's just booming. We're accredited and Wayne isn't
so we do a good business at much higher rates.
The
engineering looks like it's coming back.
But nobody's
taking language, so I'm suffering over there.
F--Let's talk a little bit about engineering.
I did an
engineering study and it indicated to me that almost
all of the engineering programs were marginal.
They
didn't have enough enrollment in them.
I used the
Tiedman cost-study basis to do it.
There's a perfect case of competition making it thin
for everybody to live. Oakland, Wayne, Michigan,
Michigan State, Michigan Tech, U of D, running headon, head against each other.

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Carron
Was
the
the
the

there pressure to abandon the program because of
competition, or is it just a matter that they had
dollars and they could stand the drain better than
private sector?

C--Yes, I think, in large, it’s been true.
Our school is a little different.
Again, we were here
first. We had the co-op program and it drew students.
Our first resident students were engineering students
because w e ’re known all over the country as one of the
few Catholic engineering schools --whatever "Catholic
engineering” means--so students began to come here.
And then again it appealed to our middle-class-poorkind of constituency.
F--Do you have a program like Northeastern does?
C--Yes, a 5-year co-op. We have a 6-year co-op in the
School of Architecture. We have a co-op in the MBA
program.
There are some Arts co-ops.
F--Do you think you’ll have to widen the market?
It
strikes me that one of the problems that higher educa­
tion has today is that the market is probably getting
saturated for the 18-22 group. Do you think y o u ’ll
have to go for continuing education, second-career
education, senior citizen cultural enhancement, and the
like?
C--You mean to survive or to perform a service? A lot of
schools are doing this.
Siena Heights, you know, is
giving courses in knitting...but it's to get students,
to get income, and to provide more service to the
surrounding community.
F--Well, I was the first member of my family to go to
college.
C--Fifty percent of our students still are.
F--I notice people who are afraid to come to college.
They have a sense of their own inadequacy.
It takes
a lot of courage sometimes. Maybe bringing people in
to take an avocational approach can then lead them on
to more rigorous disciplines.

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Carron
C--We would judge all those options and possibilities on
the surrounding area: what Wayne is doing or not doing,
what Michigan is doing, or what Oakland is doing.
It
means also that we might even drop something based on
that, but that’s a different kind of question.
I ’m rising or falling on my idea of this university.
I'm not about to drop professional schools unless I
really have to because I think they're part of our
personality and identity.
I should think that as a private university, if we
dropped engineering, we'd lose considerable support
from industry. We're the largest supplier from any
private school at Ford Motor.
For many years we had
more graduates there than any university in the world,
about 1,6 00. And GM, we have more there, about 1,000.
F--I'm struck, Father, by your term "survival." Do you
think institutions can have that kind of attitude
and be vital? Don't you have to have an expanding
kind of philosophy, without becoming imprudent?
C--No, I don't think so.
If you're talking about physical
expansion, certainly not.
I think you have to be innovative, and you have to
react to what's needed, but if you're talking about
numbers and the old kind of expansion that brought
us to where we are now, I don't think that's going
to happen again.
F--I guess I have the sense that you have to broaden the
market to bring higher education to a different
clientele. Maybe we have to turn our back on credit.
Like the College of Lifelong Learning.
Isn't that
really an enhancement rather than a manpower decision?
C--Who's got that?

Where did I hear that?

F--Well, President Wharton talks about it, but President
Gullen is seemingly on the way to establishing it if
he can get it through his faculty.
He may not be able
to, but they've taken all the continuing education
pieces and wrapped them into a bundle. Not that the
program is that different...

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Carron
C--There's many dimensions to this.
I don't think
colleges and universities are going to change much
in their approach to professional education.
F--No, I don't think so.
C--They may or may not want to, or have to.
I've talked
to our dentists about how they could cut through the
whole question of how to change their profession. You
know what a losing argument that is, when you're
talking about auxiliary people who might be trained
just to fill a tooth.
F--I don't think they're going to have much choice though.
Not because of them, but because of things like the
tremendous expansion for the market of dentistry that
will come from the UAW contracts.
The dentist is not
going to be able to survive as an artisan, just as the
doctor isn't.
C--I was talking to the faculty and more or less announcing
to them that we were going to cut back and maybe drop
about 25 tenured people because of the departments that
aren't growing.
One member of the faculty said, "Why
don't you just take in everybody who applies?"
Wouldn't that solve your problem?"
We turn away maybe 300 or 400 students a year who we
consider couldn't compete in our environment.
F--That probably wouldn't change the market for the people
you're talking about in French, German, or Romance
languages.
C--No, it wouldn't change that unless the faculty changed.
The attrition might be the second factor that would
kill us, and we aren't that selective.
We're just
kind of moderately selective, we're not nearly as
selective as the University of Michigan.
F--Do you think it was the personality of the leaders?
I gather that there wasn't much contact in the time of
Hannah, Hatcher, and Hilberry, in the way of relation­
ship and concern of one for the other.
You said you
didn't travel in the same circles.
C--I just began my career as Hannah was leaving his.
Hannah and I did one thing together, along with--who

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Carron
was the former superintendent of schools in Detroit?
He's quite a guy--Brownell--we formed the MichiganOhio...
F--Michigan-Ohio Regional Education Lab.
C--We did that together. Hannah called and then his man
walked into my office one day and said, "Sign this."
I said, "What's it all about?" "Well," he said, "we're
going to tell you later. We're going to form a cor­
poration." That's how MOREL started and it was a flop.
But anyway, that's beside the point.
I didn't know John Hannah very well and there was no
opportunity for us to work together. Wharton I know
better, but we don't talk about doing anything together.
F--Aren't you cooperating together on trying to save the
Detroit schools, or are you out of that? I know
Michigan, Michigan State, and Wayne are working on
some kind of consortium.
C--Yes, I'm on that.
F--Although it's hard to move the Detroit schools these
days.
C--Yes, I worked on that through New Detroit.
But I used
to talk to Keast a lot about more cooperation down
there.
One time he started talking about how they lacked
architecture.
They had something like city planning
and we were trying to put something together.
The latest attempt with Wayne --President Gullen came
to me and said there was pressure on him to start a
dental school, but he didn't particularly want to start
a dental school. He thought that our school was
furnishing in response to the needs of this area pretty
well. And he said, "I just want you to know that,
because you might hear that somebody's going to push
for Wayne's dental school as a completion of that
center."

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Carron
I said, "You know, George, it's not going to be
enough for us just to talk. How would you like to
go all the way? We've got to have a whole new plant.
Our plant is worn out. We need about $15 million for
a dental school and the place for that dental school
shouldn't be down on McDougall, it should be in the
medical center.
It should be the University of Detroit
Dental School right in the medical center so that our
dental students get the benefit of the hospital
experience.
They get the benefit of our faculty, get
the benefit of dental research, and the medical school
gets the benefit of dental research. We can work the
whole thing together."
F--Do you think that could work as a contract school?
C--Now wait.
I said, "Nobody is going to believe us
unless we go out and talk to the Legislature together,
not separately, but together." So we went up there and
talked to Gar Lane, talked to several others, and they
said, "Let's get going."
So we got a planning grant--$100,000--and that's what
we're about now.
I've got my planners working with
the Wayne people and getting opinions from the Attorney
General. We can go in a couple of ways.
One would be,
if there's any problem, for the state to buy the land
and build the building and lease it to the University
of Detroit for 100 years.
We think that's the answer.
We put the big clinic in
there. We service an awful lot of poor people through
the clinic every year. We are already built into a
health care building that Wayne's starting to build
now, where we have this family care kind of thing.
It's just a modest kind of clinic.
We are already on Wayne's campus. We're using one of
their buildings to teach basic science, and we're
using their teachers to teach that science on a
contractual arrangement.
So that's where we are on that.
cooperation.

That's pretty good

F--Do you have any insights about why private schools
didn't develop in Michigan and have the same kind

A 312
Carron
of clout that they did in the East or in Ohio, for
instance?
C--I think probably the strength and prestige of the
University of Michigan would have an awful lot to do
with that.
I don’t know too much about Ohio. I know
all about why private education developed and prospered
in New York.
But Michigan, I think, was one factor.
I think they have a fair number of private colleges in
the State of Michigan, something like 30-35.
That's
not minimal.
What's more important is the rate of
decline. At one time there were about 24 percent of
the college-age students in private colleges. Now it's
down to about 14 percent, isn't it, or 12?
F--Yes, and it's

been going down, generally.

C--The obvious factors are the increase of the community
colleges in the state and the development of the
teacher-education schools into full-blown universities
around the state.
I know that Ohio is outstanding and different, has an
awful lot of private schools, but I'm not familiar
with that history.
F--We talked before we started the tape about a lack of
conflict, one toward the other.
In Massachusetts,
for instance, the private schools fought mightily to
prevent the University of Massachusetts from coming
into the urban area.
Private schools never did fight
the growth of public schools in Michigan, that I can
see.
C--Well, Father Steiner used to as kind of a one-man band.
He used to inveigh against the community college plans.
I don't think it was a very useful kind of debate or
argument because he didn't get out with it that much.
But he was very fearful of community colleges taking
away students from us. He was very fearful when they
came in with the U of M-Dearborn.
I worried through
that, too, a little bit because they started a co-op
program, which was our kind of thing.
I've never been aware, unless it was very quiet, of
anybody opposing us, and I've never felt the need to
feel threatened by other public schools.

A 313
Carron
The fact that you can go to Wayne for $700, the fact
that we have 9,000 students paying $2,000--I told the
faculty, you must be doing something right if we can
attract students at those rates. Next year tuition
is going to be $2,100.
F--What do you do with the money that you get?
try to lower the tuition some?

Will you

C--If this total plan comes in, yes. We have quite a
scholarship plan of our own.
I don't look on that as
a problem yet--what will I do with the extra money!
We've got so many things to do here.
See that "Archy
Save" on the end of that building? That's a message
to me. The architecture school is running out of
space and they want to say, save the architects.
I'm
looking for a new building for them now.
We've got about $1 million worth of delayed maintenance
here. Our older buildings are in very bad shape. We're
starting a centennial drive to get a new library, archi­
tecture buildings, and some new recreational facilities,
but that's brick and mortar.
F--But part of the problem that I see with the private
school is that you have to about once every 10-15 years
renew your plant. And you're about 10 years out, aren't
you?
C--Yes, that's right.
F--Are you having a large growth in the third year?
the effect of the community college?

What's

C--It's good. We've had some transfers.
I maintain that
we haven't taken full advantage of it. We've got to
do more earlier in developing those transfers.
But
we've been doing pretty well. That's what I always
thought was the benefit of the community college, that
you'd be filling your upper-division classes.
F--It's my understanding that Michigan State, for instance,
has more "first-time-in-the-university" people in the
third year now than they have in the freshman year.

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Carron
C--It could be.
F--Or if not, the number is amazingly close. That's got
to be a means of lowering unit cost and revivifying
an institution, too.
What about the cooperation with the Protestant sector,
Calvin...?
C--The history of that's all in the Independent Colleges
of Michigan. At one time we had the Catholic Colleges
of Michigan, but when I became chairman of that Board,
I moved that we dissolve it and just be part of the
Independent Colleges.
F--John Gaffney is the head of that group.
isn't he?

He's Catholic,

C--Yes. At the same time that we dissolved the Catholic
Colleges the Protestant group dissolved.
F--Was that about 1966?
C--Something like that.
F--Have you been able to work cooperatively there?
C--With all but Hillsdale.
Hillsdale pulled out of
Independent Colleges because they take the stance
that they don't want state help. There are a couple
in Independent Colleges that have, I guess, a religious
problem.
But they won't pull out, they just won't
accept money if it comes directly from the state.
Andrews University will take the tuition grants but
won't take a building or won't take the degree
reimbursement. Hillsdale takes the stand that they
don't want any part of it and...
F--Before I came to see you I was struck by that because
their president had quite a lot of rhetoric in recent
weeks about the danger of the government.
It sounded
very John Birchish to me.
I wondered if the private sector were afraid of
cooperation and government aid.

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Carron
C--They don't seem to be.
F--Somebody said to me that there's very little difference
between a private school and a public school. They're
both public institutions.
C--I suppose in one sense they're public but that's the
constant problem of private schools--maybe public
schools never have the problem--our identity.
It's
what we talked about before, what made us different
in Catholic and Jesuit [institutions], and made it so
worthwhile.
"Well, you look just like Wayne, I might as well send
my kids down there." We're in the throes of resolving
that and why it is worth the $2,000 to come here.
Is
it just the academic quality or is there some other
dimension that makes this a better place? Some people
say that your school has all the advantages of a large
university because you have all these programs,
doctoral programs, professional schools, but really
you have also the strength and opportunities of a
small college.
Everybody teaches and is a full
member of the faculty. We don't have a lot of
teaching assistants teaching.
I used to think it was a kind of PR but I really
believe that our people spend a lot of time with
students.
I see these relationships.
F--It may be PR, but that certainly was one of the
strengths of the community college, too.
They use the
same arguments.
C--My answer to that is there's a difference and if you
see it, fine, if you don't, you shouldn't be here.
F--We're really talking to you at a very auspicious
moment in a sense.
If the bill is implemented, in a
real sense it will remove some of the real perils
these schools have faced, the question of day-to-day
survival will be behind you and you can get back to
the questions about which a man spends his career:
about enhancement, improvement, and finding new and
innovative ways. You won't have to worry every day
about meeting the back mortgage payment.

A 316
Carron
In a sense the man that will succeed you, and other
private colleges will be looking at probably the most
promising sets of situations since 1950. Do you have
that sense of...
C--Well, I just don't think it's that easy.
I think that
an awful lot of private schools are going to go out of
business.
I still want to ask the question: When we finally get
absolutely competitive, whether students are still
going to really come to this school, whether they
really prefer it, whether they think it's better,
whether they think it's got it's own personality and
identity.
When I've answered that, I suppose the question will
be answered.
I think there might be some private
schools at which you could give it away and they still
wouldn't survive.
F--State schools have that same problem.
C--I know it.
F--Because when they all have grown to copy Michigan, and
try to be identical, there's no reason to go to one
rather than another.
I don't know how to say this tactfully, but my view of
the Eastern Dilemma is that they didn't create a
personality and an institutional style that was
identifiable.
C- -Yes.
F--The next president there will have a very treacherous
and arduous job to create a sense of why you should
go there rather than to some other place.
C--I have a feeling that Kalamazoo College would survive
without state help.
I have a good feeling about that.
I think that state help will just give them a little
extra.
F--It's my understanding they've developed some coopera­
tive arrangements with Western much like yours with

Carron
Wayne, particularly in the hard sciences.
the nursing program that was costly.

They had

Well, thank you very much, Father, for your insights
about the University of Detroit and your observations
about the private sector of higher education.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
JOHN W. PORTER1

F--John, what in your opinion were the reasons that led to
the expansion of higher education in Michigan from 1958
on?
P--I think the principal reason was the expanding desire of
high school students, and others, to seek a higher educa­
tion. Apparently the Legislature was inclined to finance
that type of upward mobility for higher education.
I think the second reason--and I think just as signi­
ficant- -was the movement following the war of community
college growth and development.
So between the community colleges and the baccalaureate
institutions I think you had the makings for expansion
of public higher education.
During this period of time there was not the expansion
in private education.
F--That’s true.
In fact, there was a slight contraction
every year over the previous year in this time.
We built community colleges; we built four-year insti­
tutions; we built a place like Ferris, which had a
vocational and technical constituency; we encouraged
the growth of intermediate districts, and they began
to have vocational constituencies also.
John W. Porter; State Superintendent Public Instruction,
1969; Consultant to Michigan Department of Public
Instruction, 1958-61; Director, Michigan Higher Education
Assistance Authority, 1961-69; Associate Superintendent
for Higher Education, Michigan State Department of
Education, 1966-71.
Interview conducted May 9, 1974.

A 318

I
A 319
Porter
Besides demand, do you think there might have been
some kind of psychological attitude, which I have
called sometimes a Horatio Alger belief, in the
value of education?
P--Well, certainly.
I think the whole premise for the
two points was the concept of Horatio Alger, tied in
with the ingredient that was there in 1958--the
John Dale Russell study and the work that John Jamrich
had done.
That work and those 13 volumes tied in with another
phenomenon--you can't really isolate these, but I
happened to have joined the Department of Education
in 1957 as the first research person, and I'm sure
that Governor Swainson, or at least Williams, iden­
tified this--in 1952 Governor Williams created a
commission on community colleges.
That commission made its report in 1954, sometime about
then. That's why I said the community college movement
really began to take hold [then]. Look back, prior to
1950, and see what happened between 1950 and 1960 in
terms of creation of community colleges --nine of which
were probably too small to have been created.
But more important than that, we've got to realize
that it wasn't until 1955, three years before this
date [1958] that we had the second university in
Michigan. Nobody seems to realize that.
I think the John Hannah movement to get Michigan State
College in 1955 designated as a university was critical.
Following that, you had in 1956 the designation of
Wayne from a city college to a state college.
I don't
quite have the dates here, but you had within a period
of time right around here the other four state colleges,
which were only teacher colleges, designated as
universities.
F--That happened in Con-Con, but it's been my impression
that after John Hannah won the fight over Michigan
State University, that when Con-Con came...
P--It was too late.
F--There was just no energy to fight it.

i

A 320
Porter
P--That's right.

It was too late.

I think that added to the expansion of higher educa­
tion, because you then had alumni who were eager to
get their institutions off and moving; you had the
Horatio Alger thing; and you had several documents,
Williams's commission on community colleges and the
John Dale Russell study, that were saying, "Hey, the
enrollments are going up and w e ’d better be prepared
for it."
I think when you put those three things together, you
have a natural in Michigan.
F--But John, in Ohio they had probably as high a desire.
They didn’t fulfill that need, they created a system
where people could get in but it was hard to stay in.
The law in Ohio said every man and woman could go to
college if they graduated from high school, and then
they ran that system of flunking everybody out.
We didn't seem to do that.

I wonder why?

P--Well, I can't say why, but I think it had something
to do with the personalities that were on the scene
at the time.
I think the egalitarian approach of the late 1950’s
and early 1960's was such that you couldn't get to
the University of Michigan--and you had to get some­
place.
Every local area in Michigan, why, I don't
know, wanted to have its college.
When you look at Ohio I think you have a different
kind of picture.
In Ohio they had a number of private
institutions scattered across the horizon, whereas in
our state we didn’t have that kind of arrangement.
You go back and look at Ohio. You'll see there was a
Youngstown College, there was a Cleveland College...
F--There were lots of small church-related private
schools spread across the land. They had a great
many more colleges than we have in this state; I
still think they do.

A 321
Porter
W e ’ve been talking about some of the factors in this
growth.
Can you think about some other significant
social and economic features?
P--I look back on what happened, not in ’58, but 1960.
Legislation was passed creating the state-guaranteed
loan program--which I was pleased to have set up-which is the first time that the state had adjusted
itself to financial need.
It was only the second or
third state in the nation that had dealt with that.
I think that that grew out of this new egalitariantype of approach where Michigan, which has been
predominantly a blue collar state, was beginning to
respond to the needs of that particular population:
indicating that higher education was desirable and
it ought to be available to the blue collar son and
daughter.
I think that ties right back into [question] number
one. Money was starting to become available for the
blue collar worker as discretionary funds to send
his child off to college.
F--Not many people have talked about that, but that’s
one of the points that has been made that struck
me with the most vigor. After '56 there seemed to
have been an increase in the standard of living so
that discretionary opportunity was available.
Some have talked about the view that Michigan industry
couldn't survive unless it became more technologically
sophisticated, and hence it began to have a desire
[to see higher education expanded]. This is also the
time of the Russian predominance in space.
P--Yes.
No doubt about the fact that Sputnik caused
part of this expansion, and likewise the discretionary
income.
Probably far more important than that--and I think
this sort of ties number one and two together--we
have to realize that even in 197 0, twelve years later
or through a whole decade, half of all the enroll­
ments in higher education in Michigan were in teacher
education.

A 322
Porter
What was happening in 1950 was the start of the baby
boom, which I made reference to before, and this push
on for teacher education.
By changing the teacher
colleges to universities we attracted an overload of
people into the colleges, many of whom were in teacher
education, women primarily, as sort of an insurance
policy.
If someone just goes back and takes a look, the
record shows very clearly that the expansion of
higher education was not in most of the basic areas,
it was predominantly in teacher education.
You had
Northern, Central, Western, Eastern, Michigan State,
and Wayne expanding their teacher-education programs
to the extent that half of all the graduates for the
past eight years have earned
teacher certificates.
F--I wondered about that when I
read--I think it's
Silberman's book. He was talking about higher educa­
tion and statistics came out that three of the ten
largest teacher education institutions in the
United States were in Michigan.
P--Six of the 25 largest teacher-training institutions
in the United States are in Michigan.
We have the
largest teacher-training institution in the United
States, the second largest in the United States, and
four others in the top 25.
Western and Michigan State each year tradeback and
forth on which one's the largest.
Central, Wayne,
Eastern and the University of Michigan are the other
four.
How? That people don't understand.
If you go back
and isolate the data on the program classification
structure and ask the question of what led to the
expansion of higher ed, [you'll find] we didn't have
"an expanse of higher education." What we had in
effect was expansion of teacher education.
F--I wonder why.

2

Charles E. Silberman, Crisis in the Classroom (New York
Random House, 1970), p. 376.

A 323
Porter
P--I think it ties into "how can you attract funds to
an institution without heavy commitment in an area
where there is a relationship between supply and
demand when enrollments are going up, damn near
doubling, in the elementary and secondary schools?"
Where would you put your emphasis if you were a
college president.
F--I see that, but it seems that our supply of teachers
was a national phenomenon, not just a Michigan
phenomenon.
P--But Michigan, I think, because of the leadership that
it had in the colleges of education... I almost said
the athletic arena, which is closely related to
education.
I think a lot of what I said before ties into leader­
ship; where you have education as an easy social,
upward mobile stamp in a highly industrialized, labororiented state.
It seems to me that the response in Michigan was far
greater than it was in many other states and that's
what made Michigan the leading teacher-education
producer in the United States for the past ten years.
F--That may be part of the trouble now.
P--Oh, no doubt about that.
F--It's hard to get institutions to change their markets,
so to speak.
What were the policy objectives that underlay this
expansion?
P--Frankly, I don't think there were any major policy
objectives that underlaid this expansion.
The problem
in Michigan, unlike many other states --although I
haven't looked at many other states--is that the
policies weren't being laid down by a state planning
and coordination agency.
The policies were being
laid down by some very far-sighted, articulate,
powerful people, such as John Hannah and some others.
We had at that time in Michigan some pretty strong
and significant college presidents.
I was commenting

A 324
Porter
to someone the other day that when I began in the
higher education [field] in 1960 we had some of the
giants in the nation with Hatcher, Hannah, Hilberry,
Spathelf, and some others.
Since 1970 not one of
those guys remains.
F--You know, I thought about that when I began this work.
In 1966 when I worked for you, you sent me up to the
north country on an inspection visit.
That was
shortly after Ray Smith^ had taken over.
I went with
Sturtz and Endriss^. I just happened to think as I
began this work that not one of these men is left,
except for Smith.
That was '66 and all of those
incumbents have gone. They're all new people.
P--Everybody's gone. When I began in 1960 all of these
guys had been in their jobs for God knows how long,
all through World War II practically.
Now I look back
and everybody's new; the Flemings, the Whartons.
They
don't know what was taking place back in 1960-61 in
Michigan. We don't have one guy left, not one.
F--I've had trouble, and it's that there's been no
institutionalization of planning.
P--That's right.
F--There's been very few clear-cut documents where people
said, "This is the road ahead, this is what we'll do."
Rather it's happened by forces of grass-roots atti­
tudes, regional civic energy, the power of individual
legislators, and the personalities of educational
leaders. And it's hard to point to, to say, "According
to page 7 of volume 3, this is what we're going to do."
But yet it seems to have had, on the balance, some kind
of symmetry to it.
It all worked out.
P--Well, it did all work out.
You know one way to translate question number 3, in
3

Raymond L. Smith; President, Michigan Technological
University.
^Charles Sturtz and Robert Endriss; Counselors, Bureau
of the Budget, State Board of Education.

A 325
Porter
my opinion--and I'm not certain of this fact but it
ought to be checked out if you're going to do this
history--Michigan is the only state in the nation
that had in its constitution prerogatives for
institutions of higher education.
There's no other state in the nation that embodies
in its constitution the kind of autonomy that Michigan
institutions have. When you have that, if you put the
right kind of visionary, energetic person in, that
wants to build an institution with this egalitarian
approach of the masses, wanting young people to get
an education, you have, in effect, a strange policy
objective for expansion.
F--Strange?
P--I say strange because as long as the populus will
support that, and there's money to finance it, what
you're in effect going to have is an increasing amount
of concentration in those public institutions.
F--As a matter of fact, it struck me that in '58 the
budget for higher education was about $84 million
and in 1970 it was about $264 million.
It strikes me that while the rhetoric is often
passionate, the schools have never really had to
know want or hardship fiscally.
They've been able
to have the resources that they've wanted and been
able to command, and I think in a very generous way.
In spite of the fact that it's always impossible to
get a comparative number, it looks to me like
Michigan's institutions have lived pretty richly
compared to their fellows in other midwestern states.
P--I don't think there's any doubt about that.
Up until recently that's been quite true.
I think
maybe that might be one of the real tough pains that
the 1970's will bring about.
F--Tough pains?

In what way?

P--That if one has to drop from living richly back to
living normally, it's a lot more difficult than if
one has to drop from living normally back to living
a little less than normal, which is what may well

A 326
Porter
happen in a number of other states. But with the
community colleges, and with the new push for aiding
private higher education, and with the whole change
in the attitude of people, this could have tremendous
impact.
It's showing up at Eastern right now.
F--It struck me, in talking with Father Carron, that the
impact of this bill that's been passed to pay a grant
for each degree could have rather immense fiscal
ramifications. Maybe not immense in terms of the
total budget, but it could be a payout of $8 to $10
million.
That would thin the pool.
It would thin
the pool a lot.
Do you have some suspicions that this may give a
chance for private higher education to come back some?
P--0h, yes.
I think this office, through the legislative
appropriations, has sustained private higher education
in Michigan for the past five years.
F--You're talking about the tuition grant program.
P--The tuition grant program, the scholarship program,
right.
F--As I can detect, this was a deliberate public policy
to keep the private sector alive.
P--Absolutely.
F--And the tuition grants and the scholarship grants
were done as mechanisms, strategy...
P--And capitation grants now.
F--And now we have capitation.
I did not notice that there was that energy of
hostility between the private and public sector.
The private sector didn't try to prevent the public
sector from flourishing.
In Massachusetts the strong
private schools prevented the public schools from
coming into the metropolitan area.
I didn't see that
the state schools in Michigan attempted to prevent
the private schools from getting monies, as they
have in some of the western states.
Do you have any idea why that statesmanship came about?

A 327
Porter
P--No, and what you say is true. There was a sufficient
amount of public educational institutional opposition
to these various programs, but once the programs surfaced
to the public arena--that being the Legislature--no public
opposition surfaced.
Frankly, I don't know why, except again I think that
that's part of the unique Michigan scene. There was a
lot of organizational concern--Council of State College
Presidents--hoping such legislation would not go in, as
I recall. But once it got to the public arena, the
opposition didn't take place.
My observation would be that that's because Michigan's
private institutions, although they're not very
powerful individually, are quite powerful collectively
because of their boards of trustees. You just look at
Albion or Adrian or Olivet and see who makes up these
boards. When you add all that up I think you get a
unique phenomena.
F--It may be a strange thing, but I'm quite struck by the
fact that in terms of physical muscle, Michigan's
universities are much more powerful than those in
other states--because of the Constitution and the
alumni.
But I also, in spite of the weak enrollment mixes,
wouldn't want to take on a Calvin, an Albion, a Hope,
or U of D because they have some hold on the spirit
of men.
I think about Hope in a very forceful way.
Governor Williams mentioned the influence that
President Lubbers had.
It strikes me that these men
were influential, and still are.
P--With influential board members you generate quite
influential institutions.
F--I haven't studied that.
I think^I’ll have to go take
a look at who was on the boards.
P--That's the key, and I think that's partly why the insti­
tutions didn't go public.
I suspect that the private
colleges have more influence across the street [at the
State Capitol] than the public institutions if it came
^See Appendix III,

A 328
Porter
to a showdown on any one of these. Y o u ’ve got to
realize that the Gerstackers and the Dow Chemicals
or the Kresges, and the people who give money to
public institutions aren't on public boards.
That's
something people don't realize.
F--They're on private boards.
P--They're on private boards.
If I'm at the University
of Michigan and I want a grant out of Kresge to build
a library or something and I know Kresge's on Albion's
board--which he was at the time--I've got to think
twice before I take a potshot at Albion.
That's a very
interesting phenomenon.
F--That's a good point.
What were the key issues that resulted in partisan and
parochial conflict in the attempts to attain the above
obj ectives?
P

My response is that I can't add any more than I already
have to that question.

F--Let me lead you down the path a little bit, if I may.
What I was thinking about is that there were regional
pressures: Saginaw versus Grand Rapids, Dearborn
versus Oakland, and Flint, and the energy to have
regional institutions.
I was curious if there were
community college fights with four-year schools as
they attempted to make a place
inthe sun for them­
selves.
I'vebeen curious how to really interpret
the Michigan State-University of Michigan conflicts,
to find out how to value them, find out how real they
were.
I have the sense that some of these fights that caught
the public's attention, and caught mine, were a good
deal more ephemeral and less real than they appeared
to be.
P--Well, Jerry, I'm wanting to get through all of these
20 questions.
I don't want to
belabor all of these
but I realize
that I'm one of the few guys that's
been around since 1958 that's looked at this thing
quietly.

A 329
Porter
I think the phenomenon was what you identified in
questions one and two. As I look back on what
happened in 1955, the University of Michigan did
everything that they could to keep Michigan State
University from being designated a university.
And if you saw the paper about that whole branch
business, the University of Michigan proposed that there
be at Saginaw, Grand Rapids, everyplace, a University
of Michigan branch.
They lost, they lost a bitter
struggle. They lost the struggle principally because
of John Hannah.
Once Hannah opened the flood gates,
then the politicians came up and said, you know,
"Let everybody get part of the action.” Before we
could get any planning under way, every public insti­
tution had gotten its foot in the door and had gotten
its name changed.
This all took place by 1958: all the institutions were
universities, except the two that became colleges after
1960. The institutions then pushed so hard--and nobody’s
ever said this before, and I ’m just thinking about it.
It's kind of funny because I was in the Capitol at the
time and listened to the debate.
People tend to think
w e ’re talking about a 40-year history. Hell, we're
talking about taking 40 years and collapsing them into
six years.
F--Yes, a lot happened.
P--The Easterns, Westerns, and the Centrals pushed so hard
between 1958 when they became universities, and 1964
when the State Board came into being, to try to become
miniature University of Michigans that they did not
view the movement by the local constituents to create
community colleges as the kind of political threat
that I think they have now become.
Eastern is a good example.
Eastern now is like a
barricaded lion because Washtenaw is growing at the
freshman and sophomore levels and the U of M has
copped all of their graduate programs.
They've just
got to change their image. What really happened was
a matter of hindsight.
F--I agree with you. I used to say when I worked on the
floor of the Legislature how glad I was that the
community colleges never realized what real strength

A 330
Porter
they had. They could have wiped us off the block,
because there was one in every hill and dale.
P--That's right.
I just don't think the baccalaureate
institutions took time enough to realize what was
going to happen.
Only ten percent of the enrollments
in 1960 were in community colleges.
F--About a third now, isn't it?
P--Oh, no.

57 percent.

F--57 percent of all...
P--57 percent of the freshmen and sophomores.
F--Why that's staggering.
P--I predict that by 1980, 80 percent of all the students
will be enrolled in community colleges.
F--That will be an interesting thing.
P--So you see back here [the attitude was] "create a few
of these little things. We don't want too many
freshmen and sophomores anyway. We want to be the
University of Michigan."
F--What about the policy goal for the destruction of
class and cultural barriers? What do you think about
that?
P--G. Mennen Williams articulated this policy in his
rhetoric.
I think part of the response at both the
community college and baccalaureate level was an
objective to eliminate class and cultural barriers.
F--Let me speculate with you. When John Hannah broke
Michigan in the fight over the university title, he
was able to line up all of the small regional insti­
tutions behind him.
It was Michigan against everybody
else.
It was not really Michigan against Michigan
State.
Michigan State has been regarded as a second-chance
school: a chance for democratic-popularism-kind of
situation.

A 331
Porter
Do you have the sense, John, that this was an objective
that had real wide support?
I think about the community college thing.
That
obviously was another part of that same facet, wasn’t
it?
P--Well, I think that the John Hannah movement, in terms
of question number 5, was more of a destruction of
class and cultural barriers than the initial movement
of the community colleges.
The initial movement of
the community colleges was to develop the transfer
academic program.
What Hannah did, and he did have the support of the
regional institutions, was in effect to marshall the
resources of labor and agriculture.
F--Did you ever wonder how a school so closely identified
with the Republicans was able to make that transition
and embrace labor and be all of a sudden across both
spectrums ?
P--Sure, very easily: because of the agricultural field
extension agent.
F--You think that the fact that they were in every county...
P--Yes. When you get down to the rural Republican farmer,
you don't have that much difference between him and
the common laborer in the factory.
In other words, the transition between the Republican
rural farmer that Michigan State epitomized, and the
guy at Oldsmobile w h o ’s a Democrat, is not that much
different when it comes back to the...
F--...social issues.
P--That’s right.
F--I think that's a very perceptive point.
That really leads to question number 6: popularism in
higher education versus elitism.
I didn't really know
how to separate questions 5 and 6. They're really the
same thing, aren't they?

A 332
Porter
And yet I wonder why Michigan didn't take part of
that, because it's been a flexible institution.
It
allowed itself in some ways to be portrayed as elite.
And yet, if it's elite, it's an extremely broad elite.
There are 40,000 students there.
P--Well, yes. But you've got to realize that Michigan is
the only institution in the state that sets a quota on
the number of entering freshmen: the 2,900 top entering
freshmen anywhere in the United States. Very inter,
esting. People don't realize it; you talk to Alan Smith .
I agree with you, University of Michigan is quite
unique.
For some strange reason they're able to get
kids who tend to be extremely bright, and yet are able
to continue to produce very good undergraduate athletic
components--something that Michigan State can't seem to
do and they don't have the quota on setting the elitism.
Maybe that's something for Cliff Wharton to think about.
I think the University of Michigan could have had the
best of both worlds, but...
F--Do you think it was the personalities on the scene?
P--0h, absolutely. Hatcher epitomized the academic elite
aspects, that the University of Michigan was the insti­
tution and Michigan State was just a cow palace.
Michigan State argued the popularism and responded to
both the labor and to the farmer.
F--0ne of the things that makes it hard for people to see
this is that we don't have a history.
I personally watched Fleming from the first day he
came--I was in the room when Fleming came to the
appropriations committee--and said, "We will no longer
be arrogant. We will consult." I think in a very
subtle and stylish way he's moved the institution a
good deal away from that starchy attitude.
P--0h, yes.
I think Bob Fleming has done a darn good job.
It's very interesting.
It seems to me that you have
in the two institutions now, almost the reverse, but
f\

Allan F. Smith; Vice President Academic Affairs,
University of Michigan.

A 333
Porter
not ingrained, of what we had ten years ago.
You have in Fleming a labor negotiator who knows the
political arena, who's trying to move the institution
back more toward the kind of image that the legislators
would support. You have at Michigan State a true
academician who wants to move Michigan State to be a
great institution academically, but I think who also
wants to keep Michigan State back there with the people.
You have a funny kind of juxtaposed position, similar
to the Hatcher-Hannah position of the fifties and
sixties.
F--It's kind of curious, isn't it.
I'm beginning to detect-although this is outside of the area of the study-certain kinds of energies between the two schools, certain
areas of noncooperation in a very genteel way, in a very
private way. They're beginning to occur because I think
they're both striving for a new constituency.
P--That's right.

They're going to have to.

F--Michigan State's moving much closer to the Michigan
position, and Michigan's beginning to drift back toward .
the State position.
It may be that there's a need for
balance, but it's going to be curious to watch that
phenomenon.
You've raised the point about the community college.
That's going to change a lot, isn't it?
P--That's right, plus the fact that neither of them has
the population base that Wayne has. Wayne really
hasn't figured out how to pull off its "thing" yet.
F--But if it does...
P--If it does, it's "watch out, baby."
know how to do it.

They just don't

F--People forget that something like 95 percent of the
population of Michigan lives in only seven counties.
What about the vocational and occupational training
objectives in the enhancement of higher education?

A 334
Porter
P--I think that the pressure put on by the State Board
of Education and by the Legislature, coupled with the
support that’s coining from business and industry, has
really given this new importance.
It's going to have,
I think, a major impact upon not only the public
institutions but also the private.
F--I’ve heard a disappointment when I ’ve talked to key
opinion leaders.
They have talked very strongly about
the desire to upgrade the skills of our people because
of--they haven't expressed it--what I sense is their
suspicion of the value of the whole assembly line
process.
They wanted to create more skills where
people have more of a sense of personal accomplishment
and achievement.
Their expectations that Ferris or even community colleges
would fulfill this has been somewhat disappointing
because they sort of implied that all the schools tried
to follow the University of Michigan model.
P--Well, they did, the first ten years.
F--That’s why it’s been cited to me that the area vocational
school, which they regard patently as a duplication of
other functions, has been created to fill a need outside
of the baccalaureate stream.
They made some distinctions
between professional vocational education and sort of
hands-on vocational education.
It’s been said to me
that the agenda is not yet done in this area.
P--It’s only beginning.
That was my comment in regard to
question number 7. I don’t think number 7 can be put
in the same context as the first six questions because
number 7 is part of a new agenda which, in my opinion,
has just begun to emerge during this decade.
F--What is that new agenda?
P--The new agenda, I think, is related very closely both
to the higher education amendments of 1972 and to the
movement of the State Board of Education to create
77 area skill centers for secondary students.
Once
those area skill centers produce secondary students
with skills tied into job placement, that’s going to
have a tremendous impact upon the baccalaureate
institutions and community colleges.

A 335
Porter
And third, it's tied into the whole concept that I've
been pushing and the Legislature supports, and that's
giving a differential for vocational education. Even
though some of the people you've interviewed have some
displeasures, you'll never get any institution creating
vocational and occupational training objectives until
there's an incentive for it.
F--I would agree with you.
There was a lot of support,
I believe, in 1968-69 when the language was put in the
bill to create the incentive and the differential.
It
wasn't something that was staff-oriented.
When the
staff pointed it out there was support across a thousand
constituency boundaries.
The most astonishing kinds
of people came out.
I can recollect when a man came to me and said, "I
represent the fisheries." A city boy like me, I'd
never heard of the fisheries. He wanted that differ­
ential because he said they needed it in order to train
people.
P--That's right.

That's a new phenomenon.

F--What about the growth of culture and the arts? Did
that have importance in the dialogue over higher
education?
P --Insignificant.
F--I've only seen culture and the arts used once, cleverly,
in the enhancement of an institution.
That was Woody
Varner at Oakland.
He built a very curious kind of
institution where he tied the automotive society into
the theater and tied Reuther in at the other end.
P--Yes. Woody initially built an institution based upon
the culture and the arts and it fell flat on its face.
Flat on its face.
They had to redesign the whole
institution.
F--That's O'Dowd's^ trouble, isn't it? They have gone
through the transition of taking an elite institution
and making it into a blue-collar one.
7

Donald D. O'Dowd; President, Oakland University, 1971-

A 336
Porter
That might have been inevitable since even though the
address says Rochester they were three-and-a-half blocks
from Pontiac.
P--That’s right, that's exactly right.
That is very
perceptive.
They put together an institution for the
culture and the arts on the old Wilson estate which
should have been responding to the city needs of
Pontiac.
F--What about the position of labor in regard to higher
education?
P--Very supportive. That's why we were number one.' You
had guys like Staebler and Reuther. You know, the
giants of the nation were around here.
All these common laborers, whether you were black or
blue or pink, made the same amount of money, and the
aspiration was that "I want my kid to be able to do
better than I can do." I think that’s the key.
F--I wondered about this, John. You have the sense that
labor in many other parts of the country was concerned
with lunch-pail issues, bread-and-butter issues. Here
they’ve built an interest across the whole spectrum of
government.
The UAW is interested in social programs,
pensions, and they're interested in education on a
very broad state basis.
I often wondered if you could
ascribe that to the vision of the men themselves.
There was Bluestone; there was Woodcock; there were
the Reuthers, all three of them; and there was Gus
Scholle.
P--Jimmy Hoffa.
F--Jimmy Hoffa,

Don Stevens.

P--Yes. You’ve
got to realize something on question
number 9--Michigan is unique. You've got to remember
that Michigan is the only state in the nation where
we equalize the opportunity of the common man around
a common productivity--the automobile --which in the
1940's and 1950’s became in effect the thing that
made America what it is in 1970. Why the hell were
we building highways? We didn't build highways to
walk on, we built highways because we got General
Motors, we got Ford, and we got Chrysler.

A 337
Porter
These guys, I don't think they planned it. They're
brilliant, but I don't think they planned it. These
guys created in Michigan the standard of living for
the nation, which was high. Once you have done that,
then you look around for some of the social benefits:
welfare plans, retirement plans, education....
I sat down with some Democrats because I was involved
with these guys at that time.
They had it made
because all they had to do was negotiate with General
Motors and the whole Michigan economy was adjusted.
No other state could do that because in other states
they've got diversity of enterprise.
So once they got General Motors to say, "Yes, we're
going to give everybody $5,500," and I can remember
this one quite well, the question became, "Now, what
do we have to do once we get the $5,500?" Walter
Reuther said, "Well, geez, we've got to kind of do
some other things.
You know, education, retirement...."
I think that's really the key.
F--You had the social engine here.
P--That's right, and that ties into question number 10.
F--What about the position of industry in regard to
higher education?
P--Supportive.
F--I wondered why.
P--I don't know.
F--If you talk to Williams he's still much marked up and
battered by all the grief he had with industry over
taxes. You know, the foolish rhetoric that they were
going to move the Flint automotive factories down to
Mississippi or something if taxes were increased.
In
the taxation committee they beat his brains out.
P--That's right.
F--Yet they never seemed to fight against the expenditure
level, they never fought higher education. When I look

A 338
Porter
at the kind of committees that we had--Governor
Romney's Blue Ribbon--we had people from Whirlpool,
from GM, and from Chrysler.
They always seem to give
some of that civic energy. Not, however, like labor,
John.
P--No, they weren't like labor.
F--Labor fought for state issues, these men were more
localized.
Guys fought in Saginaw for their school,
for their community.
Ford guys fought for Dearborn
as an outlet for themselves in their community.
P--And that's one of the reasons why we were able to get
the community college movement off the ground. You
look at any community college and look at what was
behind it and it was an industry. Just look at theg
names, Battle Creek was Kellogg, Alpena was Besser,
Flint was Mott. You just go down the list.
F--That's a perceptive point.
P--Dearborn was Ford.
You just look at where the com­
munity colleges were started and look at how they got
under way and you see behind them industry.
F--Virtually in every one. That's true.
I hadn't
thought about that.
I'm too close to those, John.

g

P--Northwestern was Les Biederman , a millionaire.
You look at what happened and then you will find out
who was sitting at the desk invisible.
You'll see a
millionaire business man or industry of some kind
behind the community college movement of the 1950's...
F--It didn't necessarily have to be a hard industry, you
see. Biederman, for instance, was radio.
God, that
radio was a tough act because he had, what, the Paul
Bunyan network?
g

Jesse H. Besser; President, Besser Manufacturing
(concrete); Founder of Besser Foundation and Besser (Jesse)
Fund, Inc.
9
Les Biederman; President, Midwestern Broadcasting
Company; Member, Citizens Advisory Committee for Higher
Education.

A 339
Porter
There's a perfect case. Nobody wanted, as I recollect,
the Naval Academy, but nobody wanted to say "no" either.
I'm not sure to this day whether that was a right
decision, but when that train came through, everybody
stood aside, you and I, and everybody on the committee.
P--I talked to Les a long time about that one, but...
F--Ok, but I think it's a perceptive point about the role
of what you call the invisible men at the table.
P--Industry tended to put their emphasis locally.
F--Do you think you can make a distinction, John, between
industry and commerce?
P--I can't.
I could, but I don't think that there's
significant difference.
I'd tie commerce into Detroit
Edison and Consumers Power and companies of that stature.
F--I thought about Seidman and Heavenrich coming from a
slightly different base.
I wasn't sure of that, but
I thought I'd ask.
I can't find it.
P--No, I don't think they were.
Frankly, my perception
is that commerce--the Chamber of Commerce versus big
business--just wasn't there.
F--What about the position of agriculture?
P--I think agriculture, in the final analysis, in merging
with labor is what pulled off public higher education
in Michigan in the fifties.
F--Why are they invisible then, John? Nobody talks about
it. Nobody says much about it.
I think you're right.
P--Well, you've got to go back and look at what the Farm
Bureau was doing all during this time.
I don't know why that's the case. That's right, they
did not surface as a very visible [force], but it
would never have happened without Farm Labor.
F--01c, and I think about the Minnesota name for their
political party, the Democratic Farm Labor Party.
In
fact, I believe we sort of created that kind of thing,
but we didn't use the title. When Governor Williams

A 340

Porter
talked he mentioned John Laughton and the Michigan
Manufacturers Association and what a truly old-style
boss he was. People mention McKay in Grand Rapids.
Nobody talks about agriculture and yet I have the sense
that the way this state is constructed--agribusiness and
the fact that the Michigan Legislature was unbalanced in
favor of rural interests until 1965...
P--It would never have happened without agriculture.
F--I'm dealing with '58 to '70, but most of the expansion
was under way by 1965. When the State Board came, it
really came into existence in 1965, it was too late.
P--It was all locked up.
F--So agriculture has to be important.
I can't find its trail.

I don't know why

P--Well, that's because you didn't have any giants on the
scene. What you had was a coalition, a very powerful
coalition, but no giants. All you had to do was to
read the Constitutional Convention minutes to see how
powerful agriculture was in the background.
F--But again no personality.
P--But no personality. The personalities all hung around
labor and industry and education. The Alvin Bentleys,
the John Hannahs, and the George Romneys were the...
F--I've had only one insight into this, John, and I'll
share it with you.
Jim Farnsworth, who was at Con-Con and is now ViceChairman of the Appropriations Committee, said he had
met Dr. Hannah forty years back when John had come to
judge a chicken contest of some sort. He said this
was a man who was interested and chatted with him.
John must have gone to a lot of those things over the
years.
They joke about John F. Kennedy having gone to every
bar mitzvah in Massachusetts. Maybe John went to every
chicken-judging.

A 341
Porter
P--I think he probably did.
I think that's very
interesting.
That ties back into what I was saying
about Michigan State having married labor and agri­
culture.
I think John Hannah wrapped the agriculture
people up so nicely that they didn't have to talk
because he was in effect "their" farmer.
They'd bring the farmers over there every spring,
and they had the Future Farmers of America tied in
with the Department of Agriculture. Half the people
in the Department of Agriculture teach out there.
I
just think that...
F--They're tied into your department too.
P--Oh, hell yes.
F--Don't you have programs inside Ferris Crawford's
organization for Future Farmers of America?
P--Vocational education, sure.
F--Vocational ed., so they got tied in there too.
P--Oh sure, very powerful.
If you rock the boat, they
just have to flex their muscle, but so far they
haven't had to. Frankly, there's been nothing to
hurt them.
F--What were the pressures and influences in the determin­
ation of public policy from the federal government, if
any?
P- -None.
F--I want you to know why I asked the question.
I wasn't
going to put it in.
I talked to my major professor
and he said, "Well, let's just ask, because look at
our social policy.
For every buck the State of Michigan
has got for welfare or human services, the Feds have
wrapped 95 requirements around it."
It seems that the money that came for research, that
came for biological sciences, that came for construc­
tion, and that came for student aid, came with very,
very few constraints.

A 342
Porter
How much, discretionary power did you have in the
allocation of the HEFA grants? You were the head
of that organization.
P--That's right.

All [the discretionary power] we wanted.

F--How did you plan that? Senator Lane talked about how
they had a subtle policy of attempting to enhance the
private schools by holding back the construction from
year to year of a state project so that a private
college could get a grant by coming up to the fore.
P--Well, if that was happening it certainly was awfully
quiet because it was a matching program. The only way
a public institution could participate would be for
Lane to give them the matching money. Whereas, in the
case of the private institutions they could get their
money through their private forces, however they wanted
to raise it.
But I don't think the federal government was very
influential at all.
The first grant didn't take place
until 1964 with the HEFA Commission. We were well down
the pipe by then.
F--We were down the pipe by then for what?
P--Well, of having our colleges and universities well
established.
F--And pretty well constructed too.
P--Pretty well constructed.
F--As a matter of fact, from '64 to '68 not that many
buildings were built in public-sector institutions.
P--They're going to have a hell of a time keeping them
full.
F--What was the nature of the regional and local pressures
to expand higher education in one location rather than
another? Do you have some observations about that?
P--Well, yes.
This has been one of the real sore points
that we grappled with.
I think we won, but it wasn't
easy.
Let me just communicate that in two different
directions.

A 343
Porter
The regional and local pressures to expand community
colleges were based upon some individual, or some group
of individuals, that had a vision. Their area had to
have a community college.
The record doesn't show-and you’re right about no history--that the State Board
of Education denied nine community colleges between
1965 and 1970: Cheboygan, Owosso, Lenawee, Ottawa, Iron,
Dickinson, the one around Cadillac, and there's two
others.
Nine of these community colleges the State
Board got beaten up on because the people felt that
they just had to have that.
Cass County-Allegan, you remember that one we turned
down because the people said that the next-door
neighbors have got one of those things and we want one.
F--That's what I mean by civic energy.
P--That's right, and you couldn't convince them. Michigan
is steeped in local control, but nobody knows what that
means.
I think we won another major battle, and I give
the State Board credit for this, too, in getting Michigan
State and Michigan Tech to split off the Sault and
Oakland.
I look back over the record and the only area the State
Board went into--and incidently this was right before
my time--where they bombed out was with the University
of Michigan.
There's no doubt in my mind that the
State Board was on the right track.
The problem was
Mr. Mott tied into the money to establish the Children's
Hospital at Ann Arbor.
I don't know if you know the
record of it.
So I would say that when you look behind what was going
on, there's usually a person or a group of people that
really wanted something.
That really affected the
whole system.
F--I specifically asked this question because in my
dissertation proposal, as you may have noticed, I
said I'm going to consider the Davis report.
P--Right, I saw that.
F--In 1964 the State Board comes to power, the first one.
It comes with the constitution of some ambiguity.
It
also comes, in my opinion, and I'm going to ask your

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Porter
response to this, when the Democrats in that unexpected
Goldwater landslide won eight seats. The state didn't
change its political makeup, it just voted for an
occasional figure.
It still went back to its rugged
independence and its middle course.
People like Briggs and Bentley didn't make it to the
Board.
I thought that probably weakened the Board in
the first place. You started off with probably four
Democrats of talent and four whom they had not expected
ever to elect.
Do you concur with that?
P--I think it's safe to say that the State Board that
came into existence did not have the experience in
higher education that the constitutional framers had
hoped the first board would have. Nor did the Board
represent both sides, and therefore they were very
disadvantaged.
F--I asked the question, "Why did the branch-campus
system fail?" It strikes me, from what I've been able
to deduce, that the State Board picked the fight and a
strong sentiment of opinion made people say, "Well,
this is the end of that." It cut that energy out.
People didn't go to Port Huron, they didn't go to
Saginaw, they decided not to go to Grand Rapids, and
the like, and more regional institutions could develop.
I often wondered if one of the reasons for the failure
of the State Department of Education to have the real
influence in the coordination of education was that
they took on Mr. Mott, they took on Michigan, they
took on Gar Lane.
In that fight, even though you won,
you lost.
P--I don't think it was the Department of Education because
you've got to realize, Jerry, that in 1964 and 1965 when
the new State Board of Education came into being, there
was no department of education. The fight was lost
before the State Department of Education was created.
You see, from January 1, 1965 until July 1, 1965, which
included the critical period in April when the position
statement was written, you had the Superintendent of
Public Instruction, Lynn Bartlett, a lame-duck elected
official. The State Board was wanting to exert their

__

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Porter
responsibilities starting January 1 for education, and
Lynn Bartlett in office was not willing to give up his
elected responsibility. We drifted during that period
of time.
Then, from July 1, 1965 until July of 1966, we had an
acting superintendent in the name of Alex Kloster.
There still was no department of education.
If you'll recall, at that time I became the first head,
we then went out and created our Bureau out on Grand
River [Avenue]. During that whole time there was no
department of education.
F--Ok, now you've confused me. You're saying there was
no Bureau of Higher Education.
When I came to work
for you and we went from the Pruden Building to Grand
River there were only like three employees.
P--That's right.
F--But that was going to be the Bureau that...
P--That was going to be the Bureau that was to be created.
What happened was we had almost lost the battle of
planning and coordination before the Bureau had gotten
under way.
F--I'm glad you refreshed my memory.
I wasn't thinking
about the bureaucratic and staff part, although it is
certainly true that all the policy-makers can go
nowhere without having adequate staff.
P--And they didn't have it. The policy-makers went some­
place without the backup material and got out there and
the limb got sawed off. There was just no way to heal
it back. We're now, hopefully, in the process of
healing it back but it takes...
F--It's taken time.
So you wouldn't ascribe as much damage to the State
Board, as I have suggested, in the fight over Flint?
P--Well, let me put it this way.
I don't think the fight
over Flint was as damaging as was the after-effect. We

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Porter
went in to fight a skirmish and in the process of
stalemating on the skirmish, or losing it, we in
effect didn't have any troops to do the job.
F--You could never get another position from the committee?
P--That's right, that's where it was.
F--I guess what I've been trying to suggest is that in
stalemating on the Flint issue it appeared to the
institutions that branches would be too much of an
expenditure of their goodwill and capital to be worth
the fight. After Flint we've never had another branch
campus.
P--That's right.
F--It doesn't seem to me that there ever will be.
P--Oh no, not now. Plus the fact that from 1955 to 1969
the State Board worked very cooperatively to spin two
of the four branches off.
F--It's not impossible at all to see a day when the
University of Michigan at Dearborn, perhaps within
five or six years, could be established as an independ­
ent unit.
P--By 1980 Flint and Dearborn will be separate institu­
tions.
I have no doubt about it.
F--I have some suspicion that Flint will come a little
tougher than Dearborn.
P--With Mr. Mott gone, and with the new political climate
on the scene in November, that could go very rapidly.
F--I think that it's worth observing that Michigan seems
to be allowing these institutions to function far more
autonomously than ever before.
I wouldn't want to say
independently, but one heck of a lot differently than
in the old days.
I have asked you, in many ways, why in your opinion an
institutional system for the coordination of higher
education did not come about after '64? Do you want
to add much to that?

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Porter
P--Well, I think that there were basically three reasons
it didn't come about. As I reflect on what we're now
doing (I just had a meeting of higher education this
morning), the primary reason it didn't come about was
that--and this I hold the responsibility of the State
Board and the people who were in these offices--we
didn't have a game-plan on what planning and coordin­
ation meant.
In fact, we've only begun to put together a rational
gestalt of a game-plan in the past 18 months.
Even
the council on post -secondary education--you've seen
the green book and the white book on that--we've got
a new state-aid bill for higher education and we've
got 20 position papers which state policy objectives.
Quality of access, freedom of choice, and things, are
beginning to move.
So I would say that one of the big reasons was that we
didn't have any game-plan.
There were no game-plans
anyplace in the United States, basically because this
was a new philosophy.
That was the first fault.
F--You never could handle a fight because you never had
a choice.
P--No.
There was no real rationale for spinning off the
institutions because there was no long-range vision
of where we were going.
The second was--you've already identified it--the
unfortunate makeup of the State Board. We've got to
admit it, the State Board had two things going against
them.
One was they were all Democratic--with a rural
Republican-controlled legislature which was constantly
against any Democratic-kind of process, who were
threatened by the Constitution creating this new
autonomous agent.
I was just reading a letter from Frank Kelley, the
Attorney General, who gave the State Board some broad
powers in a letter to Ed Robinson in April of 1965,
but he didn't have the people on the Board, the
Bentleys, the Briggs, or the people who could command
the attention of the state political figures.

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F--I think about a guy that nobody much talks about, like
Roscoe Bonisteel--or that kind of a guy--behind the
scenes, a powerful attorney.
Those were the kind of
people you needed.
P--We needed a Roscoe Bonisteel, we needed a Gene Powers.
Now the third thing--and it seems to me there are only
three things that brought this about--I don't think
the institutions would have anything to do with it, if
I see what's going on now, because they didn't do any
planning themselves.
They were all running in different
directions.
The third one is that the Governor and the Legislature
in Michigan just can't seem to get together.
I have
never been to anyplace where the Legislature seems to
want to exert....
In almost an appetite-kind of way,
they get so much pleasure out of being wined and dined
by the institutions.
It's almost, I don't know what
it is, but it's the strangest kind of thing.
Illinois
didn't have this.
So it seems to me that with those three things going
on, with the Legislature not willing to take any advice
from the state agency or from the governor, and wanting
to get in there and find out themselves....
In other words, someone's sitting over here and says,
"Hey, I want to know what's happening." If I'm a
John Hannah out there, the way to do it is go down and
take those guys out, wine and dine them, and really let
them know what's going on.
At Michigan's institutions, such as President Ed Harden
of Northern Michigan University, these guys just wined
and dined and I think whetted the appetites of the
Legislature, the appropriations committee people
primarily, to make them very powerful individuals.
And that's something you just don't want to give up.
F--I understand that perhaps better than most.
P--That's right.
F--In Michigan we seem to have a condition where the
executive power has been seriously curbed by the

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Porter
Legislature.
I don’t know that it exists in other
states in the Union.
In fact, I suspect that it
exists in almost no state except Michigan.
The
legislative power is equal to the executive power,
whereas in a place like Iowa the legislature comes in
three months and they’re nowhere.
P--Not only Iowa but several of our more populous states.
They don’t work like our Legislature works.
F--There's always somebody around.
Is there ever a day
when you don't have a legislative inquiry about
something?
P--They've got good, competent staffs.
Even with the kind of board that I thought would have
been needed in higher ed.; with that kind of legislative
makeup, not taking what the governor says and wanting
to do their own work; with the constitutionally estab­
lished institutions; higher education is going to be
hard to plan and coordinate.
F--Do you think there's any possibility of a state board
for higher education, with an adequate staff, in
leaner money times?
P--I think that would be a very serious mistake.
You see, if one looks down the road, one will see that
higher education is moving more toward being egalitarian,
responding to the needs of adults and lifelong learning,
and less and less toward the old elitism.
The secondary
schools and the community colleges are also moving in
that same adult framework.
To bring in a fourth agent of government to try to do
that I think would create more problems than it's worth.
I think there's need for some kind of a commission for
post -secondary education, but I don't think we need a
constitutionally established body.
I think that would
just confound the problem.
F--In any case, you suspect that it's going to be right
hard to manage?
P--Yes.

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Porter
F--John, who were the key opinion-leaders in this period?
Certainly you have to say the governors.
P--The Senate appropriations chairmen: Porter, Beadle,
Zollar, and Lane.
I think several of the university
presidents were.
F--You mentioned some like Hannah, Hatcher, Spathelf.
P--Harden.

Hilberry wasn’t too influential.

Jim Miller.

F--Any House members?
P--Well, you know, the House....
F--It seems to me--this is the trouble with something on
tape--that the school-aid bill has always had a greater
degree of knowledge, support, and strength in the House,
and higher education in the Senate.
P--Yes.
I'm not talking about in the past several years,
I'm talking about since 1958.
I just believe that
Speaker Ryan, Copeland's committee, and all of the
powerful House people, have been more elementary and
secondary oriented.
The people who have been wined
and dined and have developed stature in higher educa­
tion have all been in the Senate.
In fact, not even
in the Senate Education Committee, they've been all on
the Appropriations Committee.
I think that's because
of the capital outlay as well as appropriations
committees.
F--Capital outlay was an impressive unit, wasn't it?
P--Yes.
F--Anybody else you'd mention behind the scenes? Other
people I should look to besides some of the presidents,
some of the legislators...?
P--...and governors.
Well, certainly I think you might
well want to look to some of the people in labor. Don
Stevens I think would be someone that you might...
F--Right. We've discussed people like Stevens, Bluestone,
Woodcock, and Reuther.
They were important.
P--I think there are a few people like Mott. You wouldn't
believe this but the Motts and the Les Biedermans had

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Porter
a hell of an impact on higher education.
Les Biederman
literally ran the community college movement from 1950
to 1956, single-handedly. Nobody knows that.
F--No, I guess I didn't know that, but I could see his
energy when he was running around...
P--I think the other thing that you ought to be aware of,
I don't think as far as power is concerned, but I think
the superintendent of public instruction.
Lynn Bartlett
is dead, and therefore you can't tap him, most of your
study is during Lynn Bartlett's era. Lynn Bartlett was
superintendent of public instruction from 1957 to 1965.
That's over half of your study.
The reason I mention that was, you remember that during
that whole period of time the four teacher colleges
were under the supervision of Lynn Bartlett and the
State Board.
There were no separate boards.
Don't
forget that. There was not a board for a state college
until 1965. There aren't fifty people in the state that
remember that.
F--Well, thank you very much.
P--My pleasure, my pleasure.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
CHARLES ANSPACH1

F--In your lifetime you've seen the whole higher education
enterprise in Michigan built, and you were quite important,
valuable, and crucial at the Constitutional Convention.
It's not for you to say, but others have said that.
What in your opinion, Dr. Anspach, were the reasons that
led to the expansion of higher education in Michigan
from 1958 on?
A--From 1958 on? Well, it starts back with Governor Kelly
after the war when the vets started to come back.
Governor Kelly called us together--I remember him very
well pounding the table--and said, "Build and make room
for these students. They need the advantages of educa­
tion, build and equip.
If you don't have enough money
come back and the Legislature will appropriate the next
year to add on." So the building program started in
that period.
Along with the building and the influx of students came
the self-liquidation project. That program came out of
the Ann Arbor Trust with hundreds of millions of dollars
in bonds for dormitories.
F--You think that, besides the veterans coming back, the
significant contributions of Earl Cress of Ann Arbor
Bank and Trust were crucial to create that impetus to
build?
A--Yes, because Earl Cress was very aggressive with his
board in meeting the need.
I think they were wise
Charles L. Anspach; President, Central Michigan University,
1939-59; Dean of Administration, Michigan State Normal College,
Ypsilanti, 1934-35, and Head, Department of Education, 1930-34;
President Emeritus, Ashland College, 1935-39; Member, Board of
Regents, Eastern Michigan University, 1964-67.
Interview
conducted May 20, 1974.
A 352

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Anspach
enough to foresee a great opportunity in business.
we had a combination of motives.

So

I ’m not sure that the Ann Arbor Trust initiated the idea.
The University of Michigan built many housing units
through the self-liquidating program with the aid of the
Ann Arbor Trust, so the program might have been a
University of Michigan proposal. Michigan State University
also was active in developing the plan and other state
institutions joined the plan.
The State of Michigan was to build the instructional
facilities, and the colleges and universities were to
build the housing and some recreational facilities through
self-liquidation without state obligation. The board of
directors of the Trust Company, including such persons as
William Habel, responded well to the program.
F--Bill Habel?
A--Bill Habel. When he was in our area he was assistant
manager of Saginaw Steering; he later became manager of
the Willow Run transmission plant, and was on the board
of the Ann Arbor Trust.
There were a number of individuals
of that caliber so really it’s pretty hard to separate the
factors instrumental in the development of the program.
I think we had these two factors: the need for facilities
and a good business enterprise which knew its way around
with the banks and particularly with the insurance
companies.
They certainly had a very fine entree with
insurance companies to sell the bonds.
One thing that made the bonds sell very well was the
general standing of the institutions. And the fact that
the graduate programs at the four teachers' colleges
were under the University of Michigan at that time. All
this together, I think, made a very good setup and
created confidence in the bonds.
F--What were the social and economic factors that led to
this significant growth?
A--Well, as I recall, business was good and the state treasury
was in good shape. The graduate program started in 1930
and--I came here in '39--there were good business periods
all through the thirties. Economic and social conditions
were poor and then good.

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Anspach
F--So money was there....
A--Money was there and also the same force as after World
War I when the enrollment in high school shot up because
people saw the need of high school education. After
World War II we had the same thing happening in higher
education.
F--There was obviously some kind of new attitude when
people began to think higher education had value. They
believed that they could aspire to it.
A--That is right. At that time I think there was a great
deal of emphasis on the fact, "Well, I want my son and
my daughter to have a better opportunity than I had.
I didn't go to college, but I want them to go to
college." So you had that attitude.
F--Let me ask you a little about that.
I'm the first member of my family to go to college.
When I grew up, people just didn't imagine they had the
chance to go to college, it was outside the ken of
working-class folk. After the war, the GI Bill, people
began to believe that there was a place.
Why do you think that whole attitude changed? People
began to believe that higher education was available
to them and they wanted it. That has to be one of the
strengths of....
A--Well, that's true.
I think one reason is that during
that period our publications and the commencement
speakers fired away on this idea--you still see them
occasionally--that if you had this much education, this
was your life income; this much education, that was your
life income.
People had several thoughts. They felt they should have
the opportunity and "here's the opportunity to get out
of my particular line to do it." And also labor at that
time wasn't paid the wages that they're paid now.
We were also moving into a period of industrial and
professional expansion.
The jobs for unskilled labor
were drying up. Education now became a requirement for
higher standards of living.

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Anspach
F--That's true.
What about the policy objectives that underlaid this
expansion? You could see Williams, Swainson, Romney,
and Milliken.
You know Romney well.
A--I knew Romney well, and I knew Governor Milliken when he
was a youngster.
It's an interesting happening. When I
Ypsilanti, Eastern practically covered
and northern parts of the state in its
Central gave only one extension course

first went to
the whole eastern
extension program.
in the field.

I taught two courses at Traverse City, one in philosophy
and one in sociology. At noon on Friday EMU would take
me to Plymouth.
I'd take the C § 0 to Grand Rapids and
then the Pennsylvania to Traverse City.
I'd get there
a little before dinner.
I'd have dinner, and then Mrs. James Milliken and Mrs. Titus-C. P. Titus was the conservation man who did a great deal
of popular writings in that period--and a Mrs. Thrilby
(her husband was a prominent physician and surgeon in
town), these three took my course in sociology and would
take me to one of their homes for a discussion period.
We became very well acquainted.
F--Mr. Milliken's mother?
A--Yes, she was the Governor's mother.
I'd get in there on
Friday night and either the Millikens
or the Tituses would
pick me up. We would go out to their house and sit around
and talk Friday night.
Saturday morning we had the class
and Saturday night I'd come back down to Ypsilanti.
This was the start of my relationship as friends with the
Millikens.
The Governor's father became Senator, and
Governor Milliken's grandfather, President Grawn, was
president of this institution [Central Michigan University].
So there was a natural relationship with Bill when he was
just a kid.
I knew him but not well.
But for years and
years the Milliken family, the seniors and myself, were
good friends.
F--So the policy objectives were to expand the whole base of
education.

Anspach
A--Right.
I think maybe you have to go back to Michigan
State in the 1860’s: the land grant institution pro­
viding the opportunity for an individual to go to school
at low tuition. You see, at one time the tuition in
these teacher colleges was $10 a quarter; three quarters,
$30 a year. That was it.
F--Did people like Romney have the specific desire to make
schools available for the poor?
A--Well, I don't know exactly.
I would say that he did, in
the matter of the common run.
I don't know as I would
say the poor over those of moderate means or the wealthy.
But he believed in education for all people.
F--Well, you see the expansion.
the size of Central in 1939?

Look at Central.

What was

A--In 1939, when I came here, about 1,000 students.
F--And today it's...
A--...about 14,300 students.
F--About 14,300 today?
A--When I was at Eastern Michigan in 1930-35 the enrollment
was 2,200. That was the largest one of the four schools.
Western had 1,800, this school had about 700 or 800, and
Marquette had around 400.
F--So the sizes of these institutions are just fantastic
compared to what anybody thought they would ever be.
A--That's happened all over the United States.
I think some
of the influence that affected us affected the institu­
tions in other states. Practically all of the normal
schools became teachers' colleges, then they became state
colleges, and a number of them are now universities.
But
not as large as we are in our expanded program, or not as
large in facilities, extension courses, and curricula as
Michigan State.
F--When Michigan State won the title of University, it pretty
much made it clear that there were going to be other
schools with that title.
A--That's correct, you're right.
At that particular period--if I may reminisce a bit here-we remember that Michigan State lost the first time they

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Anspach
came up for a change of name in the Legislature. At
that time, then, we did not try. The first time we
came up, it was about 1939.
We had just started a graduate program with the
University of Michigan. Under the State Board all the
work could be taken on the campus of one of these four
schools, with the exception of the last six weeks which
had to be done at the University of Michigan.
Then the
diploma was granted indicating that the major portion
of the work was taken at Eastern or Central or wherever
it was, and that the degree was granted by the University
of Michigan.
Western was the first one to break the affiliation.
I
would guess in five years--I'm not sure of that date-CMU went independent.
There was quite a bit of discussion and the Governor-you mentioned the Governor--you could see the Governor
practically any time. That's one advantage we've had
in Michigan. We've had no difficulty seeing a governor
about educational problems.
Governor Williams called the presidents of the four
colleges and the University of Michigan together-because we were breaking from the University of
Michigan--to discuss whether we were capable of doing
graduate work.
We were because of the fact that all of the people who
taught courses at the graduate level had to be approved
by the graduate faculty of the University of Michigan.
A special department, say, mathematics, approved that
particular person. The catalogs were published as
bulletins from the University of Michigan listing people
on our faculty that were approved for giving graduate
work.
I presume that we must have had maybe as many as
40 people that were approved for graduate programs.
So you see, when we came to break, we had had a good
training period. Once or twice a year a representative
from the University of Michigan came up and visited
with the various professors giving graduate instruction.
When we came to make the break we already had people who
were qualified to do it. It was a good program.
But when the time came to do it, there was some resist­
ance, of course.
It isn't a matter of no consequence

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Anspach
for a university to let programs go. But they agreed
and everything ended up very peacefully.
So that’s
the beginning of the graduate programs in the four
teachers' colleges.
F--Did you line up with Michigan State to fight for their
name change?
A--Yes, but not in an active fight. As a matter of support,
we talked with the legislators and so forth.
By the way, the relationship of Michigan State between
this institution--John Hannah and I--has been very,
very fine.
I ’ll give you an illustration, which I don’t suppose
could be a matter to publish because it was just a
matter between John and myself. At one time there was
an idea, following the John Dale Russell report--I don’t
know how many years later--that there would be a concen­
tration.
Russell recommended that Eastern Michigan
become the school of education for the University of
Michigan; which Eastern Michigan didn't like, of course.
He also recommended that this institution start chemical
engineering, which was a surprise to me. His argument
was that Dow Chemical, one of the great chemical concerns
of the United States, was here, so therefore we had our
buildings, our laboratory, and our faculty right there.
Well, we never did it, but nevertheless that was in the
report.
At that same time the Board of Governors at Wayne State,
and I guess the Board of Regents at the University of
Michigan, talked about cooperation.
They were going to
cooperate in medicine.
I guess they were also going to
cooperate in law, and this sort of thing. There was a
growing feeling in Michigan that there should be sort
of an integration, or an exchange back and forth between
these institutions.
Well, I don’t know what happened at Wayne or the
University of Michigan, but it didn't materialize. At
that time, if it had gone through, there might have been
two umbrellas. As one umbrella, the University of
Michigan had Flint, Dearborn, Eastern, and so forth.
Then you might have had another umbrella over here at
Michigan State University with Central and Western.

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Anspach
So there was a possibility of this sort of thing happening,
at least a cooperation of the boards, but it didn't
materialize.
F--What were
parochial
policy of

the key issues that resulted in partisan and
conflict in the attempt to bring about a
enhancing higher education?

Obviously the fight over the name was one. What about
the branch campus fight?
A--The University of Michigan took the position, because
our first Constitution says that the University of
Michigan may establish branches.
So it hit in this area
because, in my own opinion, the alumni had a great deal
to do with it.
I think before Saginaw Valley and Delta were established
some of the alums from over in that area said "Michigan
State." Some of the alums of University of Michigan
said "University of Michigan." So as a result you got an
independent organization set up over there. This is a
factor, I think, in the manner of establishing branches.
I ’m not so sure about Russell's report. He recommended
independent boards, as I recall, and independent insti­
tutions because of his belief that higher education would
develop better under individual boards rather than under
an overall board.
F--What happened at Con-Con?
Committee.

You were on the Education

A--Yes, I was on the Education Committee at Con-Con.
Roscoe Bonisteel, chairman of the board at the University
of Michigan for 18 years, John Hannah, and two or three
more of us, including Don Lawrence , who was then the
delegate out of Ypsilanti, wanted to set it up so that
all state colleges and universities would have the same
rights as the University of Michigan, Michigan State,
and Wayne. That is: counted as constitutional bodies
and so named. Therefore, outside of the appropriation
of finance, the board operated the institution. This
2

Joseph Don Lawrence, Jr.; Republican from Ypsilanti;
served on Committee on Judicial Branch at the Constitutional
Convention.

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would permit growth, development, and that sort of thing.
Then it came to the matter of electing the board.
In
the Constitution, the three institutions are more or less
set aside. We repeated that. Roscoe Bonisteel and Don
Lawrence copied from the old Constitution, word for word,
the section which gives the university boards of control
the right of administering.
John Hannah, by the way, on the method of selecting
boards of control by election or appointment, said, "I
don’t care." He was very liberal in his position.
Mr. Bonisteel, who had been a Regent of the University
of Michigan for 18 years, wished the board to be elected,
because of 100 years of history and the prestige of being
elected a Regent.
There is some conflict now due to the differences in the
interpretation of the Constitution.
There are those at
Lansing who say, "Because the three major universities
have boards of control elected by the people, they are
responsible to the people; and those institutions that
have boards appointed by the governor are responsible
to him. Therefore there is a difference in the authority
of these institutions."
In a recent decision of one of the courts concerned with
the authority of the University of Michigan, the court
said in ruling in favor of the University that the
decision might well apply to the other state universities
and colleges.
I would guess that sometime, Mr. Faverman, the four
colleges will have to go through the courts to establish
completely that right, because there’s no documentation
there. University of Michigan, Michigan State, and Wayne,
when there's been an encroachment, the court has always
ruled in their favor. There's no such decision which
will support us. Therefore, we are independent finan­
cially, and yet in a way we're not completely independent.
F--Did you seek elected boards at Con-Con?
A--No, appointed boards.
If you remember the Con-Con--you go through the proceedings,
if you haven't, and check them--Governor Romney's position
was, everything appointed by the governor.
The same as if
you'd run a factory, everything would be appointed all the
way down.
So you got the compromise.

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The auditor general is responsible to the Legislature,
not appointed by the governor, but responsible to the
Legislature because it all was a matter of money. This
is a compromise. The treasurer was to be appointed by
the governor because of the fact that the governor has
to do with the money, and he wants some flexibility there.
And then they came to the boards of state colleges and
universities. All the boards now are appointed, with
the exception, of course, of the big three.
So there
was a compromise there. Now the board of control for
the junior colleges was a compromise within the Committee
on Education. My idea was that this should be an inde­
pendent board, but, particularly because Adelaide Hart
was quite opposed, we had to compromise so this would
be a board responsible to a board.
F--How do you explain the language, Dr. Anspach, that said
that the State Board of Education would be in charge of
coordination and control and the other section that says
that institutions will be constitutionally autonomous?
A--Again, this was a compromise. There was a feeling,
particularly on the part of Miss Hart and Mr. Douglas-I forget all the names of the people who were on that
committee--that the superintendent of public instruction
should have a great deal to say about education in the
state.
At one time Senator Milliken, the Governor’s father,
said to me, "You know, the Superintendent of Public
Instruction should be head of the whole system. He
should be at the top, with everything, higher education,
secondary, elementary, all under it." This, indeed,
would be appropriate. Well, I wouldn't say that
Miss Hart had that particular position in mind.
She
felt it would be better if they had the community
colleges put under the Board of Education, which would
be elected.
So this is the way it is.
The Board of Education, in the minds [of the delegates]-I think you'll find it in the discussion--would have the
authority to determine the need before new institutions
would be established.
Now it's gotten down into the
matter of courses and some other items.
If they are
coordinating there, I don't think we've defined it
correctly.
It wasn't in the mind of a great many people
that it would be the overall board that would have all
control.

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F--It's my sense that people weren’t especially impressed
with how the State Board had handled the four schools,
that they had the sense that the schools should be
autonomous and weren’t looking for control by the state.
A--That's right.

I think you have that exactly right.

The Board has really three functions as far as most of
the delegates were concerned, including myself.
First,
we thought of the State Board as in control of the
elementary and secondary public school systems; second,
that before new institutions could be started, and
before there would be any great expansion from the
standpoint of curricula, it would report to the
Legislature and they would have something to say, not
authority to stop it; third, it was not to control your
budget but to say to the Legislature, "You’re not
appropriating enough money for higher education,” or
"You're appropriating too much money."
Those were really the three functions in our minds, as
I remember them, when we argued the case.
F--There wasn't really much to give out after 1964, though.
Between '58 and '64 we just about gave the store away.
You created Saginaw Valley and Flint, you created about
15 community colleges in places like Clare-Gladwin,
Roscommon, and Sidney--all over the place. There really
wasn't much left, was there?
A- -No.
F--So, therefore, one of the reasons the State Board really
couldn't have much impact was that there was no real
question of new resource.
Since '64 as far as I can
recollect, there's only been two new education agencies
that have been created. One would be the College of
Osteopathic Medicine--where I work--and the other is
Wayne County Community College. There's nothing else
that I can recollect.
A--No.
F--Maybe the Maritime Academy at Traverse City, but that's
it.
A--It won't come under your period of study, but I doubt if
the law has ever been revoked. At one time the Legislature
enacted a measure which would establish another teachers'
college in the northern part of the state. As far as I
know, that's never been rescinded.

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F--I don't know of that, but there's always been some strong
energy, hasn't there, to create another institution in
Traverse City?
A--Yes, that's right.
It isn't quite like the northern
peninsula, but there's been a feeling up there that they
could serve. And we have some very important, influential
people in that area.
F--It strikes me that there could be a case made for an insti
tution at Traverse City. And also one in Macomb because
there's a tremendous growth there. Macomb is probably the
largest county in the state without an institution of its
own, except for the community college.
A--I think the Carnegie board brought out a report in which
the idea was that the University of Michigan and Michigan
State, as an example, were tremendous universities and
large universities, and the growth in the future would
be in community colleges and smaller state schools.
F--Then at Con-Con you had certain kinds of attitudes: one,
the desire to create autonomous institutions based on
their experience; two, some kind of philosophical
attitude about the State Board being in charge, not of
day-to-day operation, but sort of settling the gun
fights; the third impetus certainly was that the schools..
A--Oh, finance.
In other words, the State Board would take
a look at all the budgets, then say to the Legislature,
"You're not appropriating enough money for higher educa­
tion," or "You're appropriating too much money."
F--You think they had the sense that these institutions
would have greater political clout tied together than
going through the State Board to the Legislature?
A--Well...
F--It certainly didn't happen, did it?
A--No, it didn't. Of course, there's one unique factor that
we have in this state--which is beside the question
you're talking about--but it brings up an interesting
point.
You started out asking the question, "Why did higher
education in this state profit more than in other states?"
Two or three reasons.
The fact that the University of

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Michigan, Michigan State, and the rest were autonomous
gave them a freedom of operation that you didn’t get in
other states.
I ’ll give you an example. When we were looking for a
president at Eastern Michigan University--I happened to
be chairman of that committee--a man came from the West
Coast. Eastern was then a school of about 10,000 and
the man came from an institution of 17,500 in California.
The salary he was getting would be pretty close to what
he would get here.
One of the members of the committee, very much impressed
with him, said to me, "Why would he be interested in
coming to Michigan?" I said, "I think I can answer your
question.
Because of the fact that our institutions are
autonomous in Michigan. We have a freedom of operation
and planning that he doesn't have in California.
So ask
him."
So when he came back the second time, he asked him, "Why
would you be interested in leaving an institution of
17,500, the life of California, and all the rest?"
[His
answer was], "Because if I see my board once in two years,
I'm fortunate.
Everything is controlled from the Capitol."
We went to their state architect when we were going to
build a music building. We went to San Jose where they
had just built one. The Dean took us through and told
us about the state architect.
[We asked], "How do you like the system?" He said, "I
don't like it.
I'll show you something." To get to his
office you had to go into a classroom, go through a
storage room and then into the office.
He said, "The
only change of the plans I could get was to cut a door
into that office from the hall.
It's that strict."
So therefore
this state.
Michigan any
other states

there has been a freedom of operation in
I don't think it's cost the State of
more in higher education than any of the
that have a restricted type of control.

Another thing is that we've had less politics in
Michigan. Now, one argument for retaining the Board of
Regents, the Michigan State Board of Trustees, and the
Wayne Board of Governors, was that if you take everything
out of the election, you'll kill your elections.
You
can't have everything appointed.
It is an honor to be

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Anspach
a member of the Board of Regents of the University of
Michigan, the Board of Trustees of Michigan State, or
the Board of Governors of Wayne State. That was one
of the big arguments for election of those boards, even
though they were elected on a party ticket.
Politics
was pretty much forgotten in the area of higher education.
Now that hasn't been true in recent years. There's been
a great deal more, I think, political influence in all
sections of the United States.
F--It also seems to me, when you talk about the big three,
that there had to be a deliberate intention, as you
alluded to earlier, to keep them from getting bigger.
It appears to me that the people were starting to get
afraid that we were going to build California-style
institutions.
A--That's right.
F--Another thought has struck me--that Con-Con had a
deliberate policy to curtail the big three and encourage
the regional schools.
A--I think this would be true.
It never came out on the
surface, but I think you're right.
F--And that was really directed towards the undergraduate...
A--That's a good observation.
but that's right.

I hadn't thought about it,

F--Did any of the policy goals for the enhancement of higher
education have as their objective the attempt to break
class and culture barriers?
A--Well, if you're referring to the culture of people and
minority groups --Blacks and others--yes. Mayor Young
of Detroit was a delegate to the Convention.
F--You can't build a society that is democratic without
everybody starting out the starting gate with similar
marketable skills. Michigan for a long time had served
the elite.
It looks to me like Hannah was able to make
a lot of ground on Hatcher because of the attitude,
"There’s got to be second-chance schools." Ferris and
Northern were regarded as second-chance schools.
A--You have that exactly right.

I think this is true.

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F--Michigan State, which you would have thought of as being
a Republican school very closely tied to the conserva­
tives, went out of its way to build alliances with labor.
Our state's largest minorities are the ethnic Slavs and
the Blacks. You couldn't build a society where they had
a share of the middle- and upper-class positions without
deliberately expanding institutions, having institutions
willing to take people who were less skilled in the
College Aptitude Tests, give them entry, and then base
it on graduating elites rather than admitting them.
A--I think you're right.
I may be wrong in this observation, but I think that he
did it deliberately.
But I don't know.
I won't be
quoted as saying "deliberately", because I don't know.
John Hannah did two things: one, this matter of an open
gate; on the other hand, at one time Michigan State had
more merit scholars than any other university in the
United States. He built both ends of his curve.
In other words, he didn't sacrifice the group up here
and he didn't sacrifice the group down here. As a
result you had a chance at Michigan State where maybe
you wouldn't have had in some other institution.
F--There's a difference.
Many people look at Hannah and
say he built a powerful and large institution.
They
didn't also understand that he had another agenda, which
was building a great institution. You had to do that
differently.
The public focused on the athletics and the size, but he
took the money he made and stuck it into merit scholars,
built some of his programs, and the like. He had to
make a ton of money off the colleges of education--this
institution must have made a lot of money off its college
of education--and was able to build a graduate program
out of that money.
It didn't go to enhance the people
who were doing the work because you can't get ahead if
you're always putting it just where it is, you've got
to drain.
I was curious about that.
What about the question of popularism, which I've just
alluded to, versus elitism? I have the sense that
Michigan, which was tagged very much as being "elite,
quality, the university," may have been unfairly tagged

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because Hatcher was such a distant man. He was able to
perform the role of being a stereotype. You looked at
him and he looked like he had a corset up his backbone.
He was rigid and tough. And Michigan has such emminent
prestige--it's older than the state. That's something
people don't recollect. You alluded to the first
Constitution giving it the power to have branches, as
I recollect.
It's hard to believe that an institution can be elite
with 40,000, so they obviously had to have some programs
that were geared to broadening the societal base. But I
think people have seen the fight in terms of popularism
versus elitism, or open-gate versus closed-gate.
How do you see that fight? I'm curious what your observa­
tions are--as an observer but not a participant--of
Hannah versus Hatcher or Michigan versus Michigan State.
A--Well, let me...
I'll answer this way. Just before we
had the riot down at Eastern, which cost us $109,000...
F--You're talking 1971.
A--Yes. Just before that we had an open meeting with the
students. My remark then was that a university, partic­
ularly state-supported, should be open to any student
who could profit by the offerings of a university, and
if he were admitted, you should do everything possible
for him to succeed.
I've been a great believer in what I call the "plus".
For years colleges and universities have checked your
minuses.
They didn't check the pluses of what you had.
In this school [Central Michigan University] there's
now what they call a "university without walls". You
can qualify for a certain amount of credit on the basis
of your experience, which is a plus rather than a minus.
This was brought home to me when I was president of a
college in Ohio which was dismissed from the North
Central Association.
One of my first jobs was to get
it back in the North Central Association. A young
fellow came in from Philadelphia--I say young, he was
married and in his thirties --who had perfected some sort
of part used by Philco in the radio.
He said, "I need my degree because all the way along some
clerk stops me because I have no degree." He said, "Can

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I come to college, audit courses, and then take the
examinations on them and carry a full load?" I said,
"Sure, you can do that, that's always open."
He graduated in two-and-a-half years.
Instead of going
back to Philco immediately, he decided he wanted to get
his master's degree.
So I said, "Where do you want to
go?" He said, "University of Chicago." Well, University
of Chicago wouldn't admit him to graduate school because
Ashland College at that time was not a North Central
institution.
So I went up to Chicago to see Mr. Bixer, who was the
university examiner, because I didn't want the report
to get out that our credits were no good. We were out
of North Central and in order to get back in we needed
students.
So I went up and he said, "No, he graduated
in a shorter period of time than he could graduate at
the University of Chicago." That was before Hutchins
and his bachelor's degree.
"So," he said, "that's it."
I said, "Well, look.
I'll guarantee that if you admit
him, before the quarter's over, you'll do something for
him. Every student's on probation, isn't he? When you
admit a freshman, he's on probation, isn't he? If he
doesn't do his work, he's out.
I don't see that you're
going to harm anybody by putting him on probation." He
did, and before the quarter was over they gave him an
assistantship. He later went back to Philco.
So here we are, a student runs 100 yards in eight seconds
They say, "Son, you have just broken the world record by
forever and a day. Where did you get the shoes?" "Sears
and Roebuck," he replies.
"That's too bad," theysay,
if you'd gotten them from Spalding, that would be a
record." You say that's assinine, but that's what we've
been doing in education for years.
I've seen plenty of individuals, and so have you, that
started late in life. There's a fellow that's moved
here who's a paperhanger and painter.
He moved to this
town--he happened to be a high school graduate--years
ago so that his sons might have an education. They
didn't want to go to college, which is quite all right.
They're doing exceedingly well without going to college.
But he went to college and ended up as a teacher in
English down here at the high school--new life completely

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We just passed a regulation down at Eastern this last
board meeting on the matter of a veteran or perhaps
another person--I said this could be more than veterans,
I think they're going to include others --kicked out of
college because he didn't do his work. Now, he'll come
back and wipe off those grades.
State, I think, did
that years ago. You take other examinations in the
courses and wipe off the failures.
F--Why do you think John Hannah was able to succeed? Do
you have some ideas about that? Do you think Michigan
was inept in the way they handled things?
A--1 think John Hannah possesses two
characteristics. He
learned to love--not as we ordinarily think of love,
but from the standpoint of a great human sympathy--to
give an individual a chance.
I think this went on under
his administration.
On the other hand, John Hannah could be very hard.
If
he wanted to make a move, he made
it. Some people said,
"John Hannah is ruthless," but I don't think so. You
need to learn that sometimes when you think you're being
kind to a person, you're being cruel.
I've seen this
happen in college administration.
It's tough to let a
person go, so we keep him on, keep him on, and maybe
after ten years--out.
That's cruel.
I think that John
was accused of being pretty hard-boiled and harsh, but
I don't see it that way.
I think that he has those two qualities; he had a great
feeling about people and about his own institution.
John emphasized time after time, when they came in in
the sixties, a land grant institution which made it
possible for individuals without a great deal of wealth
to go to a college with a range of courses which would
prepare them for vocations in life, and all the rest of
it. He had a program he wanted to move.
F--What about the role of vocational and occupational
training in the decision to expand higher education?
You mentioned John Dale Russell and chemical engineering.
A--We need more Ferris-type institutions that offer twoyear courses instead of four-year courses. John Dale
Russell handled the matter of vocational education
through his proposed community college program.
I think there are plenty of courses and curricula in the
universities if we're smart enough to see them. Michigan

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State has over
The rest of us

the past put a good many of them in.
are coming along too.

However, there is an offsetting fact.
I'll give you an
example.
Eastern has a declining enrollment--as all
institutions have had--that's been rather severe.
Because
of the location of the university, and all the rest of
that, we've lost quite a few students. Well, the answer,
they say, is to put in more courses that will attract
students.
But as soon as you get too much into the voca­
tional end, are you competing with the junior colleges?
The community colleges are getting on the horse, too, and
they say, "You are encroaching in our area. This is what
we're supposed to do." And that's right, they're
supposed
to do it, if they do it.
But again, alluding to what you said, we are getting so
many demands for technological curricula it is almost
impossible for a community college to offer all the
curricula and satisfy the needs. Hence, community colleges
are not completely fulfilling their function.
F--At Con-Con, did you have some concern about training people
for work?
A--Only indirectly.
I don't recall any particular sessions
or any great push in this area other than the community
college angle.
F--The community colleges definitely had the vocational
interest.
People saw them being different than the
baccalaureate institutions.
A--Plus expense.
The big argument was that the student
could live at home. Well, according to John Hannah, you
can't.
I remember very well--I think it was on the floor, you
may find it in the proceedings --when we were talking
about this.
[Hannah claimed that the] community college
"soon wants to become a four-year college, and then it's
got to have a band, and if it's got a band it's got to
have a football team, so then you get into the construc­
tion of dormitories and all the rest of the growth
factors." They haven't become community colleges in the
sense that all people could live at home and commute.
F--The community colleges have become more like baccalaureate
degree institutions and less vocational, haven't they?

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A--I think to a degree that's right.
F--And that's probably one of the reasons for the expansion
of the skill centers that are starting to occur outstatethe job hasn't been done.
Was there any energy, that you could observe, for the
expansion of culture and the arts in the dialogue over
the growth of higher education?
3

A--Oh, yes. Young Mr. Jack Faxon was the first one to
propose it when we started to put in proposals that would
be referred to various committees for discussion and then
come back on the floor.
I think he was the first one to
come out with the matter of subsidizing cultural areas.
F--So that had some impact.
A-~Yes, it did.
There's another incident that you may not uncover that's
interesting. We were laughed out of court.
Frank Millard from Flint--former Attorney General of
Michigan--got the idea there should be a Committee on
Emerging Problems. As a result, such a committee was
appointed.
They didn't call it pollution but pollution
was one of the topics that came into the discussion.
People down at the Convention laughed.
"This is one of
those committees just set up to make a point of being
busy," they said. Well, a man came up from Detroit and
found I don't know how many thousand particles in what­
ever the measure is--a quart of air?--right there at
the Capitol and showed that pollution was already
occurring.
This was one of the problems.
Another problem was brought up by a young Polish attorney
he backed up on it later--who came to the committee on
the matter of the authority of commission regulations.
The rules are not law, but they become a matter of law.
F--He was concerned about administrative law.
A--Yes. Any commission you point out--I don't recall that
he mentioned any particular commission--which could pass
a series of regulations.
It's not law, but you have to
Jack Faxon; Democrat from Detroit; Michigan State
Representative, 1964-70.

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accept it.

The commission is given the authority.

Now, some of the other things that that committee talked
about. One was a matter of pensions. Also, the en­
croachment of the federal government on Michigan land,
as you now have up in the dune country. We have a state
park, but the federal government decides it wants to
take it so it comes and takes it. There's nothing you
can do about it.
These are a few of the various things that happened to
be discussed at that particular time.
F--From your long career in the public sector, do you have
any observations on the role, if any, of the federal
government in the expansion of higher education?
A--Well, my observation goes back to the old idea we used
to have that the state will operate its own until it
can no longer do it, then the federal comes in and does
it.
I think there's a lot of encroachment by the federal
government on the state's rights and so forth.
But to come back to education.
So far I haven't seen any
great derogatory influence from the federal government on
higher education.
I've participated on various boards which received federal
grants.
There's no attempt to dictate to you, except the
matter of objectives that you hope to achieve through the
grant.
I can't see that their regulation interfered with
the right of the state to operate.
I don't know. What's your observation?
interested to know what you thought.

I'd be

F--Well, I have some experience from when I worked with
Arthur Ellis in the state government.
I find that
federal encroachment in the area of social policy is
quite severe.
A--Oh yes, it would be there.
F--We put the question in because we thought we should ask
it. My major professor and I didn't observe it, but we
thought, well, we'll ask it anyway.
I don't see much
encroachment.
A--I don't see encroachment by the federal government on
education; in other areas, yes.

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F--Jim Farnsworth thought that most congressmen had come
from a long background of local government and weren’t
willing to meddle with something like education because
of America’s traditions and history. And also it works
well. Why get involved in something that's working well?
A--That's a pretty good observation.
F--What about the role of the private sector, the private
schools? Did you feel any desire on the part of public
policy makers to preserve those schools?
A--Yes, I did. Of course I may be prejudiced a bit because
I was president of a private college before I came into
the public educational sector, but I also have a criti­
cism of the private colleges to a point.
Let me start with the criticism.
They tried to ape the
state colleges and become everything for all people.
I
don't think that's the function of a private college.
I think a private college...
liberal arts, right, but
I think that liberal arts has to have a vocational turn.
Dean Cooley at the University of Michigan used to say,
"If I were building a dam I'd want engineers.
If I
want someone to supervise that, I want more than an
engineer, I want men with intelligence, an individual
of broad background and all the rest of it." The
liberally educated individual would be such a person.
To me the liberal arts colleges have missed it in that
they haven't tried to pull vocational objectives into
the liberal arts setup.
F--I'm from Massachusetts.
In Massachusetts the private
schools fought the public schools to prevent them from
growing strong enough to hurt them.
In some of the
western states public schools fought private schools
getting things like state grants because it would limit
them.
I haven't been able to observe that the public and the
private schools in Michigan dealt with each other in
any unstatesmanlike way. They seem to have gone out
of their way to help each other.
I wondered if you had felt pressure of a negative,
derogatory sort. Or, if you would concur that we
haven't had many fights here. Why?

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A--Well, I think it happened, to some degree, a number of
years ago, but I don’t think so now.
I'll give you an example.
I was at Eastern Michigan and
President Seaton of Albion College was at a banquet at
our place. He sat next to me and said, ’’When are the
teachers' colleges going to get out of the field of
liberal arts?" I said, "The same day the private colleges
get out of teacher training."
Ninety to ninety-five percent of the students in the
private colleges take certificates, which is quite all
right, but you see the inconsistency of the position.
In 1918 we were given the right to grant the degree
without the teaching certificate.
For years the teacher-education institutions of this
state were far superior to those of the East because a
liberal arts background was emphasized. The old normal
school that you had in Massachusetts didn't disappear
until recent years.
F--They were still in existence in the 1960's when I came
out here.
A--Exactly.
In 1918 we were given the permission to build
this liberal arts background.
I don't think many of
them took their certificates but you've had...
this has
been a competition.
Private colleges have had the
feeling that the state schools are unfair, particularly
with respect to tuition and rates.
Their rates are low,
therefore it takes students from private colleges.
When you come back to it, as you will, our enrollment in
public institutions is too large, not only because of the
desire for more education but also because money for
operations is based on numbers.
Appropriations on the
undergraduate level are not based particularly on
institutional functions.
The present system is better,
for appropriations are now based on credit hours earned.
I don't suppose you noticed the comments in the paper
where some of the colleges in the United States have
padded their enrollments, particularly in Florida.
It's
been pretty bad...
because the amount you get is per
head.
So we've had competition.
The private colleges feel that
the state is unfair because students go to a state school
rather than someplace else because it was easier and
cheaper.

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Now, there's one thing the private college has not
recognized and that's the fact that the old loyalty of
the parent to the alma mater isn't there anymore. There
was a time when if your dad went to school A, you went
to school A. That's not true anymore.
If you want to
go to school B, or C , or D, you go.
The church has pulled away from the private college-these are criticisms--they're church-related and that's
about all there is to it anymore.
Some colleges are
completely independent.
They're competing, I think,
on a level with public education where public education
is bound to win.
The second thing, and I think I'd mention it briefly,
is that they haven't correlated the liberal arts with
vocational objectives.
For instance, there's no reason
in the world why private and public don't cooperate
because Michigan State and other public institutions would
cooperate in practically any of the vocational courses.
Two years here, two years there; or three years here and
one year there. There are plenty of areas in which you
could get this co-op relationship.
It's true enough that
they aren't going to graduate from both schools, but
maybe you can give a dual diploma someway. This is a
new concept but it could be done. They would preserve
the private colleges in an area in which they're unable
to compete at the present time.
So, that, I think, is
the next thing.
Also, the private colleges have to have students because
they've gone into bonding issues the same as the public
schools. You've got to have students to pay off the
bond, you've got to have new dormitories, and you go all
the way down the line.
F--But has there been a fight or has it been pretty
gentlemanly?
A--In this state?
F- -Yes.
A--Gentlemanly in

this state.

In Ohio at one
time it was kind of awkward. I can't
answer for Ohio now because I've been out of
it for many
years, but one
year the Legislature had a bill introduced
that a public institution could not put out anything but
a skeleton catalog for the protection of the private
colleges.
In Ohio there are 88-plus colleges but many of
them are private.

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F--What about the nature of regional and local pressures
to expand higher education in one location rather than
another? You observed some of that.
I wondered if you
had any observations?
A--You mean that in one place you want this sort of system...
F--I was thinking, in this period '58 to '64 areas were
fighting and sometimes they would fight one against the
other. You know, Michigan State making moves toward
Saginaw; Michigan making moves toward Port Huron,
Grand Valley and Saginaw.
Do you have some observations about how that fight
spilled over?
A--No, I haven't any.
I would think local pride and alumni
pride pretty much would negate that type of system.
Now, if you're talking in terms of curricula, New York
tried that, you know. At Oneonta you had one discipline,
at Fredonia you had industrial arts and music. These are
the two institutions that concentrated in those two areas.
I imagine it's pretty much gone now since they've become
state universities.
F--But at each of those places, at Plattsburgh, New Paltz,
Fredonia, and Cortland, they all had a different style.
I don't have the feeling that's true anymore.
A--No, I think that's been discontinued.
F--I think it's gone the same way our normal schools have
gone. They've become full-standing regional schools.
A--Well, it's difficult to kill a college because of the
alumni, because of the local pride, and because of the
legislators that are pretty much concerned with their area.
F--So what you're saying, then, is that rather than one area
killing another off, they ended up colleaguing with each
other to get what they wanted.
A--I think we're in that position now.
I'll give an example.
I don't know that it's been passed, maybe it's just in the
proposal stage, the amount of money that can be expended
versus private funds. We've got about $450,000 from the
Kresge Foundation at Eastern--we have a small lake area
out of Lapeer given to the university--to put a biological
station there.
Kresge's money goes in there and no state

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money. There's a move on that no money, public or
private can be expended without the approval of the
Legislature.
I suppose the argument there is future
obligations for support, I don't know, but the univer­
sity, you see, is not exempted from supervision and
control.
If Eastern loses, all lose,
F--That comes back to your discussion about the constitu­
tional crisis. You're probably much concerned in your
thoughts about the Eastern difficulty, and that may color
it. Eastern is an institution that's found itself in
some peculiar difficulties that haven't been true for
other regional institutions.
The other regional institutions really aren't in compet­
itive situations.
Western stands alone pretty much,
Central stands alone, and Northern stands alone. Eastern
is the only one that has to compete against Oakland,
Wayne, Ann Arbor, and then five or six of the strongest
community colleges.
Eastern is a place that needs a
market identity and they haven't done that. Eastern, I
think, is an institution that probably has to become some­
thing clearly identifiable and different, whereas Central
doesn't have that problem because Central doesn't face
life and death complications.
A--No, we don't. And you see, during the period when we had
the trouble with the students, the only march you had on
the board here was by about 100 students led by two
students from Eastern.
They weren't from up here at all.
Later at Eastern we dismissed 14 students, including
those two, and seven professors.
Of course, we got sued
in the courts on the whole thing.
Eastern is right in there and in close competition with
the universities in the area.
I said to the board
recently, one thing that we have to look at as a matter
of reality is the decrease in enrollment.
It's a
different situation. You can't compare us, EMU, to some
other institution.
F--What in your opinion, Dr. Anspach, were the reasons for
the failure of the branch campus system that had begun
to be developed in Michigan at Oakland, Flint, and
Dearborn? Why didn't that succeed like in Wisconsin with
maybe one or two institutions with hosts of satellites?
A--I can't answer that.
I really don't know.
I wondered
about it myself. However, the tradition of institutional
independence in Michigan is very strong.

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F--Well, I think about the University of Wisconsin at
Milwaukee.
That kind of situation really didn’t happen
here.
A--All the teachers' colleges are now branches of the
university; the University at Oshkosh, the University at
Milwaukee, the University at someplace else.
It didn't
happen here.
Again, unless it's this strong independent local pride
and influence, I don't know. That would be my best guess.
F--That's the guess that other make, too.
I think that's
probably the answer, myself, but it's curious that it
didn't happen here.
We actually had a retreat away from the branch system
because Oakland became independent.
Some speculate that
Dearborn and Flint will shortly be independent institutions.
A--I don't doubt it at all.
F--But that's not going to happen in Wisconsin.
What in your opinion were the reasons that an institutional
system for the coordination of higher education didn't
come under the control of the State Board after 1964?
A--You mean of complete coordination?
F--Yes.
A--Well, I think two factors.
In the first place the general
attitude, as I said before, here and in part of the
Constitutional Convention wasn't to do that.
It was
merely to stop new institutions and new program expansion,
not the coordination of the others.
Also the resistance--as you now have the new government
proposal on this super board which, I think, is in pretty
much a compromise position--by people to do the thing
that we thought they would under the old board.
F--You're not speculating, are you, Dr. Anspach, that that's
going to succeed?
A--No.
F--We're talking pretty frankly.
I don't have any indication
that any institution of higher education, or the
Legislature, wants to create a new super board.

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A--I think you’re right.
F--One of the reasons is administrative. We spend a lot of
time talking about politics but not enough about admin­
istrative science.
A--You made a good statement.

You ought to put that in print.

F--You mean about administrative science?
A--Right.
F--Well, you know, when I went to school at MSU I had some
occasion to take a course with Dr. Melby and to listen to
him. An old, old man but savvy.
It strikes me that the rule is this: Forget about all the
fancy junk about drawing charts on pieces of paper,
political solutions aren't sought until administrative
procedures cease to work.
In Michigan the higher educa­
tion system, for all of its untidiness compared to Illinois
or California, works.
People are happy with it.
I don't see any impetus. The Legislature feels--in my
opinion, after working there for four years--that the
schools are really susceptible to the public interest.
They feel that the schools perform in the public interest
and are amenable to suggestions from the public sector.
So why create a whole bureaucracy that you'll have to deal
with when the thing works? It may not look modern...
A--You should write an article on that and make it part of
your dissertation.
It's pretty important.
F--You know, people don't understand the rules for the
administrative sciences and they look for all these
political things.
A--This would be good for the boards of control in the future.
It would be good for them right now, as far as that's
concerned, because I think we have some questions.
Years ago--maybe they still do it--the new legislators
were brought in for a series of lectures.
I think the
boards of control should have the same thing.
F--As a matter of fact, one of the problems about boards of
control is that they really don't have a sense of the
history, or a sense of how the system really works. They

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Anspach
get in and talk to their own officers who give them veryparochial views. The Legislature in the beginning of
each four-year session--maybe two--brings in all the
legislators and runs over hoiv the whole thing works.
You just selected a new member of your board at Eastern.
That woman is not going to know what the heck is going on.
A new member is not going to know any of the history, not
going to know any of the peculiar relationships that exist
between, well, like the Lincoln district. A new person is
not going to know about that and won’t understand some of
these impetuses.
A--You're 100 percent right.
your dissertation.

Write an article and put it in

F--What about the role of labor in regard to the support of
higher education?
A--Always been good in my opinion. You go back into the
history of education.
If there was any group out
supporting education, it was labor.
I personally--my
experience is limited to a number of institutions--never
had anyone try to come in and say what you should do in
the way of teaching or anything else.
F--Dr. Anspach, the attitude always has been that labor is
interested in lunch-pail issues, but they don't seem to
have been interested in lunch-pail issues about higher
education. They seem to have been interested in the
broadest public policies.
A--That's right.
F--What about the role of industry?
A--Same way.
In each of our states we have an organization
of independent colleges that solicits business. As a
result, the amount of money that they’ll get--a couple of
million, three million, four million a year--is apportioned
out to the private colleges.
A part of that, I think, is a result of graduates of private
colleges being in prominent positions, plus the fact that
they've done a good job of communicating, even on the TV,
"Support the private colleges."
They've done a better job then public institutions, in my
opinion, with industry.
In general, I think industry and

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Anspach
people in various nonindustrial positions do more for
private colleges, but not when you come to research where
you need to have the know-how and the facilities for
research.
I'll give you a case.
did they come there?

Down at Mesa, RCA came in.

Why

F--Where is Mesa?
A--Right outside of Phoenix. They came in there because of
the college of engineering [at Arizona State University].
F--That also happened in Massachusetts right along route 128.
A--Right. As small as this town is, Spang--which manufactures
the clutch and brake--is here because the university is
here.
F--That's a very good point, and I think that comes back to
the desire of regional institutions.
You see, my studies lead me, Dr. Anspach, to believe that
labor supported the broad concept, whereas industry didn't
support the broad concept and had a strong attachment to
private education.
It was very strong in local areas.
I look at Mt. Pleasant. This town is just a wide bend in
the road.
It would be a nothing village, just like lots
of other places in this state, except for the institution.
The higher education institution made this town.
It
brought in the work itself, it brought in a huge payroll-the payroll here's got to be $30 million at least--but
further, it created the spinoffs.
A--I think you're exactly right in your analysis.
I haven't
thought of it in terms of the broad role in education.
That's the first time that question has ever been put to
me, but I think that's right.
F--And I think the strong pressure that Midland has brought
on Central, Michigan, Michigan State, and Saginaw Valley
to have training resources for chemistry, for management,
and so on, is part of that same regional argument.
A--Dow Chemical has taken the position that they wanted their
Ph.D.'s in chemistry and physics to know some business
administration, so we've been giving courses over there
in business administration. Any number of these Ph.D.'s
are taking a master's degree in business administration.

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Anspach
F--That goes back to our discussion.
commerce in higher education?

What about the role of

I'm not sure that this is at all valid, but when I looked
at Romney's Blue Ribbon Commission I noticed people like
Max Heavenrich, very influential people.
And I think of
Seidman in Grand Rapids.
I wonder if the role of commerce was different than
industry?
A--Well, no.
I'll give you an example here, again it's
limited, from our school of business administration.
Recently a bank here in town, Isabella Bank and Trust-where I happen to be chairman of the board, but I didn't
initiate this, one of the other members of the board did-began a program where the top junior student will receive
assistance in his senior year.
The student, the office
in business administration, and the bank will each get a
plaque with the student's name on to encourage him to go
into the field of finance, not necessarily banking.
Dow Chemical is doing the same thing from the standpoint
of excellence in business administration.
F--That's an interesting point and I hadn't thought about it.
What's happening is that you can't build an institution,
industrial, commercial, or scientific, without being able
to get the smart people.
Industry finds itself for the first time, I think, having
to compete for the young men and have got to enhance.
They're starting to lose talented people that they normally
could have automatically had. Many people, when I was in
college, went into finance so they could go into law of
the public sector.
A--Some years ago the president of the College of Wooster had
the reputation of getting $100,000 in three minutes. A
building burned at the College of Wooster, he made an
appointment to see Carnegie, walked into his office, and
presented his case in less than three minutes.
Carnegie
asked this question: "Why should I be interested in the
College of Wooster?" And he said, "Because we are training
your employees." Carnegie said, "Good enough." He got
$100,000 in three minutes.
F--What about the role of agriculture in support of higher
education?

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Anspach
A--Well, I'll go back a number of years on this.
For years
they used to say that the University of Michigan and
Michigan State controlled the Legislature because the
lawyers were in the Senate and the farmers were in the
House.
Agriculture, I think, has supported education but pretty
much in the area of specialization. Although at one time
this institution had a course in agriculture because the
students came in and a good many of them went back to the
farms.
Now, of course, with the changes in farming, the way it's
done in concentration and all, you don't have that demand
anymore. As far as colleges like this are concerned, we
have gone over to conservation education.
So instead of
agriculture, it's conservation education.
F--Natural resources.
A--State has had many farmers on the board. We have Wightman,
an orchard man and a stock man who was head of the farm
organization of the state, on this board, so there is an
interest in agriculture.
In the past it was pretty much
concentrated, I think, at Michigan State.
F--Many schools had agriculture.
a farm.
A--Yes, that's right.

You know, even Wayne owned

I remember.

F--At the regional schools in Illinois they built agriculture
into all the curriculum, down at Carbondale as well as at
Urbana.
In Michigan that didn't happen.
Do you have any
idea why?
A--Yes.
F--It seems to me to have been the right decision, but I
wonder if it was an accident.
A--I can understand why you'd get one at Carbondale.
Dwight
Morris went down there from Terre Haute.
He was president
and he wanted a college of agriculture.
That's Little
Egypt, similar to the northern peninsula in relation to
the State of Illinois.
It's got a rather choice position
in getting appropriations because in order to do something
for upper Illinois, you've got to do something for Little
Egypt. The University of Illinois fought it, but he got
it after about two years of effort.

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Anspach
But I think in this state what you had in the Lower
Peninsula was agriculture, so this was concentrated
pretty much at Michigan State,
Lumbering, iron, copper,
were in the Upper Peninsula.
In between there wasn't a
great deal except resort areas.
I think, therefore, it was because of the geographical
location, type of state that it is, and the concentra­
tion of agriculture.
F--Agriculture really hasn't been economically significant
in this region, has it?
A--No, not through here.
It's largely dairy through here,
where they have anything.
It's good pasture land and
there are some good beef herds.
F--I imagine if an institution had grown up at Saginaw, with
the same history that Central had, it would have had a
school of agriculture because agriculture is a very
crucial crop in that area.
A--That's right.
But you know, this institution might have been located
at Cadillac. There was quite a battle on. A newspaper
man at Cadillac by the name of Perry was on the board.
The reason it came here was because the citizens started
a land development and every third lot, or something of
this kind, was given to the college.
F--When was the school started?
A--1895.
It was organized but for one year they didn't
appropriate, appropriations came the second year.
F--So it had that civic support.
A--That's right.

With the civic support it went over.

F--Who were some of the influential people, Dr. Anspach,
in higher education in this period?
A--You mean from '39?
F--No, I was thinking in the fifties and sixties.
A--You're talking about the fifties. Well, I'm not certain
how many of them are still living, but in education

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Anspach
proper it was Dean J. B. Edmondson of the University of
Michigan.
He was a great soul.
Can I depart just a moment to tell you one story that
changed me around, as Hannah would change some other
around? I was married, went back to the university,
got discouraged, and said to Edmondson one day, "You
know, I think I ’ll drop out.
I made a living before
I came here, I can make a living after, I don't need
a degree." He said, "I agree with you." I said, "I’ve
been in Chevrolet and these other companies." He said,
"I agree with you, but did it ever occur to you it might
be easier to do it now than explain the rest of your life
why you didn't do it?" I said, "You're right." So I
went back and finished up my doctoral degree. Well, that
was Edmondson.
In the field of agriculture, Dean Anthony at Michigan
State. He was a great soul too. And then of course
Cliff Harden came along--he went out to Nebraska.
He
is a great soul. And then Hannah, who was quite
influential.
Ruthven was a great president. Ahead of him was Burton.
The Legislature accused him of kidnapping the Legislature.
He couldn't get them to come down so he got a special
train up there and put them on. Later one of the legis­
lators said, "That man is a dangerous man. He kidnapped
u s ."
Burton's idea was, "Ok, now we have facilities, now we
can get staff. This can be a great university if it
has some of the greatest scholars in the world."
F--So you had Hannah, you had Cliff Harden.
A--In the private colleges, Seaton of Albion was very well
recognized and important in the educational circles of
the state.
In the Legislature itself we had people like Milliken,
Beadle, Gar Lane--Gar Lane was always active for
education.
4

A man by the name of MacKay from West Branch happened to
be our representative there.
Sandy MacKay, a Scotsman,
4

Alexander M. MacKay; Republican from West Branch;
Michigan State Representative.

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Anspach
took a great deal of interest in the young people of
this area. He made sure that they had a good education
here and that the facilities were here. He was a great
man.
F--And certainly you've got to mention Romney and...
A--Romney, of course. And Williams was always very active
and quite influential.
F--And some point out Bentley.
A--Bentley, too, with his Foundation.
I happen to be chairman
of the Bentley Foundation for college scholarships. Yes,
Bentley was quite influential at the University of
Michigan and in the Constitutional Convention.
But of
course you didn't hear so much about him in recent years.
Paul Goebel, because he raised $77 million or whatever
the sum was, instead of $50 million [the goal of the
University of Michigan's Sesquicentennial Campaign fund
drive].
F--Well, one of the things that's been a great fascination
to me is to find how strong the history in Michigan has
been, how dedicated the people have been to institutions
of higher education, how much civic pride there's been,
and how well schools have done compared to other states.
I think when you talk about people, if we spent time, you
could mention industrialists, you could mention farmers...
A--Newspaper people like Hill of Detroit, and any number of
other people.
F--We've been very fortunate in this state.
A--The Free Press and Detroit News both have always been
strong supporters.
F--0ne of the important things, I think, is that this history
should be written so people will know the great men that
did great things.
A--You are e x a c t l y right. You know, you can do it now and
do it well, because you're getting some of these individuals
who are still alive to talk to.
The history of this institution has not been written. A
man started it twenty years ago but he was a perfectionist.

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Anspach
He didn't cut off at a certain period, you see, so he'd
get sidetracked.
Took twenty years and didn't get it
done.
I hope he'll get it done one of these days.
I was disturbed two weeks ago because the paper came out
quoting one of the professors to the effect that the
university organization here was a copy of Kent State in
Ohio and that the vice-president down there had been the
consultant.
So I called him and said, "No, those facts
are wrong."
We had organized it as a state college into these various
schools.
The question was whether to call them colleges
or schools. Well, under the old definition four years
within the administrative area was a college, two years
was a school. You took two years of liberal arts as a
base for all schools.
So we went to schools and set them up. We limited the
number to five. Michigan State for years had been a
state college with different schools before it ever
became a university.
One of the arguments that we used
in getting the title "university" was that we were already
organized administratively and we were ready to go on.
So you see, this has never been written.
Ten years from
now someone is going to write a history of this institu­
tion, will run across this article on how this institution
was patterned after Kent State University and a certain
person had been a consultant.
The facts wouldn't bear up.
F--This is one of the things that I am so interested in.
I'm
trying to build the historical record. And I've talked to
you, I've talked to Steve Nisbet...
A--Are you going to talk to Steve?

Good.

F--Yes, and I'm going to talk to John Hannah. These tapes are
going to be donated to the Michigan State University
Historical Tape Library. Well, when men begin to write
these things they will be able to listen to you and to
others, too. And the transcript will be there and hope­
fully we can broaden the base of our understanding.
A--I think it's wonderful.
F--Thank you.
A--Not at all.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
WILLIAM RYAN1

F--Bill, what in your opinion were the reasons that led
to the expansion of higher education in Michigan from
1958 on?
In 1958 we were spending some $80 million a year for
higher education and in 1970, when the study concludes,
we were spending something like $260 million.
That is
quite a significant expansion.
What do you think the reasons were?
R--I think that the basic underlying reason was the fact
that you had the societal need for improved education.
You had the needs of industry to have persons trained
to fill the job needs; you had the needs of the
students and the citizenry generally to obtain the
education that was going to fit them to take their
place in society.
You had the general acceptance of the masses of the
citizenry who, although many of the elderly had not
had higher education themselves, did want their
children to have a better education.
They were
getting to be more and more in a position to finance
their children's education, whether it was financing
it through taxation or whether it was financing it
through tuition and fees, and as we know, through both.
I think too there perhaps were more social programs
than [previously] existed which were enabling the
youth to be freed from family responsibilities so
that they could spend the years necessary to go on
to higher education.
William A. Ryan; Democrat from Detroit; first elected
to Michigan House of Representatives in 1958; Speaker of
the House since 1969.
Interview conducted May 5, 1974.

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Ryan
I think those were the basic underlying reasons that
created the atmosphere that caused everyone to pursue
the expansion of higher education.
F--You raise a point that not many people have raised,
which I suppose is understandable since you’ve been a
great student and an expert in the area of social
policy. You say that as the social programs began
there was a greater opportunity for the poor to aspire
to higher education.
Do you think this was one of the key objectives: to
broaden the base of those who could have higher
education?
R--I think it was.
I think in order for students to be
pursuing higher education two factors are needed: One,
there has to be the opportunity for them to obtain
financial wherewithal; two, they have to be freed of
family responsibilities, to a reasonable degree.
This does not mean that students cannot possibly take
on their own types of family responsibilities and work
that into their student years.
I think that's quite a
different thing than being tied to the sustenance of
the family from which they came, as distinguished from
the family which they are commencing.
I think that's a very big factor.
In fact it is so
basic that it's probably more important than the acqui­
sition of the financial wherewithal, because given the
first instance--that is, the freedom of the student to
do one's own planning--the financial wherewithal is
separately obtainable if even it isn't initially present.
F--What were the social and economic factors that led to
this growth?
R--I think that the social and economic factors would be
the growth of the labor unions and the gradual improve­
ment of the living standards of the factory workers:
their gradual change from the ranks of the impoverished
to the ranks of the middle class.
I think that's
probably the most basic underlying economic [factor],
and I guess you would call it a social factor too.
F--One other thing that has a great degree of interest to
me has been the changing conception of people's view
of themselves in the class structure. Many of us

A 390
Ryan
[were], I am for one, the first member of our family
to go to college.
The GI Bill certainly changed the
attitudes of many people to believe that higher
education was available for the children of working
families.
Politics, when it comes to class issues particularly
like welfare and taxation, has a way of splitting
people apart.
It has not been my observation that
education was one of these groups where people broke
down into factions.
It seems to me that education
was something that crossed political boundaries and
caused them to be able to unite.
R--Yes and no.
It's true, in my opinion, that higher
education was somewhat freed from rural-urban divi­
sions. Nevertheless I think that there has always been
present high regional pride in educational institutions.
I think that's one of the factors we have always had to
deal with.
I don't think it has been harmful to the expansion of
education.
I think it has been helpful because it
created multiplicities of local efforts to try to
improve their respective educational institutions.
I
think it has been present.
F--Bill, what were the policy objectives that underlaid
this expansion? Certainly making a place for the poor,
and creating access where there was desire, are two.
R--I think it was a policy of education for education's
sake: just an assumption, almost an axiom, that the
greater degree of education of a country, the greater
the country.
There of course was international competitiveness on
the national level which carried down into the state
and local levels, which also helped to promote the
idea that education just had to be a national objec­
tive.
The technological and scientific developments
of the day certainly lent tremendous credence to the
necessity of education for education's sake if we
were to be a great country.
I think those are the main policy objectives.
It's
quite vague and general, but I think it was something
that everyone seemed to take for granted.

!$Sj

A 391
Ryan
F--That may be part of the problem because when one deals
with planners they like to state a set of objectives
and then ways and means to attain them. We seem to operate
in this state without a clear-cut plan.
The agenda and
the aspirations were understated or not stated at all.
It seems to have been part of the Zeitgeist of the time.
As you have talked about the technology, Governor Williams
talked about the impact of Sputnik and the competition
with the Russians.
What were the key issues that resulted in partisan and
parochial conflict? Certainly some of the regional
interests must have been difficult.
R--Certainly regionalism was one of the factors.
I think
the partisan competitiveness of each political party,
trying to prove to the citizenry that they were more
for the citizens than the other party was, certainly
caused both political parties to be for better and better
education and the means to obtain them.
F--Did the parties direct their loyalties to one insti­
tution rather than another?
R--No.
I think that it was a flexible, fluid-type of
thing.
It flowed with whatever happened to be the
matters of the moment.
I don’t think you can say that
either political party geared into this or that insti­
tution and pursued them to the exclusion of others.
Even in a place like Wayne State.
I would think there
you had both political parties, as urban as it was
cooperating--at least in trying to convert it to an
institution.
F--What about the fight between Michigan and Michigan
State?
R--I don’t think that that one should be overemphasized.
Those types of rivalries and the various ways in which
those rivalries reflect themselves is something that
is certainly understandable and to be expected in any
type of institution, educational or otherwise.
I think
the natural human desire to make comparisons, one with
another, is something that is always going to be with us.
It probably had some spin-off or rub-off effects to
keep everybody on their toes, but I don’t think there

A 392
Ryan
is anything unusual about it.
F--Were there other issues that you recollect besides the
regional one, which was certainly a very difficult one?
R--I know within the ranks of higher education there was
an underlying labor-versus-management competitiveness
for influence in the universities.
I'm not all that sure that that was a factor that
stimulated the development of the institutions.
I
think it was taking place.
I think it was quite
noticeable and quite interesting, but I just don't
think that it was a stimulating factor to cause the
expansion of higher education.
I think labor, however, in and of itself, aside from
its competitiveness for influence with industry, was
a tremendous stimulative factor.
F--I guess I was thinking as you talked, Bill, that while
labor may not have been responsible for the growth of
one institution rather than another--the fact that in
our state, labor with Reuther and Gus Scholle, and I
think about Woodcock on the Wayne State Board, Stevens
at Michigan State, Bluestone at Grand Valley--their
affirmation of support broadened the base of the
institution of higher education and therefore made
it again less political, more societal.
One of the things that I'm trying to get at, and it's
tough to get at, Bill, is this: In many states private
education, and even public education, was very definitely
owned by one class, related to the needs of one class,
and wasn't broadly based.
In our state it seems that
we've crossed a lot of boundaries and we've built a
tremendous
kind of support for higher education across
all those boundaries.
At the same time that labor and management were busy
beating each other's brains out, for instance, against
Williams over tax policies, they didn't seem to use
this as an arena. They seemed to work together here.
One thinks about Bluestone and Bentley serving together
on Romney's citizen's commission--probably the only
area where
they ever did.
So I think
that labor certainly rapidly became in this
state fifty percent of the deck.

A 393

Ryan
What about the key issue of popularism in higher
education versus elitism? Many people see this as
a key area of conflict.
R--Well, like you said, I think Michigan's inclination to
bring education to the grass roots had to respond to
grass-roots needs.
I think that was one of its big
factors in causing education to expand in Michigan as
much as it did.
I think if it had been held in the
area of elitism it probably would not have been
expanded quite as much.
It wouldn't have had the broad
base of popular support.
I think the tuition arguments that took place in those
years, as to whether tuition should be higher or lower,
was one of the evidences of this kind of thing taking
place. Recently, I guess, there has been more of a
willingness to let tuition rise without protest, but
I know that not too many years back that when tuitions
were going to rise, it was a pretty big political
issue. Conservatives were pretty much taking the posi­
tion that more students should be financing their own
education ivith higher tuitions and less with taxes.
F--I've never been impressed with that argument personally.
I always have regarded tuition as a form of tax, a user
tax.
I've always looked at it as the state pays part
of its tax revenue to institutions to provide an educa­
tion and the tax fee that we call tuition is another
public money and not a private money.
R--Yes, that's true, and it is offset by the fact that
the real taxation comes after the person concludes his
education and presumably gets higher paying jobs for
having done so, and then is subjected to higher taxes
because he is receiving more money.
That's the quid pro quo. The state provides the educa­
tion but then the student pays for the education every
week in the remaining years of his lifetime.
F--Of course, that's the argument that was fought about
for progressive taxation, because higher income gives
one a greater ability to pay.
How important were vocational and occupational training
objectives in the enhancement of higher education?

{

A 394
Ryan
R--Well, I think too few, too small, in a narrower sense
of the words vocational and occupational. As far as
industrial training, the ordinary job skills, I think
higher education played a very small role. Those
types of skills were acquired through apprenticeship
programs in industry.
If you are talking about more professional-type
occupations, of course, ...
F--I guess I wasn't because I suppose everybody works.
I was really thinking about what we call the skilled
tradesmen.
Is that why you think, because we weren't doing enough
of a job in higher education in this period, we created
the community college system?
R--That was the theory in the creation of the community
college system, but even it hasn't done its job in
that area either--yet.
It's pretty strange because labor and industry are
strongly for vocational education and yet nobody seems
to be grabbing the bull by the horns to try to get
good, organized, comprehensive, well-conceived types
of vocational training.
F--That certainly was one of your aspirations when we
went through the agony of creating Wayne County
Community College, wasn't it?
That went through with a great deal of strain and
stress.
R--While you'll have to say that some progress has been
made, it certainly hasn't caught on yet.
F--I don't know how I can get to this, and it may not be
possible, but I've always felt that higher education
sort of modeled itself on the research university and
followed the status trail of places like Michigan and
discouraged institutions like Henry Ford Community
College, and Grand Rapids, for instance, from really
pushing and espousing the vocational. Maybe that's
the reason for the development now of the new--and
actually duplicative function--skill center which
is more closely tied to the intermediate district.

A 395
Ryan
R--Right, right. There's a lot of individual efforts
being extended now in that area.
It may be that all
of them at some point along the way may blossom all
at once and we may end up with some massive results,
hopefully.
F--But, you're saying that in the aspect of training of
men, this is an unfilfilled agenda.
R--Yes, that's what I'm saying.
F--Did the growth of culture and the arts, Bill, have
importance in the dialogue over the growth of higher
education?
R--That one's probably a little bit out of my field. I
can only speak from my own personal observations and
conseption.
I think certainly it played a role, but I never felt it
to be a part of the push, the pressure, the reasons for
the growth of higher education.
It may have contributed in a sense that a degree was
valued in industry for job-obtaining purposes. Many of
the various areas in which degrees could be obtained
were still quite relevant in getting the degree which
enabled one to obtain the job, as distinguished from
doing the job.
So, I think in that sense the culture and the arts
played a role. There's no doubt, but what the groups
which are intensely interested in the arts are an
intellectual factor and did play their role, but I
think it still is a relatively small percentage of the
total picture. You could never feel that particular
pressure in the Legislature.
F--I guess the only time I personally observed where
culture and the arts would have had the same kind of
impact, say, as athletics, would have been at Oakland
where they used the theater programs and the like to
build a sense of community.
I myself haven't observed
that that helped Wayne, for instance.
Did you want to add anything to the position of labor
in regard to higher education?

A 396
Ryan
R--No, I just think that its political activities were
parlayed into tremendous support for the growth of
higher education.
The fact it was heavily involved politically was the
circumstance that caused it to make its tremendous
contribution.
F--I do see several factors and I want to raise them
with you for your reaction.
In Michigan one has the sense that labor was less
oriented to bread-and-butter issues than they were in
some other states. They had a lot of broad societal
interests that had to do with well-being in a broader
sense rather than just lunch-pail issues.
It’s been
my observation that labor was interested in higher
education across the broad spectrum, not necessarily
in terms of specific institutions.
Whereas industry, which was much more involved in
taxation issues throughout this whole period--preven­
tion of increasing state appropriations and hence
taxes--was less interested in a broad sense but had
a more parochial interest.
Local industries led
pushes, along with other groups, for places like
Saginaw Valley and Grand Valley and Oakland, Dearborn.
What's your reaction to that?
R--I think you're right.
I think though that there were
particular members or individuals in industry who
helped to play fund-raising roles for the institutions -out to play alumni roles.
Because of this fund-raising
role, as civic leaders and as common alumni, I think
industrial personages did play substantial roles in
the promotion of higher education.
I do agree there was always that underlying effort to
balance education with the taxes, and as always the
persistent argument that the state should not be
assuming a stated role in the financing of education-as it was.
But that was sort of mixed.
Industry could not unite
on any such concept as that because there were too
many persons in industry who were not supporting that
particular concept.
It was incompatible with their
role as educational leaders, by reason of their civic

A 397
Ryan
activities or their alumni activities.
It was never
a unified type of thing.
It couldn’t get off the
ground very much for that reason, it couldn’t get
unified.
F--Do you think that the position of commerce might have
been different or would you lop them in with industry?
R--I think that there w e ’re talking about persons and
individuals rather than talking about industry or
commerce.
I think the mixed dilemma that persons in
commerce had were similar to or somewhat the same as
persons in industry.
I don't think you can very well
distinguish between them.
F--Well, that may be an important point because certainly
in the taxation process one didn't find during this
period that they were as divided or mixed in their
approach.
We went through several taxation crises over increasing
the base. We went over the attitudes about progressive
taxation and their arguments were very much that if
they didn't get what they wanted they were leaving the
state--always as sort of a final threat.
R--That was always on the area of taxes, but they usually
didn't oppose,though, the spending program the taxes
made possible.
In fact we quite often reminded them,
without much response from them, that those taxes do
buy services which are beneficial to industry and
which they wanted and which they usually conceded.
When they would be comparing Michigan's taxes versus
nearby and other industrial states, we would be saying,
but look at what you're getting for that money. You're
getting better educational institutions and other types
of services.
They usually wouldn't argue against that
point.
F--What about agriculture, Bill?
R--Agriculture I guess did play a pretty big role in educa­
tion in Michigan. MSU, of course, is sort of the
exhibit that displays that fact.
I think elsewhere, though, too. As agriculture moved
from the small individual farmer to the large corporate

A 398
Ryan
farmer, they then became persons with the ability and
means. Education was certainly one of their requisites
for the sons of the farmers.
Agriculture, I think, was highly promotive of educa­
tion in this state.
F--I was curious.
Certainly with the agricultural research
station and the curriculums at Michigan State there was
strong support, but I was curious if you felt that in
other local contexts: so that their children wouldn’t go
away from home and the like.
The small farmer in the 40-acre holding no longer could
support a family and moved to corporate farms. One of
the tragedies of this period--and of our current history-was the migration of people from homes to the city and
the destruction of the quality of life in rural areas.
R--Well, I guess it was inevitable that the agricultural
populations would diminish as you moved towards more
production with fewer people due to mechanization.
It
was inevitable that that would happen.
Perhaps the only
way it can happen is by migration from farm areas to
non-farm areas.
But, I still think, though, that among that element of
the agricultural population which remained agricultural,
education became absolutely more and more essential.
One, because they had greater ability and means; and
two, because they had an absolutely greater necessity to
obtain more education.
F--In other words, the agricultural segment needed more
occupational alternatives than the urban dweller did?
R--Yes, but it's not only alternatives, it's enhancement
of the few alternatives.
If agriculture were to be
mechanized and were to make technological advance­
ments, you had to have education in order to make that
possible.
F--What were the pressures and influences in the deter­
mination of public policy from the federal government,
if any?
The reason I ask the question is that when you look at
the social policy of America, the federal government
grants to states required many quid pro quos: regula­
tion, distribution, access.
That doesn't seem to have

A 399
Ryan
been the case in higher education.
I'm curious if you've observed, for instance, con­
straints on the states from the federal government
the way it's been very definitely so in welfare policy.
R--Well, I suppose the way in which the federal govern­
ment influenced higher education was the way it always
is: in the way it makes its grants and what kinds of
grants that it makes.
It made money possible to cause the faculty and pro­
fessors to take on national and international respon­
sibilities which lent national and international flavors
to the educational institutions.
It's not that the
federal government was spending that much money in
doing it, but they were spending it in a very attract­
ive way, which probably did considerably influence the
thinking of the faculty in broadening their concepts
and activities.
I think also the federal government played pretty big
roles in its research grants in the types of money that
it made available for that type of research project.
F--You know, as you've talked, Bill, you're the first one
that's observed the international role.
People have talked about the research grants to enhance
biology and technology; people have talked about eh
role of federal aid for specialized curriculums like
counseling; people have talked about the construction
grants which helped to support and enhance private
schools, but this state isn't an insular state. As I
think about what you've memtioned, you think about
Michigan State in Turkey, Nigeria, Viet Nam; Wayne in
Yugoslavia; you think about Eastern Michigan University
in Somaliland.
Nobody has talked about that, but that obviously was a
significant and unspoken factor. Perhaps the right
word to use is attractive.
I had not thought about
that.
I think that's a good insight.
What were the pressures and influences in the deter­
mination of public policy from the private sector?
I'm thinking about private higher education.
I'm
thinking about U of D, Albion, Calvin, Kalamazoo...
V

A 400
Ryan
R--Of course all of those institutions are heavily com­
mitted to the concept of education for education's
sake and help to form the whole public concept that
was taken for granted among the mass of the citizenry:
that education was good and necessary.
I think that the main role these institutions were
playing helped legislators, for instance, and society
in general, just to accept without question the
necessity to expand higher education. These institu­
tions in some instances, of course, were pioneers.
For instance, U of D in their co-op arrangements.
That's in the days when public higher education was
laggard and retarded and private education was fore­
most when relative costs favored private higher educa­
tion more than they later did. They were able to send
higher education down various types of experimental
and constructive roads.
But as we made more and more money available for public
higher education, made low tuitions possible and made
these public higher educational institutions more and
more attractive in their environment and their facil­
ities, private higher education diminished in relative
influence and found itself resorting to a fight to
stay alive financially.
F--But there's some degree of statesmanship, the fact that
you can't identify the conflict because I don't believe
it exists.
That's the reason there's a degree of
statesmanship.
In Massachusetts, where I'm from, Bill, the private
schools fought for 20 years to prevent a state school
from coming into the urban areas because they would
offer alternatives that they were afraid would destroy
them.
Recently in Colorado there was a meeting of the
state colleges and universities, so I am told, and one
of the states came across very vigorously against any
support for private education.
Yet, in this state we just passed the bill to give
grants to institutions for each degree earned, the
McGeorge Bundy plan. And not one public school that
I know of fought that in any public way.
Now,
obviously, there's been a certain kind of attitude
where both sectors, the more powerful public sector
and the declining-in-strength private sector, have
some degree of statesmanship that believes that there
is a value in this state for the continuation of both
models. That, I think, is worth remark.

A 401

R--I think you're right about Michigan.
There has been
more cooperation between public and private education.
F--Nobody wants to talk about it.
I think that the public
institutions have a tremendous amount of political
power because of the linkages with the alumni, with
industry, with labor, and the fact that for a variety
of reasons, the modern Michigan citizens identify with
the individual institutions.
If they decided to make a fight, a real tough fight,
the votes wouldn't come so easy, would they?
R--No, they certainly wouldn't.
But, my own personal opinion is that the private sector
is still on its way out.
I think the financial
pressures are just too great for them to be able to
compete.
It's true that public higher education could
hasten their demise if they opposed these relatively
modest degrees of assistance the state gives to private
higher education.
But, I think, nevertheless, it's still
only a matter of time.
I think that some elements of it can survive, you know,
if they stay small and if they cater to particularized
obj ectives.
F--But, doesn't that really threaten a place like U of D,
maximally? I think you're probably right about the
fact that institutions will only survive when they pick
spots on the market of very limited effect.
Places like U of D have a broad-based curriculum, and
I sort of have the feeling that the private sector is
being pushed out of professional education, being
pushed out of high-cost technical education and
expensive and small programs.
They will probably have
to end up being...
R--The thing that's going to murder them too is capital
outlay. No institution can survive without replen­
ishing its facilities from time to time.
F--The last time they really got money was 1965 with the
HEFA, which came from the federal programs.
There's
been no state aid or construction.

A 402
Ryan
R--There’s been some helpful assistance to students to
pay their tuition, and as you say, these grants for
degrees would be of some help to the institution directly.
F--In our medical program people talk frequently about
the fact that we have a $4 million budget in our
college.
The reason we can do that is w e ’ve got $50
million worth of capital that's part of that effort
too, which doesn't show on the ledger.
What was the nature, Bill, of the regional and local
pressures to expand higher education in one location
rather than another?
R--I think it's economic and civic.
F--Were they an advantage to you? A lot of people, par­
ticularly planners, make a great fuss about the rivalry
between, say, Saginaw and Grand Rapids or Oakland and
Dearborn.
I myself lean to the belief, based on my experiences
working for the Legislature, that that's not bad at
all. As a matter of fact it wired people in who were
never in. It brought people into the game who had
the privilege and legislative tactic of voting no.
All of a sudden you brought in Grand Rapids people and
Saginaw people and Dearborn people and you could wire
them into a system where in order to get this they had
to give something else too.
So I wasn't sure that that kind of competition was at
all devisive or bad for the objectives of the state.
R--No, and it certainly has stimulated the particular
legislators, I sort of figure about 30 percent
of them, who find it most convenient to vote no on every­
thing, all of a sudden picking up some of these people
in order to get votes for their institutions and civic
interests.
They had to swap them for welfare and mental
health and public health issues.
Do you feel that way too?

A 403
Ryan
R--Yes, except that this core of legislators that you're
talking about that vote no on everything--1 don't think
that they vote no on everything.
I think they vote
strictly in accordance with the provincial wishes of
their constituent leaders.
But it serves the same purpose.
F--Ok, maybe the districts say no, but they certainly
learned to watch that board.
It was always red.
R--If you're talking about this particular type item
yes. The concept I mentioned would reflect itself in
red votes for institutions elsewhere.
But, I don't think
that these people, as you say, who vote no just for the
sake of voting no, that's not really what's motivating
them--their desire to vote no--what's motivating them
is their desire to get themselves re-elected.
F--I guess I'm speaking to something very directly. When
you have a program you have to fashion, since party
regularity in Michigan doesn't really exist in the
fullest sense, votes are crucial from this sector.
You have served as Speaker since 1968.
Bill?

Is that correct,

R--Yes, I started in 69'.
F--The Legislature's been Democratic in the House only 12
years between 1850 and 197 0. Every time you have a
program you have to make up your mind how you get the
votes. As I have said to my class, anything less than
56 votes is a stimulating opinion. A lot of good ideas
don't have 56 votes.
So I was thinking, did the increased role of education
assist you and other Legislative leaders in the building
support for other programs?
I, therefore, wouldn't
be highly critical of the competition, I think it may
have tied more people in.
R--Oh no, competition is certainly a good factor.
F--What in your opinion were the reasons for the failure
of the branch campus systems that began to be developed
in Michigan with Oakland, Flint, Dearborn, that we
turned our back on pretty much?
R--I just don't know much about that.

A 404
Ryan
F--Farnsworth said something very interesting and I am
curious as to what your observations are about it.
He was very much into the attempt to make the human
services bill a reality. Jim said one of the reasons
is that people were suspicious of very large institu­
tions. They didn't like big government, they didn't
like big schools, they didn't want to see one school
be bigger than 40,000 and be like California where
the system might have 150,000.
They were afraid of
thought-control and the like.
And then, of course, he made the strong point that you
have made about the civic energy: their desire to
control their own destiny rather than being run from
East Lansing or Ann Arbor.
Do those make sense to you?
R--Yes, I think so.
I think those thoughts probably over­
come and supersede the human desire to be associated
with bigness and to say you have some association with
status and prestige.
I think that the points that Jim
Farnsworth made there probably are more valuable.
But I think that in the Legislature they are not looking
at the bottom part: that is, not from the civic aspect
to the state, they're looking from the state down.
I
think Jim's right there, that people in the state are
suspicious of efforts and attempts to build empires,
to create extra and additional power for oneself. You
know, to pursue a system that says when we exhaust our
possibilities in one location we will continue to
expand by taking over other locations under our direction
and guidance.
I think the people in the state were
somewhat suspicious of that even though there might be
some advantages such as educational and economic
advantages.
F--There is a certain kind of cultural resistance here in
people.
But why, in your opinion, did an institutional system
for the coordination of higher education not come about
after 1964?
R--I guess because higher education didn't want it.

A 405
Ryan
F--I think that’s a good answer too.
A young man who is writing his dissertation at Michigan
came to me.
They're all involved in planning and they
have all these beautiful charts and boxes and bars and
hierarchial structures.
He said to me, "Well, you know
in Ohio and Illinois the legislatures are just fatigued
by the conflict.
Don't you think they want a system?"
I said my personal opinion is that, no, everybody's
quite happy with the way the system works.
They can
stand the strain of the competition in return for the
opportunities of getting the schools to be susceptible
to legislative initiatives.
R--Well, of course, the autonomy of the institution is the
big factor. They want autonomy, not to be coordinated.
F--The other thing that I was struck by is simply this.
It may well be that in Michigan we really do have a
system of coordination, where there is a subtle compet­
ition for resource.
In fact, the legislative and
executive branches are really able to control institu­
tions, without the need for a large bureaucrecy to
effect that control, by the competition for resource.
R--Yes.
F--Do you have the feeling that the members of the caucus,
and legislators that you have known over the years,
feel that the institutions are not susceptible to
control to obtain state objectives?
There is some rhetoric but I don't have the sense that
that's the case.
R--The institutions don't want to be controlled by a state
institution or state board.
The only way they will
submit to control will be if they are allowed to retain
and strengthen their own autonomy so they can resist
control if they don't like it. They have an objection
to somebody telling them what they should do, advising
them what they should do. They want that autonomy that
gives them the right to not do what they don't want to,
or gives them tremendous bargaining power.
F--Someone said that Michigan citizenry seem to be willing
to pay for that duplication and competition in return
for the freedom, that ideal, that autonomy is dear to Mich­
igan's people.

A 406
Ryan
R--I don't know what the masses of the citizenry think
about that.
I don't know that they've been confronted
with that.
I think in Con-Con the representatives of the institu­
tions fought hard for autonomy and was the main voice
that was heard.
F--And they won.
R--And they won, as you say, but there's been no countervalent force that's been giving the other side of the
argument. Occasionally, though, the politicians who
have to be responsive and accountable to the people do
use in their argumentation with the citizenry the
limitations to their power that the autonomy of the
institutions impose upon them.
It may be that some
point down the road the citizens may rise up against
autonomy on the grounds that the institutions can do
anything they want to and the elected representatives
of the people are powerless to prevent them.
In most cases you might talk about not so much the
economic but the social trends in institutions which
people get all concerned about and ask the legislators
to do something about it and which they just have to
say, "Sorry, we don't have any power to do something."
F--It's amazing things like coed dorms can create tremen­
dous attitudes, can't they?
R--Yes.
F--Do you see any countervailing forces developing at this
time?
R--None that are strong.
anything.

They're not strong enough to do

F--They'd have to develop in the Legislature and executive,
wouldn't they?
R--It'd have to develop in the grass-roots citizens first.
Then the politicians would nurture it. That's the way
it would happen if it's to happen.
F--You were saying something about legislatures that I
think is important.
Frequently people look at

A 407
Ryan
legislatures as creating events and then the grass roots
respond. You're saying that one of the main energies
of legislators is to survive and to be reelected.
They
listen closely to their grass roots and there'd have to
be a basic change in the attitudes of the grass roots
in order to find programs and mechanisms to change those
attitudes.
R--Yes, I guess I would put it in that way.
not to commend it.

And this is

They are politically successful to the extent that they
can ascertain what the people are thinking, and can
express what the people are thinking in a way better
than the people themselves can express it, so the people
recognize it as their views when they hear it expressed.
In some cases that is good.
In other cases it's very,
very bad for the politician to play that kind of role
because politicians should be leaders, should be
leading the citizens away from those views which are
selfish and inconsiderate of the masses of the people
or even the neglected minorities. He should be leading
people towards a constructive view.
Too often politi­
cians take advantage of a political situation for their
own good.
F--Well, I'm struck by what you say because it strikes me
that as long as higher education in Michigan serves
the people and broadens their base of understanding
rather than following parochial interests just for
themselves, the day of control probably will not come.
Probably only when institutions get really out of
whack with society do we have these mechanisms.
Bill, who in your opinion were the significant opinion
leaders in higher education in this period?
R--I suppose the outstanding person, outstanding individual
who influenced the development of higher education is
G. Mennen Williams.
I think he is probably the one who
helped to shape tentative direction of state support
for higher education with the greatest degree of popular
political influence in his day.
F--Are there other legislators or institutional people that
come to your mind?

A 408
Ryan
Well, obviously the governors, the members of the
appropriations committee, the party leaders in the
House and Senate, the presidents of the major insti­
tutions, just because of the tremendous power-base
that those institutions have.
Those people have to
be mentioned and have been by others.
R--Yes, but you don't think of those persons really as
being persons who are promoting education for educa­
tion's sake. What they're doing is trying to respond
to the pressures in working out annual budgets. You
never think of them as being influential leaders in
the area of education.
I suppose maybe there could
be legislators who had solid convictions as to the
necessities for improved education.
I can't think of many who impressed me from that stand­
point. Many impress me as having done tremendous work
in this area but not doing so much for that motivation,
[but] doing it because they had to work out the annual
budgetary problems in accordance with the public
pressures which were presented to the Legislature.
F--Then when we deal with leadership, we're talking about
people like G. Mennen Williams, perhaps Romney, because
they created a public part, Walter Reuther, maybe Gus
Scholle.
R--Now, all of those persons were persons who you could
sort of feel were dedicated to the promotion of
education.
F--Thank you very much, Bill.

HIGHER EDUCATION IN MICHIGAN,
1958 to 1970
VOLUME 3
Interviews
By
Gerald Alden Faverman

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Administration and Higher Education
1975

CONTENTS
16.

John X. J a m r i c h ........................... A

409

17.

David H. P o n i t z ........................... A

444

18.

Robben W. F l e m i n g ......................... A

490

19.

Frank D. Beadle

......................... A

524

20.

Stephen S. N i s b e t ......................... A

558

21.

Victor F. S p a t h e l f ....................... A

607

22.

Leonard W o o d c o c k ......................... A

645

23.

Milton E. M u e l d e r ......................... A

673

24.

George R o m n e y ............................. A

712

25.

John A. H a n n a h .............................A 7 3 9

26.

Harlan H. H a t c h e r ......................... A

776

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
JOHN X. JAMRICH1

F--John, we're talking about an inquiry into the nature of
higher education in Michigan from 1958 to 197 0. In
that period higher education appropriations increased
from some $80 million to some $270 million.
I'm curious, what in your opinion were the reasons that
led to the expansion of higher education in Michigan
from 1958 on?
J--I think there are probably half-a-dozen important points
that can be made on that question. These are not in any
order of importance, necessarily, but let me just cite a
couple.
Number one is obvious. Namely: There were just many more
young people graduating from high school. That in itself
might or might not have produced expansion and growth.
It could just as well have been that instead of going,
let's say, from 20 percent or 25 percent of the high
school graduates going on, instead of that growing to
47 percent, that could have stayed at the same level.
There obviously were other sociological, philosophical
factors which gave rise to the phenomenal increase in
numbers and growth of education.
In other words, if the percentage of high school kids
going on would have remained the same, we still would
John X. Jamrich; President, Northern Michigan University,
1968; Assistant Director, Legislative Survey of Higher
Education in Michigan, 1957-58; Professor of Higher Education,
Michigan State University, 1957-58 ; Director, Center for the
Study of Higher Education, Michigan State University, 1957-63;
Associate Dean, College of Education, Michigan State
University, 1963-68; author of several books on education.
Interview conducted May 21, 1974.

A 409

A 410
Jamrich
have had larger numbers, but when you consider that
not only were there larger numbers but larger per­
centages of those numbers going on, this is where we
find ourselves with the trenendous pressure for
expanding the opportunity.
One might aslc, why is it that the percentage of high
school graduates going on increased? There, again,
are several reasons, aside from the draft and all this
kind of thing.
It's hard to measure what impact that
had.
I think there are some very practical things that came
in. Number one, at that point in time the demand in a
number of professional areas was evident to the young
people. They saw this as a way of moving into the
teaching, engineering, or whatever, professional arena.
So I would say that as the numbers increased, the per­
centage of those going on increased. This was a result
of newer goals emerging in the young people’s minds,
and their parents' as well.
F--That's a political decision, John, to increase not only
the number but also the percentage of high school
graduates who *11 have a place in the higher education
system.
J--That's correct.
F--0hio increased the number, but not the percentage of
the class.
J--That *s right. This state was responding in the political
arena with fiscal and financial support for the need as
it was perceived by those who were in a position to make
decisions, for programs, for example, at the less-thanbaccalaureate degree level.
F--We created some 15 community colleges in this time.
J--You go back to 1958 and '57 and ’56 and you think of the
infancy of junior and community colleges in this state.
You compare it then to the survey of ’57 and '58 which
recommended that there be a community college within a
30-mile driving radius of every citizen of the State of
Michigan and you come up with a map showing some 35 of
them throughout the state.

A 411
Jamrich
The state has moved in that direction.
It’s in response
to the recognition of: a) these programs of less-thandegree [status]; and b) an opportunity to begin higher
education with a transfer option. This really convinced
the decision makers in the state: at the local level,
politically, in terms of community colleges; those who
vote millages; those who vote in the Legislature; and
the governor's office, in terms of providing the budget.
F--That's a good point because traditionally higher educa­
tion has been paid for at the state level. With the
construction of these new community colleges, local
citizenry were voting to directly bear part of the
burden with their own dollars.
That's quite a level of community and social support,
isn't it?
J--This is right.
It goes back to the kind of point that
I've made many times in speaking on this subject: the
recognition in the State of Michigan of what I call the
social value of higher education. And having it,
recognizing it as an appreciating investment rather
than a depreciating investment.
Taking one's discre­
tionary income and recognizing that putting it here is
an investment that is appreciative in character, rather
than as when you buy a car and the next day the Blue
Book says it's worth ten percent less.
F--You're saying that there was a social understanding
that dollars invested in higher education were an
investment rather than an expenditure.
J--I believe that--in the decision maker's mind. You
take some of our people--we were talking a while ago
of Senator Zollar and Senator Lane--these men
recognize this generalized social value of investment
in higher education.
Public higher education was of such stature as to
rather naturally warrant the notion that that's
something worth expanding. When we go back to the

A 412
Jamrich
2
'57 and *58 study you realize that in the State of
Michigan you had the total spectrum of higher educa­
tion, practically everything.
I remember saying in
that report that the only two things that we didn't
have were optometry and osteopathy.
These two things
were visible because of their absence in terms of
public institution availability.
You have the whole spectrum of post-secondary educa­
tion : undergraduate, ... you take your choice and you
could find it in the State of Michigan in a public
institution, and highly respected, nationally and
internationally. You had something to begin with.
F--You went from Ferris to the University of Michigan.
That's quite a broad spectrum, isn't it?
J--Absolutely. One of the important things that was
recognized by those who were making the decision was
that this is a total service to the state. It isn’t
just a Ph.D. in ornithology, you see, but it is that,
plus a whole lot of other things.
F--Did you sense that there was some real belief that the
only hope for the state's economy was to enhance the
industrial sector by encouraging the growth of higher
education for the support that industry could get from
research and the like?
J--That's a little more difficult, I think, to put your
finger on except to say that the net result is indeed
that.
You take the research in the ag school here at M S U ,
or you take the research in engineering, nuclear
physics, and the like at Ann Arbor.
These things,
when translated and transformed into the industrial
business arena, have certainly shown tremendous
dividends to us.
2

John D . Russell, John X. Jamrich, and Orwin T .
Richardson, Instructional Programs in Michigan Institutions
of Higher Education^ (Staff Study No. 6~t The Survey of
Higher Education in Michigan) (Lansing, March 1958),

A 413
Jamrich
Now, sometimes those things are difficult to discern
In advance and say, "If we put $3 million in research
on hybrid corn it’s going to yield $300 billion of
dividends." Who knew that in the beginning?
But this is how it comes out, and some of the experi­
ments in research pay off more than others.
That's
the character and nature of experimentation.
F--The John Dale Russell Report was sort of a curiosity,
in a sense. It’s the most well-received and influential,
as far as I can ascertain, report. It was the one that
was subject, in many ways, in my observation, to the
least political fratricide.
It strikes me that Michigan has not been a state
sympathetic to either centralized control or bureau­
cratic mechanisms for coordination. There’s been a
great deal of resistance, all through, to the admin­
istrative kinds of decision structures that occur in
Wisconsin and California.
It further struck me that there's always been a great
deal of legislative opposition, to the contrary of
other states, to creating control mechanisms. Whether
they be in higher education or even in the area of
social services, where we are now currently facing a
discussion over the human services agency.
Have you some thoughts about what were the reasons that
the Russell report succeeded so?
One of the big things that strikes me is some of the
attempts of coordination, such as the combined-board
administrative structure that existed for a while.
It's my understanding that M. M. Chambers came and
effectively got driven out. That's always struck me
as somewhat astonishing that such an emminent m a n ...
and yet I gather he didn't even last long enough to
unpack his bags here before they tossed him out and
he headed back to Illinois.
And yet, [for] everybody who was studying higher educa­
tion , John Dale Russell seems in many ways to be the
beginning and the end.
J--Well, a couple of facts have to be recognized.
That
study came out with 45 basic recommendations.
The

A 414

Jamrich
one and only major recommendation which has not yet
been put into effect in any way in the State of
Michigan is the one having to do with coordination
and planning.
You will remember, though, that in the 1963 State
Constitution they tried to reflect that, but they
reflected it in this inconsistent fashion of saying
on the one hand that the State Board is this, and on
the other hand, in another section saying they’re
[the colleges] autonomous. So really, it didn’t
accomplish that, but all of the other 45 major
recommendations were indeed implemented.
There were some difficult times trying to put some of
the data together.
There were great obj ections, for
example, in our staff report on medical education.
The idea of expanding Wayne and maybe even starting a
new medical school--that of course initially was
opposed.
Eventually it came about with, I think,
the proper kind of success.
To go back to why central coordination has not found
a good nest in Michigan.
I think that has some obvious
reasons and it goes back to the point I was making
before. This state’s higher education enterprise has
been of such long standing--since 1837 [U of M ] ,
1855 [MSU], 1849 for Ypsilanti as a teacher-training
institution--and of such high reputation, and all in
a setting of individuality and individual performance.
Anyone who thinks about it for any length of time has
to ask the question: "If w e 've done so well under
these conditions of individuality and autonomy, who
says there is anything better to be obtained by
merging all of this under one board?" South Dakota
has had a single board since 1800-something, and
fame and stature don’t happen to reside in higher
education in that state. It is modest, it does its
job, but certainly nothing like the fame and stature
of U of M, MSU, et cetera.
I think there's a tradition here that can be translated somewhat into dollars and cents, but basically
i t 's more of an interpretive perception of how well
things have been done. Again, you have to remember
that this took a certain kind of insight in the
political arena.
To translate some of this, "How did

A 415

Jamrich
those institutions get to be what they are?" The
answer is state support through a sympathetic,
supportive legislature and executive office.
F--And I think societal support, too.
J--Yes. I think the Michigan citizenry was willing to
absorb and internalize this. Had they been resistant
it might have been a different matter, but I think
you have to recognize some of our legislative people's
leadership in this thing.
F--You've been president since 1970?
J--1968.
F--One of the things that strikes me as worth a remark
is the fact that I don't know any other state in the
Union where the educational enterprises have consti­
tutional status. You take a look at the Constitution.
You are guaranteed rights of autonomy. That's got to
say something for Michigan attitudes because...
J--From way back...
F --And it was there in 1908 too, and the first
Constitution spoke to the powers of the University of
Michigan.
So there's got to have been some strong
prerogatives here and yet Russell did have significant
impact.
The Legislature brought Russell in, didn't they?
J--Yes, that's correct.
F--Do you think that was the reason it succeeded?
J--Oh, there's no question about it.
It's like anything else, Jerry.
For example, if the
legislature, the governor, and the institutions,
those three entities, suddenly decided that they need
a central coordinating board, there would be no problem.
There would be one, provided all three of them recognized
a single agency to carry this on, and if at the time
they recognized it was something that probably ought to
be done.

A 416
Jamrich
There’s a little background to this. There’s an
interesting little monograph printed by the Council
of State College Presidents about 1955 or '56. If
you've not read that, you'd better read it as part of
your history, because there's a thing that makes
projections for enrollments that are fantastic. If
I remember the chart, there are five different options
for enrollments and the most extreme, liberal, highest
option, let's say for 1960, was exceeded in 1958. The
one for 1965 was exceeded in 1960.
So the institutions were faced with a little piece of
paper that projected something that, almost as it
came off the press, they recognized was really way,
way off target. Something had to be done to respond
to this kind of thing that was felt by people. I
think we can feel all of this, now what are we supposed
to do? What's the best response?
In the meantime,, prior to the Russell study, people like
Ferris Crawford^ and some of us were dabbling into the
community college situation in various parts of the
state. There were little bubbles of this need through­
out the state, and I think this sort of came at the
right time.
F--I think there's something to that. It came at the
right time, but there's not been a study since, that
has been accepted as significantly as the Russell one
was. Virtually every one of Russell's recommendations
has come to pass but that one of state coordination.
J--Just that one.

They're working on it now.

F--What are your observations about that?
J--Well, there are two. One is that the way it's proposed
now I would support it.
I would express my support for it: namely, a post secondary commission separate from the State Board of
Education, for obvious reasons that I think you're as
aware of as I am.
The State Board of Education has
3

Ferris N . Crawford; Assistant Superintendent for
General Education, 1958-65; Associate Superintendent
for Educational Services, 1966-

A 417
Jamrich
plenty to do if it's taking care of K through 12, a
tremendously complex enterprise in itself.
I think a separate commission to advise on planning
and coordination--and those are the words now being
used in that proposed piece of legislation--does have
my support.
Our Board at Northern has looked at this,
w e ’ve talked about it, and it has our support.
But just between the two of us I think the chances of
that getting on the ballot and passing this fall are
fairly slim. That would be my guess.
F--My studies lead me to believe that there's no public
at all for this kind of structure. The sentiment that
I can ascertain is, "Michigan's policy leaders say the
system is working. Why, therefore, create an instru­
mentality that1s not necessary?"
J--The paper I read on behalf of the Council of Presidents
before the Commission [Governor's Commission on Higher
Education] four or five months ago... perhaps you were
there.
F--I know, I read it.
J--That summarizes precisely the point you're talking
about. I think that1s right. The leaders look at it
and say, "Well, wait a minute. What's wrong with it?"
F--I ’m not sure that people are displeased with the steward­
ship of any of the institutions in any grevious way.
John, what were the policy objectives that underlay this
expansion, as you see it?
Obviously the decision to make a place, not only for
the current percentage of people in college, but to
increase that percentage, was obviously an objective.
The community college idea of having low-cost educa­
tion within available range for every citizen was
certainly another.
What are some of the others that you saw?
J--The opportunity for education beyond high school, I
think, is the broadest policy objective under which
a lot of these things will fall.

A 418
Jamrich
Take Northern Michigan University, for example, or
Ferris State College.
Northern Michigan University has
had for more than a decade a thing called "the right to
try." Ferris says "open admission." This is an oppor­
tunity for a student who shows interest in, an
inclination, or some support for going on to college,
even though his high school grades may not be 3.0 or
2.75.
I think there is a realization on the part of the people
who look at this that, let's put it quite bluntly, our
governments, our businesses, our industries, are not
run and operated by people who graduated in the upper
one percent of their class and are in the upper one
percent of IQ measurements. They are operated by people
like you and I , who put their pants on one leg at a time,
and whose IQ’s will range from 100 to 200.
F--I'm laughing because somebody told me something yesterday
that just broke me u p . They said, "Remember that
50 percent of the doctors now practicing in the United
States graduated in the bottom half of their class."
J--This is exactly the sort of thing I say to people when
they get all hot and bothered about [the fact that]
this kid to be a school teacher must have a 3.85
average.
I say, "Wait a minute." I get sick and on Thursday I ’m
going to have a little eye operation.
I’m going to be
lying there and the doctor’s going to come in with all
his cutting tools. Am I going to say, "Just a minute,
let me see your transcripts and your diploma. What
was your GPA in med school?" This is ridiculous.
That’s where artistry instead of numbers really comes
into play.
But getting back to my point: If one man-one vote is
going to mean something in terms of participation by
citizenry it goes back to Jefferson’s basic point- a well-educated citizen. Now, whether our leaders and
our citizens in this state read Jefferson’s statement
or not and said, "This is exactly what we want so w e ’re
going to do this," the point is that this is the
direction w e ’ve taken. We are saying, and were saying
in those days, that the basic policy commitment is an
opportunity for the maximum number of youngsters to go
on.

A 419
Jamrich
Let me remind you, though, that not everyone in this
state was supportive of that policy.
For example-a very specific thing--! did the survey for the
Legislature in that six-county area which eventually
came to be established as Grand Valley State College.
My analysis of the high school graduates, parents, and
their expectations and goals, led me to the conclusion
that that six-county area was indeed right for a fouryear, degree-granting institution--based on the notion
that we ought to maximize the opportunity for young
people to go beyond high school.
Well, this lady just took me apart: What a terrible
thing I ’m foisting on that area in terms of the erosion
of the quality of education by bringing all these lessthan-qualified students into the college arena, et
cetera.
It's an eight- or ten-, maybe twelve-page
document where she took issue with my position.
Interestingly enough, and fortunately, she was in the
vast minority.
But still, I'm saying it was not a
unanimous rising-up of the Michigan citizenry saying,
"Everyone of us wants this." But in the main, I think
you found the leaders of the Grand Rapids area, Kent
County, and so on, seeing that something like this had
to be done in that part of the state to respond to the
needs of the young people.
Under this comes such things as opportunity for the
minorities.
This emerges as a very important reason
why certain kinds of numbers came out in the expansion,
plus why certain kinds of programs developed in our
colleges and universities.
F--Was there also the attempt and the vision to cap the
size of the large schools and encourage the growth of
regional institutions?
J--This is sort of built in if you're going to say we
should maximize the opportunity for access to higher
education. I think you immediately have to recognize
that many who want to go on are not economically able
to pick up and go miles away from home and pay room,
board, and tuition.
If we're going to really put into
practice that principle, we have to put the schools
nearby.

A 420
Jamrich
I go back to the Grand Valley thing.
I made my recom­
mendations on the assumption, I forget the dates now,
but by 1968 or 1970 there should be 10,000 students
there.
Well, I remember the first president, Jim Zumberge^.
He used to chide me. He would say, "Jamrich, where in
the world did you come up with those numbers 4, 5, and
6,000?" My response was very simple: "You didn’t read
my report very carefully in terms of the kind of
curricula and program offering.
If you’re going to
become the Harvard of the west shore of the State of
Michigan, that's an entirely different proposition."
F--Zumberge’s problem was that he didn’t know what Grand
Rapids was.
J--That’s exactly the point.
He was somewhat reflecting
this lady’s point of view.
I remember when I made the
study out there. He said, "Oh, why are you fussing
with that? After all, we want our kids in Grand Rapids
to go to college for a degree.”
Weren't they surprised when they found what a large
proportion of them actually aspired to such things as
cosmetology, barbering, and so on. This was the real
world of work. And it was an awakening, because if you
remember, Grand Rapids Junior College was also 80 percent
oriented in terms of transfer.
F--It was the oldest community college and really an
academic and not a vocational institution.
J--Absolutely. It was not a community college in the
sense that we normally think of them.
F--If you look over these last few years, it really strikes
me that Michigan, Wayne, and Michigan State really
haven't grown that much. They're not that much bigger
than they were when you started.
J--Yes, I think that’s right.
^James H. Zumberge; President, Grand Valley State
College, 1963-68.

A 421
Jamrich
F--If you take a look at the total number of kids in
college today, and if you take a look at the kids in
community colleges, private colleges, and the regional
institutions, you'll find that Michigan, Michigan
State, and Wayne have declined in their percentage of
the market.
J--I think this is a problem for us in the next five to
ten years.
Let me tell you a little bit about this,
because for Northern Michigan University what you're
saying is supported by statistics.
Back in 1965 or so, Northern had about .8 percent of
the college-going population in public institutions.
In 197 0 and '71 we had 3.6 percent.
That's quadruple,
which means, of course, we were taking a larger
percentage of the total. Therefore, somebody else
was staying reasonably level.
Now the problem I see in the next half a decade is
simply this. The peak in high school graduates for
Michigan occurs June of '74, this year. Thereafter,
for the next eight or ten years, that number of high
school graduates is going down very sharply. And with
that is the interesting phenomenon that the percentage
of high school youngsters going on to post -secondary
education has plateaued.
If it doesn't do anything, there's some indication that
it might even drop, but if it just remains steady, it's
the same percentage of less and less. Therefore, there
will be fewer and fewer numbers in the total public
institutional setting.
If IJ of M, MSU, and Wayne
continue to grow in the next five to ten years, their
percentage of the market is going to grow sharply and
some institutions are going to...
F--That's Gresham's law, the reverse of that, applied to
the reputations of higher education institutions.
But I guess that's why I expect very strongly that the
lifelong learning, the midcareer vocational retraining,
the adult education, and the continuing education, will
have to become vital forces as the institutions have to
move to new markets.
The high school market is dead
and they can no longer be just post-puberty institutions.

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J--A) we have to do it; and b) we have to somehow find
a way of bringing about the recognition of this on
the part of the Legislature, the budget bureau, and
the governor’s office." They’re going to say offcampus is self-supporting, but they will need public
support.
There are two kids living as neighbors in Iron Mountain,
Michigan.
One kid has money, his parents are reasonably
well-to-do, so he enrolls at Northern, takes his bag and
baggage, lives in the residence hall, and takes
History 101. He pays $16.50 a credit. His neighbor’s
kid is poor. H e ’s got to stay home and work, but he
wants an education little-by-little so he enrolls in
History 101 that we teach at Iron Mountain. He pays
$25.50 per credit. H e 's a tax-paying citizen of the
State of Michigan and w e ’re saying to him because
y o u’re poor and you're staying home, you have to pay
double. Now, that's never going to be acceptable if
we are to serve a larger part of the citizenry.
F--It's a bad public policy.

It’s going to have to change.

J--Somebody has to look at this in terms of the mode of
delivery of education in the state.
F--You're going to have to offer equal protection under
the law to all the citizens.
J--Basically, yes.
F--That's why I think that's the only future for higher
ed.
J--Sure.
Somebody has been bugging me about reciprocity
on tuition with Wisconsin, and I say, "Wait a minute.
When you give reciprocity to my Iron Mountain citizens,
then I ’ll be talking with you about reciprocity for
people from Wisconsin."
F--John, what were some of the key issues that resulted
in partisan and parochial conflict in the attempts
to attain some of the above policy obj ectives?
J - -I can give you some very specific ones for what that's
worth.
The one I just gave about Grand Rapids.
F--Certainly there had to be fear of attenuating the
market and lowering the quality of the degree-holders

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Jamrich
by broadening the number of holders.
J--That was a factor expressed by these people.
There
was another contingent in the Grand Rapids area that
said, "Look, we're all for expanding the opportunity
but only if you establish a branch of the University
of Michigan here."
Now, let's move to Saginaw. That's another area
where some of this partisan, parochial conflict arose.
If you'll remember back there, Delta College in the
beginning...
F--I taught there.
J--You taught there?

You ought to know.

We went in there, we made a study, and we said, "Well,
what ought to be here is a state-supported, degreegranting institution.
In view of the fact that there's
a good two-year institution here, why don't we try
something a little newer here and set up a junior and
senior level state-supported institution called Saginaw
Valley Senior College?"
All of that made a lot of sense and--you may remember
or you may not--we were there almost at the last
moment with Senator Lane.
Some of his people were
talking about this and everybody was seeing that this
made a lot of sense. All of a sudden, a local group
from the area came into the conversation and said,
"Look, we have $4 million pledged. We want to keep
this a privately supported institution and we don't
want this 'tainted' money from the state." You know,
all this kind of thing.
The Senator expressed some concern about the lack of
unity, and that sort of dispersed that meeting.
F--So we had problems in Grand Rapids, we had problems in
Saginaw, and we had problems in Flint. Wasn't that
partly over status too? New institutions didn't have
the status and reputation of a Michigan State or a
Michigan.
J--That's right.

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Jamrich
In Detroit you had some other kind of things. When
you talk about establishment of community colleges
for opportunity and education, Detroit was a logical
place, but look how long it's taken to do this.
F--I suppose that one of the only persons that could ever
write the inside story of that is me.
J--The final chapter anyway, or the beginning of the final
chapter.
F--I've often joshed about donating my couch to the people
at Wayne County because the college was established
there.
Legislators talked in my home at night about
[its establishment].
It was a major conflict...
I
never saw a tougher fight.
J--But that was in what year?
F- -1969.
J--You see, those community colleges should have been
established in 1958.
F--It wouldn't have happened if they hadn't had the riot.
I'm sorry to say that, but that's my opinion.
What about the fight between Michigan and Michigan
State? Was that really a divisive kind of thing or
was that more a sideshow?
J--I think it was pretty real, all right. I think it was
pretty real on the medical school for reasons that
appeared to be legitimate at that time.
In retrospect
one could say, "Well, what was all the fighting about?
We need the doctors." But it was real.
People I worked with down there in the study, for
example, although Michigan State University was
actually a state university--MSU--these old-timers
would never call it MSU.
There was something status
about the semantics of it that they just didn't permit
themselves to even pronounce it.
F--They all used to call it the "ag school."
J--So it was real. You go back to the original 1855
period. When you read about the kind of shenanigans
that took place in opposition from Ann Arbor for the

L

A 425
Jamrich
establishment of this institution, the ag-mechanical
arts complex--my God. The story was, "You do that
and you're going to ruin the quality of higher educa­
tion forever more. Opening up a college to let the
farm kids in!"
F--Well, let's talk about that for a moment because John
Hannah's shadow looms across this twelve-year period
very strongly.
In other states we built a system of one academic
institution and one agricultural and mechanical insti­
tution.
Like Indiana, where Purdue has never been
able to compete with the University.
In this state, we've made some kind of politicalsocial decision to create not one university, but
two multi-faceted universities, moved to three, and
may be on the threshold of making a decision for
Western that in the next decade could create a
fourth comprehensive university.
Do you have some observations about why that happened?
It's quite unusual.
There's no other state where that
model really has happened.
J--Take a few illustrations, Ohio, for example. The insti­
tution was in the capitol and sort of center of the
state.
It took a long time for the State of Ohio to
move from the private-public imbalance to a great deal
of public support for public institutions.
In our state, of course, we had the public image and
public support already existent.
There are a couple
of things going here.
I think Wayne was able to do
what it did because it's in a natural setting of
population and growth for the medical school. All
of these kinds of things were natural ingredients.
MSU, I think you have to say, was essentially the work
of one very aggressive, talented, articulate, influential
person--and that’s John Hannah.
I just don't think
there's any question about that.
I don't think there
are any general, how shall I say, social factors which
said, "Well, there ought to be another one here at
MSU." I think this is just the work of one man.

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Jamrich
Take, for instance, the University of Illinois.
President Dwight Moore emulated MSU when trying to
establish Carbondale--didn't quite make it.
I just
don't believe he quite made it. There were lots of
things in his way. One was that the City of Chicago
was not being served by any institution. As soon as
they established Chicago Circle, that did something.
Northern Illinois at De Kalb was closer to that
population center. He was trying to do this at the
wrong end of the state.
F--He was trying to serve St. Louis, that’s the problem.
J--Then he decided Edwardsville was the way to do it, so
he opened a 600-acre campus there.
F--Edwardsville is really a suburb of St. Louis.
J--Sure it is.

It's an across-the-river kind of thing.

Dwight Moore in many ways was sort of a self-made image
of John Hannah in aggressiveness and ability to con­
solidate legislative strength and so on. But as I say,
I don't feel that he quite made it to the extent that
Hannah did.
F--So you think part of this decision was based on the
character of a man?
J--Oh, absolutely.
do.

I personally believe that.

I really

F--John, did any of the policy goals for the enhancement
of higher education have as their objective the
destruction of class and culture barriers?
J--I think the answer to that is yes --now whether conscious
or somewhat below the conscious level...
I say yes,
very definitely.
F--What about popularism in higher education versus elitism?
Certainly you've talked to that in the Grand Rapids
sense.
J--Very definitely--the whole idea of providing educa­
tional opportunity for a broader spectrum of
intellectual ability. The student realizing, as I

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Jamrich
said before, whether it’s the man with the welding
torch, the TV repair man, electronics specialist,
the medical technologist, the one-year licensed
practical nurse, that they need basic education in
addition to their apprentice-type preparation.
F--I find it hard, John, to understand how the University
of Michigan could have painted itself into the corner.
In a sense all the regional schools, State, and the
community colleges, succeeded because Michigan, in a
real way, was unwilling to meet part of that horizon
of new need.
They could probably have succeeded in
stopping some of this if they'd been willing to move
ahead.
They could have probably built the regional
system, like Wisconsin.
J--I think that's right, Jerry.
If you go back in the
history of the University of Michigan you’11 find
that in its earliest decade or two they did have a
branch at Romulus and a couple of other places.
F--As I recollect, the first Constitution said the
University of Michigan will be located in five areas.
J--But that didn’t work for financial reasons.
In the history of U. S. higher education, this is a
rather common recurring phenomenon: the inability of
the existing enterprise to respond to a need and
thereby forcing the establishment of another entity.
For example, in the 1850’s or so, with universal high
school education after the Kalamazoo case, demand for
teachers meant somebody had to educate them. Most,
if not all, of the existing higher educational insti­
tutions essentially said, ’’Now that ’s really not for
u s , that’s a little bit below our dignity.” What
happened? There emerged the normal school, the
teacher’s college, dozens, hundreds of them, across
the country in response to a need which just wasn't
being met adequately by the existing enterprise.
Community college growth of, say, 20 years ago, the
beginnings of it, was the same kind of thing: the
inability of the existing enterprise to respond to
that one- and two-year-degree kind of thing.
The
social pressure w a s , "We must have this kind of
opportunity." Therefore, something else was established
and the community colleges grow and blossom.

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Jamrich
F--I went down to Southern Illinois at Edwardsville the
other day and gave a speech. The real text of my
remarks was simply this: That political leaders
regard higher education as a social engine and that
if in fact it won't meet a need, they'll create
another institution.
That's your point. They created
normal schools, we've made them regional institutions.
We've created community colleges but when community
colleges began to fail in the vocational mission, we
started to create area skill centers.
I guess what I'm wondering about is why didn't [University
of] Michigan respond to that need? It certainly had a
tremendous lock on the love and regard its people had
for it. And it had tremendous clout. Do you think that
institutions just get rigid and can't meet a need, and
then the change comes after the fact, sometimes?
J--I think that's one answer, yes. The other is, that there
develops a certain feeling of tradition about a thing
called quality of education.
Here at MSU, when I first came aboard, they had a whole
array of things: one-year programs in secretarial
training, a course called Family Living, 095 courses in
arithmetic, written English, and so on. But as this
institution took aim at the target of merit scholars-you remember that era here--they decided that all of
these other things really were below their dignity,
so they were pushed aside.
At that very moment, what was happening? A thing called
Lansing Community College was established.
People said,
"My God, in the shadow of MSU? How could a school exist
there?" Well, how could it? Easily, because MSU felt
it had enough to do with other kinds of commitments and
all the other students flocked over to Lansing Community
College.
F--I'm troubled by the concept of status because status
sometimes gets in the way of social utility. MSU, as
you recollect, had at this same period a degree in
mobile homes.
People turned their backs on that
because that was less prestigious.
But architecture
is not ddclasse.
People live in buildings and I'm
not sure that the architect is any more noble than
the mobile home builder.

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Jamrich
J--However, you recognize in the pronouncements of
President Wharton a return to the kind of thing that
John Hannah had in the first place for MSU: give the
student an opportunity, give him a chance.
The 095 courses in math and English and so on were
designed for the student who needed some assistance in
coming up to the line.
I think that President Wharton,
in a little different wording, has essentially the same
idea.
F--I think that all
go back to older
going to have so
There’s no hope,

the institutions are going to have to
markets to handle the fact that you’re
many fewer high school graduates.
otherwise, to be majority institutions,

J--As you said, the extended education, lifelong education.
We have to devise systems for doing and delivering that.
That will keep us busy if we can find the way to do it.
F--How important, John, were vocational and occupational
training objectives in the enhancement of higher
education?
J--Very important.
I think I sort of alluded to these
several times.
In some of our studies we surveyed the
Kent County area--thousands of high school students,
thousands of parents--and asked, "What are your aspira­
tions for going on and what would you pursue if you
went on?" One emerged with reinforcement of the notion
that people still were quite directly seeking prepara­
tion for the world of work.
Clearly the vocational training thing was important-is important now. Maybe it’s getting more emphasis
now than it ever did, despite the fact that the com­
munity college movement of 15 to 20 years ago derived
from that recognition.
F--It will be outside the period of the study, but it’s
my own hunch that this is still an unmet agenda and
hence this is where a great deal of energy is. W e 're
probably meeting 100 percent, or real close to that,
of the market of those who want a baccalaureate education.
J--I agree with you.
In the Upper Peninsula, 5,500
students graduate from high school every year. Forty
percent go on to college for two- or four-year degrees.

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Jamrich
I doubt that we can increase that percentage.
The real
question that I ’ve been raising the last two or three
years is, what in the world are we doing with the other
55 percent? I say practically nothing.
Now, some of them don't want anything, but most of them,
if we had the proper opportunity, would.
We just
finished a study in our Marquette-Alger County area and
what we find is that hundreds of these youngsters are
looking for opportunity in such things as welding and
automobile repair--all of these mechanical kind of
things, the world of skill training. Our two counties
don't have that kind of opportunity. This is what our
skill center is all about at Northern.
But that’s not atypical. I think this is very definitely
a need that's to be met, as you say, for the next several
years.
F--Did the growth of culture and the arts have importance
in the dialogue over the growth of higher education?
J--Well, social recognition of cultural and arts develop­
ment is a pretty tough problem. This has recognition
and verbalization in certain circles, but not as
broadly as some of these general policy things.
For example, Woody Varner at Oakland University for
many years pushed this very, very heavily. Walter
Reuther was moving in the direction of utilizing the
union as a vehicle for the arts. It's a beautiful
concept.
F--The place that he built up north. Black Lake, was part
of that, wasn't it?
J--Yes. Tremendous idea. You can only do so much stewardtraining in the labor union.
Beyond this , there's a
built -in vehicle for "Everyman" to somehow get an
exposure to the culture and art. It's a tremendous idea.
I think, as to this question, I 'd have to answer "to a
very limited extent" because of the rather arty nature
of this thing.
F--You just mentioned Walter Reuther. What was the position
of labor in regard to higher education?

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Jamrich
J--My feeling is that labor has and continues to support
the expansion of higher education, giving great
support in our own area, even currently, to providing
opportunities for preparation for the world of work-the skill center type of thing.
But not exclusively
just to that.
I think they are very supportive.
F--One of the things that's alx^ays struck me is that
nationally one has the sense that labor supports
lunch-pail issues. Yet in Michigan they supported
issues beyond the lunch pail.
They were interested
in societal issues and supported higher education in
a very broad sense, which wasn't typical.
J--This was a very interesting phenomenon in the Russell
study.
Several leaders from labor were on that
committee. Very, very important people. Similarly
in the Grand Rapids area.
Getting back to that 1957-58 report, another reason
possibly for some of its success is that you had very
influential labor leaders involved.
F--Well, I'm thinking about people like Woodcock at
Wayne, Stevens at Michigan State, and Bluestone at
Grand Valley.
J--Bluestone was on that group.
F--And Bluestone wasn't from the area. You had Gus
Scholle, you had Reuther.
That's a very strong base.
J--That leadership was important in recognizing and
giving impetus to higher education and its development.
F--What about the role, John, of industry?
J--Industry and commerce, I think, you can point to in
the same way. The business community supporting the
business schools at U of M and MSU, for example. The
banking and financial world supporting this development..
F--I think when I first came to your school at Northern,
when you were first president, you brought out a man

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Jamrich
named Sam Cohodas . There was a man that had no
economic or particular interest in the institution;
it was a civic sense--because he thought it was right.
J--That's exactly the way it was.
F--I was impressed with that.
J - -11 is very typical to turn to business and industry,
much as the labor leaders you've named, and obtain
support. And I don't mean just simple verbal support.
On the boards of control, boards of trustees, and
boards of governors of the institutions of higher
education you have labor and industry represented,
and vigorously active in them.
F--You really don't have a regional board, do you?
J--No. Up at Northern we have five from the Upper
Peninsula and three from down state. It’s not written
anywhere, but it's attached to the agreement with the
governor and the Board itself recognizes it as set up
this way.
F--One of your recent chairmen came from Williamston,
didn't he?
J--Y e s . Our present chairman is from Marquette. One of
our relatively new members, Mrs. Jackie Nickerson, is
from MSU.
F--What about the position of agriculture in regard to
higher education?
J--When you mention that, it brings out a point we should
have referred to when talking about MSU's development.
Agriculture was tremendously influential and powerful
in supporting Hannah's expansion and development of
Michigan State University.
No question about that.
It was very important.
r

Sam Cohodas, who with his wife Evelyn, founded the
Sam and Evelyn Cohodas Scholarships, 1963, to School of
Business at Northern Michigan University, and contributed
$250,000 for a Professorship in Banking.

A 433
Jamrich
F--I couldn’t think of prominent agricultural leaders.
I inquired about that and somebody said to me, "Well,
there was no need for agribultural leaders to stand
out because John Hannah was their spokesman."
J--This in a way might be true.
that. Dale Ball is one.

I hadn't thought about

F--You know, somebody’s got to write a biography of John
Hannah.
I was talking to Jim Farnsworth, who was an
automobile dealer, a Con-Con delegate, and is now on
the Appropriations Committee, and he told me that he
had met Dr. Hannah many, many years ago in the
twenties.
H e ’d come out to judge his chickens.
I thought to myself, how many thousands of people did
John talk to, press the flesh with, and deal with to
build that kind of overwhelming sense of value?
J--This is the unique character of the m a n , the ability
to somehow bring out of every person a dedication and
commitment t o , and recognition of, the importance of
this. People have sort of been casual or critical by
saying, "Well, he was a chicken farmer." He was one
of the most successful chicken farmers I know and if
I were going to be a chicken farmer, I ’d want to be
one .like John Hannah.
F--I have to go along with you. A lot of academic men
were put off by the fact that he was not classically
educated...
J--He got his degree, I ’ve forgotten now...
F-- It must be chickens [poultry science] or something like
that.
But, if I could ever have a career one-seventeenth
as successful in its contribution to the public sector,
I ’d be a right proud man.
J--And you know, he had foresight. He was involved in
community affairs. I ’m sure in the early days when
Hannah was able to purchase thousands of acres around
this area people must have thought h e ’d lost his
marbles.
Today, it has to be looked at in retrospect
and said, "That was ingenious, absolutely ingenious."
F--In a sense I ’m kind of regretful Michigan, which
obviously had far more money, didn’t do that. You

A 434

Jamrich
visit there and see that campus just snuggled into
town. They've had to go and split the campus with
the North Campus...
J--Hatcher and Hannah were just two different men, pure
and simple.
F--You know, historians, and that's my origin, talk
about, "Is it the man or the times?"
J--But the times were the same.
different, just different.

I mean, the men were

F--1 think w e 're probably too close to the Hannah time
and the Hannah legend to get a good look at them.
John Porter said, "You know, one of the things that
you can't forget is that national figures, giants,
strode the Michigan scene. Reuther, Hannah,
Hatcher, ... great men."
I think probably one of the reasons education in
Michigan prospered so is that probably in no other
place in the nation was there such a confluence of
great and powerful leaders in the political sector
with Williams, and then Romney, and
J--And labor.
F--Labor, and maj or national industry like Ford, GM,
and Whirlpool. Maj or agricultural industries that
became the breadbasket, virtually, of the world.
When I lived in Saginaw I was struck by the fact that
the beans were heading for places like Iraq and Iran.
Massachusetts is a much more parochial economy.
What about the pressures and influences in the deter­
mination of public policy, if any, from the federal
government?
J - -I think they were pretty well recorded: the federal
government's assumed role in public education in
K through 12; and higher education in the Facilities
Act; the health professions acts, and the support of
regional laboratories, which was money down the drain
but nevertheless it was an attempt at that time to
help, presumably, the quality of K through 12.

A 435
Jamrich
But certainly the federal government’s rules and so
on provided opportunity to remove economic barriers.
I think federal funding was very important there.
F--I guess I was looking to see if the constraints were
severe.
It's not my impression that they were, as
they are in the area of social policy.
J--You mean constraints by the federal government on
the institutions? I think you're right. They were
much more liberal.
You take research, whether it's
in psychology or whatever area, the grants which
came from the federal level really didn't have
great...
F--...whereas every dollar we get from the federal
government in the area of social policy has a kind
of constraint or requirement.
J--Yes, yes.
F--It may be that there has been a national sense of the
need for the autonomy and sovereignty of the academic
enterprise that faculty sometimes don't appreciate.
J--Yes, this is true.
F--There's often a time to worry about the invasions,
but I ’m struck by the fact that probably no other
sector of American life is challenged or threatened
as little as higher education.
Industry certainly
can make a better case that their degree of
sovereignty has declined immensely.
J--There are some threats at the federal level now.
There have been some suggestions of establishing a
central kind of higher education scheme at the
federal level, and data reporting, and so on, but
that's a long way down the road.
F--There certainly do seem to be indications that that's
coming.
J--Right, right.

A 436
Jamrich
F--What about the role of the private sector in creating
pressures and influences in the determination of public
policy in Michigan?
J--1 1's kind of interesting.
I think that until a recent
year or two ago the private sector has fared very well
in Michigan, despite the tremendous support of public
funds for state -supported institutions.
It is true that it used to be 75-25, then was 80-20,
and maybe it's 85-15 now.
In Michigan the private
sector was never, percentagewise, that large. Never
like Ohio or New York, for example.
I think the
influences of the private sector perhaps are coming
to the fore much more now than they did during the
period of '58 to '70.
F--I'm struck by something.
I'm from Massachusetts and in Massachusetts the private
schools fought the entry of the public sector into the
large metropolitan area, prevented them from coming.
Even the decision to locate the University of
Massachusetts medical school at Worcester was, in a
way, an egregious, blundering edict from the political
strength of the private sector.
I'm struck by talking to the vice-president of the
Eli Lily Foundation and finding that in some western
states the public sector has banded together to fight
dollars to go to the private sector.
We just passed a bill to give grants to private colleges
for degrees granted, we put money into tuition grants,
and we put money in for scholarships that dispropor­
tionately advantaged the private sector, but there was
no fight. When the public sector received immense
amounts of money to build facilities there was no
fight from the private sector.
And yet some of these schools are immensely influential
in their areas.
I think about Hope.
You talk about
the Grand Rapids area...
J--Kalamazoo College.

A 437
Jamrich
F-Calvin.
And you think about Albion, you think about
the U of D. These are powerful institutions with con­
stituencies, and strong affection from industry too.
J--That’s one of the real reasons why they have been able
to hold their own. They certainly have a loyal,
influential, and financially able alumni, plus private
industry and business support.
F--Do you have some speculation about why we had that
degree of statesmanship when the conditions were right
for a fight?
J--Well, I suppose back in ’58 it was easily recognized
by the private sector that they were not in a position
to serve the numbers that were coming. Therefore money
had to be put into the public sector.
New York's a perfect illustration.
I was over there in
'59 working for the Heald Committee --Heald and two
other distinguished citizens had been appointed to this
committee--and up to that point it was all private,
essentially. Albany State Teachers College was a kind
of a cobwebby place.
If you look at New York now and see that situation, it
is a phenomenon.
There were fights there, but they
were overcome by public pressure. We really didn't
have great fights on this thing.
I think the private
sector just recognized that this had to be done and...
F--Now that's a good point.
The New York analogy is a
valuable one because New York had to do in ten years
what we've done in 150. We never really had to abrade
the fabric.
J--Well, sure, we had a curve like this [indicating a
slowly upward curve], you know, and New York went like
that [indicating a rapidly upward curve]. There was
that very brief period when New York really just had
to exert tremendous pressure.
F--Every year we only had to get 10 or 15 percent more
than the previous year, whereas in New York they had
to go for 100, 200, and 300 percent.
I think that
may be something to which you alluded earlier--about
the history and the tradition.

A 438
Jamrich
John, what in your opinion were the reasons for the
failure of the branch-campus system that had begun
to be developed in Michigan with Oakland, Flint, and
Dearborn?
J--I was just commenting this morning to somebody that
maybe I'm changing my mind on the branch system.
I
guess I'm defining it in a little different way.
There were great dissertations written on this by
people who opposed it --1 being one of them--feeling
that if students go to a thing called an "institution
of higher learning" it ought to be an entity in itself,
governed by itself. We recommended the dissolution
of the State Board of Education and its governance of
the four regional colleges, for example, on that same
basis: There ought to be an individuality so the degree
the student receives is from that thing and not from
something twice displaced.
When you look at Flint, I think perhaps the problem
there was that the faculty--as I remember the thing-seemed to reflect a sort of second-class-citizen
feeling. I think the faculty themselves may have had
some problem there. And then there was a problem of
the kind of students who were admitted. The rigorous
admission policy implemented on the Flint scene was
not a realistic one in terms of the kind of students
who should have been served there. There were a
number of reasons of that kind which I think were
working against the branch notion.
As I said, in the Grand Rapids area, when I first began
the study, there were quite a few people who said,
"Well, the solution is very simple. Just say yes, have
a thing here as long as it's a branch of the U of M."
We agreed after some wrestling matches that anything
but that, if there was going to be something there.
Part of that was regional pride. There were enough
people in Saginaw, enough people in Grand Rapids, who
said, "If w e 're going to have something, it ought to
be our own kind of thing and not sort of a displaced
island of something else." They said, "Well look, if
they're short on funds, or quality, w e '11 be the first
ones to feel it. Whereas if w e 're our own entity,
w e '11 make those decisions." This is how the thing
worked out.

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Jamrich
F--So you think that in the end institutional status,
no matter how overwhelming, couldn’t beat the
tremendous machine of civic energy and local pride?
J--Local pride was very important.
F--Isn’t that an immense component of your own institution?
J--Sure.
F--I've always had a great interest and amusement that
Eisenhower, when he got elected President, promised
to go to Korea.
It always struck me, knowing you as
well as I do, that you found it important to go to
Finland.
I don't think that's at all bad.
I notice
in the outer foyer of your office the flag of Finland
is there. That may sound corny...
J--But it's real.
F--The love that people give all of the 30-40-odd insti­
tutions in this state is something that makes an
educator proud.
J--We had our 7 5th anniversary observance luncheon and
we had a three-hour program.
If you can imagine 400
people sitting through three hours of a program, but
nobody became restive.
It was a family-type affair,
alumni, emeritus professors, and visitors from way
back reminiscing about the institution. A tremendous,
as you say, exhibit of pride.
F--I'm not going to do a good job by this subject unless
I make that point very clear: that the love the
Michigan people have lavished on the higher education
enterprise and their identification with it is just
immense. And any derogation of that, or being snide
about it, will do our people an immense disservice.
J--Yes sir.
F--It's really quite something. I ’ve often wondered
about why this state had such a love of higher educa­
tion when states like Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio-much like us economically and socially--didn't have
that same dedication and commitment to it. It's a
question that I'm going to puzzle over a long time.

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Jamrich
J--But it's there.
F--And it's not even as strong in Massachusetts, which
has great pride for its institutions, but nothing
like here.
I asked a question, "What about the nature of regional
and local pressures to expand higher education in one
location rather than another?" You have spoken to
that some.
Did you want to add anything else?
J--Pretty substantial in many parts of the state. The
community college thing, I think, shows this. The
growth of Lake Superior State College from a two-year
branch into a four-year institution was a result of
regional and local pressure, no question about it.
F--But there's something curious about it. Usually in
politics if you have two forces they will neutralize
each other. Here it seems they had some kind of
accommodation where when one decided they couldn't
get it, they would back the other and then in return
expect their support. Saginaw Valley stood back for
Grand Valley, Tech was willing to let go of Lake
Superior, and Michigan State was willing to let go
of Oakland.
J--Sure. Oakland's another illustration of a certain
degree of local pressure for autonomy.
F--Woody couldn't play the athletic game but he played
the culture game. John Hannah went and recruited
Earl Morrall here. Woody went and hired Vladimir
Ashkenazy. Ashkenazy had the same kind of clout
there that Morra11 had here, I suppose.
Why in your opinion did an institutional system for
the coordination of higher education not come about
after 1964?
J--I think I referred to that before: essentially the
status and tradition of higher education in Michigan
over 100 or more years, the demonstrated success of
the enterprise. There are no facts that are con­
vincing people that we need to indulge in major
surgery on this thing.

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Jamrich
F--I often have wondered if the fact that an allDemocratic State Board, elected after the Goldwater
landslide for Johnson in '64, picked the wrong fight
over Flint with the Legislature...
I wonder if that
was there.
Some have said, ’’Well, that was a major
thing." Others have said, "Well, if it hadn't been
that fight it would have been something else."
J--If the State Board of Education had not attempted
to move so openly and vigorously and inclusively on
higher education and planned it a little more incre­
mentally and gradually, I don't think we would be
where we are today with the confrontation of the
Salmon case and the governor's commission recom­
mending a separate state post-secondary board.
We could very well have some of the planning and
coordination in a systematic way within the State
Board of Education. I think there was a tendency at
one point of that Board to suddenly focus on higher
education.
They were really going to redo it, and
plan, and coordinate and so o n . That began, I think,
to rub some people the wrong way.
F-- In other words, I would suspect that you're saying
that if they'd moved in a way where they counted the
House first.... We used to j oke about that. In the
Legislature we used to say 56-20 is the Constitution,
anything else is a stimulating opinion.
I have the
feeling that that Board found it had stimulating
opinions rather than a consensus behind it.
John, who were the influential people that you would
point out in this period?
J--Well, we talked, and again in no particular order, but
we talked about several of the labor leaders, Walter
Reuther, Bluestone, Woodcock. We certainly have to
pinpoint John Hannah as a tremendously important,
influential person.
Soapy Williams. I did some things for Soapy in terms
of his own perception of the need. At one point he
said, "Look, write out for me the 100 most likely
questions on education and some of the alternative
answers to them."
I prepared a working book for him

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Jamrich
on this thing.
I think Romney you have to recognize
as a very influential person in the education com­
mittee, the Constitution, and as governor.
Certainly spanning all of this you’d have to point
to Senator Lane and Senator Zollar. I think you have
to look at these people as decision-makers, policy­
makers, influential, insightful; having to fight off
a lot of the aggressive, negative thing to keep our
higher educational enterprise going full steam.
You go back and look, of course, in history.
I think,
as I’ve tried to say to our people, that you can take
pride in where you are but don't forget that where you
are is due so much to people who have come before yo u .
Some may not be named in the history book but their
contribution was there in terms of the line of
continuity.
You take Bill Seidman. Grand Valley State College
is where it is because of Bill Seidman. I think
you'd almost have to say that without any question.
With Romney's support, and Glenn Allen involved, this
is the way that institution began and grew and was
financed and supported.
F--This is a good state to work in, isn’t it, because
of that?
J- -It's great, really.
When you really look at the people
and the kind of things w e ’ve been talking about; the
recognition of some very subtle kind of things, the
role of culture and the arts. You look at certain
kinds of people and the role of...
F--You've spent the major portion of your life involved
in this and have been a participant in many ways at
Michigan State, with John Dale Russell, and now at
a major regional institution.
I imagine as you look
over these years you’ve got to be well pleased with
the time you've put into it.
J- -I have to be, Jerry.
It's a gratifying experience.
Little things sometimes make it. I shook hands with
801 graduates last week, name by name, individual by

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Jamrich
individual. Afterwards, when the student and the
parent come just to cite a little anecdote, that really
touches you. This is what did it or this is what did
that. That's where all the payoff really is.
F--Thank you very much, John.

It's been a pleasure.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
DAVID H. PONITZ1

F--What in your opinion were the reasons that led to the
expansion of higher education in Michigan from 1958 on?
P--I think that people said, "If you're going to grab the
golden ring you'd better have at least a two-year and
hopefully a four-year college education--or more."
The great American dream during the fifties was that
most jobs would require a college education.
Irrespec­
tive of who you were, a college education was the endall to any kind of job which would have good salary and
which would let you be a productive and capable indivi­
dual within your community.
And there were an awful lot of industries saying, "Give
me a person who's well qualified, who has a general
education, and w e '11 train him from there."
There was an awful lot of discussion that talked about
attaining a four-year college education and you will
make so much more than somebody with an eighth-grade
education, so much more than 12th grade education.
That myth was--and it is a myth in my judgment...
F--It was certainly a myth that the people lived by, and
they still do.
P--That's right, absolutely, but less now than during 1958.
F--I've called that part of the Horatio Alger dream.
P--That's correct.
David H. Ponitz; President, Washtenaw Community College,
1965; President, Freeport (Illinois) Community College,
1962-65; Member, advisory committee, Governor's Commission
on Educational Reform, 1969-70.
Interview conducted
May 23, 1974.

A 444

A 445

Ponitz
F--It!s probably more modulated because the dream had some
excess to it.
I think they’re trying to find room in
it for other aspects of human personality besides just
the academic tradition.
But I think as far as enhance­
ment- -the artisanship, the craftsmanship, the vocational
and occupational aspects--if that can be fitted into
that Horatio Alger dream, it’ll work fine.
P--The GI Bill had a great amount to do with this. During
the ’58 time period, and before, persons using the
GI Bill had gone through as never before and now were
out as taxpayers.
They were beginning to say, "The government paid
x billions of dollars to put so many people through on
the GI Bill and now those individuals are paying a
substantially greater figure annually in terms of taxes."
That kind of response was, "Here's a way that we can
improve our community and improve our individuals."
I’m impressed that there were a number of politicians - I guess Terry Sanford^ is the one that comes to mind-that actually ran their campaigns on improvement of
education.
I 've forgotten exactly what the date was ,
but Sanford, as you remember, said that...
F--He’s president now at Duke.
P--That's right. He said, "We're going to have total
community college involvement in North Carolina." He
set up a number of community colleges and technical
schools.
F--One of the reasons that I wanted to talk with you is
that you have been in the community college movement
for a long time. You've built one of the greatest
institutions of service to the people with great skill
and acumen.
You can’t say that because it would sound immodest, but
I think many of us have a great regard for you and for
what you've done.
I'm particularly curious, when did you come to Ann Arbor,
Dave ?
2

Terry Sanford; President, Duke University, 1970;
North Carolina State Senator, 1953-55; Member, executive
committee, National Committee in Support of Public Schools,
1963-

A 446
Ponitz
P--'66.
F--When I first saw your campus it was the old abandoned
Willow Run camp, right smack in the middle of the
cotton-farming Blacks and the hillbilly mountain whites,
and in the shadow of one of the nation's greatest insti­
tutions, the University of Michigan, with its inter­
national reputation and certainly high on the ladder of
status. And then a more workman-like university at
Eastern, which is the oldest teacher-training institu­
tion west of the Alleghenies.
How were you able to build the school? You see, it
comes back to, "What were some of the social forces?"
How could you build a school that had its own clientele,
its own view, and not be destroyed?
The answer that you give for this locality may well be
representative of what the social and economic factors
were that led to this significant growth.
P--1 raised the question with the board when I was first
asked to come here as president. The first time I said,
"No, I don't think I'm interested." I frankly wondered
whether we were going to have another institution in the
area simply for the process of gilding the educational
lily.
There's no community in the state, in my judgment, that
has supported education more than this particular county
and the people of this area because there are so many
teachers and professors and persons related to education
that live within this county. A figure that I use often
is that 20 percent of all the census track people in
this county are going to college.
That makes it atypical, but the question is, "How do you
find your own clientele?” My response was very simple.
I said, "Look, if w e 're going to try to simply duplicate
what U of M is doing, or duplicate what Eastern is doing,
then there's no reason for our existence.” Some people
were pretty unhappy with that kind of response, but I
believe that very strongly.
I put it very candidly into a response of division of
labor: The University of Michigan has a division of
labor, Eastern has its function, and Washtenaw has its
function.
There will be some duplication in terms of
subject matter, but there should be not that much
duplication in terms of the clientele.

A

447

Ponitz
One of the things that's always intrigued me has been
the comment of the major universities that the faculty
is the university.
In my judgment, if the faculty is
the community college, the community college would He”
doomed to failure. The faculty is one very, very
important part, but you've got industry, you've got
business, you've got advisory committees, and you've
got a host of other groups who have to make an input.
F--So what you were saying was the community was the
community college.
P--Yes, our middle name is Community.
I believe very
strongly that you’ve got to work for the community.
F--What, Dave, were the social and economic forces that
you were able to harness to build this institution?
P--From the social point of view, this is looked upon as
one of the wealthiest counties in the country, and
certainly the first or second within the State of
Michigan.
F-- It's certainly one of the best educated counties, too.
P--That's right, but there were very substantial pockets of
poverty that were not being dealt with by the four-year
institutions at that time. There were very substantial
pockets of blackness where the specific emphasis in
dealing with needs of minority students was not being
met.
Those were two areas where we said we must make specific
attempts to deal with those persons. There were no
specific attempts at that time to take the person who
maybe didn't have a high school education and say,
"There is still a future for you."
And lastly, industry was beginning to say the apprentice­
ship route, that is, you work to become a horseshoe
specialist or whatnot for four years and then you become
a journeyman horseshoer. There was a beginning trend at
that time, as I saw it, for industry to say, "In order to
stay competitive perhaps we should not be spending as
much time on entry-level kinds of training for our people.
That, perhaps, should be a public responsibility."
F--So y o u 're saying that previous to this movement, much
of the entry-level training was done by industry itself.

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Ponitz
P--Much of it was, but I saw some decline.
saying, "We need people of higher skills
provide," or, "You can do it. If you do
you can do it better than we can. We'll
work with you and then hire those."

Industry began
than we can
it correctly,
be willing to

F--It was probably most obvious at the state level in
health education because there all of the entry-level
training for hospital schools and nurses was abandoned
virtually overnight.
P--Right, because of the tremendous cost. We're going to
go through another cycle of that, I think, within the
next couple of years. As the Blues [Blue Cross-Blue
Shield health insurance companies] say, "We aren't
going to finance that part of instruction..."
F--...because the hospital industry has been subsidized
by the insurance sector.
What you're saying is that in Michigan the GI Bill
created the realization that people could have a higher
education. Those people, who were the first who had
ever had a higher education, believed that that was an
important and attainable thing for their children.
Secondly, we talked a little bit about the Horatio Alger
dream, this desire for the enhancement of themselves and
their position.
Some have talked about the increased wealth.
Once
people moved from the subsistence level they began to
think about how they could enhance their lives. They
were past the problems of survival.
You've talked about the fact that there were minority
populations that were not being served.
You've briefly
alluded to the fact that there needed to be a post-high
school institution that was a second-chance institution.
P--There were a couple other factors involved.
The economy
in this area would fall into three categories: the
educational kind of economy which...
F--Public sector economy, which would figure state govern­
ment , municipal government, and universities.
P --... a large health industry; a large industrial base in
terms of the automobile manufacturer in the eastern
part of the area; plus the usual...

A 449
Ponitz
F--What are the major employers in this area?
probably?

Gar Wood

P--Well, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler are large
employers.
The University is a large employer.
The
hospitals are large employers.
Research lumped together
is a large employer. When you have $60 million, for
example, spent annually by the University of Michigan
in research you get a lot of spinoff.
If you read Time magazine this week you saw the KMS
industry, which is a former...
F--You mean the laser fusion?
P--That's right. Here's a person who's a university
professor, started Conduction, sold out to McDonald,
and then came back with another company with which he's
going to try to solve the energy problems of the world
with fusion rather than fission process.
F--So there was a peculiar market here for trained
technicians.
P--There's a market.
When we first came here I went down to MESC [Michigan
Employment Security Commission] and said, "Tell me the
needs of this area as you understand them." I got no
help because essentially the guy told me every area is
an unsaturated sponge.
Well, that's not true, but it was true at the time that
there were just great needs for people with skills.
That was the first need that brought people in, that
there indeed are jobs. Then, as people were educated
the first couple of years over in the old Willow Village
area that we talked about, we had industry saying to
people, "Great, but if you want a promotion, or if you
want to keep your job, you've got to go back and take
this course."
We've had great pressure here from the contacts that we
have with about 300 industries and businesses for
sending people back (to college), they're encouraging
it: "If you want to go to the next step, or if you want
to get off the line and go into maintenance, you're
going to have to take this course and Washtenaw
Community College offers that course."
We've had those kinds of pressures.

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Ponitz
F--Is that why you made the remark earlier that the
community is so vital instead of the faculty?
P--I think both are, but they’ve got to work in concert.
May I say that early in this stage we had to be very
careful about selecting faculty who weren’t saying,
"Gee, I ’m coming to the University of Michigan to work
on my doctorate and I'd like incidentally to teach at
Washtenaw Community College."
We tried to hire none of those individuals because the
kind of faculty member it takes here is a particular
kind of person and we don't want someone who has as his
major goal a stepping-stone to becoming a university
professor. We think there's a difference in terms of
the emphasis and the quality of what needs to be done.
F--How early did you build these industrial advisory
groups to individual specific curricula? I was always
struck by that as a very astute mechanism.
P--When I was in Illinois, as president of a community
college, I remember getting a recommendation from the
engineering school at the University of Illinois that
we should start no more than three occupational programs
in any one year. When I came here and looked at the
situation, I said, "My gracious, if we start three a
year it means that we aren't going to have the number
of courses that w e 're going to need for the next ten
years."
So the first year I pushed hard, along with one member
of the board, Ralph Wenrich, who was exceptionally
helpful because of his interest and skill and training
in the area. The first year we had 27 occupational
programs. Twenty-six of those programs went the first
year. Willie Mays should have that kind of batting
average.
We got a lot of people, top people, involved in those
advisory committees from the start. There were persons
who had the theoretical skill and people who had the
practical skill. People in the community were there
as lay citizens and looking, not from the theoretical
point of view, but looking and saying, "All right, how
do we use the mechanisms to get Blacks into that
program? How do we use the mechanisms to get the poor
white, w h o 's never had an opportunity, into that program?

A 451
Ponitz
How do we use that mechanism to go through the develop­
mental programs and say to a person where there had
never been a Black in that particular program, 'Here's
an opportunity for you where there's good money and
good security.' "
Those are the kinds of questions we looked at above and
beyond the technical questions.
F--And here we're dealing with the community's opinion
makers, too.
P--Absolutely, although this community, as opinion makers,
is as diffuse as any I've worked with.
I've been a
superintendent in some areas where in a community of
35-40,000 if you got five people to agree it was a good
idea, you pretty well had (the new idea) zapped down
the line.
This community is not that way.
I've seen the kind of
person that would come in here within a month and say,
"I understand the power structure of Washtenaw County."
I know when I've heard that one that I've been talking
with a fool.
You just can't understand the power structure of this
community in a month.
I'm not sure I understand it now.
F--11's awfully broad, isn't it?
P--It's broad and it's changing. It's quite different now
than it was ten years ago. One of the reasons is that
the eastern part of the county is growing very rapidly
and feeling its political musc1e vis-a-vis Ann Arbor,
which once was the focal point. You're going to see
some new changes.
F--And I gather, I was not able to observe this, but that's
part of the problem that Eastern had. I was surprised
ascertaining the fact that this county, which always
looked to us like an Ann Arbor-base county, has Eastern
energy too.
I was told just the other day, by way of an aside, that
the county clerk had some observations about the fact
that everybody on the other side of the county was a
bunch of dingbats or some such.
I don't mean to make a
judgment about that, but it reflects a changing energy.
P--Absolutely, absolutely.

A 452
Ponitz
F--What were the policy objectives that underlay the
expansion of higher education in the state?
P--I think nationally, during this period of time we're
talking about, when you took a poll about higher educa­
tion, people looked at higher education with great hopes
and great dreams. We talked about the governor of
North Carolina, as well as others, translating that at
that time into action.
The old cliche, which was true at that time, was,
"We're beginning one community college every week in
the country." It will never be said again, obviously.
I think that was one policy decision, the underlying
feeling that you could make it if you were educated
and we've got to provide for education.
Education was looked upon with some awe.
F--One of the things that strikes me is simply this, that
for the first time in Michigan history, we come to
locally supported, citizen-paid higher education
through the mechanism of the millage.
The citizen had
a chance to vote for the dollars and did.
We built in this period from '58 to '70 — I haven't
checked the number and I must go back and do that--at
least 15 new community colleges.
So while we didn't
build one every day, we built more schools in 12 years
than we had built in the previous 100.
P--That's right. You said, "Gee, why did people spend
their money and their local dollars?" The other
response was fear.
Let me give you a specific example,
not in this state, but where I was before as superin­
tendent of a K-14 district.
During that time there were great pressures that you
couldn't get into college. The regional colleges in
the State of Michigan said you had to have a B average
or better. For the University of Michigan you had to
be some intellectual giant to get in--in the minds of
the broad spectrum of persons.
I remember talking with 21 separate school boards in
Illinois, far from the University of Illinois and far
away from Northern Illinois University. The greatest
selling point was that if you start a community college
with an open door enrollment for those individuals that
are paying your taxes, we guarantee that there will be

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Ponitz
a place for your son or your daughter or your grand­
child to attend college.
That was by far, in my
judgment, the strongest selling point. There was
nothing theoretical about it.
F--That's a good point.
I've talked to a lot of people
about access but you're the first one that's made the
point about fear of denial of access.
P--As I say, I talked to 21 school boards.
I remember the
first school board, a farm group, that I talked with.
The question came, "Ok, Dave Ponitz, how many other
school boards have you talked to about joining in a
consolidated community college effort?"
I thought, "Oh-oh, here we go, I'm in trouble." So I
maneuvered it round somewhat to the point, "Well, you're
the first ones w e 've talked to because we think you're
the most progressive in education and that's why we
came to this board.
Obviously we had to start someplace."
Instead of the normal conservative response that yo u 'd
expect from a rural kind of school board, one gentleman
said, "Let's us be the first because I want a guarantee."
H e , an older gentleman, was saying, "I want a guarantee
for my grandson that h e 's going to have an opportunity
to make it."
I was much inpressed by that comment on a hot summer
night.
F--And that's part of the support that underlays this
institution, too.
P--Absolutely.
F--People couldn't perceive that their children might be
able to go to Michigan since the gulf for some was so
huge.
P--We had, along with other institutions, racial problems
and persons who wanted to burn down the Willow Run
facilities --which wouldn't have been too hard to do
with the way those buildings were built.
One of those lads graduated two years ago. He came
across and pumped my hand and the response was a very
interesting one. He said, "Hey m a n , you're for real."
All he was saying was that "Somebody took the time and
effort to get my head screwed on right, in terms of

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Ponitz
giving me an education and giving me a job."
I think that's the next step.
These kids have a strong
response here.
If they're in the area, particularly
the occupational area, they know "when I get out of here,
I'm going to have a job." Even now, in many of the areas,
we have employers waiting in line for the students.
F--Now that's something I think is important.
I remember
going through your industrial design shops and yours
was the first community college in which I 'd seen
computer-managed tools. Everybody else was using all
their junk from 1915.
I was struck then and as you talk now it brings it back
to m e . But really people had a belief, not skill, but
the belief that they had a future. They didn't have
that when they came. I suppose that's an immense social
engine if you can begin to believe for the first time
that you fit.
P--It's a social engine in two ways--and that's a good
word that you used, Jerry--it's a social engine for
the students saying, "Hey, I know there's a job."
It's a social engine also for industry. Many times
they will call and say, "Hey Dave, I 've got a problem.
Can you help me?"
The problems are kind of interesting problems; they
are affirmative action problems, they're problems in
terms of training women, and they're problems of
production.
Sometimes we will send out one of our
instructors to a small plant that has a production
problem and help them solve it.
F--Are you at the place now, because I wasn't struck that
you were in the beginning, where frequently you will
have more expertise about a particular technical
problem than the plant itself?
P--Sometimes, yes.
F--They will then look at you as a community resource, as
a consulting force, as well as an educational force.
P--To some extent that's true.
F--Well, to GM that's not possible, perhaps.

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Ponitz
P--Well, let me give you an example.
I guess I would
prefer this not to be involved, but let me tell so
you understand the coloration of this one.
W e ’ve been talking about affirmative action programs in
the construction trades for some time.
The response
from the unions was, ’’Let’s get started in the training
and the affirmative action will come later." My response
has been, "No, we aren't going to participate in any
programs here unless that affirmative action program is
well in place."
They came up with a proposal which quite frankly I
thought I was going to get blown out of the water o n .
I told them, "Look, you can go to the board if you want
t o, but my recommendation is going to be negative until
you have a specific affirmative action response in that
program.” We went through some rather difficult times
and finally they acceded to my demands that we do it
right. That’s my perception, of course.
But the response was, "You don’t have welders that can
train our people, plumbers and pipe-fitters, to work
on atomic power plants where the quality of the welding
has to be a certified kind of welding so you don’t have
nuclear leakage." My response was very simple. "Why
don’t you try us? Forget the talk.
It’s the college
professors that are supposed to be full of all the talk.
I ’m saying try u s , y o u ’re doing the talking."
I knew that we had highly certified welders to do this.
W e 've got 40 welders here that are getting upgrade
training in that area.
That’s the general kind of
response where we work together.
Some of the forces we have are very upsetting to our
general studies faculty who say, "How come a guy w h o ’s
a welder with less than one year of college could make
as much as I can with a Ph.D.?" Which is true. We have
a very different salary schedule here. The answer is
because that individual got his skill and his training
in one way and you got yours in another way.
Quite frankly, it’s a hell of a lot harder to find a
real qualified welder than it is a Ph.D. in history.
I use that because that's your area and my area and we
both squirm.

Ponitz

A 456

That's helped us to bring very high quality people on
board who are working very, very carefully in a one-toone relationship with students. Because of the numbers,
there's more counseling goes on between the instructor
and the student putting on a brakeshoe on an automobile
than there is in a history class.
F--You've obviously made a deliberate policy on ratios,
which has fiscal implications, to enhance the voca­
tional training.
P--Yes. Probably one of the smartest decisions I ever made.
I don't talk about this too much, but I'll talk about it
to you.
I was very concerned when I came here by a statement made
by Robert Maynard Hutchins^ before the California
Community College Association. Hutchins said community
colleges have got more important things to do than to
train people for work.
That didn't surprise m e , knowing
Robert Maynard Hutchins and what he stands for. The
thing that appalled me though was that in parentheses in
this speech, it said "loud applause."
That got me to thinking in terms of this kind of com­
munity where the response is "the faculty is the insti­
tution ." Some comments were made that "leave a faculty
to its own responses for three to five years and you
w o n 't have any occupational programs. They’11 vote them
out of existence." I began to say to myself, "Hey, wait
a minute. If you truly mean that y o u 're going to be an
occupational college, and emphasize that as well as the
other, you better make darn sure there's a balance
between the general studies faculty and the occupational
studies faculty from the start." The occupational people
aren't trained in articulation, verbal or written, many
of them, but trained in hand-eye-coordination kinds of
skills, or mathematical skills, or other sorts of skills.
One of the things that we have done, that's kept the
balance here, is that when we started out we had half
and half. Now, perhaps, I think we have even more
occupational than general studies. That decision in
the very early days has put us in very good stead in
terms of where the priority for dollars should b e .
3
Robert M. Hutchins; President, University of Chicago,
1929-1951.

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Ponitz
I would look upon that as perhaps the best policy
judgment that we ever made in terms of saying what
we were going to do.
There are a couple of other policy decisions we made.
You simply can't talk about what you're going to do,
you have to do it.
The traditional way to build a college is to build a
library-classroom facility first. Right? In every
institution around the country you've done it that way.
My recommendation to the board was that we build the
campus backwards. That’s why you’ve got an exact
science facility here, technical and industrial facility,
but no permanent library. Because we felt, you know,
w e ’ve got to say to the community, "We're dead serious
about doing what you told us we were supposed to d o ."
The other thing we tried to do is tell people, "Keep
the pressure on u s ."
Every year in our student newspaper persons in the
general studies area lament the fact that, "Gosh,
there's so much emphasis upon occupational programs in
this institution." And that’s all right. Those are
students looking at life as they see it at that time.
People who write newspapers are communications kinds
of students and from their own perspective that's their
understanding.
I try to encourage them to go over and
take a look at what an automotive technician does, or
what a metallurgist does, because they don't know.
We try to mix faculty and we try to mix students. We
have English classes, for example, over in the T and I
Building--physics and chemistry, electronics are here.
There's a lot of mingling of people, a lot of open
laboratories where, if the metallurgists have a partic­
ularly interesting assignment going on in welding,
other students leave their stations and walk over and
see what's going o n . Kind of a melding and mixing of
students who, by and large, don't know what they want
to do, that is, the very young ones that come here.
I think those were policy decisions. Some of them were
welcomed, some of them were looked upon as really bad
judgments. I really got hassled the first year by the
North Central Association advisor on questions like
these: "You really will accept students without a high
school diploma?" My response was, "Yes." Let's assume

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Ponitz
that that student, without a high school diploma, comes
here and completes the requirements for an associate
degree. Without that high school diploma, would you
give him the associate degree? My answer was, "Of
course." Their response was, "Heresy."
That’s ten years ago and that’s pretty open now.
I
guess I would only share with you one of the very
dramatic instances.
A young man came to us, a carpenter with tenth grade
education, good mind, and great articulation.
Tried to
get into several four-year colleges, wouldn't talce him.
We took him. He came from the deep South and was very
much involved in a variety of things--writing, equal
opportunity.... He graduated from here; went to
Michigan, graduated with honors with a bachelor's degree;
later graduated with honors in urban planning with a
master's degree; ran for the Ypsilanti Township Board
of Supervisors, won; ran for the Legislature, w o n ; is
now chairman for the subcommittee on community colleges
in the Appropriations Committee.
F--In Michigan?
P--In Michigan...

Gary Owen.

That’s a dramatic example, but don’t tell me that there
aren't literally hundreds of people who for some reason
or other haven't gotten a high school diploma and who
are now older and say, "Gee, I want to put it back
together but in my own mature w a y ," who should have that
opportunity.
I know you aren’t saying they should not.
rhetorically to the North Central group.

I ’m talking

F--As a matter of fact, I happen to believe from my vantage
point and experiences that opening up the ladder of
opportunity was one of the key issues.
P--This guy was our advisor to tell us how to run a
community college. You know what I had to do? I called
North Central and asked him to be relieved because he
was asking us to run a very traditional four-year type,
two-year program.
F--He wanted you to run half of a baccalaureate institute.
P--That's right.

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Ponitz
F--I want to know what were some of the key issues that
resulted in partisan and parochial conflict in the
attempts to obtain some of the above policy objectives?
Certainly one of them is the one you’re talking about,
which is the problem of the status and tradition model-it still is with us --and how to create a ladder of
opportunity.
There might have been also the fear that by adulterating
the value of the degree by extending the number of
holders it would cheapen its value to those few elite
that had it.
P--Some take that position.
F-~That was probably one of the fights. What were some of
the other fights that you saw that had to be overcome
in order to create a good public policy?
P--Great support for the community college by the presidents,
vice-presidents, and deans at both the University of
Michigan and Eastern Michigan.
F--Wasn’t Hannah also vital in this way too?
P--Yes, very much so.
Junior College.

He was a graduate of Grand Rapids

F--That's a .good point. I don’t think many people know
that John went to Grand Rapids Junior College.
P--John’s a great politician in his own right. I don’t
know how many times I met with John Hannah with com­
munity college groups, but the first statement he would
make was about his own experiences at Grand Rapids
Junior College, which gave him his start, and how he
was very impressed with what those colleges offered.
I think the conflict did not come there. I think part
of the conflict came from persons who did not understand
what a community college was all about in higher educa­
tion . There were fears: the community college was the
intruder, the community college had glamour, the com­
munity college people weren’t sure what it was going to
do, the community colleges were in the newspaper a lot.
We had those kinds of conflicts, and probably still do
to some extent.

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Ponitz
F--And since you were the first institution to really move
toward the implicit policy of low tuition, if any, you're
asking people to pay for something that they weren't
using. Whereas the Michigan appropriation came in a
disguised way from Lansing so people didn't realize that
they were really paying for it, equally as they paid for
local institutions.
P--The other problem was one of not conflict, but one of
apathy.
I was impressed when we picked this site.
It
was a hard site to pick, politically.
Once in a while
you win. There was a sign by this land that said
Ann Arbor three miles, Ypsilanti three miles. The sign
is long rotted and gone but once in a while, politically,
you pick right. People were very happy with the selection
of the site, other than those in the western part of the
county and there was a conflict there. They would have
preferred that it be done on a geographical basis rather
than a population basis.
F--But that's support that you can't complain about, because
they weren't fighting the nature of the institution, they
wanted more of it.
P--That's right.
The other problem was that people really didn't know what
the institution was all about. I spoke to groups on an
average of three to four times a week for the first two
years just trying to help people understand what a com­
munity college was all about.
I remember when the site was picked, and I mention it
because I want to make this point --big headlines in the
two major newspapers with a picture of the site taking
up most of the front page of the two newspapers. I
remember, six weeks later, knowledgeable people in the
community saying, "Well now, let's see, have you picked
a site yet?" Apparently even with all that kind of
publicity people still didn't have the information or
understand what it was about.
The point that 1 would make is that you have to go out
for a certain period of time until you reach what I call
a critical mass. That critical mass is enough students
who have taken courses here, and enough employers who
have hired your people, to suddenly say, "Oh yeah, I
know about the college."

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Ponitz
Even now we have those difficulties about what the
college is. You see me riding the pendulum pretty hard
toward the occupational area, particularly during the
first five years, probably too hard, but the reason I
ride that side so hard is so that there would at least
be a balance because of the kind of community that this is
I remember getting a call from a cocktail party at one
o 'clock in the morning. It said, "Hey Dave, I got a
bet with this guy. He's betting me from what you said
that you don't have any general studies programs at all
at the community college." That response, or the other
response, a conflict of responses, is people saying,
"I'm not going to vote for any millage for the community
college because you don't have any occupational programs
at all."
That critical mass response, although still there, has
diminished very rapidly.
F--That's in a local way that y o u 're talking about. I also
want you to talk a little about the state, because you
were one of the key leaders in this state.
P--At the state level there were some internal conflicts
which I was not a part of because I was not here.
There were eight community colleges early in the game -perhaps it was nine, I ’m not sure--who kind of got
together in a gentleman's club and in a gentleman's
fashion and determined how the capital outlay should
be spent. I think that was probably before your time
in the Legislature as well.
I hear those men, most are retired now, talk about that
era with great fondness, that is, a gentleman's club.
Well, all of a sudden the eight increased bang, bang,
bang, bang, bang. Each couple of months you had a new
face turn u p .
F--They had 23 or 24 and it was hard to cut the pie, wasn't
it?
P--11 was hard to cut the pie, and the divergencies of the
high-style operator coming on versus all the divergencies
in terms of what the budget should b e . For example,
should the budget emphasize occupational programs?
I was one of two, I believe, in the early days that said
there ought to be a differential for occupational programs

A 462
Ponitz
If you remember the first year that we did it, it
was $50.
F--I was struck by that fight, but that's more of an
internal fight.
When I came to Delta--I taught in the community college-they had a college of community services and a college
of liberal arts and the two faculties proceeded to beat
each other to death before the community services won.
And it won, I think, because of the creation of the
community services, amongst other services, that was
available for the whole community.
What about Wayne County Community College? What about
the push for more funding? What about the Dutch and
urban Black and hillbilly and surburban and the like?
P--Let me move back to another point, for a moment, on
conflict. It was a statewide situation in that I think
there are some very specific differences between the
two- and four-year colleges in how they attack problems.
About five years ago the boards of trustees --some of
them very strong members, the Fred Mathews^, the
George Potters^, and others--became very suspicious of
the college presidents. Board members felt they were
not a part of the action and "by gosh, if w e 're board
members and are supposed to run these institutions, we
aren1t going to have presidents involved in that
situation."
F--About 1969 that was.
P--So we amalgamated trustees and presidents into a group,
with some great trepidation, by the w a y , presidents
feeling that their power was being taken away in that
kind of situation. That was a real conflict there. I
served as the first president of that group, as you
know, and have played the role of mediator on a number
of occasions in getting groups to work together.
4

Fred Mathews; Chairman, Board of Trustees, Southwestern
Michigan College, Dowagiac.
^George Potter; Chairman, Board of Trustees, Jackson
Community College.

A 463
Ponitz
Now, were there small and large conflicts? Absolutely.
Were there urban-rural conflicts? Absolutely.
One of the things that we have done, not 100 percent,
but one of the things that we have done is said, "Look,
we are 2 7 community colleges working together and we've
got to submerge our individual differences for the
greater good of all students in the State of Michigan."
And there were a number of times when individuals said,
"We are not going to act in the competitive, abrasive
nature of the four-year institutions." That's been
articulated, time and time again.
F--That’s an important point.
P--Yes, it is.
F--0ne of the things that’s happened in Michigan is that to
some degree the regional strivings of the institutions
have managed to enhance those institutions, but also to
cut away some of the public base.
What I guess I'm asking is this: Did the community colleges
think that the only way they could survive against the
juggernauts of Wayne, Michigan, Michigan State, and the
growing power of Eastern and Western, was to hang together
or they'd hang separately? I mean, was there some fear
that you certainly were not getting treated as fairly in
the capital outlay procedure as the four-year schools?
P--Capital outlay. As I went before the JCOC Committee
[Joint Capital Outlay Committee of House and Senate
Appropriations Committees] a couple of weeks ago, they
gave me the usual rough treatment--which I don’t worry
about after going through 25 of them--for $750,000 of a
$10 million building.
You know, you say, "Geez, is this
worth the paper work to come up here?" I think that was
part of it.
On the other hand, when you get 29 institutions - -27 were
in the group, but 29 now--I think there’s a very strong
feeling that some of the four-year institutions are
telling community colleges "because w e 're bigger and
because w e ’re stronger w e 're going to beat you politi­
cally. " No way is that going to happen.

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Ponitz
F--But they have certain tools.
They have alumni, they’re
older institutions, they have athletics, they had in
Oakland County the tremendous academic and cultural
force, you know, like the great concert pianist Vladimir
Ashkenazy.
P--Those are minor tools.

They forget the major one.

F--Ok, what is the major one?
P--The major one is that every senator and most every repre­
sentative in this state has got one community college
they’ve got to look out for.
F--You can see some statesmanlike activities where the
powerful schools, Macomb, Oakland, Washtenaw, Grand
Rapids, and Lansing, made the decision to buck up the
reimbursement formula bottom.
Of course, that’s simple
to do because it doesn't cost much money. Increasing
the entitlement of a Roscommon by 100 percent only takes
$100,000 at the maximum out of the pool, whereas a place
like Oakland can be counted on for $6 million.
P--That’s right. Let me give you one more example, just to
make the point.
I represented the MCCA [Michigan Community College
Association] at a health group where they were all fouryear colleges.
I was kind of interested, sitting back, to hear people
tell me nicely, in a very sophisticated manner, "Now,
you represent just a community college," and " I ’m from
the University of Michigan Medical School representing
so many persons, you know, great school." "I’m from
Wayne." "I’m from Ferris." It was almost a very
sophisticated putdown and suggesting "we really know
our way around politically."
Finally, when the introductions came and I ’d gotten this
putdown enough, at least as I perceived it, I just
indicated who I was and that I was representing--they
had indicated the number of students they had in their
programs --the 150,000 students in our program.
It was
kind of interesting to see the change in that group of
health students.
That group was so naive, although they understood the
health processes well, they were so naive. They wanted
to have a major political appropriation and they

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Ponitz
approached me and said, "Can you help us with the
protocol of how we get the appropriation through the
State Board of Education."
F--They didn't know the process.
P--They didn't know the process and they were upset about
the protocol.
You know, "How do you approach the State
Board?" Well, you know, you call them up.
What I'm saying to you is I think maybe you're right in
your hanging analogy. Community colleges have hung
pretty tough, you know, five years out. The average
number of institutions attending our monthly meetings -where w e 're traveling all over the state--is generally
the voting representatives from between 23 to 24 out
of the 27 each month, which is phenomenal.
F--When I first met you and we were in certain kinds of
conflict situations between the entrenched community
colleges, what we saw as "new view," many saw as
meddling. One of the things was that we deliberately
attempted, and we had statesmanship people like you,
was to enhance the disadvantaged schools at the bottom,
helping one or two cut the whole movement away from
its more traditional and rigid responses.
We also had the problem over the K-12, K-14, and the
creation of the independent freestanding community
college rather than as a department. I believe only
Dearborn and maybe Grand Rapids... is Grand Rapids free
now?
P--No.
F--Those, I think, are the only two left.
P--Henry Ford and Dearborn are voting the tenth of June,
I think.
F--But that era of the 13th and 14th grades being a depart­
ment in a school district is gone. We had that touchy
issue. We were attempting to push people into lower
tuition rather than having them ape the higher schools
by cutting the market out, which was a very difficult
thing. The community colleges are the only institutions
in the state that have a mandated tuition by statute,
which of course is a fractious story because we ran it
through as a penalty.

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Ponitz
When I think about these things, we were dealing with
divisional issues and not public service issues.
The
Legislature as I perceived it wasn't saying community
colleges were less useful, they were saying they were
more useful than they were. What we were trying to do
was hitting you where you were divided over things like
districting, over the attainment of new territory, over
the determination to make the 40 percent of the land of
this state that didn't pay any tax, pay a tax. That
frightened people out and brought the parochial interests
of one institution against another.
You were pretty well insulated by that because you had
a natural district. Oakland had a natural district.
Maybe that's why they were powerful, I don't know, but
the rural ones didn't and we couldn't see how they
could survive.
But now w e 're past some of those points. We've past the
point of districting and just ignore it. It was obviously
an issue that divided people past the point of being able
to perform what they were supposed to d o .
We moved in the period from '64 through '70 by broadening
the base of support because certainly that was one place
where you were politically weak. You made the case very
trenchantly, as I recollect, that the cost of your
offering vocational programs was extremely costly with
all that tremendous hardware. I used to be amused when
I looked at your place to realize that the equipment in
the building was worth ten times the building.
P--That's right. In that building the equipment is worth
half the cost of the new building, to give you some idea.
F--Well, the point was, we were paying you $300, $350, or
$400 a kid. For a low-cost program at Eastern, 30 blocks
away, we were paying them three times that.
You've been able to remedy that by union and strength,
and yet I'm struck by the fact that you people do not
exert the kind of political strength that you will later.
P--It's hard. You know, within our own group there's still
a number of persons that don't understand the full
impact of the political process.
There's been a change in presidents in those ten years.
I would describe the change this way. One of the

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Ponitz
obvious conflicts has been collective negotiations.
There's been conflict at the state level and local
level.
So much so that within a two-year period of
time, 50 percent of the community college presidents
in this state were censured by the faculty.
I've been one of them.
I don't wear that as any badge
of honor except to say that it suggests the signs of
the times--of how you destroy the presidents and the
board to handle the adversary relations of collective
negotiations.
As a result of that process the kind of president, in
my judgment, who presently exists is very different
than the president of ten years ago.
F--How is he different?
P--Ten years ago a president perceived himself as an educa­
tional leader very concerned with curriculum, development,
innovation, and those kinds of things. The kind of
person that survives now must leave the educational
leadership to other individuals and fall into the very
specific category of educational manager and diplomat-an external source of working with the community.
F--So a man like Jack Tirrell^, who was very much the
innovative type in pushing equipment, couldn't really
come to the fore today.
P--Well, I don't know.
I think you have to change. I
came as an educational leader, but I said to myself,
"If I want to remain a college president in this state,
I have to change my style."
I have changed my style rather substantially. When you
start an institution you spend 80 percent of your time
on innovation and program and 20 percent on management.
It's just the reverse of that now. This isn't to say
we don't have new programs going, but I spend a tremen­
dous amount of my time on program budgeting, management
objectives, affirmative action, state relations, con­
struction , and getting funds in terms of construction
of buildings, millage campaigns, and those kinds of
things.
^John E . Tirrell; President, Oakland Community College,
1967-68.

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Ponitz
Those are not curriculum items. By and large, the good
people we have in curriculum are saying, "Hey, Dave, you
get money and w e ’ll guarantee a good institution.”
The division of labor has changed.
The guy involved has
become mentally much tougher, by necessity, in terms of
the collegial relationship which some are concerned about.
F--Probably something else has happened, too.
It's my
recollection that when I first looked at community
colleges the majority of the subsidiary academic offices
were of lower quality.
The president was a paramount
figure, internally, but I think now many of the deans,
subprogram managers, and academic deans are much stronger
in stature. Well, of course, they have more to d o .
P--As I tell our people here, as I look at a new person on
the staff, what I ’m interested in is if the person is a
quick study.
Can he learn quickly? Which substantiates
your point. If they can’t learn quickly and stay up with
the changes and the flow of things, they're going to be
lost.
Every institution has had persons that were great people
when they came in with that innovative approach but
weren't able to change dramatically enough to be a
manager.
They have to say, "Well, gee. We appreciate
your efforts but we think you’11 be happier someplace
outside the institution." Most of us have gone through
that.
F--Obviously, then, to the question, "Did any of the policy
goals for the enhancement of higher education have as
their objective the destruction of class and culture
barriers?", the answer is that community colleges
wouldn’t exist without that agenda.
That’s what you’ve
really said.
P--Absolutely.
One of the other conflict areas--one which we thought we
were battling, and we were to a certain extent--was the
age-old saw of local control versus state control.
Local boards have been very insistent that they keep
local control so they can have the flexibilities to
meet local community needs. Community colleges have
many similarities but they have many differences as well.

A 469
Ponitz
F--That was a conflict with us, but I always regarded it
as a false issue.
P- -Yes. I think it. wasn’t a one-to-one issue. Each of us
had a different agenda and were fighting the agenda on
the local control issue when really we each had an agenda
other than the local control issue that we were involved
with.
F--The proof is that the Legislature was comfortable to take
away the superintendency of community colleges from the
department --which had the bureaucracy to manage you--and
turn you over to the Legislature which had neither the
will nor the bureaucracy to manage you. In fact, we were
telling you, you were on your own as long as ....
It was
when we came to the "as long as" that it was hard to stand
it.
We wanted certain obj ectives accomplished. Now the
institutions are doing them, and in very vital ways. I
don’t hear much of this argument, although the mechanisms
are there. You're not busy fussing about how the state’s
taking you over.
P--No, I think that issue probably has paled. Well, it’s
not paled, it’s gone into a new kind of response. The
response is affirmative education to inform the
Legislature as was the Tinkers to Evers to Chance legis­
lative response. The response now is the fantastic
amount of time on reporting without any benefit to the
institutions.
F--Well, maybe not any benefit to them.
P--I don’t know about that.
F--This isn't in the subject, but I would suspect from talks
with the professional staff who receive the stuff that
something like 85 percent of the data collected is
unassimilated, unanalyzed, and unused. That comes to be
the problem, because if you spend 1,000 hours to generate
something that takes five minutes to review, you could
invest those 1,000 hours better in some other way.
P--That’s right, absolutely.
F--What about the role of popularism versus elitism? You
obviously represent the sector of popularism, but do
you think that was a fight?

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Ponitz
P--It was a battle in this community, not on the policy
level but on the interpersonal kind of level.
As I used to speak to university groups--most of them
with master's or Ph.D. degrees--! would indicate that
"there are two requirements to enter this community
college and each of you, I think, would qualify for
one of those requirements and could be accepted."
They would kind of lean forward, these professorial
types, and I indicated that "either you have to be a
high school graduate or 18 years of age."
I would do that to try to put it, within humor, in terms
of what people can do who haven't had the opportunity for
the traditional kind of education that you and I had.
F--Fine. You may recollect that when I went out to the
Focus Conference at Sidney [Michigan], I said,
"Community colleges have the following two criteria:
You have to breathe or be able to walk, but you can
waive one or the other." But that's the same point.
P--The same point is made. I think the key point that I
would make is to be more concerned with how the product
performs than with the traditional guidelines.
F--John Hannah seems to have represented, in the public
mind, the popularism. It looks like the regional insti­
tutions lined up behind John against Michigan.
P--It's no longer a debatable issue because many of the
regional institutions have essentially the same opendoor policies as the community college. It's done that
way because admissions policies appear to be determined
more on the number of empty dormitory spaces you have
than on intellectual criteria.
F--1 respond badly to that because somebody said that about
State the other day. It may well be that w e 've come to
accept that rather than talking about people meeting
standards w e '11 enhance what they have. Therefore,
every institution has got to do its part to improve
our citizenry intellectually and skillwise.
P--I guess the response is that everybody should have a
chance. There are all kinds of tests --ACT or College
Boards--which show they can't succeed. And yet, given
a chance, they do succeed.
The thing that impresses me
most is that we really don't know.

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Ponitz
F--One of the things I'm going to talk about in the study
is that we did not create the Ohio system.
Ohio
promised opportunity by saying every high school
graduate can go to college but didn’t create the chairs
so they could and instead created a system of failure.
It’s much better, although it’s been more difficult to
create socially and politically, to have a system that
gives a man a chance to succeed rather than a chance to
fail.
P--Let me show how far ahead the Michigan system is. I had
a letter yesterday from Max Lerner, who is Vice-Chancellor
for Community Colleges in Ohio, saying, ”I ’d like to chat
with you about putting a community college in Columbus."
They’re just now to the point of saying there is an
opportunity for a community college in a city that has a
major university. Well, Michigan passed that...
F--Twenty years ago .
P--Yes, exactly.
F--And it couldn't have been done without your help, although
that’s a story that probably never will get told.
P--A young man was here. I haven't seen the final disser­
tation yet, but the University of Michigan allowed him
to do one very different from most dissertations.
H e ’d come from the East, from Newton Community College.
Newton has gotten all kinds of raves for its K-12
program, but it has a very traditional, eastern, privatetype community college approach with very little occupa­
tional education. There is very little apparent working
with the needs of people other than the traditional
middle-class kind of individual. H e ’s a counselor
there and he got disenchanted because there were so many
people who needed help in the occupational areas and
weren’t getting it.
He was raising the question: "So many community colleges
say they’re going to emphasize occupational education
and yet three years and five years down the road they
really aren’t . This institution said it was going to
do it and it is doing it. What happened to have this
institution continue to not only start that way but
grow continually, exponentially, and reinforce that
particular responsibility versus others who have said
they’re going to do it and then have not done it?"

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Ponitz
I'm kind of interested in reading that dissertation
when it finally comes.
F--1 ’m very curious about that.
P--I think I have some answers.
F--I want to talk to you about that for the reason that
I ’m personally of the opinion that the community colleges
have, to some degree, while succeeding in many, many
areas, failed in keeping the public agenda, the respon­
sibility that was thrust upon them.
The proof of that that I ’ve offered in discussion with
others is the fact that the community colleges now are
faced with a competitor, the area skill center. The
area skill center is a statement, in my opinion, to the
policy makers that the occupational agenda of training
for the world of work isn’t being done by people who
should have been doing it.
P--I don’t fully subscribe to that. For example, w e ’ve
had three requests for an area skill center in this
area.
Each has been defeated. One of the reasons it's
been defeated is because of people saying, "Hey, w e 've
got a great community college which is doing that.”
This tends not to substantiate the point of view that
you’re making.
I would take the position, however, that a good area
skill center can be built upon by an innovative com­
munity college to develop outstanding technical people,
particularly in the interdisciplinary areas. And I 'd
make my point in a couple of areas. First, there
appears to b e , as I read the Department of Labor stuff,
a substantial surplus of labor in certain areas which
will now allow corporations that were saying, "We’d
like to have you with a high school education," now to
say, "We want you to have one year or two years of
community college education before w e ’11 take you."
They'11 be more selective.
And they'11 require some kind of either jump-in-jumpout occupational education, or a one-year certificate.
The other thing: I think you see a lot of employers not
wanting to hire high school students. High school
students aren't mature, a high school student jumps
around a lot, you just get the guy or gal trained
and he moves.
They want somebody one or two years more
mature.

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Ponitz
So if it's handled correctly, 1 see it as a beautiful
melding and marriage between getting technicians, or
quasi-technicians, trained. Now, you've got to work
it, you've got to work it every day of the year if it's
going to happen.
It's not going to happen, it's going
to be made to happen.
F--Are the programs between skill centers somewhat differ­
ent than community colleges? The reason I ask that is
that when I was at Flint I was quite struck by the fact
that they were teaching masonry and artisan kinds of
programs rather than the more dependent kinds of things
where you have to work for somebody. A mason is a
traveling journeyman.
P--1 think skill centers are probably doing more training
and the community colleges are doing more education.
That's a pretty broad statement, but skill centers,
many times, are giving a person an overview of what you
need to do to be a mason, for example.
They may come
to a community college to begin their apprenticeship
work to actually become an indentured journeyman.
For example, we have plumbers here. We have journeyman
plumbers in for upgrade training and very shortly w e '11
have persons moving into the apprenticeable kinds of
skills.
F--What you're saying is that to some degree they are
competitive in focus.
P--They can be competitive if there's not innovation and
cooperation.
F--But they could also be enhancing to each other.
P--They could be greatly enhancing to one another. That's
one of the reasons why I pushed hard for an area voca­
tional center here. I think there are too many students
that either psychologically or physically drop out of
high schools w h o , given some hands-on experience, would
progress much faster in their particular skill level.
F--What about the role of culture and the arts in the
dialogue over the growth of higher education?
P--Great, but first let me indicate that this institution
has not been in the vanguard in that area.
F--Has any community college?

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Ponitz
P--Yes, I think so. I think there have been a number
which for their own constituency have done some very
fine things in that area.
I think Oakland and Grand
Rapids probably fall in that category.
From its
traditional junior college approach Grand Rapids did
a number of those...
F--And Delta did when I was there.
P--Yes, Delta has.
Our response in this area, up till now, is that we have
leaned on the community rather than bringing in concerts
and those kinds of things.
Going back to the division of labor response, our
responsibility is in other areas and this community does
a fantastic job in those areas. "At least as w e 're
getting started, let us lean on you."
F--Ok, let me move the question a little differently.
This
is probably the most culture-rich area in the whole state.
The other 82 counties aren’t within 50 miles of Washtenaw.
I guess what I was saying is, did the creation of com­
munity colleges with local support have as one of its
agendas, hopefully, the enhancement of the culture and
the arts for those areas? Would you suspect that was
important in places like Roscommon, West Shore, Petoskey,
Benton Harbor, and the like?
P--I suspect it was an articulated need which they said they
were going to do something about. I suspect also that
based upon the needs of the students and the community
that it had a much lower level of interest and support
than any other area.
One reason, of course, would be that in a number of areas
some of those things would be 100 percent locally funded.
Like anything else, unless you get those things started
very, very early, you aren't going to do them at all.
So I see lots of opportunities for student culture in
terms of various books and so on.
I guess I come back
to an earlier point. When I started here, I think
18 percent of the student head count--average of the
state--were involved in occupational programs.
Three or four years ago I think that percentage had
moved to around 33 percent and I suspect it’s considerably

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Ponitz
higher now. The community college response has been a
more pragmatic response, if you will, than the cultural
response.
I may be saying negative things about it, but I think we
probably ought to be doing better in that area.
F--You can do only so many things with so many dollars.
P--Yes. I find our students not overly interested in those
kinds of things, maybe because they have been presented
incorrectly.
The number of students who have those kinds
of concerns is not large.
Maybe it's part of this first generation response. I'm
not sure that when you're trying to bootstrap yourself
up to get a secure job so you can support your family
you're going to put priorities on the quality of life.
I think you maybe have to go through another generation.
F--Well, it may be something elso too, although I agree with
you.
I'm not anthropologist enough to know what the
right words are, but it strikes me that the presentation
of formal culture in America is surrounded by all kinds
of taboos and ceremonials that have to do with class
level rather than appreciation.
P--Yes.

Good point.

F--You think about the way art and concert music are
presented. What it really says to the lower classes is
that you are not welcome.
It takes time for people to
feel adequate to participate and that may be the second
generation thing.
P--I think one of the big pushes in culture, frankly, has
been in the minority areas. As a result of black
student unions, black studies, and so on, their people
have looked at their own culture because they have been
denied a look up to now.
F--But after that straightens out it will come back to the
same splits again.
P--Yes, I think that's true.
F --What has happened is that the black culture types were
separated out from the white culture types, not based

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Ponitz
on a place, but based on a color, and once they get
folded in it will still be the mass against the thin
column.
What about the position of labor in regard to higher
education?
P--I think labor originally was somewhat suspect of higher
education. I think they were suspect in a rightful
kind of way because higher education made little overture
to labor.
I see that changing substantially now.
F--Have you done a lot here in your local community?
P--We do quite a bit. We have a great number of social
and work interchanges with labor in a number of areas.
F--And you think that they were suspicious because of the
status ceremonials around the higher education process?
P--When they sent people to college for training they were
concerned that college would have an antilabor back­
ground and that they might actually turn people off
from the labor movement. That has been a strong response
that I've seen statewide. I see that changing now from
college to college after they *ve learned to accommodate
to one another and know what one another’s needs are.
I don’t think higher education has done a particularly
good j ob in recognizing the specific needs of labor,
just as sone of the other parts of our broader communities
have not. I see that changing now.
I see it changing in
terms of so many people being involved in a unionized kind
of activity.
F--It's particularly true in the academic world.
P- -Absolutely.
F--What about the position of industry?
You *ve talked a good deal
institution couldn't have
you think that's been one
local growth of community

about that, and obviously your
been created without it. Do
of the underpinnings of the
colleges?

P--Absolutely. Industry has been very interested in
community colleges because it1s helped them to be
competitive. Although we talk about the philanthropic

A 477
Ponitz
point of view of industry, which they have, I think the
reason that industry continues to be involved with
community college education is that it’s to their selfinterest .
F- -It's a form of local taxpayer support, isn’t it?
P--Absolutely.
F--I don’t see, David, the same kind of deducation to
baccalaureate institutions by industry. What do you
feel about that?
P--I guess the most honest answer I can give you is I don’t
know.
I see it in research at U of M where great amounts of
dollars have come to set up the Chrysler center, and
also the numbers of dollars that they get on earmarked
kinds of things.
In terms of the regional institutions I ’m not sure. By
and large, industry has been interested in hiring people
who have a specific skill and can return whatever dollars
they're paid plus more to industry.
F--Have you been able to get political and social support
from industry statewide for higher education?
I ’m really dealing with the fact that the share of the
state appropriations for higher education is about
14 percent of the total. All state monies go to some
valid purpose. Therefore, making the decision to spend
in one area rather than another means that somebody has
to be squeezed.
P--I guess I don’t know.
It seems to me that at the
community college level, as they've dealt with the
question, they have worked with the industry that they’re
serving, who in turn has supported them. But neither one
of them has dealt with it in the abstract.
No community college has, for example, asked to have
President Gerstenberg from General Motors come and
support a community college effort. I would not hesitate
a moment, however, to call up a vice-president in charge
of hydramatics and say, "I've got a tough problem here.
Come up to Lansing with me a week from tomorrow because
I need your help to get that thing through." And they'd
come.

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Ponitz
F--And have you ever done that?
P--Yes I have, and will continue to do it.
F--What is the position of commerce? Do you make a
distinction between industry and commerce?
P--We very actively participate in Chambers of Commerce,
not as an advocate of business but as a way of saying,
"We're here to be supportive, to assist you in your
kind of activities."
F--I guess what I ’m thinking about is that there's an
industrial role versus a labor role in society.
I was
wondering if you would make a distinction between
industry and commerce? Did they have different
obj ectives ?
P--Yes, probably greater involvement in commerce and
industry [than labor]. One of the reasons in commerce
is that commerce is employing the graduates of this
institution.
We could have the best equipment, the best
teachers, and the best facilities, but unless there are
jobs at the other end of the rainbow you aren't going to
have a program.
We had, for example, 20 personnel officers in here for
a gourmet dinner the other night. Why? Because we like
them? Well, yes, that's one reason, but our major purpose
was to highlight the kinds and quality of people that we
train here in saying, "We'd like to have you hire them."
So that very active self-interest thrust, on the part of
our students and on the part of the institution...
F--And only by understanding the nature of the marketplace
can you get that support.
P--That's right. Much more involvement with industry and
with commerce, a different kind of involvement with labor.
F--What about agriculture?
I understand your view is
essentially local but you've been active...
P--Yes. I think there's been substantial interest in agri­
culture in the rural areas. I would only suggest to you
that several years ago, in one area, there were three
veterinarians on a board who saw to it that they had
rather substantial programming.

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Ponitz
F--I was curious about the following thing. There’s been
a tremendous migration out--in the period from "58 to
'70 and earlier--from rural areas to the city.
I wondered
if people, as the farms were no longer viable as economic
units to keep the families home and working, hadn't moved
to create community colleges as a way of keeping their
children at home.
P--Yes, yes, absolutely. More so in the more rural area
where I was in Illinois than here. I think it depends
upon the geography of the area.
F--I was much struck by the community of Roscommon, for
instance.
P--Yes, absolutely.
F--At Kirtland Community College where the hope w a s , "Well,
w e '11 get some subsidiary industry, w e '11 find jobs,
we'll train the boys and create a labor pool and then go
out and headhunt the industry."
P--There’s strong feeling by some families that, "Ok, I now
understand that women should go to college. But, if
they1re going to go to college I'd prefer it to be close
to home to get another couple more years of home environ­
ment and home supervision rather than going to the
colleges far away "--which are kind of sin cities as
they would see them.
F--They'd be fearful of that?
P--Yes, absolutely.
F--What about the pressures and influences in the determina­
tion of public policy from the federal government, if any?
The nature of the question is this. In federal grants
for social services, every dollar has an accompanying
constraint. W e 're trying to inquire if the federal
efforts in higher education brought constraints. We
haven 't been able to ascertain them, but we haven't
concluded our work y e t .
P--Strong constraints in a couple of ways. The first con­
straint is that with colleges growing so rapidly, a
number of administrators, as we talked about before,
were hired who jumped up the ladder too fast in terms
of understanding administrative process. A number of

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Ponitz
administrators across the country have gotten into major
problems with the federal government in terms of making
too many decisions with their hearts and not enough with
a combination of their heads and hearts.
I can give you some specific examples, particularly in
the student-aid area.
I guess I would prefer not to
name names, but I can point out college presidents and
other individuals who are long gone because they simply
did not understand accounting processes or accountability
practices.
F--Of course, there's a problem there. The funding and
granting agency always encouraged people to dispense and
there was no combination of the police audit function
inside the granting agency.
People would get encouraged
one way and then the auditor exceptions would come and
sometimes 10-20 percent of those funds would be excluded
as not permissible.
P--Right. Two other problems as I see them. One has been
the single purpose grant where you had to tailor-make
the grant to get the money and yet that wasn't really
what the needs were. The general purpose grant versus
the specific purpose grant is one problem which w e ’ve
had continually.
F--What you’re saying is that that distorts the nature of
an institution’s service role from what it should b e .
P--Absolutely. And the other area is that in states that
have really done a great job in career, occupational,
vocational education--call it what you will--by and
large the number of federal dollars have been going down.
F--1 find it hard to comprehend--in view of the federal
government’s support in times of national crisis to
train manpower--the amounts of money that’s thrown into
research compared to the incredibly low level of support
that occupational programs have received from the
federal government.
I can’t think of any program that you have here that
receives any significant kind of investment from the
federal government in the program way.
Student aid,
yes; higher education facilities, yes; a specific
research grant, maybe a minority or an equal opportunity
grant, yes; but a broad base curriculum to create more
manpower for this or that, n o .

A 481
Ponitz
I can't think you ever got a buck for air conditioning
or computers and that's where the service has to be.
Am I wrong about that?
P--You're right.
In the health areas you are as aware as
I am that you got dollars one time and the next year
you got zero.
F--As a matter of fact, I talked to the Appropriations
Committee about it. For them, a buck is a buck.
I
tell them I don't even want those dollars because I can
never plan them. They always have to go into disposable
and consumable rather than program enhancement things.
We're talking to you in May.
I was supposed to get my
federal entitlement grant for capitation for medical
students April 1. I haven't the vaguest idea what it
is or what it's level will b e . I can't hire anybody
on money that doesn't exist.
P--The last federal pressure of significance that I would
want to address myself to is the Title 9--permanent
action areas in terms of roles of women. That's an
interesting pressure.
The act was passed two years ago. Title 9, as you know,
addresses itself to three questions: admissions, student
aid, and athletics, particularly in the male-female
response, to a lesser extent to a color ratio response.
The attempt of Congress, as I listen to and read Edith
Green's status report?, is very different than the
administrative intent in terms of how you approach the
question.
In the area that I mentioned, the act has
been passed for two years, but there are still no federal
guidelines. When that crunch comes, we will have addi­
tional bookkeeping work to show that the number of dollars
proportioned to go to the women and men are equal and that
the amount of athletics for men and women have some
comparability.
Those pressures will become very strong. The pressure
shat says you can hire the best-qualified person,
7

Edith Green; Democrat; U.S. Representative from Oregon,
1963; served on Committee on Education and Labor;
author of Federal Role in Education (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1964).

A 482
Ponitz
versus the administrative rules that are saying maybe
you can hire the best-qualified person, but only if you
have a Supreme Court case documentation, will become
very substantial for all higher education in this state.
F--And in the nation.
P--Oh yes, really tough.
F--What was the nature of the regional and local pressures
to expand higher education in one location rather than
another? Do you have any insights about that?
P- -1'm trying to think back to when all community colleges
were forming. There was a strong local response that if
you have the money or not, go ahead.
People thought that
the state would provide the lion's share of the financing
and the local government would provide the small share.
It was such a great idea that everybody would support it
willingly.
It really didn't cost that much.
I think some of the strongest pressures came from people
who really wanted a new identity for their community.
So-and-so has got a community college... For example,
the western part of the state at one time didn't have
any colleges to speak of, except Western and Grand Rapids
Junior College.
There was a strong feeling that, "By gosh, a college
indicates a civilized, intellectual, caring, and pro­
gressive people and therefore w e 're going to have one."
The kind of work that Ray Young^ did, that Max Smith^
did, that Sigurd Rislov-*-" did, and that Ferris Craford
did in terms of working with the community and all those
kinds of things was important.
You had co have the assessed valuation o f , I forget what
it w a s , 150 million?
F--I think it was 150, but they moved it u p .
P--Yes, they moved it to 250.

^Raymond J . Young; Professor of Higher Education,
University of Michigan.
^Max Smith; Professor of Higher Education, Michigan
State University.
■ ^ S i g u r d Rislov; Chairman, Department of Education,
Wayne State University.

A 483
Ponitz
F--And the answer was that you couldn't do it in some cases.
P--That was my answer.
I'm going to talk with a group in
Livingston County in another week about the same issue:
"Can we start our own community college?"
F--Part of the answer w a s , of course, that those rules
didn't have to do with highway nets. They didn't have
to do with the way people function, the way they lived,
and the way the economies were.
Probably in the north
you needed much bigger areas and in the urban areas you
needed smaller ones.
P--I 've been involved in a number of studies nationwide,
and everywhere, irrespective of who they were in the
community, people felt compelled to say, "Yes, we want
a community college," because this was the wave of the
future.
F- -It's 1 ike medicine. We say, "Everybody in favor of
dying hold up your hand. Everybody in favor of being a
Philistine or a barbarian so no to this program." That
is the same thing you are saying.
P--Y es, good analysis. People really saw this, once again,
as the brass-ring opportunity for themselves and partic­
ularly for their children. "There's a great opportunity."
F--1 come back to what you said early in our conversation
about the desire to guarantee access. I think that that
is probably a very crucial issue.
What about the reasons for the failure of the branch
campus system to develop in Michigan with Oakland,
Flint, and Dearborn?
I'm particularly curious if you
have any observations why Dearborn and Flint, adjacent
to community colleges, failed to be senior institutions.
P--I guess I don't see them as failing. I would only say
that in this day and age--when the Pill has 18 years
later taken its toll on college freshmen--that most any
institution except the most prestigious will fail if
they're going to sit tight on their present clientele.
I use this institution as an example. If this institu­
tion had the same clientele today as it had even three
years ago, w e 'd be in a massive deficit situation.
F--What you're saying is the fact that these branch campuses
had to create and identify a separate market. The

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Ponitz
community college couldn't be seen as a truncated insti­
tution, but had to create its own market.
Those were
the reasons it had to happen.
P--I guess I would use the analogy of after World War II
when car salesmen simply sat in their offices and took
orders. All of a sudden when that first rush of orders
was met they really didn't know how to sell. All of a
sudden people weren't buying cars from them any more
because they didn't know what was under the hood,
couldn't convince the wife about how this color was a
great color, and so on and so forth.
All colleges have suffered to some extent.
F--That's a good point.
I like that because what we're
going to have to say to the students of higher education
is that if in fact y o u 're going to survive in a leaner
marketplace you're going to have to learn how to develop
new options for an institution.
P--They're going to have new options. I think there's going
to have to be a new balance between sedately waiting for
someone to apply and telling them what you can do.
F--I know the problem.
It's a very tough line to walk
between outright hucksterism and shy dignity. I don't
know how you're going to do that, but it's going to have
to b e .
I was struck by your remark that you made the front page
about the location of your campus and people still didn't
know.
I've got the problem in medicine that people don't
know how big we are.
P--That's right.
F--We've got 500 medical school students at MSU and people
think w e 've got 20. How do I tell them?
P--Well, that's right. As I talk with people I hear them
saying, "Well, you know, in another two years when they
get their building done they'11 probably be ready to
enter their first class." You *ve got the same problems
that we have.
F- -It's kind of discouraging because you beat your brains
out. But it's normal. People are living, they've got
work, children, occupations, and recreation.
What's
important to our lives may be peripheral to theirs.

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Ponitz
P--The critical mass problem.
F--That’s right.
P--I wouldn’t put them as failures, except to say that
you've got to have your clientele and then you’ve got
to restructure the teaching function so that it's both
exciting and meaningful for students.
Students in this day and age, if they’re turned off
because, "I always wanted a teacher that smoked a pipe
and you don’t smoke a pipe," go over [where the teacher
does smoke a pipe].
There’s going to be competition that w e ’ve never had
before.
F--Do you have any observations, Dave, why an institutional
system for the coordination of higher education did not
come about after 1964? Certainly for all the talk about
community colleges I never discerned any desire for you
people to be coordinated.
P--I think .the coordination would have been done by the
State Board.
I think there was great hesitancy, great
suspicion, and animosity toward the State Board.
Indi­
viduals used that as a clarion focal point for local
control.
I think the other thing that happened, it seems to me,
is that an awful lot of control comes when you first
establish a college program.
I ’ll use North Carolina
as an example. They said, "There will be a community
college system. There are no campuses now, but in five
years there will be 15 campuses and this is how it’s
going to be done."
F--We didn't do that in this state.
P--That’s right.
I think you got institutions started and
they were all different. As each one came on board
while the train started there was a very strong response
that they were different and they were going to remain
different.
F--I think that’s a perceptive point and I ’m trying to
comprehend it.
In some states they started the move­
ment from the top down and that means control, perhaps.

Ponitz

A 486

In this state we started from the bottom up. Maybe that
means they stay local because they have more sustenance.
The state didn't say there will be a Washtenaw.
The
Washtenaw people said there would be one. Therefore, if
the state money ceased at this time, you'd still survive.
P--I think the other factors involved were the constitu­
tional autonomy that University of Michigan had. It was
extended to the big three, and then the regional institu­
tions said after the court case, "Hey, maybe we have it
too." There was a great leeriness (of state control).
F--But there was some sense that the community colleges,
while they don't have it formally, have it in practice.
P--That's right. And local school boards
position about how important it is.

take the same

And the other thing, which simply might be used as a way
to fight the political battle, is at least one study, and
perhaps others, says that those states that are the most
innovative in trying to meet the educational needs of
its people are ones without strong state control.
F--Who, Dave, do you think were the strong opinion leaders
in this state in the period from '58 to '70? Who were
the key figures from your vantage point?
P--I think Bill Atkinson from Jackson.
colleges you mean?
F-- In the whole movement.
certainly, at Jackson.

In community

With community colleges, Atkinson,
»

P--I think Bill Atkinson was, I think Bob Cahow w a s , and I
think Phil Gannon
was. I think there were people at
the state level, like Ferris Crawford, who fall in the
area. Clair Taylor, the former superintendent of public
instruction--I remember as a kid talking with him about the
emerging concept of community colleges--falls into that
category.
There were a number of individuals who saw the need and
worked in it peripherally. Harlan Hatcher, for example,
as you may or may not know was chairman of the fund

•I T

Philip J . Gannon; President, Lansing Community College;
Member, State Higher Education Facilities Commission.

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Ponitz
drive to study where there should be a community college
in this area.
F- -1 didn't know that.
P--Yes.
F--John Hannah certainly was one.
P--John Hannah certainly would fall in that category.
talked about Ray Young and Max Smith.

We

F--Sig Rislov at Wayne.
P--Yes, Sig was very influential in that period of time.
I suppose the new community college presidents themselves,
who came in with a different vision of what a community
college ought to be as it moved from the junior college
to the community college concept, would fall in that
category.
F--There were the political leaders too, obviously.
P- -Yes, and the political leaders were very, very much
involved with the situation.
Obviously Gar and
obviously Charlie...
F--Senator Lane and Senator Zollar.
P--Absolutely. They were very perceptive in terms of needs.
I've gotten to know Gar better and I ’ve watched him with
interest in terms of his occupational interest with
Ferris and other areas. Charlie, too, with his broader
humanistic interests in those areas.
I guess I could name, if you went down the list, many
others who were involved.
F--Well, there were people from the industrial, social, and
labor sectors. We are just trying to identify some of
these people.
P--Yes. I think the State Board was pushing hard.
I think
certainly the governor's response in terms of the com­
munity college board, and the constitutional convention
committee who were involved in education. There were a
number of rather exciting educators in there. Steve
Nisbet, as an example, came from an educational back­
ground and his perspective was education.

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Ponitz
F--Well, thank you very much.
It's certainly been true,
I think, that it's been fun to work in this state.
There’s been a lot of the right pieces and the great men
put it together.
This has been a national state.
Its
industry, its labor, its great institutions, the polit­
ical climate, and the energy of its people, build some­
thing that I hope this study will attempt to explain.
P--I'm pleased that you're doing it. The community
colleges, particularly, were moving so fast that you
never had an opportunity to look back.
I ’ll give you an example in passing. We had a group of
four business students from the school of business who
wanted to pert chart some things that they thought we
ought to be doing as we were starting Washtenaw
Community College. They were going to provide us a
service by pert charting for the next six to eight
months the kind of things we ought to be doing to get
that institution off the ground. That was helpful.
They agreed that they would do this and come back within
a month of what we should be doing in the next six to
eight months.
They came back with their pert chart and the various
kinds of goals that we ought to be working on. The
interesting thing was that what they had pert charted
for us to do we had already completed.
F--I suspected that.
P--You know, you had to go rapidly to get the job done.
F--That's one of the reasons that I've extended the study
to talk about the community colleges. It didn’t come
at state direction because at state direction the pace
would have been slower.
I came in '64 to teach at
Delta and the energy was phenomenal.
P--I had 100 days to find buildings to get started--and
get them in shape --which ended up with 1200 students.
The people said, "Well, fine, Dave. W e 're glad you're
here. If you're really successful, when you reach your
saturation point you'11 probably have as many as 500
students." How do you deal with that kind of question,
a very hard question?
F--The historian in the three of us --because Jay, my
graduate research assistant, is a historian too--tells

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Ponitz
you that when the time is ripe, that's not the time to
go slow, that's the time to move. When the crest of
the wave passes, you're done.
P--Absolutely, absolutely.
If we had tried to build this
building or that building from day one, the hue and cry
of this community would have been devastating.
Because
of the fact that we started and in the first three years
doubled our enrollment each year there was great joy and
glee.
They were building these buildings large enough
to really meet the needs of the students.
F--That may be. Chuck Sturz, of the bureau of the budget,
says that there's a period in every social movement
where you have a quantitative need to be met and only
after this can you get to the qualitative.
It may be
that eventually, and we may be five years away from
that, we'll start to address qualitative questions
inside the movement.
They didn't have that time. You
haven't had the time here yet.
P--That's right.

We're just really nicely into it.

F--You've got 5,000 kids here and you know in 1946 Michigan
State, which was 100 years old, had 4,000.
I think that's
interesting.
Thank you very much.
P--Hey, it's been fun.

I wish you well.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
ROBBEN FLEMING1

F--From 1958 on Michigan higher education grew quite
prodigiously.
It grew from $80 million of general
fund appropriation to some $260 million. What in
your opinion were the reasons that led to the
expansion of higher education in Michigan?
FI-Well, you’ll have to remember I came on the scene in
Michigan for the first time in 1967. Therefore, my
knowledge of particular factors in Michigan prior to
that time is essentially historical knowledge which
I've picked up from other people.
Probably my own views of what caused that expansion
are more nearly hinged to national factors than they
are to anything that’s particularly unique about
Michigan. After 196/, as you know, universities have
expanded some, but this university, in Ann Arbor-which is the big campus, of course--has been relatively
stable.
It’s changed somewhat, but not by very large
figures.
I think a principle factor was when the government
decided at the end of World War II to provide the GI
benefits with which to go to school.
I think that
decision was in part made because of the judgment that
as the economy converted from a wartime economy to a
peacetime economy there was likely to be substantial
unemployment.
I think that turned out not to be a
good guess, but I believe that was the thinking
behind it.
1

Robben W. Fleming; President, University of Michigan,
1968; Director, Industrial Relations Center University
of Wisconsin, 1947-52 ; Director, Institute of Labor and
Industrial Relations, University of Illinois, 1952-58;
Professor of Law, University of Illinois, 1958-64;
Professor Law and Chancellor, University of Wisconsin,
1964-67.
Interview conducted May 24, 1974.

A 490

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Fleming
place but they created the opportunity to fail by not
creating advanced standing places.
In Michigan and
in Wisconsin--which I know you are familiar with-they didn’t do that.
I guess that's one of the things
I ’m seeking an understanding of.
Do you have some observations about why they were
willing, out of that social and economic force, to
really fulfill what I call the Horatio Alger dream?
FI-Well, I think one of the things you have to remember
about Ohio is that it has very large numbers of private
schools, much more than Michigan does, and the private
school concern about the growth of the public schools
is a long-standing thing.
It's not a phenomenon of today, even though you hear
it expressed a great deal today as "the dilemma of
the private schools." That's not a new phenomenon,
they've talked about that for a very long time.
I suspect, therefore, that the private schools in the
State of Ohio had their own following.
Probably there
was less impetus there for the expansion of the public
system than there's been in either Wisconsin or
Michigan.
If you had to cite another factor in Michigan--and
here I'm speculating because I don't really know--1
would guess that given the concentration of the auto
industry in the state and given the prominence and
dominance of the UAW over the years here, with that
union tending to be a forward-looking union interested
in social welfare and improvement of the lot of its
workers and their families, you'd probably find a good
deal of UAW pressure to make opportunities for sons
and daughters of their people available in public
institutions.
F--I don't want to lead the questioning, but as you know
I've talked to a great many people.
One of the things
that quite struck me were Speaker Ryan's and Neil
Staebler's remarks about the creation for the first
time of adequate disposable income in society so that
choices were there beyond subsistence.

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Fleming
Once you make it possible for large numbers to go to
school financially, and you couple that with what I
think was, and in many ways still is, the prevailing
view in this country--that the way to upward social
mobility is via the route of higher education--then
you stimulate a great demand for higher education.
You go back to that period after World War II, you
have a great many parents saying that they want their
children to have the advantages they didn't have. You
were beginning to get, by that time, the bulge of the
population growth that had come up through the I(-12
system.
So the factors for growth were there: The social
milieu was right, the symbolism was right (with great
respect for the cause of higher education), and the
financing was there. And there it went.
F--I suppose one of the things was that
it didn’t have
to happen all at once like it did inNew York where
they hadn't done it at all. If you take a look at
the higher education funding, while it's gone u p , the
increment from any one year to the next has never
really seriously created a political crisis where you
had to bend people out of shape to do it.
FI-I think that’s right, the growth of the economy was
such in this state, and w e 'd been essentially a state
of public education, of course.
The great growth has come in the public institutions
and they were, as you indicated, already in place-large numbers of them.
Community colleges weren't
there as they are now, the old teachers' colleges
weren't expanded, but they were in place and could be
expanded.
F--That's what I meant when I talked about New York.
In
Michigan the system really was in place. In fact, by
1964 when the State Board and the new Constitution and
the new Legislature came, there really wasn't much to
give away.
It had all been given away before that.
One of the things I was thinking about is that in some
states [only] the rhetoric was there. I think about
Ohio, where they promised every high school graduate a

A 493

Fleming
I know that you're an economist by training.
think that that must be a factor too.

I

Fl-Well, I think it is.
Incidentally, I'm not really an economist. I'm, how
would you say, a newspaper economist?
I'm a lawyer
and a political science undergraduate major, but
because I've dealt a lot with the industrial scene I
know at least some economics.
I think that's right. I think you could see changes
in consumer habits, very substantial changes over
those years, and one of the consumer items that people
desired was education.
F--I, coming from Massachusetts --the private sector
schools --where the private schools were strong enough
to prevent the public schools from being meaningful
at all in my time, always had great empathy about the
price of tuition.
I can recollect going to a small community college and
saying to a boy, "Is the tuition a heavy burden?" He
said, "No, the tuition is less than my car insurance."
For the first time I was struck dramatically with how
cheap, in fact, tuition is today.
I think that had
to be a deliberate public policy, too.
Fl-Yes, I don't think there's any doubt about that.
That's a factor of some importance now, as you know.
There's probably less support for the traditional low
tuition policy than there's been in the past, maybe
partly because economists in analyzing the problem-and with the increased affluence of the society--have
tended to press harder the point of view that it is
fair, given the lifetime earnings expectations of
students, to impose a more significant share of the
total cost on the student.
F--What do you think some of the policy obj ectives were
in this expansion?
FI-I think, as is so often the case, that the policy
obj ectives can be stated very broadly, but that they
may not bear much relevance to what actually happened.

A 494
Fleming
That is: I believe most parents saw a college educa­
tion as a route of upward social mobility and economic
mobility for their children.
They saw opportunities
through education for them to change their life style,
to get into white collar work, so to speak; to become
doctors, lawyers, and so forth; to have an easier life
than they had had in terms of work; to have more
opportunity for travel and so forth.
I think that's what most parents saw and I think they
analyzed it in quite simplistic terms, aided, I must
say, by educators, in large part, who saw that the
argument that it improves your lifetime earnings
expectation was an appealing argument. Therefore,
if you look back to those years, y o u '11 remember how
many times you heard the argument that if you go on
to higher education it has a great payoff economically.
I believe that a great many parents were motivated by
that without any very specific objective beyond that.
F--I tend to agree with you because in opening up a new
world of the mind for the children, the children were
leaving for a land that their folks had never lived in.
I'm the first member of my family to go to college. I
read books and went to theater and cultural events that
my folks had never imagined that they would consume, or
had no desire to consume.
Fi-But you know, you can draw an analogy right now that's
sort of interesting.
I'm told by our dean of our liberal arts college that
50 percent of the incoming freshmen to this university are
indicating a pre-med preference. Now that is a wholly
unrealizable expectation. If that many of the incoming
liberal arts students are really seriously thinking of
a medical career, that is a wholly unrealizable ambition.
I'm frightened in part, but not as frightened as the
figure would suggest. I believe there is a substantial
part of that number which will find as it begins to
take the preliminary pre-med work, that that's not
really what they're interested in and will drift away
from it for perfectly natural reasons.

A 495
Fleming
I do believe, however, that that will still leave a
large number with hopes and expectations which cannot
be fulfilled. And that troubles me greatly.
F- -I’m troubled by that, and very much so.
I remember talking one time to one of the academic
vice-presidents of one of Michigan’s institutions.
He said to me that one of the key differences in
Michigan is that we have made a place for every student
that we allowed into the freshman situation.
We gave people a chance to succeed.
In many of the
states that had the Ohio system of letting everybody
come in and then flunk out, w e ’ve built in mid-America
a tremendous sense of rejection, self-hatred, and
antagonism and hostility to higher education.
The number of people who can come to medical schools is
a very finite number.
If we tell perfectly fine people
that they are not adequate for medicine, what we're
really saying is there aren’t the number of places for
them.
I worry about the destruction of human value and
of self-regard.
FI-Well, I do too. We know that in at least two fields
now, law and medicine, there are nowhere near enough
openings in this country, not just in the State of
Michigan, but in this country to accommodate all of
the good students, not poor students, all the good
students who want to go into careers in those fields.
That inevitably will build some frustrations.
F--I would suggest in my experience--only in one school-that in the final cut the half we turn away for that
half we take are equally able and that the distinctions
are minute.
I want to go on. We talked about the policy obj ectives,
w e ’ve talked about the Horatio Alger dream, the higher
aspiration dream, and part of the rhetoric.
I wondered too about the thought about delaying people’s
entry into the marketplace. That's a social investment.

A 496
Fleming
And I wonder about the desire for technology.
Some
have talked about the desire to expand Michigan as a
resource to the state, the Russian technological lead
at the time of Sputnik, and the fear in the postSecond World War period that the automobile industry
may have reached the end of its tether and a one industry state had best begin to broaden its base.
I wonder if you think some of those were agenda items?
FI-I think that for a long time economists who have looked
at the economy of Michigan have felt that the economy
of this state is too closely related to the automobile
industry to be healthy on the long run. It’s not just
the primary manufacturers, it's the suppliers and so
forth that are so closely tied to the auto industry.
As far back as ten years ago or so when the Haber
group wrote that book about the economy of Michigan,
one of the things they were pushing was a greater
diversity in this state.
W e 've seen the impact of that lack of diversity just
within this last year. When the oil boycott hit and
ultimately was holding unemployment nationally around
five percent, we were ten percent in the State of
Michigan.
So I think we are vulnerable to the auto economy. I'm
not as pessimistic as some people are that the auto
industry is going to greatly decline. I think it’s
going to change. I'm not so sure that it's going to
greatly decline. It may not grow in the way it has
in the past, partly because if the population begins
to level off, and you get more crowded highways and
so forth, there is some point beyond which I'm not
sure that it will grow a great deal. But I look for
the auto industry to be a very healthy industry.
If you look at the question, "Should the institutions
be oriented more towards the technology and needs of
the state?" you can argue that both ways.
William Haber, W. Allen Spivey, and Martin R. Warshaw,
eds., Michigan in the 1970's: An Economic Forecast,
Michigan Business Studies, Vol. XVI (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan, 1965).

A 497
Fleming
The trouble with orienting your program too closely to
a given technology is that that changes--you get
unforeseen swings. You get the sudden emphasis upon
aerospace, for instance, and that goes madly ahead for
a while but then it all of a sudden levels off.
It's
not easy to anticipate exactly what those developments
are going to be.
Even totalitarian countries, like the Russians, where
they try to allocate manpower scientifically and where
they are able to do it with less regard for individual
wishes than we are in our kind of society, I gather from
reading about it that they don't solve their manpower
problems that way. Nobody is wise enough, whether in
a totalitarian or democratic society, to completely
foresee what the manpower needs will be in various areas.
Now you can try to allocate it as the Russians do and
say w e 're going to produce so many engineers of suchand-such a type and that's what our economy will need,
but you can't necessarily foresee it accurately enough
to know that that's what you're going to do.
On the other hand, it is true, I believe, that if you
look back historically to the development of the land
grant institutions in this country they really were
created to serve, as the language at that time said,
the industrial arts and agriculture. And agriculture
attained its great productivity in this country, to
the point now where practically nobody farms anymore
and still supports the food needs of the country.
F--They don't have to.
Fl-But a lot of that development came as a result of both
the scientific interest in universities and the engi­
neering interests.
F--I talked to Governors Williams and Swainson and they
had a lot to say about higher education as a mighty
social investment, not an expenditure, and the value
of placing public dollars, maybe not specifically for
a solution or putting it hand-in-glove with one
industry, but to generally prepare society more
prudently.
Now I'm sensitive to what you say about "you can't
predict the needs for certain industries." Who knows

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Fleming
what kind of occupations you'll need 25 years from
now? On the other hand, the caution of what happened
in modern Egypt where they turned out a nation of lawyers
who didn't want to work in a land that needed
men to work, that's the other side of the coin.
But, I look at Michigan's sea grant programs.
I look
at Michigan's research in the automotive area. When
the pollution problem came, the automobile industry
was at step one and they had to come immediately to
the institutions for step three and four. I look at the
Phoenix project here, and also the investments in
Willow Run, which became problems in the early part
of your presidency, but it was still very forwardlooking in terms of the sense of technology that the
whole society is moving towards and will change
geography and agriculture and the like.
I don't know that you could have made a judgment of
their value as insturction. When you go to the
Legislature it's always "What do you do for instruction?"
I guess I have a sense here that there is societal
investment although it's hidden in some way, perhaps
to make it less a hostage of, I don't know how to put
it delicately, less a hostage of the red-necks.
Fl-You can take certain areas...you've picked one good
one, water resources. It seems to me 100 percent pre­
dictable that the state and society will greatly benefit
from an emphasis upon the studies of the various aspects
of the water: the cleaning up of the lakes; the erosion
of the shoreline as a result of the action of the waters;
the whole question of the extent of food supplies one is
going to want to rely on from sea products in the future;
as a necessity for getting our sewage waste disposal
and our industrial waste compatible with our water supplies,
and so forth.
All of those things are clearly serious problems which
relate to water resources, many of which call for
scientific solutions and therefore towards which it
is completely legitimate to marshall one's academicscientific resources to help resolve. So, I think you
have to say, yes, there are some areas.
Take the whole field of energy right now.
Suppose that
we want to place great emphasis, as we say we do, upon

A 499
Fleming
making ourselves independent of the Middle East in
terms of oil.
Then the potential for atomic energy
becomes increasingly important --and the question then
of waste and the question of breeder reaction and so
forth--to us as a power resource in the days ahead.
So I don't have any doubts that a university is a
place that needs to be sensitive to, and conscious of,
the society needs and interrelate with them.
It's easier to see and more popular in the science
areas, and so-called hard science areas, than it is
in the social science areas or the humanities.
But
you can switch that around and say that’s true if you
are just concerned about immediate societal problems,
many of which are amenable to hard science analysis.
If you are concerned about life satisfaction or
quality of life, then you have to be also looking
increasingly at the role of education; not as a
training device for people who want to go into a
particular line of activity, but as a resource which
makes life worth living for the person outside of
those hours in which h e ’s on an immediate job.
F--Well, let's talk very hard with each other.
We talked
earlier and you suggested, very obliquely that part of
the growth came from the rhetoric of educators - -and
part of it in my opinion probably was specious --about
the difference between a fourth grade education in
monetary terms and a Ph.D.
The role and the influence of men like yourself, the
400 or 500 key educators in this nation, who have
access to the media and the opinion makers of society,
probably have to be placed in ways where it is less
difficult to interpret. What I'm thinking of is the
role of the institution not as a trainer of men but
as a civilizing force. That probably can't come from
the other sectors. It has to come from people like
you.
I have the sense, you know, the questions are all
related to a plan. I don't believe there is a plan.
I can't find there's a plan where people use the
California system and turn to page 9, paragraph 7.
It looks to me that in Michigan it's been more of an
artform where there was some general consensus about
obj ectives, which you suggested, and then the style

A 500
Fleming
of their attainment came in a political way. Why an
institution was here rather than there is a political
and social accident, but as long as we fulfilled the
overall purpose it didn’t matter.
FI-I think you're right that education as a resource for
self-fulfillment is going to be pointed out more by
those of us in the world of education than it is by
the public as such.
Let me give you a couple of
examples, however.
We have here a school of music, as you know.
It has
in it a great many students who aspire to professional
music careers, some of them as performers, some of them
as teachers, many of them will go out in the K-12
system as instructors, and so forth. As a part of that
school of music we have a very good symphony orchestra.
It is also true, however, that w e ’ve got some absolutely
first-rate musicians in the university among students
who are not in the music school, who don't want to be
in the music school in the sense of their career aspira­
tions , but who immensely enjoy music.
One of the things we were discovering was that unless
we do something about it there is no outlet. We knew,
for instance, we could make up a second symphony of
nonmusic students from talented young student musicians
here in the university who are not in the school of
music and who probably couldn't get in it, just in terms
of numbers, but who didn't want to if they could. A
lot of mathematicians, as you know, tend to be musical.
We decided that really one of the things that one ought
to do in terms of self-fulfillment and the quality of
one's life and so forth--because what they do as
students is going to have some relevance to what they
do later--was that we ought to have a second symphony.
We would get a director from the music school, but a
prerequisite for playing in that might be that you were
not a student in music school.
We now in fact have a second symphony here. It is made
up of 120 students or so who are not in the music school.
They're not preparing for musical careers. I haven't
heard them but I'm told by some of our music school
people that it's a first-rate symphony even though it's
made up of nonmusic students.

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Fleming
Now 1 regard that as one of the responsibilities
which those of us in the educational world have to
give those students who do not want to focus on a
musical career; the satisfaction, the experience,
and the pleasure that music can bring to their lives.
I believe that the balance of their careers, which
will probably not be in music, will nevertheless be
greatly enhanced if they can use that experience to
find as an avocation and a pleasure in their lives,
let's say music.
I believe that is a perfectly
legitimate objective.
F--1*m 100 percent in sympathy with what you say, but I ’m
very much discomforted by the fact that when I look over
the previous historical period it was easy for people
to look in 1958, and even in 1950, at the number of
kids that were in the pipe--the kids were there in
the 6th and 5th and 4th grades of the state.
Now as people look at the long road ahead of declining
births, the previous position of institutions of higher
education as just trainers of post-puberty youth...
It seems to me that now's the time for institutions of
higher education to address themselves to the qualityof-life question: mid-career retraining and avocational
interests perhaps completely outside the structure of
credit.
The value of a man for his soul, as you point out in
music, is vital indeed for all of u s . And yet I don't
see that leadership beginning and I'm troubled by that.
FI-Well, it may be more there than you realize. Let me
just give you a series of examples from around here.
There's the symphony example which I just gave you.
In deciding to separate art and architecture as we did
just a week ago, that was only partly a decision that
those two were really incompatible in a single school
and had in fact been operating pretty much independently.
It was in part a decision that if we separated the art
school, and you will indeed find this in the general
action, we wanted the art school to devote its maj or
growth potential--which it has in the new building
which will be ready for occupancy in the fall--to the
training of nonmaj ors in art.

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Fleming
We did that with the full approval of the art faculty
and we did it for exactly the same reason that we
created the second symphony.
There are a lot of
students who are not majors in art who nevertheless
have a desire for their own self-satisfaction to take
courses in art even though they have no illusions of
becoming a great artist.
They look upon this as
simply a life satisfaction, so to speak.
We had also observed as we listened to students that
there are a lot of students, as there always has been,
who felt when they got all through with the liberal
arts program that they didn't have anything "practical"
that they could apply. We also knew, however, that we
had among liberal arts students a lot of students who
enjoyed things like crafts, pottery, woodwork, and
sculpture welding, This is not a high-level interest
in the sense of wanting to concentrate in that, it was
a satisfaction kind of interest.
We said a great part of that is probably not something
we ought to be engaged in; for instance, carpentry,
cabinet-making, and so forth.
But here we sit in the
same town as Washtenaw Community College that is able
to put on those things--probably do it better than
we'd do it as a matter of fact. And here we sit with
a bus system which connects our north campus and our
main campus.
[The question was] why don't we work out a system with
Washtenaw Community College in which we say to students
here on the campus, "We'11 make available our bus
system free in the evenings, or Saturday mornings, to
transport those of you who would be interested in going
over to Washtenaw Community College to take a course in
woodworking or pottery or something like this, but not
in the direction of counting it immediately toward
your degree."
W e 're open to consider that but we knew that would be
a long drawn-out process of fighting it through. We
wanted to get something going and we wanted to see how
much interest there was.
[It was explained that]"We will make this bus system
available. W e '11 try to facilitate all the administra­
tive arrangements. You'11 have to pay a fee over there

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Fleming
for that course, but it's not a prohibitive fee by
any means.
You decide whether you'd like to take
some of those things. You can take a whole variety
of things, of course.
You can take machine operation
if you want to so you'll know something about that.
You can take computer programming at the general level
if you want to. Anything of that kind that y o u 're
interested in."
We don't know how well that's going to work out yet
because we just started it. We think it will probably
get its major test this fall.
Those are at least three areas in which w e 're increasingly saying that we ought to be interested in seeing
that the students get some real satisfaction out of
some of these things that are potentials for them,
quite apart from their education.
F--Well, I'm very encouraged by that because I 've always
believed that in the end you have to define education
in a much broader terminology. I think the public has
to be won to it.
I guess what I was suggesting earlier is that I believe
that much of the impetus for the growth of higher educa­
tion in this state came from the leadership and rhetoric
and skill and the love that the people had for their
educational leaders.
There's been a lot of self-serving weeping about the
difficulties of being a higher education administrator.
I guess I can't find any institution in society that
has more respect, regard, and credit across the length
and breadth of the land, and more hope ascribed to it.
Now I know that may sound a trifle Pollyannaish when
you've been besieged in this building, but generally
I think the respect and love the people have for higher
education is just an overwhelming resource for us to do
a better j ob at it.
Fl-I think there's a great deal of truth in what you say.
I know I'm always struck, as I go round the state, by
the respect which is held for the president of the
University of Michigan.

Fleming
I think an individual can affect that some one way or
the other, but it's not something that attaches just
to an individual.
It really attaches to the office.
F--Well, it's 150 years or so of contribution.
Bob, what were the partisan issues and parochial
conflicts that occurred, in your opinion, in the
attempts to create the above policy objectives?
I'm digging into things like the destruction of class
and culture barriers, elitism versus popularism, and
the like.
Fl-The egalitarian approach versus the elitism approach
has been there for a long time.
In a sense it runs
more sharply all the time, although it's very interesting
to see.
Take something like our law school or our medical school,
where we get so far more applications than we can
possibly take.
I have sometimes suggested to our people
that in my view, grades and test scores above a certain
level--which I haven't troubled to identify but which
I think we could identify as suggesting genuine
competence--are not meaningful.
Just take it on the grade side for a minute.
I've
always said to students, and I've said this many times
in public speeches: "Don't spend all your time on the
books.
Books are only a part of your education and if
in order to get very high grades you're spending all
of your time with your books and getting nothing else,
that's a mistake.
I don't think you're going to emerge
as a well-rounded individual."
So you apply to school. What happens is that with the
exception of our programs in which we're trying to
help the disadvantaged and so forth, that is pretty
much a straight-out competition based upon grades and
test scores. Now if I'm right that those are not
meaningful above a certain level, then we ought to be
searching for some better way to do it.
But it's at that point that a very interesting thing
happens and that comes back to your original question.
I have found that if we suggest that perhaps the thing

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Fleming
to do above a certain level is to throw all the names
in a hat and then, for instance, do something like a
lottery in picking our people, that immediately gets
vigorous opposition. And far more vigorous opposition
than our system at present does which is allegedly
based on objective criteria which show grades and test
scores.
People seem to be much more upset by the
son or daughter might or might not go to
or law school by the luck of a draw than
say w e ’re going to put it right on those
and grades.

idea that their
medical school
they do if you
test scores

F--1 've learned a lot since you first knew me about some
of the more practical human problems because of the
terrible cruelty of watching a medical school apparatus.
We weigh our applications about 50 percent for social
criteria and intellectual growth beyond the grades b e ­
cause it’s hard to make a determination of a person’s grade
level at 3.5 versus 3.6. But it (is explained by) the
Horatio Alger dream, I think.The Horatio Alger
dream
believes that merit will succeed and the lottery goes
against that.
Let me be more direct. Much of the talk in the history of
Michigan’s education is the conflict between Michigan State
and Michigan: popularism versus elitism.
People are very
much of mixed minds about it.
It was popular, it was show,
it got the front page.
The conflict of personalities is
always easier to watch than the conflict of issues. And
people were very dedicated, too, to the second chance.
I find it hard, really, to make a case, in spite of the
record of excellence of the University of Michigan for
generations, that this is truly an elite place. It’s
hard for me to comprehend how you can deal with an elite
that's 40,000 wide.
It seems to be really a mass-education
program.
And also when one investigates something like the medical
school grades --the easiest way to accept a class and not
go through the agony is just take all the 4.0's--and find
out that the average grade-point at Michigan for medical
school is about 3.3 because other factors come to the fore.
I'm not sure that w e 've really dealt with the kind of
dichotomy that exists, that people talk about.

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Fleming
I know that quality is important to you and I know it
is important to your faculty and to your Regents and
to the public, but I just don't have the sense that
that's real. Not that the quality isn't real, but
that you cast all your cards on the side of elitism
and turned your back on places like Livonia and
Big Rapids.
It just doesn't look that way.
There
are 40,000 humans here, or probably more like 65,000
people and 40,000 FTE's .
FI-I think you're right.

I would argue the same way.

So much of it though depends upon how you define elite.
Let me give you an example.
I grew up in a little town in northern Illinois. I
was a depression youngster. My father was very ill
early in my life and died when I was about a sophomore
in high school. My mother was left with two boys. As
I look back and try to figure out what we lived on
during that period, I really don't know to this day.
I doubt if we had an annual income in cash of $500.
Yet, the interesting thing to me as I look back is
that we never thought of ourselves as poor.
I
remember we thought there were some poor people in
town but we never thought of ourselves as poor.
Now, why? Well, I suppose as I look back we had a
number of family around there. They were always
people with books.
We liked books, all of us liked
to read, it didn't cost anything to read.
A small town life was a comfortable life. You could
grow a garden and in your garden you could have a lot
of the things you ate. We didn’t eat steaks every
week, and so forth.
The point I'm getting at is that there are enormous
numbers of us of my age in these universities who
were products of what I suppose would be called, if
not poor, at least families of very modest financial
means. When I went to college I knew that I couldn't
go unless I worked. My mother had a little money
from my father's insurance to help me get started the
first year, but I knew that after that I would have
to largely earn my way.

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Fleming
I'm not unique in any sense.
There were large numbers
of [such] people. Now they are people who are often,
because of the passage of years, in positions of
authority in these educational institutions.
The
notion that we have completely forgotten our own
origins and therefore bid only for an elite, so to
speak, I think ignores the fact that such large numbers
of us remember with enormous thankfulness the oppor­
tunity which those of us who didn't have any money
had to go on to institutions and to go through them.
The point I'm really getting at is the question that
you hear so much about today, about what really
constitutes an elite. I didn't have any financial
resources, my family didn't have any financial resources,
but we always had lots of books around our house. My
family always encouraged us to read.
They saw that
we got interested in cultural things and so forth.
That was not, as they saw it, a function of money.
Now, the other part of that argument, today, in some
of the studies like the Coleman study and so forth,
tends to show this: There is an enormous amount in
the motivational climate which the family provides
for an education.
I think that is a very key problem
today.
There are large numbers of students today, like I was
in my day, who don't have a lot of money. W e 've got
a lot of them around here. W e 've got hundreds of
students here who work very heavily to support them­
selves . They're not elite in the financial sense.
They are, large numbers of them, products of families
which encouraged a learning atmosphere.
And that, I think, tends to be the breaking point
today between what's called elite and what isn't .
We aren't spending enough of our time and resource,
the argument goes, on that segment of society which
didn't come out of that milieu.
F--Ok, I'm very struck by what you say because much of
what you say about yourself is true for me and I
sometimes am struck by wonder. I was a poor boy that
didn't know it because everybody else was poor.

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Fleming
Fl-Thatfs right, sure.
F--But I am sometimes struck by wonder that I know the
governor, that I know the president of a great uni­
versity, that I'm the first member of my family to
go to college.
I imagine sometimes when you meet the president of a
great institution or a great societal institution,
or the president of the United States, northern
Illinois comes back to you.
Fl-Sure.
F--As you talked I thought that maybe we've dealt with
the definition of elite in the wrong way. What we
have in America, I think, is an elite of merit and
an open elite.
I think back to England before the red brick institu­
tion.
I think about France and Spain where these
elites were closed, and self-perpetuating, and
hereditary.
That's a political and social problem
of entirely a different nature than what w e 're
dealing with.
I guess that I couldn't way, as you describe yourself,
that you were a man that was born to the purple. And
many of the colleagues, like Fidele [Fauri]--there's
a man whom I've talked to and had great empathy for-who grew up in a small town in the Upper Peninsula.
And Art Ross^ was of a similar...
FI-Alan Smith grew up in Kearney, Nebraska, and went to
a teacher's college as his first education.
F--Perhaps the definition of the question of elite versus
popular really was different ways to create the same
avenues because Michigan State has many members of the
elite now, too, but they are men who worked their way
in.
We have a ladder, though, in this state, don't we?
3

Arthur Ross; Vice President for State Relations and
Planning, University of Michigan.

Fleming
Fl-We have a ladder and I think the real question you
get these days is whether that ladder is really open
to all elements of society. More specifically, is it
open to minority groups in the same way that it was
to those of us who came out of the majority?
F--And what we're really doing with the Blacks, and the
Chicanos, and the women, in a sense, is creating for
them the opportunity to j oin that.
FI-That's what you ought to be creating and that's what
w e 'd like to be creating. Part of the argument is,
are we doing it as much as we should?
F--1 don't know.
I'm troubled by that, too, because we
have to go through a generation of agony before those
questions will be easy to answer.
But there are a
institutions in
ten years ago.
but in terms of
meritocracy, if
the way.

lot of Blacks in Michigan public
a way that they weren't in 1964, just
It may be that w e 're not doing enough,
creating a homogeneous and extensive
I can use that term, I think w e 're on

Fl-Yes, yes.
F--The reason I'm troubled by that is that a lot of these
factors are there. Politicians talk very directly
about their sense of creating that access. I'm struck
by the fact that the factory system created prosperity
but it didn't create satisfaction.
FI-It's interesting how you can get acceptance. I was
troubled recently when a son or daughter of a family
that have been very major private givers to this
university applied for one of our professional schools
and was going to be turned down. Not because of a
lack of capability because in fact the student could
be identified as a pretty good one, but not good enough
in the straight-out competition to be given entry. We
did in fact deny admission.
I wrote to the family myself because of this particular
situation and said that this was a very hard thing for
us to do. They had been very generous to the university
over a long period of time, but the fact was that we

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Fleming
could not give that admission without violating in
effect the rights of other students who had applied
for admission and had somewhat better records.
I wasn’t altogether sanguine about what kind of reply
I ’d get to that--and one doesn't always get the same
kind of reply.
I was enormously pleased about ten days
later to get back a reply from the mother of this
prospective student saying, in effect, "Thank you very
much for your letter.
I'm sorry our son cannot enter,
but I understand this.
I believe you've been fair
about it and we thank you for your early reply to
our inquiry."
Now, that's pretty gracious acceptance. I 'd be the
first to say that we wouldn't always get that, but
I think the fact that we can get it at all.. .
F--I think that comes back to my earlier remark to you
about the love and respect the institutions have
beyond a parochial interest.
FI-I think that's right.
F--What about the vocational and occupational training
objectives in the enhancement of higher education?
Do you think they were important in the dialogue over
its growth?
FI-Well, yes, but I think you have to be careful of how
you define vocational. If here at this university
you use the word vocational, you find that the academic
community tends to think of that as courses in welding,
auto mechanics, carpentry, and so forth.
They would
say, n o , that really wasn't a part of the growth or
interest in the institution. There is sometimes a
fine line between what is vocational and what is
professional.
If you use the word professional, however, then you're
thinking of it in terms of the training of lawyers,
engineers, nurses, pharmacists, and so forth. Those
are all legitimate, "professional" objectives that I
think did generate a lot of the support that comes to
the institution.

A 511
Fleming
F--It's hard to write this and handle that question
because what you cross is not vocational and occupa­
tional, you cross the status line.
FI-That's right.
There are no longer any janitors,
there are only building engineers.
There are very
interesting studies, as I am sure you know, that have
been done on the use of titles.
That's part of what
you’re talking about.
F--Yes, and I guess that's where higher education gets
caught in that problem.
But I'm not at all adverse
to men having a greater sense of their own value.
That's why I'm sure that many of the thousands of
degrees that have been granted by Michigan institu­
tions , and institutions all over the nation, have
given men the sense that they are worth more than
they thought they were. Actualizing human potential
is itself the value for the degree beyond any other.
The fact that in thousands of homes your signature
is plastered up on the wall, I think, may be one of
the social energies that makes our society more
productive, more useful.
Did the growth of culture and the arts have importance
in the dialogue over the growth of higher education?
I have the sense that where I come from, in the East,
cultural institutions stood on their own, they had a
public of their own and could be funded. Things like
the Museum of Fine Arts, the symphony, the Atheneum
in Boston.
I came here and didn't have that same sense and found
that culture w a s , in my opinion, on a narrow and lean
base and frequently was husbanded by institutions.
Where it existed, it had the protection of institu­
tions . For instance, in Lansing you bring in the
Grand Ole Opry and y o u '11 fill the local auditorium
past the point of belief, whereas to bring in chamber
music, you may have 35 people.
I wondered if you had the sense that public policy
people had the hope that the institutions could
nurture this?

A 512

Fleming
FI-I think they do have that hope, and I think to an
extent they've been successful.
I think your analysis
of culture is right.
I think that by and large people throughout the Middle
West did not see the university as the place where
you went for an education largely in the arts. You
might go there for music for the very practical reason
of being trained to be a music teacher in a K-12 system
somewhere. I don't think people saw this as a great
energizing influence which was going to lift the cul­
tural level of people.
On the other hand, I think internally, within univer­
sities , it has been seen in that way by large numbers.
I suppose this university is a particularly good
example of that given the long history, for instance,
of the Musical Soiety in bringing in here for 100
years some of the best of the cultural events in the
musical and the theatribal fields. It has made this
immediate area, at least, considerably more conscious
of the factor than it would otherwise have been.
F--Well, let me extend what I'm saying.
In Massachusetts I see a great public support for
cultural institutions on their own. In a place like
Boston University there is no real support for culture
except intrinsic to the institution's need.
I haven't felt in the Legislature a great support or
pressure on you to (nurture culture). It had to come
out of "skimming the pot." But at the same time I
take a look at Michigan and the Musical Society and
the impact on the culture of the people of this state
from Michigan, and then take a look at a place like
Harvard.
I would say that the impact of Michigan on
the society of this state is maybe 20 times the impact
culturally of Harvard on the society of Massachusetts.
FI-I think that may be so, at least I 've heard other
people from that part of the country who know it
better than I do say the same thing.
A year ago we had a visiting faculty member from
Harvard who said that he found the musical life of
this community much richer than the life in Cambridge
at the same time.

A 513
Fleming
F--Have you any observations on the position of labor
in regard to higher education?
Fl-Well, principally the one I made earlier.
I do
believe that laboring people, and laboring people as
represented by unions, have seen the universities as
a ladder for upward social mobility into the white
collar fields, into the professions and so forth,
and that they have strongly supported that.
You point out you were first of your family to have
gone through college. It's still interesting at
commencement how many times you will still see a
family where this is the first time anybody in the
family has gone on.
A while ago I was in a taxicab and the driver was all
excited because his daughter was graduating from
nursing school at a university and his son was
graduating from law school. He just thought that was
the greatest thing that ever happened to the family-to think that these two children of his were coming
out of universities with degrees. He was just bursting
with pride.
F--It makes your heart full, doesn't it?
Fl-Yes, it does.
F--What I was thinking about is this: If you take the
Marxist model of society they have the idea that the
divisions are much couched in terms of conflict.
Some
of the labor orientation in Michigan history in the
thirties was much that w a y .
And yet I'm struck by the fact that labor has supported
institutions across the whole spectrum and that while
Michigan State accrued labor support, Michigan did,
the community colleges did, and the blue collar
colleges like Eastern did. It seems to have come
across the whole spectrum. You can call on labor
support but they don't feel in any way traitorous to
give it to other institutions, from Wayne County
Community College to Black Lake--the Walter Reuther
place. That strikes me as an unusual kind of asset
for an institution.

A 514
Fleming
FI-I think that's right, although I think that you find
this true in a lot of other states. You find that in
Wisconsin, by and large, labor was supportive of higher
education.
They've seen it as an upward channel of
mobility.
F--We didn't get to this question and I'm hoping to be
able to address it some.
I'm struck that certain of the states have certain
kinds of peculiarities about them.
I'm always struck
by the fact that Wisconsin and Michigan are much alike.
I don't think that moving from Madison to Ann Arbor
was really as much a cultural change as if you'd moved
to Columbus. I 've always been struck by the fact that
Ohio, Indiana, and I11inois have been different from
Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
I think those
three northern states are much alike in the way their
attitudes have been.
I don't know w h y , except that Ira Polley suggested
that Michigan's migration came from the northern
New England states --where there had been a tradition-through the Erie Canal and the other states got
settled through the south and Pennsylvania.
I don't know how perceptive that is but there has to
be something. For instance, the tradition of public
service here and in Wisconsin and Minnesota is an
honorable profession with really a minimum of corrup­
tion. When people talk about lobbying I'm always
struck by the fact that for all of the rhetoric this
is essentially a clean state.
I'm personally overj oyed about that, but I wonder why
it happened.
I don't know the answer.
FI-I don't either. I think there's a lot of truth in
your observations. I think those three upper-tier
northern states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan
have had that tradition.
I suppose it may have something to do with the fact
that the agricultural interests in states like
Indiana, Illinois, Iowa--I'm not so sure this would
apply in Ohio--have been heavily oriented towards
universities, but [especially towards] the schools

A 515
Fleming
of agriculture, which they perceive as something
different from the whole university because they’ve
seen its immediate practical tie-in to the farm world.
And in a sense they *ve seen themselves as more
directly related to the control of it because they’ve
always had the county agents sitting right there,
working with them all the time and representing them.
Maybe their northern location, and the fact that they
were not as rich an agricultural area as a state like
Illinois, made a significant difference.
F--You may have got a different kind of people because
the road west didn't come through any of the northern
states.
What about the role of industry in regard to higher
education?
Fl-Well, I think industry has by and large supported
higher education.
I think it’s supported it for somewhat different
reasons. Whereas labor people supported it because
they saw it as a road for upward mobility for their
students, industry people tended to support it more
for the very practical reason of supply of trained
manpower.
They have been very interested in engineering schools,
in what they could provide in business schools, for
what they could provide in the general education of
liberal arts students, who would, they felt, perhaps
have larger perspective on the problems of their
industry than one would have otherwise.
F--The Gaber study refers to the trained manpower pool
of this state as a definitive asset for the location
of industry in the state.
I wonder, because of politics, when I look at the
Blue Ribbon Commission and some of those early planning
studies if I could make a distinction between industry
and commerce. I think about the role of Seidman and
Heavenrich.
I ’m not sure about that and I wonder if
you have seen a difference?

A 516
Fleming
Fl-Well, there is a difference between the industry
people and the commerce people.
I think, by and
large, one can fairly quickly and readily identify, if
you listen to them talk, for instance, which is which.
The commerce people have less interest, I found, in
the engineering schools as such. They don't see their
need being as great there.
They are often more closely
tied to the business schools and not as closely tied to
engineering.
They see themselves, in a sense, as
related to liberal arts schools because that's where
a great many people in commerce have come from.
F--I guess I've seen them in one additional way.
I felt
labor to be statewide, industry to be discipline-wide,
and commerce to have a local orientation. Maybe
because of the nature of their business, commerce in
general occurred in one region or another and there
hasn't been these monolithic commercial institutions
throughout most of our history. But that's certainly
changing now.
I look to the support of Dearborn and Flint, for
instance, as having a strong commercial orientation
that wasn't transferable, say, to Saginaw or Grand
Rapids, or vice versa.
FI-I think that might be right.
F--What about the role of agriculture? Aside from their
support of the co-op extension, the ag research station,
and the college of agriculture--which interestingly
enough only occurred here in one institution rather
than the Illinois model where it was spread across
many institutions.
Did you feel the strength of
agriculture for higher education?
FI-We don't see evidence of it nearly as much at this
particular institution, simply, I think, because we
don't have a school of agriculture. We don't have,
therefore, nearly as much contact into the agricul­
tural community.
When I go out and meet with alumni round the state
or the country, I would say far fewer of them are
identified with agriculture than when I was at

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Fleming
Wisconsin or certainly at Michigan State.
I believe
that it's true that agriculture has been favorable to
higher education for much the same reasons that labor
has.
F--Now that's a perceptive point. Neil Staebler said it
was easy to identify the common interest of the blue
collar worker and the farmer--their conditions of
deprivation were similar.
I hadn't thought of that
until I'd heard it, but it made good sense.
Fl-Yes, I think that's right. Although we don't see much
of agricultural interests here, I have never sensed
nor seen any overt indication of hostility on their
part towards this university.
F--What were the pressures and influences in the deter­
mination of public policy, if any, from the federal
government?
What I guess I'm asking is this: In my experience the
federal contributions for social welfare have been
accompanied by constraints and requirements that have
much conditioned the way it acts in response to the
public.
I don't have the sense that federal require­
ments for education have been anywhere near as
burdensome or difficult.
I'm curious about that because when I talked to Dave
Ponitz yesterday he made the point about the require­
ments over women changing institutional requirements,
not towards the legislators but towards the bureau­
cratic arms of government.
FI-I think that for a long time, up till very recent
years, the federal government's impact upon education
tended to be limited by the incentives and disincen­
tives which came through the application of money.
They had a capacity through the availability of money
to attract faculty people into new fields, and
students. And by withdrawal of money in a given area
a capacity to cause that field to go down.
F--1 think here about public health as a perfect example.
Fl-Or aerospace versus, let's say, environmental factors.

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Fleming
By their expression of interest, accompanied by dollars,
they have a capacity to affect the way university people
behave.
The second thing they have done through the use
of money is that they have created an entrepreneurship
attitude in universities which in some ways eroded the
loyalty of faculty members to their institutions. They
saw their support as available through these funds and
not really through the university.
F--That's a good point. When a man would leave an insti­
tution he would take his research too. They would
frequently recruit him for the dollars he had rather
than...
Fl-Or simply that the man does not see himself as basically
supported by the university. He sees himself as being
able to pick up and go somewhere else.
A few years ago, when we lost our key physiological
psychologist, he took with him four or five staff
members and all of their grants. The whole shebang
just moved out at once. So it’s had that effect.
Recently, however, it's had a much more direct effect
and it's very hard to see how this one's going to come
out--and it's a very troublesome one. There is a much
greater direct impact now in terms of the affirmative
action programs in which they say, "These are the rules
with respect to how you hire, the kinds of records you
must keep."
W e 're spending, as is every maj or university in this
country, large amounts of money for pure record-keeping
purposes. It is said, for instance , and I 've heard
this from California people, that it's going to cost
Berkeley $300,000 just to compile the statistical data
to comply with that latest HEW order.
Now, another thing, take an area like OSHA--Occupational
Safety and Health Act. Through its requirements it is
going to have an enormous impact upon universities.
F--I hadn’t thought about this. Y o u ’re on the board of
a private college. Is it Knox?
Fl-Beloit.

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Fleming
F--I noticed that the NLRB says that they have the
capacity to regulate private schools in terms of
labor.
Obviously w e ’re entering a period where we
don't know what the answers will be.
What about the private sector? In other states there's
been a good deal more unseemliness and fighting pro and
con.
I haven't noticed that here. There's been states­
manship .
FI-I’m not sure there's as much statesmanship as there is
lack of competition. You don't have in this state a
Northwestern or Chicago as you do in Illinois. You
don't have a M I T , or Stanford as you do in California.
You don't have an Ivy League school. The biggest
university we have in this state would be the Jesuit
university, the U of Detroit. A good school, but not
a school in the same category with Chicago, Stanford,
or Northwestern and so forth.
So although there is an impact upon the private schools,
it's not the same impact that it has on us --if you 're
talking about the small private schools.
Now it is true, however, that it is increasingly
difficult to tell the difference between a private
and public university. A school like Harvard will
have more public money invested in it than most public
universities in this country. A school like MIT,
Cal Tech, Stanford, Chicago, and Northwestern will
have very large amounts of public money invested in it.
F--So your point is that we can't really assess the
competition between the public and the private in this
state because we never had a major institution of the
first rank, that had a wide public support, such as
Stanford or Chicago.
FI-Right.
F--What in your opinion was the reason for the failure
of the branch campus system that had begun to be
developed in Michigan with Oakland, Flint, and Dearborn?
Fl-Well, that's not a question that I'm a very qualified
person to answer.
By the time I came on the scene it
was pretty much over and the only ones left were our
own two.

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Fleming
I think what's perfectly clear about them is that
there is great local political pressure from the
people, the faculty, plus the students in Flint and
Dearborn to remain a part of the University of
Michigan.
I think that's what keeps them there,
basically.
F--I guess when I said failure...
I worried about your
looking at that question.
In Wisconsin you ended up
with the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and so
forth.
I guess when I say failure, I mean I don't
believe the time will ever come again that w e '11 have
branch campuses of the University of Michigan at
Port Huron or at other additional cities.
FI-I think that's right.

I don't believe that will happen.

F--The concept of the branch system as part of a satellite
farm system I think is gone. The same with local
political energies that want the prestige of Michigan
to husband their campus. It may sometime come when
nationalism and political climates could be different
and they may strike off on their own.
FI-Yes, and we have, in fact, made deliberate efforts now
to operate them as independently as we can.
F--I was going to ask that. It's my observation that in
your presidency you have taken direct efforts to make
these schools more autonomous, more capable of their
own management, and delegated many decisions to them
that formerly stayed here in Ann Arbor.
Fl-Yes, w e 've done that deliberately in order to make them
as autonomous as possible. Therefore, if there ever
comes a time when public policy directs that they be
spun off, they could become independent quite easily.
F--Whereas when you came, the Michigan State capacity to
do that with Oakland, which occurred right in your
first year, was not a viable choice for you.
Fl-That's right.
F--That could be so five years hence.

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Fleming
Fl-It wasn't viable in terms of either administration or
politics.
I would say it is viable now in terms of
the administration.
It is not viable in terms of
politics. You'd see an enormous uproar from those
localities.
F--I guess that the political climate is one that the
institution, unless it has a deliberate policy, has
to respond to rather than create.
It looks to me
that State might have been willing to keep Oakland
if the climate hadn't been different. They had the
managerial skill to go their own way.
FI-Yes, they wanted to do it and there was not the local
political pressure, asI watched it at least, to keep
it a part of Michigan State.
Any time you ever have any doubts about it and you
want to take a little local test in one of these
places, you’11 discover that there's just enormous
political pressure to keep those...
F--1 guess I can't tell you I know Dearborn well because
it was not the focus of acute legislative attention,
but Flint was more direct in my attention.
Do you have some observations why an institutional
system for the coordination of higher education did
not come about after 1964?
FI-Well, I think it got less of an early start here than
it did in some states.
It has had the very vigorous
opposition of the major universities. I think they
do have a good deal of political clout in this state
when they put it together.
I think that the initial Board of Education under the
Constitution made a serious tactical mistake. There
was that ambiguous language in the Constitution...
F--Deliberately put there.
FI-Deliberately put there, but ambiguous.
Now it seems to me in retrospect that what the State
Board should have done was not to ever let itself
take the universities on headlong. They should have
tried to demonstrate to the universities what a

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Fleming
substantial assistance they could be and built their
cooperative strength. Now had they done that, it
might over a period of time have evolved into a
system.
I think, because they chose to take on the
universities and it became a show of political
strength, that they never got any support again.
F--There's two other points.
One is that there's a
mighty fine line between control and coordination
and they xvere leaning into the control rather than
the coordination.
And in 1964 there were no Republicans on the Board.
This state, no matter what you say, has a significant
body of Republicans. If they had been on the Board,
it might have been different.
Who were the major figures that you look at?
FI-You mean in terms of education in this state?
F--Yes. Who were the significant opinion leaders in
higher education in Michigan? Who built the system
on quite a good deal of subtlety and, in my opinion,
created an enterprise which stayed healthy when other
states did not?
FI-Well, I think that whoever is the president of the
University of Michigan will always be an important
figure in education in this state just because the
University of Michigan is the University of Michigan.
F--1 think the same is probably true of State.
FI-1 think that is true. I think John Hannah, for
instance, whatever one may argue about him--I came
late in his career and John was always very kind to
me personally and I have only affection for him in
every respect --John was a very major figure in this
state.
F--I have not talked to John yet but I suspect if you
talked to him, h e 'd tell you, "Man, I loved and
admired Michigan and I wished for that too."
FI-It may b e . I think Cliff Wharton is a maj or figure
in this state. I think that the president of Wayne

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Fleming
is constrained by two things: One, its earlier history
as a private institution gave it less roots for the
public argument; and two, in recent years the terrible
handicaps that it has by the nature of the community
problem.
The state college presidents have significant influence,
but more, as I watch it, as a group than as individuals.
F--Although I think you can identify a man who had earlier
ties.
I think about Jim Miller of Western Michigan
University because of his ties as a comptroller.
The
community college people I find hard to identify in
individual cases but their strong regional and local...
Fl-Yes, yes they are.
If you look ahead the community
colleges as a political factor are going to be a very
strong influence in this state.
F--Thank you, President Fleming.

I

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
FRANK BEADLE1

F--Senator, what in your opinion were the reasons that
led to the expansion of higher education in Michigan
from 1958 on?
In '58 the appropriations for higher education were
about $80 million and in 1970 they were something
1 ike $250 mill ion.
B--I don't know whether I can put my finger on it or not.
Part of it, I think, was a feeling on the part of more
parents that they wanted their kids to have a higher
education.
The Legislature decided we'd better
provide it for them.
Of course, there was some reaction, from the engineering
standpoint, from Russia sending Sputnik up.
I don't
remember whether that was '58 or later.
F--That's about the time of the Russian success in outer
space.
B--I think that had a lot to do with the development of
interest, not only in engineering but in all phases of
education.
F--The Legislature in this time was more conservative than
it is now.
One thinks about the great difficulties
that Governor Romney had in attempting to get taxes
through, and the like.
Why were they willing to spend that money? It doesn't
appear that they begrudged spending the money for that
public purpose.
Frank D. Beadle; Republican, from St. Clair; State
Senator, 1950-1968; Chairman, State Senate Appropriations
Committee.
Interview conducted June 13, 1974.

A 524

A 525

Beadle
B--Well, I think they figured there
there to take care of these kids
education.
That was my feeling,
a responsibility there we had to

was a responsibility
who did want higher
at least. There was
recognize.

F--Republicans could get Democratic votes for this.
It
didn't seem to be political about where the districts
were or where the schools were located.
You think it was because of the fact that people across
the whole state wanted their children to have a higher
education?
B--1 think probably that was the important factor. I
don't think that the location of the school had too
much to do with it, although in some cases there was
some provincialism involved.
F--Senator, what were some of the social and economic
factors that led to this significant growth?
I know that people were concerned about the automotive
industry not being the industry to put your whole
state's eggs in, so to speak. People were concerned
about training people so that different kinds of
industries could come about. The Legislature put
money into research at Michigan to hopefully get
some of the benefits for [the attraction of] new
industry there.
B--Well, there was some consideration in that direction.
There was some consideration in the direction of
education for the social fields because of the
increased demand in that area: trying to provide
education for some of these folks so they wouldn't
be on welfare.
F--That's what I was curious about. It strikes me that
you've got only limited choices when you're making
public policy.
Either you keep the people in the
social welfare system, which to my mind is a sort of
prison system because they really can't get out, or
you put money in to help them get out by education.
By putting money into school aid, community colleges,
vocational training, and the like, the people in
Detroit and other areas --even the Upper Peninsula
where the coal mining and the logging had left-have a chance.

A 526
Beadle
Do you think that was a clear-cut idea?
B--I don’t think it was clear-cut,
was in the minds of some of us,

Jerry, but I think it
at least.

I think that was part of the background for the amazing
development of the community colleges: to bring educa­
tion closer to these kids so that they could at least
get a start and determine where they wanted to go after
their first two years.
F--That’s a good point you raise.
In the time you served
we built a state community college system--without
master planning, without a lot of fancy talk--from
just about nothing to a system that will, in a few
years, take 57 percent of all the kids.
B--Unfortunately, when you say without planning, that's
true. I think there were some community colleges
established that shouldn’t have been, but I suspect
that’s a mistake that you make in any area.
F--I know. Everybody points to places like Kirtland at
Roscommon where there were no kids.
B--And no tax base.
F--And no tax base.
But even these marginal schools don't really end up
costing a lot of money.
I mean, in terms of the
billions of dollars in the state treasury, Kirtland
can cost $200,000 a year.
It's not an outrageous
amount of money and maybe it could be the base of
developing a future industry.
Although we didn't put one in Detroit where the
people were.
B--That's their own fault. There was a definite under­
standing when the state took over Wayne University
that Detroit would establish their own community
college. They haven't done it.
F--They haven't done that to this day. The school was
established by the state and they're the only ones
that don't have a legally voted millage; it's a
mandated millage by state statute.

A 527

Beadle
They never have done a local act to this day.
guess I ’d say that.

I

B--That's something that's always irked me a little bit.
I was in on the deal when we took over Wayne and that
was definitely part of the deal.
F--Nobody seemed to remember that.
Gar was not very
[vocal] about it, but it was my understanding that
as one of the conditions for the state taking over
Wayne they were supposed to carry the burden for
vocational and technical and community college
education.
B--That's right.
F--They specifically agreed to that and then nothing
ever happened.
B--Of course that's not unusual.
I always kidded Arnell Engstrom.
I remember Arne11
coming before our committee and saying, "Well, give
us this money this time and w e '11 never be back again
asking for any money for a community college." But
it wasn't very long before he was.
F--Every year is a year forever, isn't it?
B--Yes.
F--When I talk about community colleges I think, well,
the intention was to create schools where poor boys
could go and wouldn't have the burden of living offcampus.
The children of working-class people, who
had never gone to college, would go to give them
the first two years and some would go on to transfer
to Michigan's baccalaureate institutions.
It was also my impression that people had the hope
that they would also train people for trades.
B--I think that was a feeling of a lot of u s : that
community colleges should get more into the technical
end of it than they were. Their argument always was
that the equipment cost too much money.

A 528
Beadle
F--They don't seem to be doing it still today.
I think it may look different here in Port Huron
because the community college here did go and build
a technical building that was pretty sophisticated.
But out of the thirty-odd community colleges, most
have really not made much of an investment in that
kind of a program.
B--I think that's true.
F--Do you have here an intermediate district vocational...
B--Yes.
F--As I recollect from the legislative sentiment, it used
to be that intermediate districts were going to be non­
operating districts--administrative groups.
Gradually
they’re getting into a lot of education, obviously to
pick up pieces.
B--Yes.

I think that’s true.

I'm not exactly sure how it does operate here. Of
course, they have an interschool set-up down here,
too.
St. Clair, Marine City, and Algonac have devel­
oped certain technical programs which they operate
among themselves with the members of the faculty who
handle it.
F--So the policy objectives, Senator, were to broaden
the base of technical education, make the first two
years of schooling available to a lot of people who
wouldn’t have to go to major campuses, to try to do
something so people wouldn't have the historical
choice of only being on welfare or not using their
potential.
I think that means, obviously, trying to reach
minority populations and deprived white populations.
Indians didn't seem to come much into this at all.
B--Not at that time.
it now.

I think they're coming more into

F--I have been told by some, like Jim Farnsworth, that
there was an intention to limit the size of the
schools so that they wouldn't get big like California.

A 529

Beadle
The legislators and other thoughtful people were
concerned that the schools would become too big,
hard to manage. You were on the capital committee...
B--That was true, to a degree, I think. There was some
concern about the schools getting too big.
I ’m not
sure how effective the controls were, and I don't
know how effective the thinking is, but I think it
did result in more schools. The fact that we put a
limit on Central and Eastern, for instance, resulted
in more thinking toward developing places like
Grand Valley and Saginaw...
F--Well, Frank, that's what I ’m talking about. W e ’re
taking a look at 1958. You take Grand Valley and
you build it from scratch.
It’s the first time you
really put a school in the southwest part of the
state. You went for Saginaw, through all of the
trouble you have there. You encourage the growth of
Dearborn, encourage the growth of Flint, and encourage
the growth of Oakland.
You rebuild Ferris from virtually the ground u p .
Because of the fire the place was just really nothing.
Although part of that may not have happened without
Vic Spathelf because he was a heck of a builder.
B--There’s only one Vic Spathelf.
F--You took Tech, where, when I first saw it, you could
still see the remains of the school that had been
built in 1920; you took Ed Harden's place at Northern,
which had 700 [students], and you built it up to 7,000;
you built Lake Superior, which was the old Fort Brady
that you got for a dollar; and you put a ton of money
into Wayne. If you go down to Detroit today and take
a look at Wayne, it's hard to believe the changes
just in the last six years.
And then you built some 12 or 13 community colleges.
Certainly some may have been in the wrong place, but
many were in the right place. Any time you have a
public policy that succeeds 85 percent, you've got to be
right pleased.
B--That's right.

A 530
Beadle
I think one reason for the development of Ferris and
the interest the Legislature showed in Ferris was
because it did develop along the technical lines that
we were hoping some of the community colleges would
pick up.
And of course Senator Lane had a pretty strong
interest in Ferris, which made a difference.
F--But one man, in spite of everything, can't really
succeed. He's got to have other people agree.
B--Oh, that's right.
F--So you had that policy of building a lot of schools
and spreading the money around.
Was that just political or was it a vision that you
didn't want Michigan and Michigan State to be huge
and the others to b e ...
B--That may have been part of it, although I think
[another] part of it was to put these schools closer
to where these kids could get to them.
F--For instance here, without Port Huron Junior College,
there would have been no educational opportunity for
thousands of square miles because you would have had
[only] Delta and Flint. Macomb was just starting to
grow north.
B--No. The big pull in the olden days here was Eastern
and Central.
F--And you had a policy of limiting the size of those
institutions. You were thinking, what, about 20,000?
B--As I recall, that was the figure.
F--Yes, I think that was the number.
What caused fights about these things? Obviously I
think about Michigan's fighting the argument about
quality, saying, "Don't thin out the pot."
B--I don't know that there were any really serious
fights. Probably their major point of argument w a s ,
"Don't give it to that school because my school won't

A 531
Beadle
get any.”
involved.

There was a certain amount of provincialism

Of course, from the time I went in, there was always
a certain amount of rivalry between State and the
University.
I don't know that you could call it a
fight but they always...
F--...were scrapping with each other.
B--In my early days, even then, it was a contest of trying
to figure a base so that one would get more money than
the other.
F--Yes, because in those days it worked by a formu1a . They
were always fighting to change the formula mechanisms,
weren't they?
B--As I recall, when I went over [to Lansingj there was no
formula. It was more a...
F--Just a grab?
2
B--...grab, and some of us Ed [Hutchinson] , Arnell [Engstrom],
Gar [LaneJ and some of the rest of us--tried one way or
another to establish some formula that would be reasonable.
I don't know that any of them were ever reasonable but
they used to work for two or three years anyway.
F--Yes, I don't think that there will ever be a formula that
can work.
B--Not and apply to all of them.
F--No, because the schools are so different. The thing they
all care about, no matter what the words are, is the
bottom line. That always gets to be difficult too.
B--Of course.
I used to throw this at some of the presidents every
once in a while: "With all the expected knowledge you
2

Edward Hutchinson; Republican from Fennville; State
Senator; Member, Senate Appropriations Committee.

A 532
Beadle
have in your institution, it seems to me you should have
more management ability to use your money to better
advantage.
One of the things that always bothered me was the dupli­
cation of programs in some of the institutions. Even
within institutions there was a lot of duplication.
F--But John Hannah really had a skill of managing a dollar,
didn't he?
B--Yes he did.
F--I would think that, looking back, the way he used the
self-liquidating part of a program was really masterful
because the dormitories got built with classrooms in them
too. He set that pattern and that's enhanced the growth
because they couldn't have built these schools if they
hadn't given people a place to live.
B--No, that's right. Now I guess some of these schools
have too many places to live, haven't they?
F--I think it's changed and I'll tell you why--you've always
been interested in real estate.
I think it's the increased cost of money, the tremendous
inflation that's happened in the last several years on
the cost of food. As the mortgages for the institutional
things are getting amortized the institutions don't have
to raise the price as much.
It's getting to be economical
again to live on campus.
B--They can compete with the off-campus facilities.
F--As a matter of fact, they tried to keep the price within
some kind of reasonable range, but they could lower the
price--in my opinion 10 or 15 percent--and still be in
clover.
I think this means that the housing on campuses will be
in good shape. This will be the second year Michigan
State doesn't have an empty bed.
B--That's a good situation.

A 533
Beadle
F--Yes, that’s good for us.
When I look at the situation I see some of the fights.
I, myself, when I started doing the [study], put a
great store by the fight. You know, thinking about
Hannah versus Hatcher.
B--That was no match.
F--I don’t think it was.
That gets a lot of
[severe]. I think
locals started the
it tough for other

attention but it doesn’t look too
back about Saginaw to where the
fight with themselves, which made
legislators to resolve the thing.

But even then, Frank, I don't have the feeling that
the fights were really very serious.
They were
getting around to the business of...
B--...putting on a show more than anything.
put on an act I guess you might say.

They had to

F--Well, when I think about it, I've seen a bitter fight
inside the Legislature and it really can be very
bloody.
People get bent out of shape and talk to
each other, they pull in their alumni, and industry
comes in.
I can't find, really, that they got brutal about
things.
It doesn't look to me like there was much
bad feeling left over. Any time you have a bad fight
there is.
B--I think that's true.
F--I talked to Ryan about this.
I said to him, "What
about duplication? What about this competition?"
As we talked he came across a point that made a lot
of sense to me. He said in the beginning we couldn't
get support for social programming; areas had always
voted no to get their share of the budget.
The
minute you put a school in a place like Traverse City,
in a place like Grand Valley, in a place like Saginaw,
they needed stuff.
They then got tied into the system
of having to vote for other things, for mental health
and the like. He said he thought that as long as you
can keep that in control that was a useful mechanism..

A 534
Beadle
I've thought a lot more about the fights and thought
to myself, well, maybe this was the way of keeping
the whole system going.
B--That's possibly true.
F--Because you needed the votes for tax policy.
B--You know, actually, I've seen more bitter feelings
over appropriations in mental health than in educa­
tion. That's because there's more sentiment attached
to the thing.
F--And maybe more pain.
B--Yes.
F--When I traveled with you and the [appropriations]
committee, I used to say to the college presidents,
"Don't feel sorry for yourself.
The committee loves
to go to colleges because everybody's happy there."
I said, "You go to a mental institution and..."
I thought always of Newberry.
B--That was an unfortunate situation.
F--...Always left me so sad.
I mean, with the children
and the neglect.
Fort Custer was thesame way.
B--They've closed Fort Custer, I think.
F--They have closed it but it was a frightening and
horrible thing to see. Particularly if you weren't
calloused from seeing a lot of it. You'd go home
and look at your children and thank Godthat you
didn't have that burden.
B--That's right.
F--I always thought that the committee was right pleased
with the schools.
No matter how badly they ran them
people were happy with them.
The mental health thing
was always crushing.
What about breaking down class and culture barriers?

A 535

Beadle
B--I don’t know that
actually there was much attention
given to that, at
least up until the time I left.
I think that’s developed more since I left.
F--I think the decision at Wayne, for instance, had to
be regarded to build that school. Maybe it worked
because of some of the political pressure.
In New York State they built a New York City system
(the City University of New York), then they built
[a system] outstate (the State University of New York).
That was different.
We didn’t do that
here. We made the decision to pick
up Wayne and put a lot of money into it. They were
right grateful. The first building that you put up
they called State Hall.
I just don’t see a way to get people to be productive
and useful for themselves, and to cut down crime and
mental illness and welfare, without the education.
B--I think that’s true.
F--Maybe we expect too much of education.
a problem too.

That can be

I think about that, you know, like religion and
schools. Maybe I ’m wrong, but I sort of have the
feeling that my burden is to train my children in
the ethical and religious things and not expect the
school to do that. And things like hygiene, I expect
to do that. My boys are 10 and 6, Frank. With a boy
of 10 I ’ve got to do something about some kind of
sex education. I still think that that's our responsi­
bility and don't expect to turn that over to the
school to do.
B--Unfortunately, you represent maybe too small a
percentage of parents. Too many parents expect the
schools to do a lot of these things.
F--That may be some of the reasons for people being a
little disappointed in the schools.
B--I think that's true.

A 536
Beadle
F--When I was a boy the church and the family had a part
of the burden. People may not want to do that. When
I was a boy people didn’t send their old family members
to nursing homes, they stayed with the family. Nursing
homes were really for people that needed constant care.
That’s not the way it is today, and that's state
funded too.
B--Yes.
F--What about Michigan versus Michigan State? I ’m thinking
about popularism or mass education versus elitism.
I originally thought that Michigan stood for the
highest quality for the lowest number and that Michigan
State was different.
I ’ve changed since I ’ve started
this exercise.
The Michigan people always talk so arrogantly, in a
way, but it's hard for me to think about an institu­
tion, as big as it is, that really is an elite.
40,000 kids is not a small group of people.
B--I think that feeling was more in existence earlier
than it probably is now.
I think there wasn't any
question when I first went to the Legislature:
Michigan was regarded as the institution of quality,
and State was one of quantity.
In fact there used
to be a lot of jokes in that direction then, but the
last few years I was there that changed completely.
I think the whole tenor of State changed with the
development of their programs.
F--You think in the last few years that as John Hannah
started to take advantage and build strong science
programs....
B--Well, they got new programs. They got away from the
old agricultural background, even though the farming
community didn't 1 ike that too well.
F--Did you get pressure from the farming community about
that sort of thing?
B--A little bit, not very much.

A 537

Beadle
F--It was hard for some of them to understand the difference
in State.
In 1946 they'd had 4,000 kids and there were
40,000 by the time you left the Legislature.
B--Yes.
The farmers resented that a little bit. Of course,
there aren't as many farmers around now as there used to
be.
F--No. As a matter of fact, it's interesting to realize
that there is not one farmer in the Michigan Legislature
today.
B--I didn't realize that.
F--Zollar is really a nursery man.
Root was, I think, the last man
the land.

x

When Edson Root died,
who made his living on

B--I thought Cy Root^...
F--But Cy wasn't a farmer, was he?
B--Yes. He didn't work on it much
still owns the farm but he lets

the last few years.
it oug.

He

F--We've talked a little bit about how important vocational
and occupational training objectives were.
I'm curious, in the creation of this tremendous institu­
tion of higher education in this state, what were the
building blocks? You talked about the fact that parents
wanted education and the fear about Russian technological
advantages through the Sputnik.
There's been some conversation from Staebler--whom I talked
to--about the fact that the state got wealthy. As the
automotive workers got above the subsistence level and
started to make money they had to invest it some place.
Education was a good investment and they wanted that.
Edson V. Root, Jr.; Republican from Bangor; State
Representative, 1952-68.
4
Cyril H. Root; Republican from Kalamazoo; State
Representative, 1950-70.

A 538
Beadle
I think w e ’ve talked a little bit about the need to
develop vocational trainings because not everybody
is oriented toward books.
I mean, there’s a place
in this society, isn’t there, for carpenters and
plumbers and masons?
B--At the price you have to pay for them, I'd say there
is.
F--But you know, one of the things that you worry about
if even though the wages that these men make--truck
drivers make a fortune today--people still don’t want
to work those jobs anymore. Maybe they don't have
enough status.
B--I think some of those skills are at a stage where
they are rather restrictive.
They were able to control
the number that went into the trade and they made it
possible for their labor to be harder to get so they
were able to charge higher prices.
F--Although you have the example of the masons.
I can
remember when every building the state built was made
of brick. You don't see one built today that way.
They all come with these huge panels. The masons may
be getting a higher price, but there’ll be no work
for them soon.
You think about the buildings you built at Michigan
like the dental school.
Gosh, I would like to have
had that brick contract.
B--Yes. There's a young chap here who thinks I helped
him get into dental school, although I didn't. He
didn't need any help. He graduated from Notre Dame
with high honors.
I kid him about how that dental
school started out to cost $9 million and ended up
costing $16 million, I think.
F--And it took ten years to happen too.
B--Yes. The head of that dental school is a Port Huron
man, by the way-- [William R.J Mann.
F--Is D r . Mann from Port Huron?
B--Yes, his dad was Alex Mann who headed Detroit Edison
in Port Huron for years.

A 539
Beadle
F--That's interesting.
I always look at him and think
of him as having lived in Ann Arbor his whole life.
B--No. I didn't realize it until I was over there for
the dedication of the building and learned that he
was from Port Huron, and that his wife is from
Port Huron.
F--Well, we talked about the importance of vocational
and technical things.
What about the growth of culture and the arts?
that have any importance?

Did

B--It was gradually developing, I think, when I left.
I think the Legislature, at least the appropriations
committee--and I can recall Mrs. Romney trying to
get money for the arts--sort of laughed it off. But
I think that attitude had changed even before I left,
F--Well, you see what Woody did at Oakland,
tremendous support with that program.

He built a

Where I come from--Mas sachusetts--culture, arts, art
museums, museums, and concerts can exist without
public support because of the long tradition of
philanthropy.
I'm not struck, and maybe I'm wrong
here, that there is a tradition of philanthropy. At
Michigan State almost the whole thing was built by
taxpayers. Except for Michigan, I can 't think of
any institutions that have really been able to get
much in the way of any public...
B--Nothing substantial.
F--I think that Kellogg has put a few dollars in, but
that's about it. It looks to me that any of the
kind...
B--McGregor‘S of Detroit has done some.
F--Right--their student center. I didn't know what
McGregor was. I thought it might be an [historical]
In reference to the Memorial Conference Center at
Wayne State University.
Tracy W. McGregor, President of
Provident Loan § Savings Society, and his wife established
the McGregor Fund in 1925.

A 540
Beadle
name or something.
philanthropy.

I didn’t know that that was a

B--It's a philanthropic trust, I think.
They have been
interested in other fields, too, because they put up
some money for a mental health study through John
McLellan6 .
F--Well, what I'm thinking about is this, Senator. At
Ann Arbor, at Michigan State, at Western, at Wayne-I'm thinking about art programs, theater and the like-those programs had to exist with state support in a
hidden way.
I know the committee was never very much
in favor of that, but it doesn't look 1 ike strong public
support for art and culture was available.
B--But don't you
background of
interested in
Normally that

think that's partly due to the industrial
the state, Jerry? They've been basically
seeing industry develop in the state.
sort of attitude doesn't lean toward art.

F--I think that's true. I think you’re right. I think
you have to have the food and the shelter taken care
of before you worry about some of the other things.
W e 're still not to the point where our people are
satisfied, that they've attained all of these things
and don't have to worry about work so they can worry
about the use of leisure time.
And the unions really haven't put any muscle in here
either. Maybe it will be different now that it's "30
years and out." Retiring at 55 gives you 20 years to
live. You've got to do something.
B--Just 20?
F--Well, the average age...
B--You put me at the top limit when you say 55 and out
and 20 years to live.
^John McLellan; President, Michigan Information and
Research Service, Inc., Lansing, Michigan.

A 541
Beadle
F--I know that.
I'm thinking about the fact that probably people will
live to 75 in good health before getting sickly.
I
think that's why a lot of people go on into second
businesses and second trades and have second careers.
When you were a boy people didn't think about two
careers, they were worried about one.
B--That's right.
F--What was the position of labor in regard to higher
education? I mean, when those guys want something....
In your time Democrats and labor came to be powerful.
B--I'm trying to recall whether I ever saw labor make
any concerted effort to help education.
Of course
they always seemed to be interested in putting more
money in all the programs, but specifically educa­
tion...
I don't recall them ever being especially
interested.
F--What I'm thinking about is in attempting to understand
the politics of this state, it's my impression--and
we've done some analysis of this--that this state from
the beginning until 1955 was essentially a Republican
state. The Democrats to this day have only controlled
the Senate twice...
B--Unt.il next year.
F--Until next year, probably.
...in '32 and then '64. They've controlled the House
only 12 years. There are districts in this state that
have never elected a Democrat.
There's only been four
Democratic governors in the history of this state.
Is that the right number? Let me see if it is --there
was Williams, Swainson, Ferris and Murphy.
B--Was Ferris a governor or a senator?
F--Ferris was a governor--Woodbridge Ferris.
forgotten the man who was in '32.
B--Comstock.

I've

A 542
Beadle
F--Comstock and then Murphy.
So there's three, and
Williams and Swainson, that's five governors.
Of course Williams served all those terms, but if you
take a look at the elections since '32, in most circum­
stances the governorship hasn't been won by much.
People made a big thing about Milliken beating Sander
Levin by 40,000, but they forget Romney didn’t beat
Swainson the first time round by much more than that.
B--No.
F--Williams won one election by 8,000 votes.
It looks to
me like the state's been pretty well divided.
Back in
the East you think about Michigan being a LaborDemocratic state. An important component of the
Democratic strength has got to be labor, they put the
money in and the like.
I'm curious about what labor wanted.
It strikes me
that the UAW was interested in issues beyond just the
lunch pail.
B--Well, I don't recall them ever having put any real
strong push on education.
F--What about industry?
B--Industry in certain fields.
F--What fields were you thinking about?
B--I'm thinking about the sciences, particularly.
F--Did you feel pressure from the automotive companies,
for instance?
B--For research.
F--For research at U of M?
B--Yes.
F--Maybe computers?
B--Yes.

A 543
Beadle
F--Drug companies?
computer and the
about Upjohn and
I never felt any

I’ve always felt the strength from the
automotive companies, but you think
Parke-Davis being inthis state and
pressure from them.

B--No.
F--You wouldn't even know they were located in this state.
Agriculture, very strong with agribusiness.
It’s a...
B--Agriculture was strong, but not in recent years.
F--Maybe not politically, but economically it is.
B--Oh, yes.
F--You think about the Saginaw Valley with the beans and
the sugar, you think about all the fruit along the
western side of the state, you think about all the beef
cattle, you think about things like tomatoes.
It sounds
foolish, but it’s been a tremendous dollar...
B--Of course when you talk about the various fields of
agriculture, you never saw the agricultural group get
together on any particular program in a really united
front.
F--Now that you say that, I think there is probably some
truth to that.
I watched Senator Zollar, he only really
spoke for the fruit guys. He couldn't have cared much
about the beans or the others.
So they broke down into the subfields?
What about the position of commerce? The reason I ask
that is this: You look at the Blue Ribbon Report that
Romney did and you see people like Heavenrich-commerce guys. You think about Seidman who was an
accountant.
I wondered if commerce had a different attitude.
They
were more locally related than the major industries.
I wonder if they had a different attitude toward
higher education?
B--Generally speaking, maybe they did.
I think basically
their principal muscle was opposed to any new taxes.

A 544
Beadle
F--I'm thinking about the Michigan Manufacturers Association
and retail and chain stores [Michigan Retailers Association]
You didn't feel pressure there for education?
B--Not that I recall.
F--I can't find any. either, but I figure that you're the man
to ask because my impression of the Legislature is that
the two watering holes where you see everybody are
appropriations and taxation.
B--For some specific program perhaps once in a while, but
generally speaking, no.
F--In the time I worked there, the only time I ever saw any
pressure at all from any of these forces--I’m thinking
specifically now about labor and industry--was over
Wayne Community College.
I never, ever saw anything
before or since. And I think that was much taken by
the destruction of Detroit, when they had the riots.
It gets to be the late end of the study, but I think
people were astonished about that, and discomforted,
frightened, and surprised, too.
I talked to Staebler
about that and he indicated that they had been surprised
because the condition of Blacks in this state was much
different.
The Blacks had had legitimate political power.
It's hard for me, for instance, where I have watched
Coleman Young in these years, to ever have regarded him
as a black legislator.
I regarded him more as a politician.
He functioned not in the same way that...
B--He was more of a union legislator than anything else.
F--Yes, right. You wouldn't put him in the box of thinking
about him as a purely black legislator.
7

We had Ed Brooke on campus the other day.
I've known
Ed Brooke a long time and he's just a politician.
He
wasn't a man that ever got his votes from a black sector.
He got them because people respected him and he was a
skilled man.
7
Edward W. Brooke; Republican; U. S. Senator from
Massachusetts.

A 545
Beadle
F--What about the pressures from the federal government
in the determination of policy for education? Were
they there?
B--I think it was there to the extent that they said,
"We'll give you so much money for this program if
you'll provide some money to go with it."
F--What programs are you thinking about?
put money into HEFA, for instance?

Did we have to

B--Well, I don't know whether I can think of any.
I
guess in many of these programs federally funded
required state matching [dollars]. Maybe I'm exag­
gerating a little bit, maybe it just seems that way.
When I say that, I'm thinking particularly about
vocational education, I guess.
F--The reason I raised the question is that when you take
a look at the federal money that's come to the states
for welfare and social legislation, every buck
required a matching buck. But on top of that, every
time you gave the money they set up rules and regula­
tions about how you could pass it out. State options
for policy making and social welfare have virtually
disappeared.
I hear a lot of complaints all the time about the
burdens that come from federal control. I don't
really have the feeling that there was much in the
way of federal control over education. The dollars
came for specific project research but they didn't
demand that you hire a certain number of people, or
that you had to have admissions criteria, or one
thing or another. It doesn't strike me that the
burden was the same.
B--Well, that's possibly true.
F--Although you did put language into the boiler plate
of the bill that said you couldn't take a gift any­
more without approval of the Legislature. I assumed
that that came from the period when Mis. Wilson and
the Fords gave those gifts to the state and then you
had to come up with state-matching bucks fifty times
as much.

A 546
Beadle
B--I think that was the reason for that language.
The
legislature didn't want to, because of a gift, get
involved in a program that was going to cost them
substantially more to operate.
F-- [Programs] that you maybe didn't want or need.
I think there was a period of time there from '58 to
'70 when the legislature began to have a jaundiced
eye about grants from anybody, and not just the
federal government.
B--That's right.
F--Although the Wilson and the Ford gifts were unusual.
They weren't a common thing.
B--No, there's not too many of them.
F--At Saginaw Valley they had to raise the money essen­
tially from a fund-raising drive. Wickes and Dow
gave a few dollars, but...
B--Mott put some money at Flint.
F--Yes, within the city limits, essentially.
Have you got some thoughts about what were the reasons
for the failure of the branch campus system?
In Wisconsin and California they built these systems
where the mother school owned all of the branches.
Like the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and
the like.
We started that way here.
There was talk about
Michigan going to Port Huron and Michigan State going
to Saginaw; Michigan going to Grand Rapids, Flint,
and Dearborn.
It sort of petered out.
Did the Legislature take a position to discourage that?
B--When you say failure, you're not marking Flint or
Dearborn as failures?
F--I'm marking them as failures in the sense that the
system didn't succeed to go along.
I would personally
suspect, very strongly, that one day Dearborn, when it

A 547
Beadle
reaches a certain critical mass now that it’s well
run, will become an independent school.
I would
think that Flint, when the community is ready, will
be independent too.
B--Could be.
F--I don't think Michigan State will ever open a branch
campus again, or Michigan, or Wayne.
B--I think there may have been some feeling in the
Legislature, and in the committee particularly, about
starting a branch in Grand Rapids or Port Huron.
There may have been the feeling that they had all they
could handle as they were. If they ran what they had
efficiently, that was enough.
F--There was some talk that when a big institution ran
a school in a small place, they always got last dips
at the soup. It was harder for local people to
support the institution because their destiny wasn't
determined in the local area but in Ann Arbor or
East Lansing. And further, the belief that the insti­
tutions didn't have the management skill to run these
enterprises.
B--I don't know that that question was ever raised, as
far as management skill was concerned. It may have
been.
F--The Legislature didn't perceive the institutions as
being well-run, did they? Or did they?
B--I think there was always the feeling
be run better than they were.

that they could

F--I suppose that's true about any institution. Maybe
that's being a legislator.
I never really have ever
seen legislators pleased with the running of any
institution.
B--I guess that's probably true.
F--Mental institutions: Either they were running well
and you ignored them because they weren't a
problem,
or they were running right badly...

A 548
Beadle
B--And they raised Hell about it.
F--I mean, the agricultural department runs pretty well and
Ball comes in, they shake his hand, give him his money,
and kick him out in five minutes. Nobody ever really gets
into inquiring what his difficulties are.
B--I'm rather surprised at the way that's gone. Nobody was
particularly pleased about Ball going in as head of that
department.
F--Really?

I think he's one of the really good guys.

B--I think he's come through in good shape.
he went in there was a lot of...

But I know when

F--Did he replace [George S.] McIntyre, the former head of
the Cooperative Extension Service at MSU?
B- -Yes.
F--He's retired now and is a consultant, an entomologist.
Gordon Guyer is the head of it now.
But that obviously was part of Michigan State's strength
too, wasn't it?
B--Oh yes.
F--The agricultural...
B--...Experimental station, that sort of thing.
F--That was obviously one of John Hannah's very strong suits,
wasn't it?
B--Yes.
F--What about some of the regional and local pressures to
expand higher education in one location rather than another?
Where were the pressures for schools at this time?
Obviously Saginaw, Grand Rapids, Flint...
O

B. Dale Ball; Director, Michigan Department of Agriculture.

A 549
Beadle
B-.Oakland,
anywhere.

I can't recall any real strong pressure

F--Were there some places that wanted schools that didn't
get them?
B--I don't recall any at the moment.
F--I always have heard that sort of hidden kind of feeling
that the people in Traverse City wanted a four-year
institution.
B--I never heard that.

Could be.

F--It looks, though, that for the community colleges just
about every community that really could put up any degree
of initiative got one.
B--I think so.
F--The four-year schools really grew beyond their wildest
dreams in a way. The old-timers who had been in and saw
what came in the fifties and the sixties probably found
it hard to believe that they could get that much. You
built a flock of buildings at these schools and you gave
them a lot of money, too.
The most incredible thing I've seen--it must have been
1964--you voted through an additional appropriation to
improve teacher salaries.
That's had to have been an
unusual thing.
I don't think it happened before or
since.
So there had to be public support for what you
were doing.
B--Teachers have a pretty good lobby.
F--Teachers aren't doing badly in the state today.
B--They sure aren't.
F--I think we're the second highest paid state for K-12
school teachers in the country.
Why, Senator, did an institutional system for coordination
not come about after '64? You had the Constitutional
Convention and there was a lot of expectation that the
State Board would be able to do some things. Why do you
think it didn't happen?

—wrop.

A 550
Beadle
B--I think there are two reasons: I think one is the
feeling that the State Board is a rather weak opera­
tion; number two, I think the individual institutions
of higher education didn't like the idea of a
coordinating board.
F--It’s a hard thing to draw a line between coordination
and control.
B--I think they were fearful that coordination meant
control, at least an attempt to control.
F--Did legislative attitudes want some kind of coordination?
B--My feeling is they’d like to see some sort of
coordination.
F--Although the schools have been pretty adeptly con­
trolled by the executive and Legislature by the amount
of money they’ve gotten. You can't say that the
institutions have been arrogant. My impression is that
they've paid close heed to the committees.
B--Some people, or a lot of people, probably w o n 't agree
with me on this one, but I think that the presidents’
organization of the colleges has saved a lot of head­
aches for both them and the Legislature. I think they
have ironed out some difficulties that might have
developed.
F--I put a great store by, and I like, Ira Polley.
B--I do too.
F--Ira’s a guy that's hard to know. When you saw him in
confrontation kinds of things, he didn *t do as well.
I interviewed him and I was struck by the fact that
there’s a really brilliant mind with a tremendous
insight into the whole system in the sense of all the
pieces, not just the parochial interests for one piece
rather than another.
B--I would agree.
F--It strikes me that maybe a lot of that credit goes to
Ira because he was there in a key time when things
could have gone differently.
I don't think that the
* Council is as influential now as it was when Ira was
there.

s

A 551
Beadle
B--Probably true.
F--When I was talking to Ira, I asked, "Do you think it might
have been the fact that in 1964--when the Goldwater
election catastrophe happened--that the whole political
structure of the state got thrown into a cocked hat?"
You ended up with eight Democrats.
I'm thinking about
the fact that Bentley, who was a well-regarded man, and
Briggs, didn't get elected. All of a sudden when the
state went back to being 50-50, there were zero Republicans
on the Board.
Well, Ira didn't think that, for the fact that h e 's a
gentleman too. I would say that I think the State Board
was weak in the quality of its total membership. Ira's
too politic a man to throw stones. I would think that
that had to be a significant problem.
B--1 don't think there's any question about it.
F--And you didn11 get the major figures in this state: the
people that served in Con-Con and that Romney had gotten
for the Blue Ribbon Committee. You take a look at the
Blue Ribbon Committee. You saw men from industry,
commerce, and labor and they were major figures. I think
about Bluestone, Woodcock, and Adelaide Hart. You saw
major figures.
You take a look at the State Board and it didn't reflect
those kinds of maj or initiatives. I think that the fact
that the State Board picked the fight over Flint was
crucial. You don’t pick a fight the first day out some­
times, because C . S. Mott was in Gar’s corner.
B--That's right.
F--11 looks to me like C . S. Mott cast 51 percent of the
votes in Flint.
B--1 attended a party for Gar over at Flint and C . S. Mott
was there. He said that "anything that Gar Lane says
is all right with m e ."
F--And that's the way it was, too, wasn't it?
B- -Y e s .

A 552
Beadle
F--And yet I don’t think that C. S. Mott really tried to
control that.
I think he admired the m a n ’s prudence
with the dollar.
B--I think, very definitely, that's true.
F--Gar always wanted a bang for a buck.
Do you think there's a possibility for any kind of
coordination coming? The executive hasn't really
wanted it either, has he?
B--No.
F--Romney had all the words but he didn't do anything.
If there was a man that really wanted something,
George would get it.
I don't think that Milliken
has that same kind of push.
B--Is there any kind of coordination coming?
F- -11's outside of the study but Dick Beers, the staff
director, and Bill Seidman, the chairman of the
Governor's Higher Education Reform Commission, put
out a study recommending the appointment of all the
boards.
B--Yes, I knew that.
F--And a coordinating body, a state board for higher
education.
The institutions wouldn't go one inch to support it.
They went hopefully, trying not to make any enemies,
but I don't see any energy for it to happen because
I don't see the schools wanting it.
I don't see the
Legislature really wanting it because they think
they've got the control.
I don't see Governor Milliken willing to go to the
mat.
If you don't have the votes, you can be the
finest man in the world, but when the control is
only 19-19...
B--18-18 now.
F--...It's very hard to lead with that. Milliken had
two years when the House was in his hand.
Really,

A 553

Beadle
with Waldron there, it was really so slim.
I think it
was one or two seats.
That's really not control.
So
unless you have 10 or 15 votes in the House, and 6 or
7 in the Senate, you can't really gauge the strength
of a governor.
You're the master of this, I'm just an observer, but
it doesn't strike me that you can really fault the
man if he doesn't have that kind of political strength.
B--No.
I quite shocked our vice-chairman of the Republican
party when it looked like the Milliken-Levin race was
close, the Senate was going Democrat, and the House
was going Democrat. I said I hope Levin wins. I said
I think it's a tragedy when you've got a governor in
the front office in one party and the legislature in
another.
F--And I figure that the people voted, "Let that guy take
the rap. You can never deliver what you promised in
the first place." So I don't really have that sense
of it, and maybe I'm wrong.
I put good store by Fleming. I have a lot of admira­
tion for some of the presidents, some of them are fine
men.
They haven't gone out of their way to affront
people. I think Fleming is quite a different man than
Hatcher by a long store.
B--A great improvement, I think.
I didn't like him at
first, but 1 1ve come to regard him better.
F--He comes through very well.
feel.

Hatcher was a hard man to

B- -1 '11 tell you the man I like--Dr. Wharton.
F--He's a brilliant man, isn't he?
B--In many respects.
over there.

I think h e 's done a marvelous job

F--They don't understand him as well as they should
because h e 's not a propagandist.
B--He's not a flamboyant type.
John Hannah was.

H e 's not the type that

A

554

Beadle
F--No.
They all complained about how they didn’t like
John Hannah, but the minute John Hannah left they
found they missed him.
But this is a brilliant man, really, but he isn't
flamboyant.
I think he's a solid, solid guy and I
think that State's got to change.
It's a different
kind of place than it was 20 years ago. We're going
to be a great institution if we work at it. But it
takes quiet work.
B--And there aren't enough people willing to work at it.
F--Who in your opinion were the significant opinionleaders in higher education in Michigan in the period
from ’58 to '70?
B--Well, certainly you can't leave John Hannah out.
F--1 think you've got to start with him.
B--1 give a lot of credit to Marvin Niehussover
at the
University. Marv was always sort of a quiet operator
but he was, in my opinion, a pretty sound man.
F--And you've spoken of Vic Spathelf.
B--Right, and Jim Miller.
F--A lot of people mention Harden.
B--I was just going to mention Harden.
F--I find it surprising that since Wayne was such a key
institution in this period, nobody ever can seem to
remember anybody at Wayne.
B--Well, Keast was down there.
F--There was Keast and there was Hilberry and there
Henry.

was

B--I think Woody Varner did quite a bit too.
F--They mentioned Woody.
Woody?

What was the difficulty with

A 555

Beadle
When I worked for you I had no history and it was a
while before Charley McNeill started to fill me in.
I was surprised in these interviews
to find out what
a tremendous store people put by Woody.
I just looked
at him as an Oakland personality, but now find that
people like Swainson and Williams very vigorously had
remembered Woody.
I understand there was some difficulty
where Arnell drove him out.
B--I didn't realize that.

with Arnell

I didn't know there was.

I still have a very high regard for Woody.
I think
the last time I saw Woody he and I had a little
difference of opinion in the Appropriations Committee-just the two of us--and he left feeling pretty down.
But I still think Woody did a lot.
F--He sure did. He's gone to Nebraska and I gather quite
well. Nebraska is a poor state but still he's done a
job.
Were there others in other sectors besides education
and the Legislature and the executive office and
industry and commerce and labor that you would think
about?
B--I would certainly put Stephen Nisbet in that category.
Paul Goebel, A1 Bentley.
F--I was going to say Bentley.
was a very influential man.

It strikes me that Bentley
What about Romney?

B--Yes, I would put Romney in that category.
F--He seems to have cared about education in a very direct
way.
B--I think both Williams and Swainson did. Of course, I'm
probably biased.
Swainson and I worked together when
he was minority leader and I was majority leader, for
two terms, I guess.

I.

A 556
Beadle
F--I talked to Swainson in the first interview.
I hadn’t
known him because he was gone from the scene. Jay,
who comes from this area, told me--and I did not know-that Senator Swainson had come from this part of the
state.
It was a very delightful and exciting inter­
view. He wasn't cynical, he wasn't sour, he came
through as a warm, compassionate man.
I was really
very struck by his intellect and by his sense of con­
cern . I came out with an immense admiration for him.
B--1 've always regarded John very highly.
F --Well, when you talk to him you come out with a strong
sense of admiration. W e ’re very lucky in our state
to have a lot of solid people.
What John Porter said struck m e . He said, "Jerry,
you've got to understand that we had some of the giants
in the country here. We had great labor leaders, major
industry, great and poxverful institutions, and a good
legislature, good governors." And you think about the
fact that our governors were major public figures, like
Williams and Romney.
I don't know what will happen
with Milliken, but h e 's starting to get notice too.
It's hard for a Republican these days to get any kind
of decent...
B--It's hard for a Republican governor today to do much
in the way of what he might think is a good program
if it doesn't happen to fit in with the other party's
platform.
F--That's why Ryan and Milliken have to live so closely.
They can't d o , one without the other.
Senator, who were the influential individuals whose
insights were the greatest significance to you?
You talked about talking to people. It isn't always
cut-and-dried when people want something. Sometimes
you just want to talk to people and say, "Well, what's
going on, what should x^e be doing?" Who were those
kinds of people that would have talked to you, that
you put a great deal of store in?
B--Well, certainly I hold Gar in very high regard because
Gar and I used to talk a lot about a lot of these
things. And Arnell[Engstrom].

A 557
Beadle
F--Any of the institutional people?
g

B--Jack Breslin , Woody Smith of course.
work together quite a bit.

Woody and I used to

F--Well, I guess what I think about is that there are always
people behind the scenes. C. J. McNeil and I had our
troubles but I had tremendous admiration...
B--Mac is one in a million.
F--He did a lot for a lot of people

over a long time.

B--Mac was so much a part of the operation that I didn't think
of him.
Certainly Mac and I had a lot of hours together.
F--Well, what I'm thinking is, for example, Sturtz. There was
a bright young man who made a lot of contributions. And I
think about McNeil. I think about Niehuss. He was a man
that was never out there out front. I think that maybe
Art Neef was...
B--I'm glad you mentioned Art because I was...
F--You know what I'm saying: useful
pfople who have done a lot
of stuff and just never were out front.I think of Ferris
Crawford.
B--I can't think of his name now, the fellow that was head of
the community college for a whi1e . I used to spend some
hours with him too.
F--You mean Cahow?
B--Yes.
F--We interviewed him.
What I think about is when I can look in Massachusetts,
Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, Indiana--they don't have that same
quality of public servant. This state's been pretty
honest, Frank.
B--1 think all that's been true. I get thoroughly disgusted,
frankly, with some of the goings-on in the Legislature
now.
I guess we were just as crazy in our time.
^Jack Breslin; Executive Vice President, Michigan State
University.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
STEPHEN S. NISBET1

F--Could I begin by asking you to talk a little about
your involvement in education in Michigan?
N--Well, I suppose my involvement in higher education
started when I was named to the Board, and later
Chairman of the Board, of Alma College--that's the
Presbyterian institution in Michigan.
I graduated
there and my family have been there.
F--When was that?
N--It was ’38 or '39 when I started.
Then in '43 Frank
Cody--who was Superintendent in Detroit and on the
State Board of Education, retired and was elected to
the City Council--could no longer serve on the State
Board of Education so Governor Kelly appointed me.
I suppose then I really got more involved in public
higher education because, as you know, the old State
Board of Education had...
F--...Four schools, didn't it?
N--...Supervision of four schools.
F--It had Central, Eastern, Western, and Northern.
did not have Tech, did it?

It

N--No, Tech had its own board.
Stephen S. Nisbet; Republican, from Fremont; Member,
State Board of Education, 1943-1961; President, Michigan
Education Association, 1942-43; President, Michigan
Constitutional Convention, 1961-62; Member, Board of
Trustees of Michigan State University, 1963-71.
Interview
conducted June 18, 1974.

A 558

A 559

Nisbet
Well, I was appointed, and then I was elected that
spring.
I was elected three times to the State
Board of Education so I served almost twenty years.
F--A term was what, eight years?
N--I think I was Chairman of the Board longer than that,
but it doesn't make any difference.
In those days
the last year of your term you were supposed to be
chairman, but because of resignations I think I was
chairman 12 or 14 years--! don't know which.
Being
chairman didn't make any special difference.
F- -No-.

You had just one vote, didn't you?

N--Just one vote, yes.
So I became interested in higher education. At that
time each member was assigned one school that you were
directly responsible for.
I was assigned Central
because of the location and so forth.
I think,
because of Charlie Anspach and my friendship and
relationship with him, I probably became more involved
in that school than the other Board members became
involved with their schools.
We were together more,
I attended more functions over there, and I think
became a little more a part of the institution,
probably, because of circumstances.
F--Then came the Constitutional Convention in 1961.
N--I had the feeling in the Constitutional Convention
that the Education Committee was going to be one of
our very important committees.
I knew the feeling
would be that Hannah or Anspach or Bonisteel or some­
body like that who had been very closely connected
with education would be the chairman.
I didn't think it ought to be that way.
I thought
that we ought to have a chairman who was a business
man, who had respect for the public, was intelligent,
and had a good background of not necessarily just
business, but of public service.
I went over that
convention list trying to figure out who would be
the chairman. And you know, a peculiar thing about
the Constitutional Convention, half of the delegates
were lawyers--almost half of them.

A 560
Nisbet
F--That's bad politically.
N--It didn't work out too badly, but basically it's not
good.
F--1 '11 tell you why I say that.
I'm from Massachusetts
and in Massachusetts --because of the low pay of the
Legislature and the fact that we didn't have a strong
farming tradition anymore--most all the legislators
were lawyers and there got to be conflicts, whereas
in Michigan the number of lawyers, up until quite
recently, was reasonably low.
N--Even now, I think, it's too many. I don't think any
public service organization should be dominated by
any profession.
I think you need breadth.
Incidentally, during the Constitutional Convention
your Governor of Massachusetts came out here...
Peabody?
F--Yes.
N--We had a meeting--well, there were two Republicans
and two Democrats at dinner with him one night--and
he was very anxious to get a constitutional conven­
tion and have their constitution rewritten. I don't
know whether he ever did or not.
F--No.
N--He never did?
F--No. Massachusetts is really still struck by some
very archaic mechanisms.
N--When we got finally down to it, the only man I could
see that I thought would do would be A1 Bentley.
The
next morning I called A1 in and I said, "A1, I've got
a job for you." He said, "Steve, I told you I'd do
anything I could for the Convention.
I'll be glad to
do it." "Well," [I said], "I want you to be Chairman
of the Education Committee." He pretty near fell off
his chair. He said, "I don't know anything about
education." I said, "Well, maybe that's the reason
I want you."

A 561
Nisbet
Well, you know, A1 took hold of that job. He had
some good strong education men on that committee,
like Anspach, Hannah, Bonisteel, Don Lawrence, and
a few others like that.
I think they did about the best job of any committee
in the Constitutional Convention. They did a
tremendous job. A1 became quite an authority on
education.
F--He really built his public career in this arena.
N--Yes he did. Later he was appointed Chairman of the
Governor’s Commission on Education....
F--...On the Blue Ribbon Committee?
N--Yes, the Blue Ribbon Committee.
I ’ve always felt
that that was one of the good appointments I made.
F--One of the sad things, if he hadn't been shot....
I always have believed that he never really recovered
from being shot. When I met him he was always sickly
looking.
I guess the bullet must have hit him in the
liver or something. He was a great man that died
early.
N-~That was a tragic thing, very, very tragic.
a Regent of the University of Michigan.

A1 became

F--I want to talk to you about that later because I
believe that one of the questions I raise about the
ineffectiveness of the State Board in question 16
has to do with the failure of not electing people who
were wise and represented Republican sentiment, too.
N--That was one of the real tragedies in connection with
Con-Con. I thought we had a good strong educational
article but the State Board that we got out of it was
very ineffective for many reasons.

A 562

Nisbet
F--We'll come back to that.
Certainly not having
Bentley’s advice and counsel--and Briggs and the
like--hurt.
You were selected as the President.
How did that
happen? There was Romney and Hannah and...
N--I think everyone was suspicious of the Convention.
It
was only passed by a few votes, people were afraid of
it. A lot of people are afraid of change.
I think
the conservatives wanted to be sure they had control
of the Convention.
The Romney group wanted to control
the Convention.
F--The conservatives had more of an influence in that body
than they have had ever since.
N--That's right.
F--And there was good old Eddie Hutchinson.
N--There were strong conservatives there. You take Ed
Hutchinson, Hale Brake, Jim Farnsworth, and groups
like that. They were pretty powerful individuals.
F--Hale Brake was a much more powerful man then than he
later was. He was probably at the acme of his influence.
N--Hale’s age, I think, made a difference.
Hale has had
quite an influence in Michigan government.
F--You had George pretty well isolated, in a sense.
N--When they came to nominate for the presidency they
nominated Romney and Hutchinson.
I kind of thought
in the beginning that it would be between those two.
But right away I think someone sensed the situation
and nominated Hannah, and then somebody nominated
Jim Pollock^ [of the] University of Michigan.
I
James Kerr Pollock; Republican from Ann Arbor; Murfin
Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan.

A 563
Nisbet
always kind of felt Pollock's nomination was--and I
like Jim very much--was Michigan State versus the
University.
The fellow who nominated Hannah was a
Michigan State alumnus.
Anyway, it started out and they were fairly even in
their ballots. We balloted for, I think, nine ballots
that first day.
It would be up and down but nobody got
anywhere near a majority.
I think the highest
Hutchinson ever got was 45 and the highest Romney ever
got was 39. They were consistently the leaders. Hannah
and Pollock were behind them. We balloted Saturday
afternoon and finally somebody said w e '11 go home and
we'll come back Monday morning and start over again.
Well, you know, you couldn't help but think that the
political leaders --and I wasn't a political leader and
I wasn't involved in this thing at all--will get together
over the weekend and this thing will be solved. W e ’11
be back and the thing will work itself out Monday
afternoon. By golly, we went back Monday afternoon and
the first vote was almost identical with the last vote
on Saturday. There was no change over the weekend at
all. So they balloted five or six more times and there
didn't seem to be any break anywhere.
Somebody came and asked me if I 'd let my name be put in.
I said, "Heavens, I don't want that job.
I wasn't going
to go to the Convention in the first place and I don't
want it." Well, they said, "We're tied up here, we
aren't getting anywhere." I said, "Well, ok, w e '11 put
my name in...." thinking that maybe a new person in
there would break it up enough so that the thing would
be solved. It didn't work that w a y . The first ballot
I think I had 29 votes. The second one I think I had
41 and on the third one I was elected. So it just came
out that way.
F--I suspect your earlier observations were accurate.
I
had the sense that the Convention didn't want to get
caught in reflecting some of the political....
N--I think that's probably true. You see, while I was a
Republican, I always got along real well with the
leading Democrats, like Gus Scholle and Walter Reuther

A 564
Nisbet
7

and Tom Downs . I got to know a lot of these people
in the United Fund and had worked with them in the
United Fund.
I think we both kind of had some kind
of trust in each other.
F--One of the reasons for the Convention was that there'd
been an awful lot of bad blood and foolishness over
the conflicts in the Legislature.
It really sort of
destroyed Governor Williams.
N--The same thing was true in the Convention on one issue.
That was the issue of reapportionment.
Really, the
Convention was almost unanimous on every issue except
reapportionment. I finally wound up with the
responsibility.
F--You had a difficult time with the Convention because
you had the labor people, I think, distressed that
they didn't have representation and strength. You
had four conservatives quite eager to cement into
concrete fiscal policy--and Hutchinsom was a tough
man. And you had that background of Michigan versus
Michigan State.
N--That was there. It had been fought through the
Legislature over the change of Michigan Agricultural
College to Michigan State University.
F--So you got selected, and then later you were on the
Michigan State University Board.
N--That's right. Right at the end of the Convention
somebody came and wanted to know if I would run for
the University Board.
I said no.
I ’d served on the
State Board for twenty years, I had just retired from
Gerbers, and I felt I'd served my time in Michigan.
I'd been in a lot of activities.
I came home that night and told Dorcas about it. She
said, "Well, maybe you ought to taper off instead of
quitting all at once. Maybe you ought to take that
Tom Downs; Democrat from Detroit; delegate to
Constitutional Convention.

A 565
Nisbet
job if you can get it and try to taper down that way."
Which I guess was a good idea.
So I went back the
next morning and talked to John Hannah about it. I
was nominated and elected to the Michigan State Board
of Trustees.
F--You’ve had virtually 40 years of activity in Michigan
public life, concerned with education essentially.
One of the things that I ’m hopeful to see happen as
a result of the dissertation is a real good look at
program politics.
There's been too much attention to
the stuff that gets to the newspaper and not enough
to what we've really done in area programs.
N--Maybe even worse than that. We've become too much
enamoured by television.
It seems to me that what
we're doing now is taking the man who has the most
charm and suave and forgetting entirely what the
fundamentals of the job are and what he ought to be
able to do.
I think you're right on that.
F--One of the things that is of great concern to me--I'm
a historial by training and came to the Legislature
as the first program analyst--is that issues of content
don't get discussed.
We live in a state--this is my
personal opinion--with very bad newspapers.
N--No, I don't agree that our newspapers are bad.
we have some very good papers in Michigan.

I think

F--But hardly any public event that deserves serious study
ever gets anything except the most cursory coverage.
I don't think that people ever know what the issues
are.
N--I would have to agree with you on that.
F--And TV. We have maybe one or two good local stations
that handle any news.
I think of channel 2 in Detroit
and channel 8 in Grand Rapids. And they give 40 seconds.
What can you talk about in 40 seconds that gives you any
news?
N--That's right.
I was on Willis Dunbar's "Face Michigan."
Western Michigan had a program when he was living.
He'd have some figure of the state come in and discuss
various things. Well, you finally got some in-depth

A 566
Nisbet
thinking about a subject, but it only happened once
a month.
F--And the audience was probably not very high. One of
the things I think that should be done, and it's sort
of a surprising thing, is that constitutional reform
in the states has not occurred very frequently.
N--No.

Very rarely.

F--1 1m trying to recollect...
I believe it's Maryland
that recently ran a constitution through and got beat.
For all of the strength you had in the selection of
the committee in the Convention, winning it was a very
near thing.
N--That's right. There were three problems: The first one
was getting anybody to agree to have a constitutional
convention; the second one was to produce a document
that was good for the state; but the most important
thing was to get the darn thing adopted. Many of them
never got them adopted.
F--Well, we've got ten years, exactly, of operation of the
Constitution. From my view Michigan government now
runs pretty effectively.
There are few real legacies
that I can find, except for the fiscal policy of putting
the rate into the Constitution itself, that people now
have much unhappiness over.
The streamlining of the
government, and the like, people are happy with. Yet
it was a near thing that the document was ever passed.
As you look through the Con-Con book and look at the
pictures, virtually every major public figure--and
this excluded legislators too, and that's a point I
think people forget--came through that Convention.
If you take a look at the senators, mayors, legislators,
members of boards, commissions, something like 60 percent of
those people went into government.
N--You know, that was a strange thing. It didn't start
out that way, but I think a lot of people, after they
went through the Convention, were rather enamoured by
government and decided they wanted to get involved in
government.

A 567
Nisbet
F--Even people like the elder Hood . He didn’t run again
but his two sons became members of the Legislature.
If you take a look at that, there’s probably been no
greater watershed, except perhaps for one man-one vote,
on the impact of modern Michigan political history
since the depression.
N--That's right.
F--And as I look through the literature I cannot find,
Mr. Nisbet, one good history of that event. What
frightens me is that many of these people are dying.
We're losing some of the men of the greatest wit and
insight. I'm afraid that 25 years from now somebody
will want to write it, because it will stand in
historical perspective, and there will be nothing on
the record.
N- -People w o n 't be there to do it.
F- -My experience with the Legislature is that virtually
nothing is ever put on paper. Almost all the conver­
sation , the deals getting worked out, the understandings,
the give and take--that isn't the exchange of documents,
that’s the exchange of personalities. And Romney, when
I was there, hardly ever put anything on paper.
We
made those contributions as men exchanged ideas.
Milliken’s the same way, although there’s a different
style.
N--A different style, yes.

I think you’re right.

F--Romney was much more central to each question, Milliken
more of a negotiator.
N--They were more personal to Romney, or he made them more
personal.
F--George cared very much about each event.
N--Yes, and he was very sincere about it.
F--1 think he cared about education, too.
N--Yes, George Romney was on the Education Committee.
^Morris W. Hood, Sr.; Democrat from Detroit; State
Representative; delegate to Constitutional Convention.

A 568

Nisbet
F--So I guess that's one of the reasons that Con-Con is
an important element.
More so, I think, than the Blue
Ribbon Committee because in a way the Blue Ribbon
Committee took the consensuses that were available
and moved them along.
N--I think that's right.
yes.

That was the background for it,

F--Then a wide discussion by influential people like
Scholle, Reuther, Downs, Bentley, Glenn Allen, and
the like. Everybody sort of understood what was going
on. When the Blue Ribbon came, Romney did something
very astute, I think.
He built that Blue Ribbon
Committee very wide--must have been 50 members of the
stature of people like Heavenrich. When Milliken did
the school reform, he got only five people on it.
That was no good.
N--No. I think on a thing like that you've got to get
breadth.
F--You've got to put Mr. Banker, Mr. Industrialist,
Mr. School Teacher, and Mr. Laborer on.
N--That's right.
If you're going to get acceptance you've
got to have representation.
F--Look at what Con-Con did by bringing
Bluestone and Woodcock.
They've not
educational issues again in the past
Don Stevens was another one that was
brought importance.

in people like
been tied into our
five or six years.
brought in and

N--I think that Con-Con did do that.
I think they brought
a great divergence of opinion into the Convention.
The only case I ever heard of where anybody felt left
out was Joe Parisi^, and Joe, I think, had a personal
axe to grind.
In fact, I never heard of it until the
5

Joseph A. Parisi, Jr.; Executive Director, Michigan
Toivnships Association.

569
Nisbet
Convention was over.
I said, "Well, he's just left
out of the Convention." It was his own fault.
But outside of that, I think there was a great gathering
of opinions and thinking in this state which helped.
F--The other point that I think about, Mr. Nisbet, is this:
After 1964 the Republicans truly became far, far less
influential than they'd ever been since 1932.
From
1964 on the Democrats controlled the House essentially.
In the next ten years--all but four years--they con­
trolled the Senate, too. They had legitimate
maj orities. They began to elect congressmen in sizeable
proport ions, and the like. And yet they've done almost
nothing to retrench on the Constitution.
N--You come again to the State Board of Education.
The first
State Board of Education was, in my opinion, completely
political.
In the first place, they were all members of one party.
They were not necessarily people who were qualified
for the broad range of education. You had some pro­
fessionals on it, and you had some teachers on it, but
they weren't people who had the vision that the
Constitutional Convention had for education in Michigan.
In the second place, they immediately got in wrong with
the Legislature. They got concerned with what their
own salary and their own expense was going to b e . They
ran into conf1ict with the Legislature and for the first
few years it was a constant battle. Maybe it still is,
I don't know.
F--I taught at Delta College in Saginaw and I was the chapter
treasurer of the AAUP [American Association of University
Professors]. I had a conversation right when they were
barnstorming the state to win support with Charles Morton.
Morton said something to me that struck me --you probably
would never recollect this. He said, "We never imagined
w e 'd have such successful polls because it was atypical."
In fact, there's only been two elections in Michigan
history as landslide in proportion: the election of
Nixon against McGovern and Goldwater versus Johnson.
N--Morton, I think, was one of the good members of the State
Board.

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F--Morton was. Morton said, "We never expected this, so
we only put up four good guys and stuck in four bums."
He didn’t use the word "bums", he hardly...
N--I know.
F--...Four less able to balance the political problems
of the political convention.
They had hoped the top
four Democrats and the top four Republicans would build
a balanced...
N- -... a balanced program.
F--Then you got people like Leon Fill who didn't have
the credibility, the education, or expertise and all
of a sudden we lost very astute people.
N--That has always been to me the one very disappointing
thing about our Con-Con: the fact that we didn't get
a State Board of Education that was strong enough,
motivated enough, or ideal enough to envision the job
that we had for them.
F--I talked to Ira Polley, John Porter, and Senator Lane.
I lean to the view--which Senator Lane would concur
with but Ira wouldn't --that the selecting of the fight
over Flint was a foolish fight; to expend all of their
resources and credibility so early on what was perhaps
impossible. They were running against Mr. Mott rather
than attempting to build that credibility of an
efficient staff that was credible to the institutions.
It was a mistake that turned us away from the
Constitutional Convention’s aspiration.
It could still
come because the legal mechanisms are there. Whether
it will in fact happen is hard to say.
N--Well, that’s true.
I hope, anyway, that we've had a
different attitude in approaching it the last few
years.
I think we've had some changes on the State
Board that have been good for it, but whether it can
ever overcome its bad start, I don't know.

A 571
Nisbet
F--One of the other elements is that I don't think that
people who aren't very close to the situation under­
stand the tremendous power that Michigan's institu­
tions have: psychological power, the love that people
have for the institutions.
I'm not just talking about
State or Michigan, I'm talking about places like
Central and Ferris. The pharmacists of this state
have tremendous admiration and love for Ferris. The
strength that these schools have in people's minds,
and the fantastic strength that John Hannah had...
N--I think John Hannah--and you ask people who were
influential with policy--far and away was the leader
of policy-making in that era. For all the criticism
that people may have for John Hannah, he still was
the education leader.
F--1 '11 tell you where I am. I happen to thinkthat
John Hannah was one of the giants ofAmerican
history
in education.
N--Those who were opposed to him accused him of being
a brick-and-mortar m a n . That was the old expression,
"John had brick and mortar."
I never thought that was true. Now, it was true that
he did build, but he was building facilities for
professors, facilities for students, and he built
housing. How in the devil would Michigan State have
taken care of the numbers of students that wanted to
come if they hadn't had that kind of housing in the
beginning?
F--They could never have

done it.

N--They could never have

done it.

F--And you can't have an academic program without physical
facilities.
N--I always had the feeling that Hannah was very success­
ful in his building program.
There was no question
about that. I could see why Gar Lane was upset with
Hannah, but if Hannah hadn't had that vision and the
ability to get it, State would never have...
F- -1 can understand Gar very much.

I worked for him for

A 572
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four years.
It comes down very simply for Gar--less
so for others.
Gar was pro-Michigan, blue to the
socks. Michigan was important to Flint as no other
institution was, Mr. Mott loved Michigan, and that
xvas that.
N--That’s right.

That was that.
6

F--I think about your remark about Clair White , who had
a gift of saying very cruel things at times.
Clair’s
remark when John Hannah left was, "The cement mixers
ran for 20 days after he left, in memory." I think
that Hannah was a great, great man.
I have his
picture hanging on my wall, and I ’m not much for hero
worship.
N--I think he’s a great man too.
F--Thirty years of public work gets men beat up. Every
time you’re in a fight, well you know, you just
can't ...
N--I think John Hannah showed his greatness, too, when
he stepped aside at Michigan State.
F--He didn’t have to go.
N--No, he didn’t have to go, he had his Board with him.
He didn't have to leave Michigan State.
F--He had the votes, still.
N--You bet he had the votes.
F--I don't knoxtf whom I talked to, but I talked to somebody
who told me how John used to encourage people to join
the Board. While it's true
that Huff wastaking a
chunk out of him, and Clair
was, there weren’tenough
votes to get rid of him.
N--You know, I like Clair White very much, w e ’re good
Clair White; Democrat from Bay City; Member, Michigan
State University Board of Trustees, 1965-72; former member,
Board of Governors, Wayne State University.

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personal friends.
He could cut like the devil. He
had a sharp tongue and was kind of clever with it.
And Huff was the same way, from an entirely different
angle, a different viewpoint, a different technique.
They did a lot of talking but when it came down to
votes they never had them.
F--No, and a guy like Huff knew that, too.
N--Oh, he knew it.
F--I don't think Clair might have, but Huff knew how to
count the house.
As I look at that: The strength of the institutions,
and what they’d done for the people, was such that
the schools didn't trust the State Board.
They were
afraid that the difference between coordination and
control ivas such a delicate line that the bureaucrats
wouldn't honor the historical tradition.
I'm very conscious of those words "historical tradi­
tion" in our state. They fought it and there was no
way without Republican support and the civic worthies
of the community being tied into the State Board that
they could be effective.
N--I think that's true.
it, of course.

There were a lot of angles to

F--Well, you take a look at the people you served with
and then take a look at the spector of Michigan public
life--they're everywhere.
So it really brought up a
tremendous upwelling of people.
The rest of them sort
of passed away from the Legislature and the old govern­
ment structures.
Now, maybe this is a bias--I come from Massachusetts
where the government is poor and corrupt--I'm very
proud of this state. It's an honest state with very
little corruption, almost none, at the state level,
and it's well run. It's got a good agricultural
department, a good highway department, a good depart ment of natural resources, and good public schools.
They put a lot of money into public schools, they've
built one heck of an education system.

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N--Another thing that I think may be a little rarer here
than in other states is that the Legislature has con­
sistently backed education in Michigan.
F--That comes to the first question.
In 1958 we spent
$80 million on higher education--that's community
colleges and four-year institutions--in 1970 it was
some $260 million.
That's quite a testament.
N--I can recall so many times in board meetings when
they'd talk about this argument, this fight with the
Legislature. Michigan State wanted $70 million and
they'd give them $68 mill ion, and the University
would want $85 million and they'd give them $82 million.
You had the feeling that there was a constant battle
going on in the Legislature. In a way that was true,
trying to get your total appropriations, which you
never did and which you really never expected to get
either. Although I don't think budgets were padded.
But in spite of all that, over the years I've always
said that I felt that the schools of Michigan, higher,
secondary, and elementary, were very well treated by
the Legislature.
F--All you have to do is look at Ohio or Illinois or
Montana to see the difference. I can remember numbers
like $70 million because I did the staff work. Part
of that was rhetoric for the campus community.
Every­
body knows in every one of these president's offices
how much money is available in the till, and they
know that welfare and mental health have to get their
share,
N--Have to get their share.

That's right.

F--11 wouldn't be good for one part of the government to
prosper and the other to live in deep need.
N--No sir, the state couldn't live with that type of a
thing, nor could education, very long.
F--No, because this state's not divided.
That’s probably
an observation that we should explore because in 1950
and 152 it was divided, although education doesn't
seem to have been part of that division. W e 've never
fought with each other, the welfare people against the
mental health, and the mental health against...

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N--No, I think that's true.
F--Everybody's sort of seen that the other parts had a
component in the good life.
What do you think are the reasons for the expansion
of higher education in Michigan from 1958 on?
N--I think we were ready for it, the finances were
available, and people became more conscious of the
need for higher, or more, education.
I think that
the situation was developing where there was the
opportunity for education to step in and fill gaps
that had not been filled before.
I think we had good
leaders in education in Michigan at that particular
time. Again, I come back to the Hannahs, the Anspachs,
Jim Miller over at Western, and Sponberg a little later
at Eastern.
I think all those things were building up to a kind of
a climax that was ready for acceptance if the money
were available and if the Legislature would provide
the money.
F--There's another side to that besides the money that
was available in the general fund of the treasury-the prosperity that was available to the workers.
N--That's right.
I think that was another thing--the
prosperity of the people in general. More youngsters
could go to school.
I think there were more scholar­
ship funds available in your universities.
F--John Porter said something that struck me as quite
sensible. He said there were giants in the land
here, not only in education but also in labor and
industry.
N--Well, you take people in Michigan industry like
Walker Cisler, or even our Dan Gerber here in Fremont
in a small way.
F--Dow.
N--Bob Briggs of Consumers Power.

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Nisbet
F--Briggs was later in government as Commissioner of
Banking.
7

N- -Yes, but you know, there were a lot of people --the Uptons
in Benton Harbor and St, Joe--that you could name all
over the state that were, as John Porter called them,
giants. They were big men in their fields.
I think they
saw the need and they not only didn’t attempt to block it,
they furthered it.
F--I agree with you.
fine.

W e ’re skipping around some but that’s

One of the things is that labor, rather than just being
concerned with lunch-pail issues, wanted the workers to
have something to buy that was real.
N--You asked four questions on the position of labor, industry,
commerce, and agriculture. I don't think there’s any
question that labor was very strong for education. They
realized it for their own people. There were more of
them, of course. That’s why they were strong in the
United Health and Welfare Fund. They said, "We have
more people that receive the benefits of these organiza­
tions than any other, w e 've got to be for it." Well,
the same thing was true for education. There were more
people in labor to be educated, who would receive the
benefit of it.
F--It’s also my understanding that around this time--this is
the time of the Russian Sputnik--people were concerned
about being a one -industry state and wanted to broaden
their technology. Industry was concerned about improving
the education of the citizenry so they could have higher
skills available to them.
What about agriculture? They didn't have as many voices.
It seems in some ways that John Hannah spoke very strongly
for agriculture.
N--I think John Hannah was a great voice of agriculture, but
you did have men like [Walter W.] Wightman and Dan Reed
of the Farm Bureau who were quite outspoken for education
too.
Agriculture has been, as you well know, hampered, I
think, to some extent in Michigan by having so many
7
The Upton Family founded the Upton (Frederick S.)
Foundation, St. Joseph, Michigan.

A 577
Nisbet
organizations. Now, this was 25 years ago. We
recognized that and we tried at that time to
organize the Ag Council.
I think there were 76 farm
organizations in Michigan at that time: bee keepers,
dairy keepers, milk producers, honey folk--just all
kinds.
F--I was talking to somebody just two days ago--I can’t
recollect, who it was, maybe I was talking to Senator
Beadle about this--and I was struck very much by the
fact that when you think about big industry you think
about a small, hard group. I ’m struck by the fact
that Michigan agriculture has never spoken with one
voice.
N--No.
F--The dairy men have their own, the fruit growers
another, and the cherry growers another.
N--We did get the Ag Council organized but it never
became real effective as a complete voice of agri­
culture in Michigan. As you said, there was never
any one group, like the Farm Bureau or the Farm
Union, that spoke for Michigan agriculture, although
they did have some pretty strong people.
F--But they never worked together like the unions did.
N--No, never.
F--One of the reasons I asked you the question is that
it looks to me like, while you saw forces fighting
appropriation levels, or while you saw them fighting
taxation levels, there just never seemed to be any
real displeasure about the amount of money spent for
education.
N--No, never,

That's very true.

F--And when you worked the articles in Con-Con, they were
ideal elements because guys like Hutchinson knew how
to do that sort of thing. You could have limited the
spending level, could have mandated the tuition level,
could have mandated the size, but they didn’t do any
of this.

A

578

Nisbet
N--No, and it was good that they didn't because that
was not constitutional material.
F--No, but there were plenty of things that happened.
We used to say "the big print giveth and the small
print taketh away." There was plenty of room for
small print, because you had so many major issues.
N--Well, I think we find in general that Michigan has
supported higher education in all of its facets to
quite a marked degree.
F--During the Convention and during your time in public
life, particularly in the period I'm interested in,
what do you think the policy objectives were that
underlay this expansion?
Certainly one, as you said, was to create opportuni­
ties for the working people to go to school.
N--Yes, I think so.
I think the recognition by all the
groups of the need for better higher education, of
diversified higher education.... For instance, it
used to be that we had the old academic mathematics,
languages, science, and so forth.
I think w e 've
broken away from that tremendously.
You have put a question in here where you mention
vocational education. I think education has come to
recognize that you couldn't have the same educational
level for all students. You had to have a variety
of curricula to take care of the students of varying
abilities, varying capacities, varying talents.
You mentioned Ferris Institute, for instance. At
that particular time, Ferris Institute, before it was
Ferris State College, was the only school in the state
that had what we would call a vocational education
philosophy to any extent at all.
F--And you didn't have to be a high school graduate to g o .
N--No, you didn't have to be a high school graduate.
You mentioned the pharmacists in the state--there's
no question Ferris has always had the outstanding
pharmacy school in Michigan. In fact, about the only
one outside of Wayne.

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Nisbet
He was Head of the Department of Education at the
University of Chicago.
I got to know him--he lives
out here at the lake about seven or eight miles now-three years ago, I guess. We had a cottage out on
the lake near him, and he would come up here on
weekends at that time.
He was a great community college man. He has done a
lot that people don’t know anything about in creating
the community college influence in Michigan. He's
done the same thing in Florida.
They built a tremen­
dous community college program down there. Well,
that's beside the point, I just wanted to draw his
name into the picture.
I think a lot of people in these areas tried to
provide something for their students that couldn't
go anyplace else, or tried to provide a different
curriculum for them that they wouldn't get in another
institution.
F--Besides the object of creating educational opportunity
and diversity of institutions so it wasn't all just
liberal arts, did you also have the desire in the
public policy field to limit the size of institutions?
Jim Farnsworth talked about the distinct desire not to
have the California-type institution with 160,000
people in it.
N--At one time, as you well know, that was quite important
in the Legislature.
They spoke of putting limits on
schools.
They never did it, but the feeling was there.
F--They did it, but without breaching the Constitution.
N--Yes, that's right.
F--What they did was make dollars available to small
schools so they could compete in scholarships and
faculty.
N--They did it in a backhand way.
In other words, they
encouraged the building up of the Centrals, Westerns,
and Easterns who would take students that would normally
go to Michigan or Michigan State.

A 580
Nisbet
I think that people recognized that you needed a
different type of higher education for different
levels of talents, and for different levels of
ability, because the A students and the C students
were going to the same university.
F--And the A students and the C students both had to work
N--Yes.
F--Would you say that that was one of the reasons for
the encouragement of new institutions? Don't forget
we built Saginaxtf Valley, and Grand Valley; we
encouraged Dearborn, Flint, Oakland; and we built
about 15 new community colleges.
N--I think a lot of it. I don't want to put Grand Valley
in with the community college idea--except it started
that way, didn't it?
F--1 wasn't thinking of that just as a community college.
I think that we built institutions across the whole
spectrum. You encouraged the growth of Tech, which
was a hole in the wall--you built fantastically there.
You encouraged the growth of normal schools--and I
would say the four schools of the State Board--to
become diversified, comprehensive institutions.
Central is nothing like it was 20 years ago. It's a
place where people go not just to become teachers.
N--It became a Michigan university then.
F--You built regional universities and you encouraged the
growth of community colleges in a most fantastic way.
N--There's a man in this state--you've never heard of him
I'm sure--who's had a lot of influence on community
college growth and that's a Dr. Leonard K o o s ^ . He
was a man that first started what was then called the
junior college movement.
8

Leonard V. Koos; Director of Research, American
Association of Junior and Community Colleges, 1946-62.

A 581
Nisbet
F--From 1964 to 1970 I don't believe Michigan got one
single building built with the general funds of the
state.
N--I think you're probably right.
F--Whereas a-place like Tech got five.
N--Yes.
Look what they did to Ferris.
I remember saying
to Vic Spathelf one time, "Vic, you've been treated
better by the Legislature than any Michigan institution.
As long as you keep Ferris to the philosophy that it
has now, you'll get that, but if you try to be another
liberal arts college you're going to be treated just
like everybody else."
F--They built the same thing at Lake Superior. Why, that
was a hole.
I don't know how to put it delicately.
It was the most rat-trap place I ever saw in my life.
N--Well, that was desert for a while.
F--And they built five or six buildings there.
N--Yes, beautiful.
F--So I guess they did have that public policy, but there
was consensus for it.
N--Yes, that's right.
satisfied with it.

That was acceptable.

People were

F--I don't believe, myself, working there, that Michigan
State has any real great desire to grow much bigger in
terms of its size. In terms of its program complexity,
that’s a different story.
N--Y ou're talking about Michigan State. Now, another man
that I think has had a big influence is D r . Wharton.
He came late in that period you're talking about, but
I think since h e 's been there h e 's had a pretty good
influence on education in Michigan.
F--I talked to Fleming--he was interviewed earlier--and
he said no matter what the talent of the man who was
the president of Michigan or Michigan State, because of
the tremendous value to the public of these institutions,
any man would be bound to have a major influence.

A 582
Nisbet
It looks to me like some of the statesmanship that's
been exhibited between Michigan and Michigan State,
for instance, has to be credited to Fleming and
Wharton.
They're men of skill.
N--As an example of where they've influenced--both of
them talked to the Detroit Economic Club.
The Detroit
Economic Club is quite an organization down there, and
they've talked to similar groups in various other
cities (business groups and farm groups) where I think
they've made quite an impression on the attitude of
the people towards education.
F--Are there any other aspects of the policy, besides
the diversity of education, creating the opportunity,
and perhaps encouraging the growth of institutions,
that you'd like to add to the public policy objectives?
Much of Con-Con was concerned with the government
structure, the management structure of higher education
which we really didn't hear about.
What were some of
the dialogues about that?
N--I think the government's standpoint, as you know, was
that the various institutions ought to have their own
boards. Which is understandable because when I first
went on the State Board of Education--we'11 say
M t . Pleasant was 3,500 students, Western 5,500,
Eastern 4-5,000--one state board might have done fairly
well in managing them, but as they got up to 15-16,000
students, it was impossible for one board to adequately
supervise, pass judgment, and help on policies.
Out of
that came the desire for each school to have its own
board. And that was the one thing that came out of the
Constitution.
The second question was how that board should come into
existence.
Should it be an appointed board or an
elected board? Well, the majority felt it should be an
appointed board and I agreed with it.
I would prefer to have all education boards appointed.
Now, some people say you're taking away from the public
the right to vote, but this is kind of a special field.
Just because a man can get votes doesn't necessarily
make him a good officer of a university.

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Nisbet
F--Some people who would make fine board members just
aren’t cut out, personalitywise...
N--I was going to say that some of your [potentially]
good board members would not submit to the elective
process.
They wouldn’t want to go before a convention
to have their name placed in nomination, they wouldn't
want to conduct a campaign, but they would take an
appointment.
So I think you get a better board, and
with less politics in it, too, when it's appointed.
F--You know, that's an interesting aside.
I remember in
1970 when Michigan State was very volatile. Senator
Zollar said to m e , "I can't fathom this. Here we are
a Senate Appropriations Committee that's elected
politically." We had five Republicans and three
Democrats then. He said, "We're less political about
education than the board of control at Michigan State."
And he also implied the same for the other two schools.
I often thought about that. When the politicians could
afford to be nonpolitical about education, what the
blazes were the elected board members being so political
about?
N--I think the board at Michigan State was more political
than any of the other boards.
F--I think that's true.
N--I think it came about between personalities on the board
itself.
F--I think that's been a strong impetus for appointed boards.
N--Yes, I do too. I think that's very true. So out of
that came the appointment of the four boards for the
regional universities.
The second thing w a s , I think that both Hannah and
Bonisteel--who kind of represented the University, or
stood for the University in the Constitutional
Convention--had a very strong feeling to keep the
authority of the boards from being impinged upon.
F--Certainly that's one of the ambiguities of the
Constitutional Convention.
In one section the colleges

A 584
Nisbet
are given autonomous power--and autonomy is a very
powerful word--and in another section the State Board
is responsible for coordination and planning.
N--You mentioned a little earlier that there was a very
fine line there. Maybe the line was too fine. Maybe
you couldn’t have coordination and autonomy. Maybe it
was impossible.
I don’t know, but it was to be. We
recognized that it would be a very fine line and would
require very close cooperation between the State Board
of Education and the boards of the various universities.
I regret to say that that cooperation never was
achieved.
I think it was because of the fear that you
couldn't reach it, but I don't think much of an attempt
was made to reach it. I ’m afraid I blame the State
Board of Education a little more for this than I do
the boards of the institutions because I think in the
beginning they never made any attempt to attain that
degree of cooperation between the various boards.
F--Was the dialogue concerned about duplication and com­
petition? Was that one of the reasons you went for...
N--Yes. They were concerned with duplication, I think,
more than competition, but...
F--Well, duplication and competition are the same.
N - -I think the two would probably go together more than
separate. Yes, I think that was one of the reasons.
For instance, take the field of forestry. Michigan
has a school of forestry and State has a school of
forestry.
F--And Tech does.
N--Yes.
Did we need those three?
Couldn't we take..,

That was the question.

F--You know what we used to say about that? We used to
say, Michigan has the money, State has the students,
and Tech has the trees.
N--Well, I guess there’s something to that.

A 585

Nisbet
F--Let’s talk about that because duplication is a political
term.
If you want institutions to be able to compete
in the marketplace for status, really you made the
first decision when you decided to permit schools to
have their own boards and to let schools have the title
of university so they wouldn1t appear in the marketplace
of the public's mind to be inferior. You had already
made the decision to encourage duplication.
Now the other thing is that I find that --and it's going
to be difficult to write about because duplication is
like motherhood--you don't regard saying "no duplication"
an acceptable way to lower the cost in the industrial
sectors. You don't go to Ford and say, "You can't make
stationwagons because GM is doing it." And Gerbers
isn't saying to Beechnut, "Don't make beets because
w e '11 do beets and you'11 do cabbages."
In the American system, the lure of the marketplace is
supposedly one of the things that you want. One of
the things that keeps us different than the Soviet
system is that we encourage competition. The minute
you have competition you give the people a chance to
vote with their feet. Enrollments tell you something.
Now I suppose the other thing that makes me think that
duplication was a false issue --and still does -- is that
when you come to a community like this one, how many
grocery stores have you got? Well, why not close up
a couple? You see, that's not acceptable to you.
What's the matter with having more than one medical
school?
N--1 think that was one feature.
to it, though.

There was another side

For instance, here's the picture in the South. No
school in the South was large enough to have a school
of veterinary medicine. So the schools down there got
together and they said, "We'11 put the school of
medicine in Tennessee," for instance.
F--You're talking about the Southern Regional Education
Board?
N--Yes. I think that was some of the thinking here, that
things will come up for which no school is large

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enough to have a facility, so maybe we ought to have
a facility in one school and refer our people there.
I'm afraid that Michigan isn't in that situation, as
they were in the South.
I had to change my mind a
little bit.
F--I think so, too.
I looked at the Southern Regional
Education Board and was quite impressed with it.
I tried to encourage, when I worked for the Legislature,
the development of instate residential opportunities
for Ohio residents to send their kids to our forestry
schools (which Ohio doesn't have) in return for our
sending our kids to optometry (which we don't have).
And also making instate residential fees available
from Wisconsin for Michigan residents, particularly
those people who live in the western end of the UP
and the Menominee Peninsula, in return for making
20 places available in the vet school.
I couldn't get that to happen because Michigan's
Legislature, and its public executive, aren't willing
to cooperate with any of the adj acent states because
you get Canada, which is a foreign country, and then
the fact is that Ohio and Indiana are noticeably
negligent in what they spend for public services.
And Illinois was too crooked.
You would think that there could be commonality, but
for some reason, I don't know why, Michigan looked
to New York and New York to Michigan and neither of
us looked to Illinois.
N--Coming back to this veterinary medicine deal, you look
for ideals and you try to supplement, but sometimes
you can't make it. I think maybe that was one thing
in Michigan.
There were other factors, like Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
and Wisconsin, where you would have thought they could
have got together, for instance, in a school of
j ournalism or something and made a really outstanding
school, but it never seemed to work out.
F--Maybe it'11 come in the future, but there doesn't seem
to be a climate for it.

A 587
Nisbet
N--No, that's right.
for it at all.

There doesn't seem to be any demand

F--Michigan's people, maybe because it's a peninsula
surrounded by a foreign country on two sides, don't
have much congress or relationship with other states.
N--Well, I think we feel quite self-sufficient on our own.
I think we have felt we are able to finance.
We've done a pretty good job in Michigan on financing
education, medicine, and highways. In financing the
needs of our state w e 've done a pretty good job.
F--We've got national industry. It may be that an
important element in discussing why some of these
mechanisms for cooperation didn’t come about is that
Michigan's people really don't want to.
N- -Yes, they probably aren't concerned.
F--You know, it's that sense of frontier.
I'm from
Massachusetts and I couldn't get over when I came,
M r . Nisbet, this weekly migration to the north to
go shoot animals. That was a great shock to m e . I
think that every man wants to own a gun. I think
that's a religious and psychiatric...
N--Michigan proves you can stir up more trouble over this
gun deal than almost anything else. You find that
certain associations will contraband and blackmail
just because of it.
F--Over guns?

Oh, yes.

It's a form ofpublic

madness.

N--That's right.
F--What about the destruction of class and culture
barriers?
N--I looked at that question and I wasn't able to do much
with it, frankly, because I haven't been exposed to
that too much. If I had come from the Detroit area I
suppose I would. Isn't that pretty much a problem of
southeastern Michigan? Have you run into it any place
else?

A 588
Nisbet
F--Wayne you think about in terms of the Blacks, and
Eastern in terms of the hilibilly-whites because they
were right in the middle of all those Appalachian
whites who came up here.
N--Yes, who came up in the war.
F--I think about the community colleges reaching people
who had never been able to go to college.
N--Well, that hasn’t been in my experience, Mr. Faverman.
I don’t think I ’ve been too aware of it, although I
guess I knew it was there.
I guess to some extent it
never really hit m e .
F--Ok, I understand that.
I don’t know if you ever thought about this, but we've
got some 9 million people living in this state. Did
you ever think how few people in this state work? I'm
not talking about idleness. W e ’ve got almost 3 million
out of the 9 million in school, from kindergarten
through graduate school. If you take those ages 0 to 5,
the people in college and school, the retired people,
and the people sick or institutionalized, you've got an
immense chunk of the population not gainfully employed.
And I think the decision to make those people who are
paying the taxes carry the burden of increasing...
You think back when you started in education how few
people really went to college, and today think about
how few don't go on after high school. It’s the rare
experience to find somebody who's not taking some type
of training. So that, I think, was what I was looking
for because that really was the destruction of class
and culture barriers.
N--Wei1, I think that’s true. You’ve hit a different angle
than I had thought o f , but you're right. There are not
many youngsters that don't go to some type of school,
and when you take that out of the population you have
rather a small group that’s supporting the state.
F--In the end it all works out because you end up with
people better qualified and the like--hopefully.
What about popularism versus elitism?
I guess I 've
been trying to get at, you know, letting everybody
go to school versus only accepting some.

l

A 589
Nisbet
Some people saw Hatcher as a very distant and aloof
man. They saw him as the personification of Michigan
and they saw Hannah as the popularist.
I'm not sure
that that's an astute question.
I've changed my mind
as I've been talking to people.
N--I think what you've said was a little bit typical of
Michigan at one time, and again with the [competition
between] University of Michigan and Michigan State.
I think they were typical of the two. People felt
that way.
I don't know that the institutions were
that way, but I think people felt that w a y .
F--I had a long talk with Fleming. You
fortunate when he talks to people of
talked to. You can learn from these
lived the experiences and have spent
them.

know, a man is
the caliber I 've
people. They've
their lives at

Well, Mr. Nisbet, one of the things that struck me
very much was that elitism is a slogan. Back East the
public schools weren't there and the private schools
stayed small. Harvard has 1 ,000 undergraduates --we'd
lose that number on Michigan State's campus. When you
take a look at that, one of the things y o u 're struck
by is that Michigan had 40,000 FTE. That's probably
65,000 human beings. That's a pretty large group to
be an elite.
It's begun to look to me like we were building a class
less society by pulling the poor into the middle class
the rich were never an important factor here anyway.
I think also about the difference between, say,
Hatcher and Fleming.
Fleming has moved a great deal
more towards the middle grounds.
N--Oh, yes. I like Harlan, personally. I think that it
may be more of a mannerism, too, than fact. He left
that opinion.
F--I have a great admiration for Keast. I thought he was
a brilliant m a n , but he came out of the private sector
He came from Cornell and he never could stand the
rough-and-tumble of public life.
N--No, he never participated.

A 590
Nisbet
F--I can recollect being told that when legislators came
to Wayne he wouldn't bother to come out o£ his office.
They thought that was arrogant.
I often thought it
was discomfort.
N--Well, he was entirely different than Hilberry. I
don't know whether the board there felt they needed
somebody different or not. You were right, he never
attained the acceptance that...
F--I think the same is true between Hatcher and Fleming.
If you told Hatcher to go to hell, he would probably
go off and be hurt.
If you told Fleming to go to hell,
he'd say, "Well, that’s a reasonable proposal.
Let's
split the cost."
N--"That's a long way to g o , but let’s look at it."
F--He'd split the cost and all of a sudden you were paying
half of the freight. Well, that's an extremely astute
mechanism, and I think that Michigan is less isolated
today than it was.
N--Yes, I think you're right. I think it was at its
height during Hatcher's and Hannah's terms. I think
Hatcher was jealous of Hannah and the growth that
Michigan State had under Hannah.
F--This is an aside, but it seems to me that some of the
criticism that comes to Wharton, because he can't
continue to succeed in certain ways the way Michigan
State did formerly, is an unfair criticism for the
reason it's not good for the state to have one insti­
tution become overly strong and another one become
weak.
Now you know, parochially, our people would
like to win every day. They would like to end up
with the score being 99 to 0. In terms of the state,
that's not a good policy.
N--That's a natural feeling, but as you say, it isn't a
good policy.
I agree with you on that.
F--I want to ask you this:
It appears to me that when
Michigan State won the fight over changing its name,
which occurred in the Legislature, afterwards a good
deal of the steam went out of the conflict. They were
pretty much, you know, just sort of racking up the
chips for the effort invested.
The degree of the

A 591
Nisbet
fight has always seemed to me to be a good deal less
real than talked about.
N--Yes, I think that's very true, that it was more a talk
thing than it was a fact thing.
It never seemed to me
that it carried over into the operation of the institu­
tion .
F--It might have been alumni because I have never--and I
was inside, M r . Nisbet, I was there in the counting
house when they were passing out the money and I
realize this is a pretty sweeping statement --1 have
hardly ever heard any Michigan institution badmouth
any other Michigan institution.
N--1 think that’s true. In all the board meetings I *ve
ever attended I have never heard one institution
vilify another one, criticize another one, or try and
promote itself above another one. I think there has
been very good feelings in the governing boards, too,
between...
F--The governing boards got on with each other?
N--Yes.
F--I*ve heard that's true. I'm well aware of the high
regard that a lot of our people at Michigan State had
for people like Goebel at Michigan. And the converse
was that they had regard for you and others.
N--I think Paul Goebel was one of the real leaders in
bringing about a mutual feeling of respect and admira­
tion between the institutions. I think Paul was a
very strong individual.
F--Hannah never really said anything bad about Hatcher or
Michigan.
N--Never in a board meeting did Hannah ever express
himself...
F--I never heard Fleming say bad of Michigan State. I
think that some of the fight was alumni, football,
rah rah talking.
N--Oh, I think it was much more vocal, as a matter of fact.

A 592
Nisbet
F--Well, what about Con-Con? I ’ve been told that
Bonisteel and Hannah had a regard for each other.
N--They were very friendly.
Hannah and Bonisteel were
very good friends and had a great respect for each
other. And again, in Con-Con, I never saw any
feeling of rivalry.
F--They weren’t trying to hurt each other, were they?
They really hung together, didn’t they, for higher
education?
N--They did all the way through.
I think one of the
powers of the Education Committee was that you had
Hannah, you had Bonisteel, and you had Anspach of
the regional universities and they all worked
together there.
F--With regard for each other.
N--Yes, with high regard

for each other.

F--So it may be a matterof personality.
I 've heard
many legislators complain to me about Hatcher driving
up in his chauffeur-driven car and being stiff.
Gar
Lane, who was pro-Michigan, referred to Hatcher as
aloof.
I think that's true.
N--Well, I think Hatcher was. For instance, they’d have
a meeting of the presidents of the universities.
They'd all be there except Hatcher. Sometimes h e ’d
send somebody to say they w e r e there, but he wouldn’t
come. Now I don't say every time, but enough to make
it apparent that he felt he was a little bit above them.
F--The community college people told me that Hannah always
told them he was a graduate of Grand Rapids Junior
College. Well, there
was that kind ofa skill with
people.
Staebler said that he thought the best politician in
the state was probably John Hannah and that he worried
that some day he was going to run against him and just
wipe the board clean.
But it was said with a great
deal of regard for him, even though Staebler was from
Ann Arbor.
N--Yes, I knew Staebler.

A 593
Nisbet
F--What about occupational and vocational training
objectives? You've already said they were
important.
N--Oh yes, I think so.
I would say it probably started
early in the sixties, but maybe before that the ground­
work was being laid.
I think we've come a long way in
Michigan in vocational training education, or whatever
you want to call it.
It's taking its place with very
good effect.
I think it's one of the fine things
of our educational system.
It's very strong now, as you well know, in the second­
ary schools and community colleges.
I don't know how
strong it will become in the universities.
I think
many feel that it is a field that should be left to
the community colleges and vocational schools.
But
as you say, we've got Ferris, we've got Michigan Tech,
we've got Lake Superior.
It's possible....
F--I'm comfortable with that for the reason that everybody
can't do everything.
N--That's right.
F--It may be that vocational things won't fall on friendly
soil in a place like Michigan, but it might at a place
like Washtenaw Community College.
N--You'd have to develop an entirely different philosophy,
particularly at Michigan.
But I think in all the
schools it might be better to keep them segregated.
F--What about the role of culture and the arts? You always
think about somebody like Jack Faxon pushing for that,
but it doesn't seem, to my mind, to have been an
important element.
N--I don't think so. When I looked at that question I
really didn't feel that that had a dominant place in
the picture.
I think it's there subconsciously, I
think it's a part of people's thinking, but as to

A 594
Nisbet
being a major factor in the development of higher
education, I just don’t think it is.
F--The problem I think is this: I’ve asked the question
because you have to, you know, follow trails even
when you’re sure of the answer. Nobody wants to say,
because of the love of learning and the respect we
have for the arts, "No, people just don't care."
So they are discomforted.
I frankly think that people just haven't cared.
It's
not been important to them. This is a state where
you come to culture after you’ve come to education.
Education comes first.
N--Yes, education comes first.
right.

I kind of think that's

F--And later that other thing will come.
N--You may have something, but as I say, I don’t think
i t’s a dominant factor or the factor.
F--We haven't put money into music and opera and the like
in the manner we have back East. We have no real good
museums.
N--I think there have been some efforts.
I think Oakland
University made some efforts with their Meadowbrook
Festival and their theater.
F--Well, that was Woody Varner...
N--That was Woody, yes.
F--...being clever about tying in.
athletic way.

He couldn't go the

N--No. Woody was concerned, too, with the people of his
area, Bloomfield Hills, and Birmingham, where he felt
they were more that way.
F--And there was the Cranbrook clientele.
N--That's right.
I don’t say that the other schools
haven't done some of that.
I think Western did just
in the last two years.
I think Jim Miller has done

A 595
Nisbet
a good deal in the dance, the theater, and the arts.
But I think it hasn't been a major thrust.
F--There's not much public support for art, either.
In
Lansing, you know, President Wharton brings in some­
thing like the National Radio Orchestra of Japan and
sixty people watch.
If you brought the Grand Ole Opry
and their rubber band there'd be 10,000 people.
N--They'd have taken the stadium for that!
F--We've already talked about the positions of labor,
commerce, industry, and agriculture. Did you want
to add anything to that, Mr. Nisbet?
N--No, I don't think so. I think they've all made a
significant contribution.
F--I guess the answer was that they really weren't in
opposition.
N--No, n o . I think if there was any place where there
was unanimity of thinking it was in education.
F--What were the pressures and influences in the deter­
mination of public policy, if any, from the federal
government?
N--1 don't think any. To m e , the big influence in the
federal government was in the research field.
The
monies that they gave to the institutions was more
for research.
I never felt that they had any effect
on the overall policy.
F--In the area of social welfare, everytime wegot a
dollar from the federal government --with which you
had to match a dollar--you had a host of requirements
that required the control in spending the entire part,
not just the federal share.
It appears to me that the federal requirements on
education were few, if any. They werebuying
a
service rather than attempting...
N - -I never felt we were limited by the federal government.
Now, I know that in some fields that's true.
F--In welfare it is.

A 596
Nisbet
N--Yes, welfare is one of them. Highways is another, to
an extent.
But I never felt in education that the
federal government put limiting factors on the schools.
F--What were the pressures and influences in the deter­
mination of public policy from the private sector?
N--Well, I again wouldn't feel that they were very
concrete.
F--Let me tell you what I had in mind. Back in
Massachusetts the private schools were very powerful
in people's minds. Harvard, MIT, Simmons, and Boston
University fought the coming of the publicly supported
institutions into the metropolitan areas. Amherst was
way back in the backwoods.
And in states out West, when there was talk about
trying to save private schools that were beginning
to decline, as they are, the public schools fought
that.
I haven't noticed in this state that when the public
schools grew, the private schools.... I think about
places like Calvin, Albion, Alma, and the University
of Detroit, all very important to their particular
people. Like Hope is to the Dutch, for example.
They didn't fight it. They cooperated.
Just this year, when Jim Farnsworth and the others
put through a bill to give a grant following the
New York plan--which Dr. Hannah served on--to the
private schools for each degree, the public schools
kept their mouths shut, even though they were losing
some money out of the pot. I 've wondered, you know,
is this evidence of statesmanship real? As far as I
can see, Mr. Nisbet, it is.
N--Well, I do too. I 've been associated with both the
private sector and the public sector.
I 've never
felt that there was a rivalry there that did damage
to either one. Although I think each made efforts
to enroll students, and each made efforts for money
in the private sector as well as the public sector.
I know Michigan came up one time and asked me if I
thought that industry would be willing to give money
to public schools, the tax-supported schools, for

A 597
Nisbet
research, or things like that.
I didn’t think that
there would be any problem there at all.
I thought
industry would support, whether it was tax-supported
or whether it wasn’t.
I guess I would say this:
I think industry has been
more liberal with the tax-supported schools than they
have the nontax-supported schools.
F--Although, you know, one of the things is this: The
private schools have a low profile, but their boards
are full of the powerful people in industry--industrialists, philanthropists...
N--You bet they are.
F--The private schools have a tremendous hold on people’s
minds.
They don’t look that way, but I sure wouldn’t
want to see a combination of Hope, Calvin, Albion,
Kalamazoo and the University of Detroit working
against the public sector.
N--Yes, they’d have a lot of influence.
F--And they didn’t use it, and I think...
N--I have a feeling that there's great respect between
the private schools and the public schools.
I don’t
think there's a rivalry there.
F--That again says something about the whole attitude.
You see, when I write this history, I think one of the
things I'm going to have to say is that for all of the
hustle and bustle there's been a strong air of states­
manship between the institutions, the various sectors
of government, and the private sectors.
N--I think you're right.
I think there’s been a feeling
in Michigan that education is important whether it’s
public or private and that it needs the support of
both sectors of the economy. W e ’ve had a very fine
relationship in Michigan between them.
Now, w e ’ve been asked, and I know the Legislature looked
at this at times, "Why is it that in Michigan 85 percent
of our students go to the public schools and 15 percent
to the private schools, when in Ohio it’s probably
50-50?" I think maybe that is truer in Ohio than

A 598
Nisbet
in other states, although it's true in other states
too. But I have the feeling that we've still had
quite a unanimity of support, even from the 8 5 percent
towards the 15 percent.
F--Yes, I think that’s true.
uniqueness of Michigan.
N--That's right,

I think that's part of the

I think, by and large.

I knew John Lederle when he was out in Northern
Massachusetts--you were mentioning the closeness of
the Harvards and the Simmons --and I think Lederle made
an attempt to break into that feeling in Massachusetts,
didn't he?
F--I don't know.
Lederle had come from Michigan and went
there, and I was here already. He didn't succeed well.
He seemed to have run into some kind of problems and
crossed the Legislature.
N--I didn't know.
I thought h e 'd done rather well out
there. Of course, about all the conversation I had
was with John, but his reports seemed to indicate a
growth of the University.
F--Oh, the University improved.
I'm not sure of this,
but my feeling was that he broke the ground and then
he got so marked up that they had to bring another
guy in to bring home the bacon.
N--Well, that could be true, too. I've had the feeling
that Michigan has been a little bit unique in its
education program. Now you take your eastern schools.
They don't have near the support that we do in
Michigan, nor do they take the numbers of students
that we have. For instance, some years ago we were
talking of giving quotas to New Jersey and New York.
F--Right, and Illinois also, as I recollect.
N--New Jersey was particularly weak in its support of
higher education.
F--And, boy, did Senator Lane used to beat me up about
that. They had that list of those states --New York,
Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio--that were sending

A 599
Nisbet
all their kids in and weren't taking any out.
I
think that's why that section is in the law, that
says you can't take more than 20 percent out-of-state.
N--To me, though, it did point out the uniqueness and
the leadership of Michigan in education.
I think
Michigan has given tremendous leadership.
F--I think it's got to have had economic benefits,
though, too.
N--0h yes.
F--And social benefits.
This state is able to encourage
inward migration because it stands for the good life.
N--Right.
F--What about the fights to locate schools in one area
rather than another?
It looks to me, and I don't want to lead the question,
that rather than saying, "If I get it you can’t have
it," they kind of built the classic position of log­
rolling and said, "Look, if only one of us can get it
this year, you help me and then next year I'll back
you." So everybody who had that kind of steam got
what he wanted.
There's hardly an area in this state that doesn't have
a school that wants one.
The only two places I think
a school could come in the next generation is one at
Traverse City and probably one in Macomb.
N--Of course Traverse City has got their own school now.
F--It's a two-year, though.
N--Yes. I think you're right about Macomb.
I think
Macomb, populationwise, could probably handle it.
I think Michigan is, I was going to say saturated,
maybe that's not the right word, but as far as
institutions I think they're pretty well taken care
of.
In Northern Michigan you've got Tech, you've
got Marquette, you've got the Soo, you've got
community colleges at Ironwood and Escanaba, I guess.

A 600
Nisbet
F--They don't have one at Marquette, though.
N--No.
F--That's one of the failures of not having the State
Board really succeed in state planning.
N--No, no. And I think territorywise, you're right.
They have a community college at Alpena now.
I don't
think there's one in Petoskey, though.
F--Yes, there is.
N--Oh yes, sure there is.
one time.

I spoke at their commencement

F--A1 Shankland.
N--Yes, A1 Shankland, that's right.
school there.

They've got a good

F--It's a good one, and it's economical.
N--Yes, they've got a good school there.
F--He runs a tight ship.
N--That's right. They used to say that Central took care
of the northern half of the Lower Peninsula, but I
don't think that's true anymore.
F--Well, in community colleges you've got Roscommon,
Clare, Gladwin, Traverse City, Alpena, Petoskey, and
then you've got Sidney which is in the LudingtonManistee area. That's six institutions.
N--They're pretty well taken care of, I think.
F--Jim Farnsworth said that one of the ambitions of the
public policy was to have some kind of higher educa­
tion within 30 miles of everybody in the state.
It
looks to me that almost 85 percent of the population...
N--We're pretty well there, I think.
F--Except in the Thumb--which is in a bad spot--and
Macomb and Traverse City, I can't think of any other
area.

A 601
Nisbet
N--It's pretty well covered, yes.
F--And the community colleges, unfortunately, in the
central UP area.
N--Well, you've got to leave something for a little
growth, you know.
F--Yes. I talked to Gerald Beckwith, w h o ’s the Governor’s
man on the Higher Education Reform Committee, and told
him, "Look, you can’t just build a structural system
full of rules and regulations.
That’s the bureaucrat’s
way. You’ve got to put some stuff in it." So I gave
them a list which they call the Faverman Christmas
Tree List, but that was too pure. They didn’t put
any of that in, so that won’t build any support.
I would have recommended a new institution at Macomb
after feasibilities, and recommended some new programs,
but they didn’t have enough understanding of why the
Blue Ribbon succeeded.
I believe the Blue Ribbon
succeeded because they took that solid work of
John Dale Russe11 and Con-Con, found out where the
communities of opinion were, got broad support, and
then recommended some Christmas tree ornaments along
with the other stuff.
N--You mentioned a thing that I find interesting. I was
on John Dale Russe11’s committee, and you know, I ’m
not sure yet it ever got the publicity or the action
that I think it deserves. But still, didn’t it kind
of make the foundation of development of Michigan
over the years since then?
F--That’s right. It set the dialogue, it set the limits,
and almost all of it occurred. It took time, but
people had to get ready for the ideas.
N- -I think it was a far-reaching committee. It was
innovative, it brought a lot of people together that
hadn’t known each other before.
F--It had legislative support, too.
N--And it had support, yes. I think that basically it's
kind of formed a pattern for much of Michigan's educa­
tion. Although, as I say, I don't think it ever got
the recognition that it probably deserved.

A 602
Nisbet
F--The other thing is: When you came across the state
government in 1961, we had a government that had
been going on since 1908, and before that.
From
what, 1830?
N - -'57.
F--1857, ok. People said it’s time to restructure,
modernize.
It looks to me like we have a higher
education system in Michigan that can last a genera­
tion or two without significant modification.
N--1 think that’s right.
F --Any time you have a political structure that can
last that long, or a social structure, you’ve got
nothing to complain about.
N--You’re lucky, that's right.
F--What in your opinion were the reasons for the failure
of the branch-campus system that had begun to be
developed in Michigan with Oakland, Flint, and Dearborn?
N--I don’t know.
I really don’t know.
I think you ran
into the Mott Foundation, for one thing, in Flint.
F--I'm not saying that Flint, Oakland, or Dearborn were
failures as institutions, but at this time there was
the talk of following the Wisconsin model where you
would have the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh,
University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee....
We were
starting that with John Hannah moving towards Oakland
and Michigan moving towards Flint.
N--I think the fact that once one institution started,
the other institutions probably had to go too.
And I think they were thinking maybe w e ’d get more
diversification and weakening of program.
I wondered
too if the idea of the community college coming in at
this time didn't...
F--...cut the local base out. Another thing is that it
doesn’t appear there was any encouragement at Con-Con
for the branch-campus system.

A 603
Nisbet
N--No, no.
I think Con-Con was a little bit opposed to
the whole idea.
F--And no matter what, I don’t believe that Michigan or
Michigan State would ever go for a branch campus
again.
N- -No, I don't thinlc so.
F--Michigan State got out of Oakland, Michigan will let
go of Dearborn, I believe, as soon as it's strong
enough to fly, and only politics keeps it from
learning to fly.
N- -Is Stirton down there or has he retired?
F--Stirton's retired. They brought in a man named
Goodall who's quite an astute man. A good man.
So it strikes me that it's not really a thing that
will happen again. There may have been a political
decision made someplace--Con-Con?
N--Well, I think part of it. I think they had no
sympathy towards it. While there was not outspoken
opposition, I think it was just understood.
F--Some people, for instance in Grand Rapids, where
Michigan had a long position, wanted a branch there.
N--Yes, there was quite a pressure at one time for a
branch in Grand Rapids. There was a question whether
it would be Michigan State or Michigan.
I just think
it got too touchy.
F--Well, it was going to be a bad political fight. And
then there were some who believed that the institu­
tions didn't have the skill to manage outside of their
own area because it got hard to run a decentralized
school.
N--I think that's true.
F--We talked earlier about some of our observations about
why the State Board of Education didn't succeed after
'64. Do you have any other observations?

Nisbet
N--No, I don’t think so.
In summary, I think it was too political in the
beginning.
It was all one party, which was unfortunat
and we had people who were not qualified.
They were
nominated at a political convention and I don’t know
that much thought was given to their qualifications
as they were selected.
I think they became embroiled
in arguments with the Legislature in the beginning.
In fact, it never measured up to what we had antici­
pated it would be because I don't think we got the
personnel that we had hoped to get.
F--You also didn't get good staff either.
I suppose
that *s a measure. The institutions could attract-because of their stature--better people.
N--They had trouble getting staff at all in the beginning
Then Polley came, didn’t he?
F--Yes, but they had a fight there too.
N--Yes, they had a fight over Ira Polley. I 've got a lot
of respect for Ira. I think Ira's a pretty good ma n .
F--He's a good m a n , but they waited five or six months
while Kloster was running it.
N--I think Porter has done a good job with it.
F--Right, but these men never really had the votes. John
does, but that's because the Board has changed around.
N--Well, I think the Board had changed around, some.
F--I like Ira. W e 've had our troubles because I worked
for the Legislature, but I like Ira and have a lot of
admiration for him. But the poor man never had five
votes for him.
N--No, he never had a chance down there.
F--If a man doesn't have five votes out of eight, he's
dead.
N--You're not going anywhere.

A 605
Nisbet
F--Who in your opinion were the significant opinion
leaders in higher education in Michigan in this
period? You've already mentioned John Hannah...
N--Well, I would say Hannah was outstanding. I think
Anspach was. I don't think Hatcher was. I think
Fleming has been. I think Hilberry, Miller and
Sponberg were. I think A1 Bentley had a good deal
to do with it. Again, I mention Walker Cisler. I
think Reuther and Scholle were.
F--That's a pretty fine m i x , isn 't it?
N--I think that's right.
F--You've named those of labor, industry, and educational
institutions. We haven't talked, but of course
political leaders have made a difference.
N--Well, there were some political leaders. I think
Frank Beadle was a very strong m a n . Arnell Engstrom
was another one.
F--When you get that kind of mix, you're bound to succeed.
N--Yes. I used to never worry what happened in the
Legislature because I knew that when it came down to
the conference committees Arnell Engstrom and Frank
Beadle would take care of any situations. And I think
in a way that typifies the influence that this whole
group had.
F--Well, I speak very particularly for the Legislature
because I worked there.
I found that when you got
down to the six guys in the conference committee,
very rarely was there parochial interest. It was
always the public interest.
N--That's what I meant when I said Arnell Engstrom and
Frank Beadle.
F--And even Gar came.

I shouldn't say "even".

N--You know, when you come right down to the conference
committee, that’s going to be it, and the men quit
fooling around--they get down to fundamentals. I
think out of our conference committees has really
come the good legislation of our state.

A 606

Nisbet
F--We’re very lucky.
I think that’s why this historical
inquiry, if I can succeed, will be of value in pointing
out the harmonizing elements.
I want to thank you for giving us this time.
N--It's been a pleasure to visit with you.
I ’ve been
recalling some very pleasant memories from over the
years.
F--Thank you.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
VICTOR SPATHELF1

F--Vic, what in your opinion were the reasons that led to
the expansion of higher education in Michigan from 1958
on? In *58 the state appropriation for higher educa­
tion was about $80 million and in 1970 it was some
$260 million.
That's a pretty sizeable increase.
S--Well, I don't think you can pin it on "from '58 on."
This may have been the onset of increased appropriations
and as you say, expansion, but expans ion would be
reflected in other than dollar amounts. I think you have
to go back to see what some of the factors were prior to
'58.
If you want to put it this way, "came to fruition
from about that time o n ."
My own feeling is that '58 is less than a significant
date. I think you need to get a range of time rather than
a specific year. In the first place, you have to recognize
that for many, many years, as far as Michigan higher educa­
tion is concerned, there was no institutional expansion.
F--It looks to me like from about 1920 to 1948 nothing
happened.
S--That's right. You had a complete standstill in develop­
ment at that point. Of course with the conclusion of
World War II you got the onset of the veterans' enroll­
ment- -which was never really prepared for in terms of the
numbers that were ultimately going to be served. The
fact of the matter is that for the first several years
the institutions were badly prepared to receive them in
terms of facilities, volume, and even faculty.
So you
had this pressure developing.
Victor F. Spathelf; President, Ferris State College,
1952-70; Assistant Superintendent of Schools, Highland Park,
1938-41; Dean of Student Affairs and Counselor for Men, Wayne
State University, 1941-52.
Interview conducted June 17, 1974.

A 608
Spathelf
You had national factors, such as the emerging
development of the community college movement.
This had impact.
You had a change in the fiscal ability of the state
as a result of tax and economic shifts. Higher educa­
tion also became a focal point of political concern,
probably in response to the veterans.
But it is much
more fundamental than this in that the public thinking
about education had shifted dramatically, perhaps as a
result of some of our experiences in World War II.
After all, you have to remember that in World War II
we were confronted with such manpower shortages that
we had to develop emergency training programs like
never before. This had its impact upon the thinking
of people as well. And you had the demand factor in
higher education among the popularists that hadn't
been there before.
You had, I think, in terms of institutional leadership
an unusual collection of people who sensed this educa­
tional need and were pretty busy trying to translate
it into institutional patterns of action.
There's
practically no institution in the state that didn't
have this kind of stance in trying to meet educational
need, which is not the case in some other states.
F--When I talked to John Porter he said, "You know, Jerry,
we had the giants of the nation in this state." When
I think about why Michigan is different, I think that
men may have made a difference.
S--This could b e , this could b e .
F--Hilberry was an astute man and seems to have been well
thought of. John Hannah stands heads and shoulders
out of everybody on the block.
S--This is correct.
F--You built the community college movement, which is today
of significant proportions. Ferris had a place in it,
not in the prestige end but in the opportunity to try.
Harden built an institution at Northern that became
useful rather than marginal. He came with 700 people
there, when he left ten years later there were 7,000.
When you came to Ferris there was hardly a building
there, was there?

A 609
Spathelf
S--We had 700 students, 3 buildings, and 18 acres of land.
That’s right.
F--That was nothing, really.
In the period from ’58 on
you built at Oakland, Dearborn, Flint, Grand Valley,
and Saginaw Valley. You built a ton of buildings at
all of these institutions except Michigan, virtually.
The enrollments increased fantastically and the public
support was always there.
S--The public support developed.
I think the political
machinery was in the rear of public sentiment.
Public
sentiment was far, far ahead of the state response.
F--Well, you take a look at things like the GI Bill.
S--The GI Bill ties in with World War II...
F--If you were going to write a history instead of a
dissertation you’d probably begin the modern history of
this state in 1932.
If you were going to write a history
of education you'd probably begin in 1946 when the baby
boom came and pressed itself on the schools.
S--Yes, but see, this is later.
forties.

This came after the

F--Oh yes, this came in about '58.
S--This is after your World War II deal. You had the con­
vergence of the veterans bulge and the beginning of
concern about the population boom which added force to
the whole thing.
You had another factor that was operating too, and that
was community interest, pride, and ambition. This was
tied in at Grand Valley, Saginaw Valley, and at Oakland.
So this is a different factor. Which came first, the
hen or the egg? It's pretty hard to tell.
F--Yes, but I call that the Chamber-of-Commerce mentality-the belief that any community to be fully developed
needed an institution.That became an important element
too.
S--I think maybe the Chamber of Commerce boys picked that
up subsequently and used it in their..,

A 610
Spathelf
F--They were willing for the first time, with community
colleges, Vic, to support these institutions with
local money.
S--Yes, but here again you better remember that this
started from a base of junior colleges that were K-12
or school-district-oriented institutions. It was in
this period of time that you developed the broader
pattern which went into the suburban and outcounty
areas.
This also ties in with several of the reports that
you've mentioned in your [dissertation proposal] here
that I think were more or less handles on an existing
problem or an existing force. I don't think that
John Dale Russell and S. V. Martorana--he used to work
for m e , you know--came up with anything new.
I think
they were astute in going in and sensing what the
popular feeling was and then trying to give a pattern
to the thing. In a sense they were using some of the
national theorization and philosophic thinking about
junior and community colleges and transplanting them
here; taking some of the latent public support and
fusing it into a document which gave them something to
hold onto and at least provided the springboard for more
public participation and acceptance of the idea.
It may very well be that in the historical analysis of
it, it was a little bit overdone. This idea of a
community college every 25 miles sounded good. It might
have been a point of departure, at least to begin dis­
cussion , but that it would be accurately implemented in
that fashion doesn't necessarily indicate soundness in
the ultimate concept.
F--It's probably particularly true up here in the north
where you put a lot of schools in that weren't viable
but didn't put any in a place like Marquette or Detroit.
S--Yes. Detroit is badly underserviced in higher education.
This has been the case for a long time but there has
never been a real translation of this because of some
existing institutions.
F--While you were at Wayne, didn't you feel the strength
of labor--looking for a place to send their children
and workers to school--as an additional support
mechanism for higher education?

A

611

Spathelf
S--Well, I don't think this was as articulate in the
formative days as it was subsequently.
I think that
subsequently labor got on the bandwagon, but you have
to remember that in the early days--you see I went to
Wayne as an undergraduate and graduate student, then I
went back as one of the four executive officers in the
early forties --that went through the transition from a
junior college, to a four-year college, to a collection
of colleges, to a university. This is when it was a
metropolitan-based institution prior to the time that it
became a state institution.
There was a great deal of labor interest in improving
the educational opportunity for adults rather than the
children at that point. When Wayne did go into the
communities, like the northern suburbs of Detroit, with
extension programs, there was more support from labor
as such. But I can't think that you can identify it
singly as labor. I think you've got to identify it as
general public support.
F--All right. So one of the reasons, then, for the growth
of higher education was that the public was ready.
S--The public was not only ready, it was long past due.
F--And then the other forces in society moved in behind
that, you're saying?
S--This is quite correct.
F--Labor, political structures...
S--We've gone through a revolution in the whole country on
the concept of who is higher educational opportunity for?
When I graduated from high school, less than 10 percent
of the kids ever contemplated going to college. Now
you've got a phenomenon where 50-80 percent of the
youngsters in a given community have some kind of con­
tinued educational plan beyond the high school.
This is not a hen-and-egg proposition, in a sense,
because the economic circumstance of people, by and
large, did not permit them to send youngsters to college.
F--That's my experience. I'm the first member of my family
to go to college. My father had trouble finishing high
school because of economics. Until the GI Bill came,
nobody from my social class ever dreamed it would be
possible to go to school.

A 612
Spathelf
S--The GI Bill was one factor, but in a lot of respects
World War II was an economic revolution as well as a
political, social revolution. High wages made it
possible for many families --and young people who went
out and got higher wages--to consider going to school.
Before that it had been unthinkable.
F--Well, that ’s proof of your point though: that when for
the first time people had a disposable income, they were
willing, rather than buying certain kinds of consumer
goods, to put it into that kind of capital investment.
S--1 agree with this, but I ’m also making a statement that
the public was ready for higher education long before
they even had the resources.
You see, they didn’t suddenly get more plentiful
resources and then become converted to the idea because
y ou'd have gotten a time lag and this was pretty near
automatic. It was quite dramatic that when the money
was there they wanted this kind of thing. It goes to
support the concept that the public wanted greater
educational opportunity for the young people long
before it was available.
F--Do you think the fact that the institutions were willing
to gamble on the money coming and taking the kids --the
statesmanship of the leaders --was part of it too?
Because, in my experiences, if you wait until the money
comes knocking on the door you may never get it.
S--You could write a dissertation on the strategy of
leadership if you wanted.
Certainly this is one of the
things that y o u 1d have to take into consideration.
But the fact of the matter is, leadership isn’t that
infallible. You had a situation where the kids were
pounding at the door and they were not going to say
no to them. At this point the legislative support
caught u p , they couldn’t say no either.
So you had a
convergence of some forces here, not all of which were
by design. Let's face that.
F--No, but I don’t personally believe in planning as the
only mechanism for change. I think that a lot of these
things happen and then people try to draw them into neat
packages. In my time in the government I 've very rarely
seen a neat plan that worked.
I very rarely have even

A 613
Spathelf
seen a plan.
S--Usually a plan is a point of departure. You can have
a plan but you can't control all the factors so it
becomes a concept and a point of departure that we
adjust to.
F--What were the policy objectives that underlay this
expansion?
S--Well, here again, it's hard to put it in terms of
policy objectives.
What you had was a great public
need. If you want to put it in those terms, it was a
policy to meet public need.
There were factors beyond this, however, When you talk
about public need you could say economic need.
For
example, the whole country had been geared to a war
economy. After that it was converted into peacetime
pursuits and meeting the long-delayed needs and
shortages of the country. At this point you had the
need for trained manpower to meet diversified manufacturing, much of which had been delayed.
So you can say a part of the policy at this point was
to provide business and industry with the trained man­
power resources to get on with the job of peacetime
living. If you want to call that a policy, that’s one.
F--I sure do.
S--I don’t think there was a great awareness of trying to
eradicate social injustices and deprivation of educa­
tional opportunity.
I don’t think this was articulate
at this point.
I think this came subsequently.
F--No, I agree with you.
I think that the eradication of
lack of opportunity came after they had built the
machine.
S--This is right.
You had another factor, whether you want to call it
policy or not, which was the effort to increase the GNP
of the state, or of the nation.
This was in the fore­
front of the business and industrial thinking. Education
at this point was essential to accomplish these objectives.

A

614

Spathelf
F--I detect--and I don’t know because again there was no
plan or stated objectives--the desire to increase the
trained manpower, based on their experiences that you
can't be a great nation without trained manpower.
S--This was born out of the World War II experience.
F--I detect the desire to build a research base for the
national solution of problems and the decision to go
with institutions of higher education rather than
building state and federal research institutions the
way the Soviets or the Germans have done.
S--Well, this is largely out of institutional force, too.
You have to remember that during the war years your
great research institutions were loaded with contracts.
Big universities were geared up for these during the
war and it was a natural transition that they should
move beyond this.
F--The other thing I detect was, in ’58 with the Sputnik,
the realization that the Russians could be superior.
I regard that as somewhat of a slap to our pride and
we had the desire to catch up technologically.
Another thing that I have detected is the belief that
Michigan couldn't continue to be a one-industry state
completely tied to the automobile. We had to broaden
the base of industry in this state by different kinds
of industry besides the car.
S--You had a national paranoia about Sputnik, which wasn't
as real as it was a fortuitous handle to encourage
further R and D development, further educational
development, and so forth.
The fact of the matter is
that despite the fact that the Russians put up Sputnik,
we were far ahead of them in many technical aspects
that were contributory to that kind of thing. But it
nonetheless was a good rallying point for many vested
interests, including education.
As far as the diversification of industry within the
State of Michigan is concerned, you have to recognize
that World War II created a diversification by mobil­
izing industrial manufacturing resources into all
kinds of enterprises which far transcended the automotive
per s e . So this w a s , again, a natural development.

A 615

Spathelf
If you did a historical analysis of the development of
the subcontracting industry in the State of Michigan,
you would find that the tool and die and all types of
fabrication plants just blossomed as a result of this
effort and as part of the know-how that was available
in the area.
It far transcended automotive as such,
even though we made tanks and trucks and all the rest
of it.
F--Lots of small towns, if you take a look at where the
industry has spread, with Whirlpool and ...
S--That *s right. These were subsidiary developments, many
of which were subcontractors for the war effort.
F--With these kind of policy objectives that were not really
clearly stated but could be sensed, what were some of the
conflicts over the growth of education in this period?
S--I think you have to say this a little bit more clearly,
Jerry.
There x\ras an inordinate amount of institutional desire
for preeminence, recognition, and growth in enrollment
and physical plant. That this existed cannot be denied
by anyone who knows the facts of the situation. Now,
when you relate it to the policies that w e 've been
talking about, I don't see a direct relationship.
F--Well, I guess besides the institutional arrogance and
competitiveness, which had its good features and its bad
features, I also see the argument that some said, "Let's
not broaden the number of degree-holders," as a status
thing--the argument that came to be quality.
S--I don't think that's right. I think you've got the
wrong handle on it. The fault of this was largely in
the realm of higher education itself.
We had an elitism in higher education for many, many,
many years that said, "We'11 take only the upper
10 percent, w e ’11 take only the people with the A and B
averages.” There are certain institutions in this state-if you wanted to do a historical rundown on their
official statements--whose catalogs even prided them­
selves on taking just an elite grouping of people. This
was a translation of the Ivy League concept of higher
education, and much of the private school thinking and
philosophy, on to certain segments of public education

A 616
Spathelf
in the public universities.
Consequently, the institu­
tions that were so involved thought that this was an
indication of quality that superseded any other con­
sideration .
This broke down, really, through the whole process of
vocational-technical training during the war years.
The emergence of the community college movement that
brought more and more people into extended educational
opportunity, many of whom didn't have these classical
academic credentials for selective admissions, and yet
were performing as well or better than many of those
who had the selective criteria,was a shock in educational
circles.
There was a period of time, and I know this quite well
since I was a party to it, that many of the more class­
ically oriented people in higher education thought
vocational-technical education, as w e ’re running it today
at Ferris, was something other than higher education.
You had a real revolution in educational thinking.
F--And that’s part of the conflict. A good deal of the
antagonism of being nothing but a chicken farmer that
John Hannah faced from liberal arts-trained people was
over his willingness to go for...
S--Of course this is the land grant movement. If you want
to get that historically you get the thread way back in,
what, the 1840’s or somewhere along there? You see the
strain and thread of this and it becomes like an inverted
pyramid, the base gets larger and larger and larger as
you go from those original dates. John Hannah was merely
implementing in creative fashion what the original con­
cepts of land grant education forecast.
F--1 don11 fuss with you about that, and I don't disagree
with it. But I am saying there was a peculiar kind of
snobbery that said architecture, which to my mind is
occupational, was legitimate whereas mobile homes, for
instance, wasn’t.
S--Oh, I understand that. This is a part of this elitism
in the translation of the classical liberal arts into
the higher educational pattern, the classical professions into the higher educational pattern, and then the
actions of professional groups, in and of themselves,
to create an elitism.

A 617

Spathelf
You had not only the institutions operating in an
elitist form, with either their presidents or their
faculties calling the shots, but then their own products
out in the community.
If they're architects, "we’re
going to create certain professional and accreditation
criteria." If they're doctors, the same thing. Later
on it came to the nurses, the medical technicians, and
all the rest. All of whom were trying to create their
own little sphere of importance and economic scarcity
at given points.
F--That’s the kind of problem that leads to conflicts with
public policy--the desire for status and the like.
S--This is correct, but n o w , you see, you're pitting educa­
tional policy against public policy in terms of educational
opportunity.
I agree that there was a period of time
when your so-called classical or leader-type of institu­
tions were not abreast of public desire and ambitions
for higher education.
F--Well, Vic, I guess I come with a bias. I believe that
public institutions have to serve the public.
S--This is right, but they didn’t.
F--One of the great strains for these institutions w a s , as
you say, that they served their own interests rather than
the public interest. That's where some of the conflict
came.
S--This is correct.
F--Some of the real aggravation and hardship that the
presidents of the schools had with the Committee was
because of the Committee's vision that the schools were
serving parochial status and professional obj ectives
rather than public objectives. Some of the strain came
there. I don't think it was bad, either, because I
think all the institutions were forced to change.
S--Of course you know that that change was not at all
uniform and that it expressed itself in many ways. For
example, an amusing thing, in the early years of voca­
tional-technical education Temple University in
Pennsylvania called itself "Temple University." And
then in small letters "and Technical Institute" was
tacked o n . This wasn’t part of the mainstream of the
institution at all. They finally came to a recognition

A 618
Spathelf
that there was a demand, but they weren't going to give
it quite the same kind of aura of respectability that
the university had and so they tacked it on.
I'm not so sure that this didn't happen closer to home.
F--I think about the legislative skill of the appropriations
committees and the use of the invidious comparison.
S--Now you're moving into something else. I'm inclined to
agree with you that when the history of higher education
in Michigan is written it will be shown that chiefly
through the hardheaded thinking of about half-a-dozen
people in the legislative process there was a greater
leveling of institutional activity to the end that the
greater needs of the public could be served.
F--From 1964 until 1970, I didn't check the numbers, but
it's my recollection that you got three or four buildings
and Michigan didn't get one. Michigan was the powerful,
international institution and the Committee said, "If
y o u 're not going to play ball, w e '11 starve you out."
They never did it in any open way, but somebody back
there knew how to count the till and they didn't get a
thing.
S--Yes, but you're missing the other point.
The other point was that the legislative leadership at
this point was keenly aware that the public--I'm talking
about the general public, the total cross-section public-was saying, "We need educational institutions that
provide educational opportunity for my son and daughter
who may not want to go to four to seven years of higher
education to become employed in a classical profession
but want something else."
Actually, in the whole period of the sixties before the
community college movement really began to get into
high gear, there were not very many educational oppor­
tunities for the youngster who wanted to get training
in specialized career skills. They just weren't there.
The Legislature was smart enough to spot it and adept
enough to provide the facilities for it. S o , by contrast,
this may add up to what you're commenting upon.
F--Well, that's what we were coming to earlier.
I don't
think there was a stated policy, I don't think there
was a document you could point to, I don't think there

Spathelf
was rhetoric you could state, but I think that when
they saw what the Committee did, how it acted, and how
the resources were channeled out, it came to be a public
policy.
I think people like Senators Frank Beadle and Garland
Lane and Representative Arnell Engstrom...
S--That's why I say w e ’ve had about a half-dozen towering
forces in the Legislature who not only saw policy needs
but helped articulate and translate them into action to
make it meaningful.
There were a lot of things talked
about in higher education that never materialized, but
they made it materialize and they did it by putting
resources where the need was and where the goal was.
F--The other thing that doesn't get talked about frequently
is that the public sees the conflict between the
Legislature and the schools. I think the Legislature,
once they found a school they could trust, really gave
it blood and trust and went out of their way to help
the president in all the behind-the-scenes ways.
S--I ’m inclined to agree with you.
Now on the other point, however, part of this was the
fault of some institutions who in their public relations
and in their relationship with alumni deliberately tried
to set up an adversary relationship between the institu­
tion and the Legislature to try to force legislative
action. Where they may have succeeded at times on
certain elements, what they also did was to create a
negative impact.
F--I’m thinking particularly about Keast. I admired Keast
for a lot of things, but one thing he didn't know how
to do was deal with the public sector.
He was a private school m a n . In one or two years of
Gullen's presidency h e ’s gotten more than Keast got in
the whole time he was president. George is going to
get a $60 million clinic building and Keast, because of
his lack of skill in this important sector, got peanuts.
Sixty million dollars is an amazing amount of money,
still today in the time of cheap dollars.
S--Oh yes. On the other hand, needs change and economic
resources change. I guess the $60 million relates to
the medical complex, doesn’t it?

Spathelf
F--Yes.
S--It’s taken 20 years to put together but it’s at the
point where it pays off.
F--They've reached that critical mass.
S--But I do think that if there were an analytical study of
the so-called public relations stances, efforts, and
activities of institutions--as this relates both to the
relationship with the public and with the Legislature-you would find some serious contradictions in what one
would now, several years later, look back on as smart
operation. There was a lot of expediency of the moment.
F--Well, people whom w e 've interviewed consistently give
very high marks to John Hannah for his skill and working
with the Legislature.
S--I agree with that.
F--They view the tremendous skill that Michigan State always
had in working with the Legislature as one of the impor­
tant elements in the growth of our institution at Michigan
State, and certainly a cornerstone of its growth.
S--Well, there's no question about it. I think John will
show up historically as one of the ablest educators that
has ever appeared on the educational scene in Michigan.
On the other hand, let's face it, he also had some
unusual audiences and clientele with which to work that
some of the other institutions didn’t have.
Now admittedly you have to work with them carefully, but
he had the agricultural community of this state as a
very fertile field. This was carefully and skillfully
done. As he branched out into some other areas this was
also an expression of public need and was well done.
F--Do you have any opinions about the growth of higher
education having as its objective the destruction of
class and culture barriers?
S--No. I think this can11 be properly put in this way.
What you have is a picture of the general societal
structure which had underprivileged people in all
segments of society for different reasons. I don *t
think that in the majority of the period that you’re
talking about educational institutions themselves

A 621
Spathelf
sought to extend educational opportunity to break down
social and cultural barriers.
I think there was an increasing effort to extend educa­
tional opportunity to individuals, but this is something
a little bit different than rather grandiose terms of
breaking down social and cultural barriers.
F--But if you get around the issue of taking a look at
where the rhetoric is today--women, Blacks and Chicanos-and just take a look at Michigan compared to Ohio; in
Michigan a policy was made--public support was there,
for lots of reasons--that virtually everybody could go
to college.
S--All right, now that1s something different.
educational institutions as such, you see.

That wasn’t

F--No, that was a public policy.
S - -11 was a public policy.
It was articulate in the rank
and file of people. You take Governors Williams,
Swainson, and Romney, all of these individuals gave
articulation to the concept, but there were many other
factors. You can’t say, Jerry, that educational
institutions were trying to structure to break down
social and cultural barriers.
F--No, I wouldn't say that but what I would say is this:
The decision to have post-high school education in
trades, vocations, skills, professional schools, and
baccalaureate programs so that you started to reach
50 and 60 percent of the population in Michigan-rather than the Ohio model where you were reaching
12 and 15 percent--is a social revolution in and of
itself.
S--Well, yes. I ’ve referred to this before and I agree
with it, but this comes out of several different things.
It comes out of the need for this kind of education to
be absorbed by government, business, industry, and so
forth; it comes out of the breakdown of this elitism
that left education to the upper 10-15 percent; it came
as a result of creating new programs and new institutions,
including the community colleges, that provided the
facility and the opportunity.
As a result of these several different forces, admittedly
there were people of diverse economic, social, cultural,

i

A 622
Spathelf
and ethnic backgrounds who were embraced in the broader
pattern of educational opportunity.
Now, I think educational institutions at this point were
resourceful in dealing with the larger, broader and more
diversified student clientele, but I don't think they
were using the institution as a social instrument to
create a social and cultural revolution as such.
F--I go another step in this discussion with you. If you
can take a look at the decision to make education avail­
able for the poor and the middle class, where it had
only been available before for the rich, that probably
reaches its fruition around 1970 when my study stops.
S--Yes, this is what I say, this is in the last two or
three or four years of your study. This is correct.
F--After 1970, since to some great degree they'd already
conquered that landscape, they began to go for specific
markets that they hadn't been able to reach.
S--Oil the squeak in the wheel.
F--All right, the same thing. You're starting to reach the
areas that were left out of the general flow, but y o u 'd
already created a social change of massive proportions.
S--Who had created?
F--Society.
S--All right, now you’re talking. I'm trying to say this
is a combination of social forces rather than the educa­
tional institution itself.
The fact of the matter is
education historically in
it has always been behind
social movement. This is

that when you look at higher
this state, and in this country,
need, it has always been behind
the case here.

F--1 went to Southern Illinois, the school that's having
trouble down by S t . Louis. I spoke there and I said
something that was drawn from my experience.
This is a
school that is all confused, and I said to them, "If
you don't meet the public demand and the public need,
all that will happen is society will create another
institution to serve them."

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Spathelf
I think the community colleges didn’t have to develop
in this state the way they did, as autonomous, locally
based institutions that were really unrelated, in some
ways competitive, to the established baccalaureate
institutions --except that they didn't want to take them,
they didn’t feel any competitive pressure.
Maybe somebody will write a history 20 years from now
and they will be sorry about that.
S--I think you are right to the degree that they weren’t
geared to take them, but there were some shifts. For
example, prior to the modern community college develop­
ment , the curricula was largely junior college classical;
first two years of four-year work.
Even today, after
many years, many of them are
in thesame pattern. The
fact of the matter is that Ferris was one of the only
institutions that made a wide-scale effort at meeting
these kind of needs.
But there was a funny thing that happened in the period
of competition for institutional growth, which was
largely reflected in concern for increased enrollments
and building. People began to take a look, for example,
and say, "What is Ferris doing? What are the community
colleges doing that they’re getting increased support?
Maybe we ought to be doing this because w e ’re not
growing as fast as they are."
Consequently, if you look at the admission procedures
and the enrollment targeting of many institutions, y o u ’11
find that they shifted their selective bases. They
shifted their admissions policy and began to implement
types of curricular offshoots that would get at this
clientele.
F--I’m comfortable with that.
S--Yes.
F--I regard that as the Darwinian urge to survive.
S--Yes, I think that’s true.
survival or the...

I don’t know whether it’s

F--If you didn’t take kids they starved you out at the
trough.
Then you couldn’t compete. You couldn’t
compete for salary and you could price yourself out

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Spathelf
of the market for tuition.
mission to the public...

If you didn’t have that

The only school that ever really has been successful at
raising any money in the philanthropic sector has been
Michigan.
I always say that the greatest single bene­
factor of Michigan State has been the taxpayers.
We
hardly got a dime from anybody else. Take a look at
Wayne. What the hell did they get from anybody except
the State? Virtually nothing. The same is true at
almost every other school.
When I came here in ’64 and used to counsel students
they’d say, "Oh, that program is terminal." It always
amused m e . I do not believe that there was a single
terminal program because every program that was
terminal very quickly thereafter began to have a degree
track that led to a baccalaureate degree at some other
institution.
Everybody would say, "Well, the program
at Ferris is terminal, only two years." The next year
or two I'd run into those kids who had been in a
terminal program and they were getting a four-year
degree at Michigan State. Terminal was a status and not
a training mechanism, and you know that.
S--Sure.
F--So this terminal degree stuff was foolishness. As long
as a man wants to grow there should be no reason to
terminate that desire. That’s the marketplace again.
That’s the pressure of society.
I ’m not trying to make
the case here that the institutions led, I ’m thinking
that society led. The institutions, because of the
subtleness of their leadership and the fact that Michigan
had some very great men, put it all together in a way
it didn’t happen in Ohio.
S--I agree that there’s some changes on that kind of a
base, but I would still have to say it was after the
fact rather than forerunner leadership.
F--I ’m not trying to make the case, Vic, that there was a
great master plan in the bottom drawer of John Hannah's
desk and that he would say, "Ah ha, w e ’re on Step 7."
I think it was inst inct. I put a great store by that,
but it was there.
I think a president that closeted himself--didn’t talk
to the people, didn’t keep his ear to the ground, and

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Spathelf
didn't press the flesh--didn't find out that the tidal
wave was coming until he was 2 0 feet under water.
I
don't think you could have survived as a president if
you hadn't spent a lot of time listening close to the
ground.
I would give very bad marks to presidents who
don't listen.
Now that doesn't mean we don't have a few, but I think
again the invidious comparison of seeing w h o 's doing
better puts pressure on them.
S--Yes. In a sense there is the essential competitiveness
There's the essential ego drive of institutions, I pre­
sume , also.
F--What about vocational and technical training obj ectives
Do you want to add anything to the importance of that
for the development of higher education?
S--No, I don't want to add anything to it. I think the
record stands as it is, which is probably more eloquent
than I can put into words.
F--I personally have the feeling that not enough has been
done. Although I have the belief that in many other
areas w e 've satisfied the demand, I have the feeling
that we haven't done enough in vocational-technical
education.
S--So what else is new? This has been the fact for a long
time. I have to agree that in higher education we are
still confronted with too much of the attempt to put
respectability or elitist values on certain kinds of
education and depreciate the other.
I think that in a sense this is being modified, but it
may be modified in a wrong way. There are too many
institutions that sense this and want to become all
things to all people, which is also self-defeating in
terms of quality and integrity of effort.
F--We were talking today with Steve Nisbet and he spoke
about their desire to create diversity in the educa­
tional marketplace. I observed to him that I didn't
believe it was possible in many cases, and I suspect
in most cases, for institutions to be all things to
all men.
S--You just can't .

SpatheIf
F--It may be possible for a Michigan, but I doubt that
vocational-technical can survive there with the
specialized nature of the activity they want to do.
You need diversified institutions, but one of the
problems that makes higher education so damned difficult
is the desire of all institutions to copy each other.
S~-But this is in the area of competition, it1s in the area
of ego satisfaction, it's in the area of expediency and
opportunism, whether it be to get more buildings or to
get more enrollment. This has been a fundamental weak­
ness in this state, but this is not confined to this
state. It’s a paranoia in higher education.
F- -111s status.
S--That’s right.
F--I know some people who would never have taken Ferris
because Ferris was a blue-collar school. It didn’t ever
have the chance of succeeding to the top end of the market
with Ph.D.’s. In terms of social utility, that's a
different question.
I personally spent a lot of time with community colleges.
I ’m much disappointed that these institutions immediately
tried to mimic Michigan in their course offerings and
didn't ...
S--I don't think that's quite fair because by nature of
function they became dual track institutions, to provide
the college parallel transfer programs --which was their
original mission in the first place as junior colleges-and secondly, to provide vocational-technical education.
Now you can say that the college transfer program
emphasis is in imitation of Michigan or somewhere else,
and I hear what you say.
But the fact of the matter is
that in the years I was at Ferris there was a regular
parade of junior college people coming up here wanting
our assistance on how to get this kind of programming
going.
The fact of the matter is that the classical institutions
themselves contributed to the difficulty in initiating
these kind of programs because they weren’t training
educational leaders with the expertise and know-how to
develop this kind of program.
But to the end that some
of these more classical institutions are now training

A 627
Spathelf
people who are specialists in vocational-technical
education shows that in the real sense there is greater
ease and greater mobility in curriculum development and
broadening of scope of institutions.
F--Let me digress for a moment, Vic. I ’ve always looked
at the Michigan system with a great deal of pride and
been pretty impressed with how it works real well--and
w e '11 come to some discussion about the State Board and
the paper you sent me--but have you any speculation why,
since Ferris was so well regarded and so proudly loved
by state officials, we never built one like it in Detroit?
S--Well, there was discussion concerning this. I suppose
that in one sense, if you mean why wasn't there a branch
of Ferris put into Detroit?--which was proposed in the
legislative circles --the answer is I was totally against
it.
I said: "If you want to develop that kind of programming,
which I think you should, you should set up a separate
state institution in the heart of the metropolitan area.
I ’11 be glad to assist, but I don’t want it as a branch
of Ferris because I think this would be a dilution of
institutional effort. Furthermore, I think the concept
is wrong."
F-- I don’t believe in branches.

I want to know...

S--This is clear.
F--But I want to know why we didn’t set up a Detroit
Institute.
S--I think in a sense this was for the lack of real deter­
mination on the part of the Legislature and state
education leadership. It didn’t insist that this be
done.
F-- It's a failure.
S--It’s a void at the highest levels of legislative and
educational thinking that this wasn't insisted upon,
as some other things were insisted upon. It becomes
a little bit difficult for an individual institutional
president to insist upon it without compromising the
situation.

Spathelf
At the point where discussions were held with me as to
whether there should be a branch of Ferris in Detroit,
I knocked down the branch concept, but I certainly tried
to give every encouragement to a resolution that this be
done as a separate institution.
But it was never picked
up.
F--It may be that Detroit's legislative delegation just
didn't have the strength to accomplish it.
S--Well, this could b e , but there's another factor in it.
This was about the time that the John Dale Russell report
on community colleges was being implemented. At this
point there was a concept that the community college was
going to be the real instrumentality to meet these needs.
I think this gave a little bit of peace and comfort to
people that shouldn't have been so blessed.
And besides, it sounded like an economical way to do it.
I told the people that it would cost a lot of money to
develop this kind of an institution in Detroit. At that
point there was also the concept of the Wayne County
Community College, as you recall.
F--Wayne County wasn't created until '69, after a big fight.
S--This is right, but there was the concept of it. This
got bandied around and the people who were the enthusiasts
of this type of concept didn’t want any part of a state
institution as such.
F--It may be that Detroit’s made more than its share of
mistakes.
What about the growth of culture and the arts? Did that
have any importance in the dialogue over the growth of
higher education?
S--This is one of these cliches, Jerry, that's awful hard
to pin down in this way.
If you put it in the sense
that you are putting it, without further elaborating
upon it, I would have to say n o .
F--I'm comfortable with that answer.
S--Now w e 've had some social and economic changes resulting
from shorter work weeks and all the rest of this that
have increased leisure-time opportunity.
To the degree
that this has provided time and stimulated curiosity

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Spathelf
and interest, there has been some movement, but the way
you have it, I'd say no.
F--No, and I put it that way. My speculation is that in
the next ten years, because of having fulfilled so much
of the basic desire for education, people may move on
to cultural and aesthetic things. But I think that you
don't look for aesthetic things until y o u 've learned
certain basic skills.
Except for Woody Varner--maybe a little bit with Jim
Miller, I don't know how much of that was personal-I can't see any institution that was grown or enhanced
because of its interest in culture.
S--Well, this is right. I doubt very much that Oakland, or
even what Jim Miller tried to d o , enhanced the growth of
the institution as such.
That's why I say you’ve got it
worded in a peculiar kind of way.
Now the fact of the matter is, for example, at Ferris
w e 've had a tremendous emphasis upon the cultural arts.
For a reason, and that is that we felt that with our
very highly developed, specialized, and narrow skilltraining , individuals' lives needed to be complimented
by an emphasis upon the life-quality type of impacts.
Consequently, we probably did more as an institution to
see to it that these youngsters had to take certain
segments of the cultural arts and humanities in the
internal curriculum. We placed a premium upon voluntary
participation in making educational opportunity available.
F--I remember when I came to your institution remarking to
myself about the encouragement that the institution
placed on people taking history, literature, and the
like, which was a surprise to me because I thought maybe
you were going to be all trade school.
Neil Staebler said, "You know, this is a state that's
just come out of the fender-bender stage.” In Lansing,
which is a rich community somewhat isolated from the
economy because of MSU, the state government, and the
service industry, if Michigan State brings a symphony
in, maybe a couple of thousand will attend, but if you
bring in the Grand Ole Opry, people will be beating
their heads to get in.

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Spathelf
S--This last month we had the Detroit Symphony at Ferris
and it was a standing-room-only crowd.
You know,
there’s an interesting historical thing.
Years ago
Big Rapids was a lumbering frontier.
This is
why they put Ferris Institute up here, to educate these
poor jokers in the lumber mills and logging camps. Sub­
sequently this town grew to about 10 or 12,000 people
and was on the frontier of the considerable wealth
coming from the lumbering industry. Big Rapids was a
cultural center of northern Michigan.
F - -I didn't know that.
S--The Chatauquas, the great lecturers, the great shows
came up here. They had three opera buildings. When
this lumbering frontier went out and moved into Grand
Rapids and Muskegon, Big Rapids shrunk back from
10-12,000
to 4-5,000 people and all this went. Butthis
was a part of the cultural impact of Ferris in those
days upon the community.
F--Do you have some observations about the position of
labor in regard to higher education?
S--Not particularly. Here again you get these umbrella
phrases. I ’ve got some good friends in the labor move ment who have given me and the State of Michigan all
kinds of assistance, but these have to be identified as
individuals. When you talk about labor as a movement
this sort of leaves m e ...
F--Well, let me sharpen what I said.
As I look at the history of the period, I am struck by
the fact that you have tremendous energy against
Williams and Swainson from industry opposing increased
taxation. In the period from '54 to ’70, some of the
most brutal battles fought in the Legislature and the
public sector were over taxes.
And yet, I have not been able to find that labor,
industry, commerce, or agriculture fought higher
education.
S--They didn't fight education.
They didn’t fight higher
education except by the indirect concern with taxes,
special levies, and so forth. Now this is like virtue,

A 631
Spathelf
you know.
Everybody is for it but a lot of people don’t
do anything about it.
I would have to say that Williams and Swainson, in
particular, as far as higher education is concerned,
articulated the desire of a large segment of the general
public for greater higher educational opportunity.
To
the degree that this got caught in the traditional and
ever-present warfare between the Republicans and
Democrats, this became a football to be kicked around.
But my general reaction is that when you talk about what
was labor's position, what was big business's position,
and what was the commerce position, I get left cold. I ’m
very frank to say I don't think they ever had a position,
and I do n't think they’ve got one now.
As I say, you get spokesmen, individuals who are talking
personally or out of deep conviction, and that’s some­
thing else. But you cannot convince me that a position
or a general policy stance has been apparent, articu­
lated, or enacted by any of those classical segments.
F--Well, I ’m comfortable with what you say.
it a little differently.

I'm coming at

S--Now, y o u 'd better believe it, because I have
so-called oracles and fountainheads of these
segments and tried to get them interested in
education and some of its needs. You better
is like a great boxer: He can roll with more
you can shake a stick at.

gone to the
different
higher
believe this
punches than

F--1 laugh about that because all of the time, Vic, that
I worked in the Legislature I never but one time felt
the slightest damn interest from industry or labor about
education.
I began to wonder, because they were busy beating the
taxation committee to death.
I thought one day, "Who
do I know?
I know all the educational guys and I know
lots of the people concerned about social issues, but
I never met the guys who represent industry, in spite
of the fact that I know they are there."
I guess I have to ask the question because w e 're trying
to build the record, but my impression was that labor,
because of the strength of personalities like Woodcock,

A 632
Spathelf
Bluestone, Scholle, and Reuther, were positive about
education without being positive about educational
institutions.
They wanted education so their workers
could have a place to spend their new prosperity.
I never observed industry except in local civic kinds
of things.
GM puts energy into Flint, there was support
from Seidman and the Old Kent Bank in Grand Rapids, I
think.
But again, it wasn’t statewide, it wasn’t policy,
it was local.
Commerce, I ask about, because when I looked at Romney's
Blue Ribbon Commission I noticed that Romney was pretty
astute at putting together a lot of local types, parti­
cularly men like Heavenrich--merchants.
I wondered why you never heard anything about agriculture
until somebody said, "Who needed agriculture?
It didn't
exist as one corporate body because the orchard guys
spoke for themselves, the dairy guys for themselves and
they didn't really cooperate." Another one said, "Why
did agriculture need anyone when they had John Hannah?"
S--1 go back to what I said.
I don't think that labor, big
business, or commerce as such had a position that was
identifiable other than to say they were all for it.
There were articulate, individual spokesmen who may have
had a halo effect on creating an impression.
My experience has been that apart from a segment policy
position, and apart from high echelon leadership stances,
there were numerous examples where individual employers,
individual businesses, or even small collections of
businesses were supportive of education, but largely
because it was in their own economic interest to do so.
They were getting something in return.
F--Isn’t that a little bit sweeping though, Vic? At your
institution, I remember the pharmacists being ready to
march for you.
S--This is correct, but this is a segment, you see.
F--Lots of small tool and die makers...
S--For example, the Auto Parts Dealers Association granted
75 scholarships up here at Ferris to train mechanics,
hopefully that they could employ, you see. But here

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Spathelf
again that’s apart from the automotive industry. When
you talk about it in terms of large blocks of organiza­
tion. . .
F--But didn’t Ferris, for instance, have those kind of
smaller blocks that came to be...
S--Oh yes, we went out and developed them. But you didn't
ask that. You said, "What is the position of labor,
what is the position of big business, what is the posi­
tion of commerce?" You can’t develop it that way.
F--You’ve got to go in smaller markets, you think?
S--They don't have a posture, other than as I say, being
for virtue. They're all for virtue, but that's it. N o ,
y o u 've got to find the responsive cord in the fractionalization of it.
F--Well, that’s what John Hannah did.
S--He did, yes.
F--What were the pressures and influences in the determina­
tion of public policy, if any from the federal
government?
S--I think here you’re getting into a pretty wide range.
I would have to say it is considerable.
The whole area of encouragement of R and D, science,
vocational-technical development, you name it, there
was underwriting, gifts, grants, and even national
advertising by the federal government. HEW and all of
these were conditioning factors upon public opinion.
This is what your question states on public policy.
They created public policy and engaged in an activity
which reinforced the public policy which they had
created.
It's been considerable.
F--Did you feel coercive pressure from the federal
government?
S--Not as far as I ’m concerned.
The kind of participation
that I was in was not the tail that wags the dog, as it
was in some institutions. Ours was assisting and
implementing more than anything else.

ir..
A 634
Spathelf
F--What about the pressures from the private sector? I'm
struck by the fact that we didn't have any dirty fights
in this state between private schools and public schools.
I wonder if you feel that's fair?
S--This has been cyclic and largely in the area of person­
alities. There was a period of time in Michigan higher
education when there was a considerable amount of
animosity between public and private institutions, some
of it even bordering, in my judgment, on the extreme and
even unprofessional.
But I would attribute this largely
to personalities.
I would also attribute it at various times to the ups
and downs in economic position of some of the private
institutions. It was also a matter of national policy
among associations of private institutions to try to
divert the expenditure of money in one manner or another
to support private education. It was a part of a larger
strategy throughout the country to slow down the develop­
ment of public expenditure in higher education because
they thought it was self-defeating of their interests.
F--It was, wasn't it?
S--Yes, in a great degree it was, depending on how you look
at it. They couldn't do the job themselves, but in a
sense there were some who tried to block the job from
getting done at all.
We also had some statesmen among the private institutions
in Michigan who had the broader vision and tried to
ameliorate these kind of controversies and neutralize
the antagonisms. They did a pretty good job. You haven't
heard much of this in the last decade or two but part of
that time it was pretty noisy.
F--What was the nature of regional and local pressures to
expand higher education in one location rather than
another?
S--I think these were several. There is the inevitable
local pride which asserts itself at times. There was
the inevitable, what I call Chamber-of-Commerce
syndrome, operating in certain towns where this would
bring in large amounts of new money as students
increased, where the building of capital plant would
bring in new money, and where it would aid in industrial
park development exploitation, and so o n .

A 635

Spathelf
You had some regional and local identification as a
result of some objective studies, and I say that
advisedly.
F--There weren't very many of those.
S--There weren't very

many.

I said,"I say this advisedly

But then you had another factor, and let's not kid our­
selves. As a part of this competitive deal some of the
institutions deliberately went to certain geographic
areas and tried tostimulate interest in having them
move in a branch or take over one of the existing
institutions. These are factors as I see them, and
I think they're all real.
F--This naturally leads into the next question. What in
your opinion were the reasons for the failure of the
branch-campus system that had begun to be developed
in Michigan with Oakland, Flint, and Dearborn?
I'm not saying that those institutions were failures,
but there was a time when I thought we were moving
towards the University of Wisconsin model at Oshkosh,
Milwaukee, and the like; where Michigan was going to go
to Grand Rapids, and State was going to go to Saginaw,
et cetera.
That came to a screeching halt.
S--Yes it did.
F--I doubt that w e '11 ever see these branch campuses ever
come again.
S--I think this is correct.
F--Probably as soon as Dearborn reaches some kind of
critical size where it's viable, it will be spun loose.
S--Well, this is in the recommendations of some of the
advisory commissions that have looked at it in the past
F--Flint will probably go as soon as the political
pressure isn't there anymore.
S--I would think so. They will become independent
agencies with independent boards and independent admin­
istrative entities. In my judgment they should.
F--They will pass out their own degrees rather than...

A 636
Spathelf
S--Yes sir, yes sir.
F--Why do you think that movement failed? It succeeded in
other states, and the prestige of the big schools was
powerful.
S--I think there were a number of reasons for it.
I think
that historically, had this germinated in the late
1800’s, there were both constitutional and legal prece­
dence for developing such a thing. That was never done.
F--Although Michigan had the constitutional perogative from
the first.
S — It certainly did, and didn’t do a single thing about it.
Not a single thing about it--since 1836, was it?
F--No, it's earlier than that.
S--Is it earlier than that?
F--From the time Michigan was a territory the University
had the right to locate the University in five locations
S--Yes. The University of Michigan was first in Detroit
and it moved out, subsequently.
When was that? In 1836
F--Something like that.
never went anyplace.

They moved out to Ann Arbor and

S--That's right. Well, as I say, this goes by default
historically and practically.
F--In other words...
S--The State of Michigan set its own precedence by setting
up different kinds of institutions.
F--That's diversity again.
S--This was an initial base of diversity and an initial
base of autonomous institutions. There were modifica­
tions , of course. The four teachers’ colleges were
under one board instead of under separate boards as
they are now, but these are elements of transition.
It was not until the community college movement started
to develop, and not until the numbers game and

A 637

Spathelf
institutional spheres of influence competition came to
the fore, that there was any real movement in the branch
concept.
It's very interesting, you know, because we had all of
these so-called coordinating boards of presidents, and
even boards of trustees, that were to be voluntary
cooperation bases.
Suddenly, out of the blue, the
University of Michigan gets a $10 million gift from
the Ford Motor Company for the Fairlane Estate to
develop the Dearborn branch. And quite by accident,
within the year, a $10 million gift was given to
Michigan State out of the Dodge Estate for the Oakland
branch.
This is not a considered judgment of branches.
the higher strategy politics of...

This is

F--Politics of imperialism.
S--All right. Call it what you will, but this is it. The
fact of the matter is that the branches at Dearborn,
Oakland, and Flint didn't go anywhere. They didn't go
anywhere because they weren't meeting people 's needs,
they were expensive, and they didn't have their own
autonomy and institutional identity.
They were warts
on the pickle. It was a part of the power play strategy
and everybody, including the public, knew it.
The next step, as I say, was to try to get the power play
extended upon existing institutions that had local bases
of support and build them into the concept, "You join us
and you'11 have the great aura of the big institution."
Some of us saw this, saw that it was self-defeating of
higher education, and bucked it. And I include myself
in it as probably as active and as articulate an
individual as there was on the front.
F--Why do you think, Vic, the coordination of higher educa­
tion through the State Board failed in '64?
S--Because the vested interests of the institutions were
such that this was never deemed to be or agreed upon.
And there was nobody to enforce it.
F--Do you think anybody wanted it?

A 638
Spathelf
S--I would be hard put to name the individuals and
institutions that did.
F--Do you think there's a need for it?
S--To a degree, yes.
?

F--Lyman Glenny came in from California to analyze the
state and was very much tied in with the State Board.
H e ’s very much a believer in institutional structures
and he came back and said, "Well, Michigan has a
coordinating body--the Appropriations Committee."
S--Well, this is something else.
Look, Lyman Glenny was
over in the State of Illinois. You can get the whole
chapter, history, and verse on that and know exactly
what he thinks and believes.
F--Yes, I know.
S--He 1s no longer in Illinois.
F--There were mixed opinions about his effectiveness.
S--But the answer is that I think the Legislature acted
in a coordinating sense when all other activity failed.
I don’t think that the Legislature would have taken as
active a part in so-called coordination had there been
a more sincere, deliberate, and persistent effort of
voluntary coordination--if this is possible and I
sometimes believe it isn’t quite. I think that this
resulted from knocking heads together because that
was the only way it was going to get done.
F--Even today some of the competition has a tendency to
look awfully stupid.
Like the competition by three
schools for one law school.
S--That's part of the same ball game.
F--Same thing exactly.
2

Lyman Glenny; Executive Director for State Board of
Higher Education, Springfield, Illinois.

A 639

Spathelf
S--And it goes into the most unbelievable pattern.
For
example, Ferris in 1895 was one of the forerunner
institutions having pharmacy.
Subsequently it was
one of three schools of pharmacy and the largest.
In fact, it's always been in the top ten or fifteen
in the United States in size and influence.
There was an appropriation finally made for a pharmacy
building.
There were some ambitious characters at
Michigan State who were interested in the medical- and
health-related fields that actually conducted an
intensive program through the state pharmacists, state
pharmacy associations, and the Legislature, to try to
get the pharmacy building diverted from the Ferris
campus to the Michigan State campus. Now, this is
within the last five years or six years.
F--I didn’t know that.
S--This is correct, and there's a lot of documentation on
it. But as I said, this was not an institutional
stance, I don’t think. It was the stance of some
ambitious people that were given a lot of rein.
I can cite you many illustrations of this kind that
have occurred over the years. They have been real facts
of life that have created animosities and created stand­
offs , and that also have legislated against coordination
if you want to put it this way.
F--Well, I lean to the belief, Vic, that if the schools
don't control themselves they'11 get coordination over
this kind of foolishness.
S--This is why you asked me the question, "Do I think that
they can do it without coordination?" My judgment is
that some type of coordination will ultimately be needed
We seem to be going through reoccurring cycles of compe­
tition and chicanery which is not in the common interest
Somebody's got to knock some heads together.
I am not of the belief that the quality and interest of
the Legislature will always be of such a nature that
they could be effective harmonizers of some of these
conflicts. As I say, I think w e ’ve had a half-dozen
unusual legislative leaders who have brought this to
pass at a critical time. But you don't have this all
the time, any more than I think you have a collection

A 640
Spathelf
of administrators who may have unusually adept leader­
ship qualities in a given situation, which I think has
occurred at times.
F--Vic, in the last twenty years or so, who would you say
were the major figures?
S--In higher education?
F--And in the whole area.
I think about legislators,
executive-office people...
S--I think in the higher education pattern you can't ignore
Dave Henry in Detroit, who was a giant; you can't ignore
John Hannah, who was a giant; you can't ignore Charlie
Anspach, who was a distinguished leader. These individuals,
in their own way, were unique at a given point. In the
legislative process you can't ignore Arnell Engstrom, Frank
Beadle, Gar Lane, Charlie Zollar, and you can't ignore
Elmer Porter in his peculiar sort of way. These were
people at key spots, largely in the appropriation area.
F--Anybody in the executive structure?
S--Well, of course I think that heads and shoulders above all
in encouraging education on the executive level was Soapy
Williams. At a critical point I think John Swainson con­
tinued with Soapy's stance in this regard, but this was at
a critical period.
I don't think either Romney or Milliken
has been as catalytic in the area of higher education as
Williams and Swainson were. But Romney's contribution to
higher education, along with Steve Nisbet, during the
Constitutional Convention was a significant and a
substantial one.
F--Were there any other people in industry or labor that you
would think of as being immensely helpful?
S- -11's hard to begin to name names there for the simple
reason that there's so many of them and they have unique
facets of one-time contributions.
F--But the people you have mentioned were there for all
seasons.
S--This is right. Now you had members of governing boards,
including Steve Nisbet that you've just seen today.
Steve was a powerhouse in lay thinking on educational
matters.
Of course here was a guy that was a high school

A 641
Spathelf
principal, a coach, a school superintendent--came up
that way--and was highly respected. He went into all
kinds of lay boards and government commissions and
served on boards of trustees. But there are very few
of these individuals that are standouts over a long
period of time.
Steve Nisbet would have to be one
of them.
You go back a little bit. Alexander Grant Ruthven was
a great agent for higher education beyond the interest
of his own institution and right up to his death served
in a great many advisory capacities.
In fact, he was
the chairman of the governor’s Committee of Seventeen
that considered whether Ferris should be made a state
institution.
There were singular individuals of this kind. I think
y o u ’11 find individual people who at a given time were
standouts for their own institutions. But I ’m not
referring to this. I ’m talking about the people who
made an impact upon the pattern of higher education.
F--That's right. Many institutions had great men, and
some didn’t , and that’s why they were there.
S--Yes. I take it y o u 're not interested in those kind
of comments.
We have people in the government bureaucracy that were
particularly helpful to higher education during critical
points.
But again, you’re talking about the long-range
perspective of higher education during this period and
people who molded a change in course of events or
pattern of activities. There aren't many.
There aren't
many.
F--No, but it seems to me that we were lucky in this state
to have had some major figures at the right time.
S--We had an echelon of quality that could not be duplicated
by many states. I think I'm a little bit better than a
casual observer because I worked with the North Central
Association on consultation, examination, and accredita­
tion and came in contact with a lot of people in other
states.
I would say that there was a period of time in the
fifties and sixties where the general quality of

A 642
Spathelf
educational leadership in higher education in the state
was very high compared to many states.
It had an even­
ness of quality.
F--I suppose, Vic, that's why we live in such a time of
prosperity compared to Indiana and the like. We had
those people at the right time.
S--Well, I think this is right to the degree that such
people can help mold public opinion and rally support.
On the other hand, you have to realize that the State
of Michigan has been economically blessed as compared
with an agricultural state, a state that is not growing,
or a state with little metropolitan population density.
F--Sure, I understand all of that, but somewhere along the
line you've got to have somebody with the guts to go
into the fire.
S--Oh yes.

This is part of leadership.

F--I look at Arnell, Beadle, Zollar, and Lane, all of whom
I knew, with tremendous affection.
S--As I say, these were powerful influences in higher
education by filling a void.
F--They could have turned their backs on it and never been
punished.
S--That's correct.
F--But they didn't do it.
S--That's correct.
F--And when they supported a place like Ferris, it was to
zero political advantage.
S--It was of no political purpose to them, really.
I have
often been impressed by their own philosophic thinking
about education.
For example, Arnell is gone, but he had a powerful
philosophic view on what he thought higher education
should be doing.
Frank Beadle did, Gar Lane certainly
has, and so does Charlie Zollar.
This ought to be

A 643

Spathelf
recorded, really, in a conversational piece so that it
would bleed through to provide an appraisal of their
philosophic thinking, because they had it.
There was remarkably little politics except as the
institutions themselves generated politics, and I can't
emphasize this enough. You talk about politics in
higher education and I don't believe that higher educa­
tion should be in politics. It is going to be brushed
pretty heavily with it because it's a public entity,
but the political crises of higher education in Michigan
have largely been generated by some of the institutions
themselves.
F--I agree with that. It's hard to say, but I don't suspect
that Engstrom got five votes for doing what he thought
was right for you.
S--Oh not at all.

This wasn't in the picture.

F--And I can recollect Zollar saying to me--when I worked
for him in the Appropriations Committee which was split
5-3, Republican-Democrat--"We're less political about
Michigan State than the Michigan State Board is."
S--That's exactly the point I made.
F--Zollar was most disappointed about that because we made
decisions about the schools without that kind of mask
or view-through.
He was always shaking his head about
that because he had a higher vision of the value of
higher education sometimes than the boards and the
schools themselves presented.
The other thing is that the institutions managed to
fight in very unseemly ways. There was sadness because
they expected better of them.
S--1 agree, yes. I think at this point you lose the stature
and the integrity that is expected. It leads to a lot of
double-talk and sometimes it leads to impossible opposing
positions within the institutions.
F--Well, I think something else--and I 've made this point
before--and that is: When one school does bad compet­
itively, it doesn't help the others. It hurts them all
because if a school is going to...

A 644
Spathelf
S--You get lumped collectively.
I think over the years,
and I was in it nearly twenty years, I sometimes had
difficulty extracating myself from inter-institutional
fights because I was collectively tied into it.
Although I presume that I was able to act a lot more
independently than some institutions, largely because
the institution had a totally different orientation.
F--And you were an independent cuss and you know it.
S--Well, I ’ve been told this.
F--Thank you so much.
you.
S--Well, I ’m delighted.

(Laughter)

It’s been a pleasure to talk with
I hope some of this is helpful.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
LEONARD WOODCOCK1

F--Mr. Woodcock, what in your opinion were the reasons
that led to the expansion of higher education in
Michigan from 1958 on?
W--Well, I think there was a growing public awareness
of the interrelationship of economic development and
the educational factor.
I think the forward momentum that had come out of
World War II, the accent on upward social mobility,
and the desire to try and make Michigan less dependent
upon the automobile industry, all of these forces came
together to create the awareness that made it possible
to generate the support that was needed.
F--Was there a conscious program, in your opinion, on the
part of labor to expand educational opportunities for
its members?
W — It was so on our part.
I know that I went to many of
our own meetings and outside meetings, very frankly,
courting the example of California’s progress.
These
were the immediate post-Sputnik days and there was
also that element of concern for the interrelationship
of our society and the world with regard to the Soviet
Union.
F--Two very telling points have been made to me as we've
conducted these interviews.
One was that for the first
time in the post-war period prosperity came to the
workers.
They had enough disposable income so that
survival alone wasn't the only question.
i

Leonard Woodcock; President, United Auto Workers,
1970; member Board of Governors, Wayne State
University, 1959-70.
Interview conducted June 19, 1974.

A 645

A 646
Woodcock
The point has also been made that labor became con­
cerned that there be legitimate and useful ways to
expend that additional money that would be helpful
to their members.
Hence they saw that education
was one of those--I hate to use the word--but capital
investments, social capital.
W--Oh, yes. You know the natural desire of parents -and many, many of our members were parents--to have
an ambition for their children "to do better than I
have done" sort of thing.
F--My dad’s a printer, and I ’m the first member of my
family to go to college. Much in his mind was the
desire that I not have to work at the press.
I have the feeling from some of the rhetoric that
many of the members, while appreciative of the
benefits of the industrial process, didn't see that
as something they aspired to for their children and
thought that education would increase their skills
and opportunities.
Was that a strong feeling?
W--Oh yes, most definitely. As a matter of fact, I think
to some degree it became overplayed in that period.
There was a social snobbery that came in, you know,
that everybody had to go to a four-year school. As
time went b y , I personally put a great deal of
emphasis on the necessity to develop the community
college system in this state.
F--We’re still much tied, I suppose, with education for
status rather than education for use. Those are hard
words, I know, but I ’m thinking about the fact that
baccalaureate programs and Ph.D. programs are more
socially valued in terms of the stature and status
rather than training in skills.
I recollect that in this
until we had established
that we put together the
to bring a school to the

city of Detroit it was not
29 other community colleges
political and social energy
area of the greatest need.

W- -1 was chairman of the study group that led to the
first community college campaign in Wayne County,

A 647
Woodcock
and then I was chairman of the campaign organization
that tried to get the necessary millage passed.
That
was in 1966. To our great disappointment, although
we put a lot of effort into it, that millage campaign
failed.
Of course we were then on the threshold of the
increasing resistance to millage. I don't think the
people are against education.
You know, the only
things voters vote on directly are schools and sewers,
which is kind of assinine.
F--That's right, there’s no other place...
W--This is the only place they can lash back at what they
think is essentially an unfair tax system.
I think we
were the victim of that.
F--And I think also, politically speaking, the people who
can, who have the strength, put their particular taxes
in mechanisms that are safe from public review so that
they do not get blocked.
W--That's true.
F--What w e r e the social and economic factors that led to
this growth? W e 've talked of some of them--the pros perity and the upward mobility.
W--Yes.
The American people at all stages of our develop­
ment have had the traditional commitment to education.
The post-war prosperity opened up that possibility in
the eye of the average working-class family so that
all of these things came together. Fortunately, we
had responsive people in high governmental places who
were willing to take advantage of that strong feeling.
F--I ’ve also heard, in a very muted w a y , that after the
war there was disquiet that Michigan was a one-industry
state. There was disquiet that the preponderance of
energy that we placed on the automobile might not be
useful.
People like Haber at Michigan began to encourage
studies of building a diversified economy in this
state that wasn't just dependent on the automobile.

A 648
Woodcock
It seems to have gone into a period of quiet during the
sixties and now it seems to be with us again.
Was that a factor, too, in the encouragement of...
W--Oh, a very big factor, no question about it. It was
certainly a big factor in my own personal reaction.
Of course, over time, our economy has not become that
much diversified, unfortunately.
F--No.
It was an objective of the educational system and
of planners, such as they were.
W--Yes, I think without question.
F--I say that because it's not my impression that we've
ever had a government mechanism that really truly
planned for events--that really has been a responsive
kind of government.
Even in areas like educational
policy it was the dreams and aspirations of individual
men, and occasionally a citizens committee and the like
There has really be no master plan.
It strikes me that Michigan has fortuitously wandered
into some of the right answers.
W--We've been pretty lucky.
On the other hand, California
which did have a master plan--I think you made the
observation before we began--had a relatively rigid
bureaucratic system that had none of the flexibility
that I think the Michigan system has.
It was achieved
by luck more than by design.
F--Right.
I don't know what the answer is, and there are
a lot of imponderables, but one of the things that I
give a lot of credit to is that, for all of the alle­
gations of status, our institutions were very broadranging .
For instance, one always makes the charge quite easily
that the University of Michigan, because of its high
reputation, was a place for the elite. And yet it's
hard to believe that when you have 50 or 60,000 human
beings going to a school, that it really is a narrow
elite.
It looks to me like there were plenty of poor
people going.

A 649
Woodcock
The construction of Wayne, which comes very definitely
in the period of this study, into an institution of
sizeable enrollment and significant graduate programs
of high quality, again makes our system somewhat more
subtle, I think, than the California system was.
W--I think so. Of course, in a relative sense Michigan
tends to be elitist.
Except that in recent years
there’s been a conscious effort to bring in those
with poorer status.
F--That’s one of the things I want to talk about.
In
fact, I think institutions in the state have changed.
I think there's change because of the pressure of the
public rather than the pressure of the institutions
on the public.
I don't know if you think that’s a fair statement,
but it looks to me like the leadership came from the
public sector rather than the institutions trying to
lead the public.
W--Yes. I remember my first daughter went to Michigan
in the Fall of 1959.
In that entering class there
were only 32 Blacks, 24 of them were there--I think
the number was 24--on athletic scholarships.
F--That tells you a great deal, doesn't it?
W--Yes.

They were screened out by the process of choice.

F--What were the policy obj ectives that underlaid this
expansion?
W--Well, of course, I can only really speak to my own
involvement. I ran for the first elected Wayne Board
in 1959 and my motivation was my interest in higher
education. My further motivation was the high
percentage of children from UAW families who were
students at Wayne.
I did not want to see Wayne as a competitive organi­
zation to Michigan because Michigan, I think, had to
be kept in what was then its preeminent role. But I
saw a unique role for Wayne, in the heartland of the
metropolitan area, as an urban university.
I had

A 650
Woodcock
hoped that--the developments couldn't be uniformly
excellent, there's just not enough money to do that-the emphasis would be put in the areas where they
had a unique contribution to make.
As a matter of fact, at one point we were considering
the possibility of a merger between Michigan and Wayne
State but the faculties in both institutions were
absolutely opposed and it never got much beyond the
discussion stage.
I think Wayne has developed remarkably over the 15
intervening years.
F--Just as an aside, I first saw Wayne in '64. When I
went by the other
day I was astonished at how attract ive the school w a s , how different it was, and how much
it had prospered.
W- -We had limited land availability so that there had to
be maximum land utilization. I think the plan that
was proj ected in those early years has worked
remarkably well.
I might say in this regard that the man w h o 's been
the provost at Wayne, a man by the name of Arthur Neef-I don't know whether you've seen him--you should see him.
F--I knew Neef.
I knew him casually.
period of his time when I came.

He was in the last

W - -I was warned against him. He was an archconservative
Republican, I was
told;he was bad for Wayne;he is
this; he is that.
So I was a little wary about him.
But that man, along with Clarence Hilberry, did more
for the early development of Wayne. He and I became
close friends.
F--It's interesting, isn't it, how labels don't seem to
fit circumstances?
W- -That's for sure.
F--I asked you about the policy objectives.
I have the
sense that we had made the decision, in some inartic­
ulate sort of way, that we would create places for
everybody who wanted to go to school, to the contrary

A 651
Woodcock
of Ohio which said there was an opening but then ran
the system of flunking people out by creating immense
numbers of freshman places and few sophomore, junior,
and senior places.
I had the sense that we had the desire to encourage a
significant proportion of our population--we're at
something like 60 percent now--having some kind of posthigh school experience.
I have the sense that we
believed that we could build--maybe this sounds odd to
you, but I've come to it over the period of this inves­
tigation- -the concept of a classless society by building
the middle so huge that it was the whole.
If you take a look at what people perceive themselves
as, they perceive themselves as middle class.
It
strikes me that the entry into a harmonizing coopera­
tiveness was education as a useful social energy.
I
grant you that we came to recognize the minorities
far too slowly, but now that they're starting to
come--in all too few a proportion of their needed
numbers--they're accepted on campuses.
They don't
seem to be isolated or segregated.
It looks to me like this may, as one of the few insti­
tutions that people can cohere around, be a social
mechanism to broaden the whole societal base.
I don't
know if that's too...
W--No, I think that's a very valid proposition.
As I
understand it, I'm not directly connected anymore,
but the Blacks in particular are not segregating
themselves to the degree that they were just a few
years ago, which I think was a protective mechanism.
I think the concept we talked about--to make the
middle so big it becomes the whole--has a great deal
of validity.
F--I started out with the old Marxist and English social
labor view of the world divided into three classes,
and those three classes divided into three subcompo­
nents so you had nine classes.
For that reason I
asked the question, "Did we have policy goals for
the enhancement of higher education, for the
destruction of class and culture barriers?" The
question was framed some months ago.

A 652
Woodcock
But as I've looked at the thing and talked to people,
I've come to the idea that it was an inclusive and
an enveloping sort of thing.
The concept of sticking colleges all over the land:
It's hard to go any place in the state of Michigan
and not be near one.
Even in Black Lake you're within
miles of three community colleges.
It's hard to
believe the change from the vista that you started
with in 1959.
W~-That's very true. Of course the average American
doesn't think of himself in the class sense. It's
true that one member thinks of himself as a worker,
but belonging to the working class doesn't have the
connotations for him that it does for a German.
F--That's occupational and not social.
W--Right. Socially he thinks of himself as "by God, I'm
just as good as anybody else."
F--And for some reason in this state - -1 don't know why
because w e 've had some great wealth here, first from
natural industries like lumber, and chemicals like
salt that built the Dows, and then w e 've had these
tremendously huge fortunes that came out of the Fords
and the like--the rich haven't had a great social
impact here the way they did in Massachusetts where
I'm from.
W- -1 think that's true.
F--I don't know why that is. The papers are not full
of their doings, people just probably don't care.
They don't have the leadership role where they can.
I think about a large community like Flint where the
influence of Mr. Mott was fantastically overwhelming.
You're hard pressed to pick rich people in Michigan
where their influence was that paramount.
W- -Of course that could be said in a critical sense too.
They have not made their just contribution to the
total society in this state.
F--As a matter of fact, I think about it being good in
the fact that they didn't wield political influence.

A 653

Woodcock
Money and political influence are closely tied.
I think about it in a bad sense. You’re hard pressed
at Wayne or Michigan or Western or Eastern to find any
buildings or programs that were endowed by the super­
rich.
If you exclude Kresge and Kellogg and Mott,
w e ’re back virtually to zero.
Coming from Massachusetts and the East where there was
a strong tradition of public philanthropy, I've always
said of Michigan institutions that the greatest phil­
anthropy they ever had was the taxpayer.
W--At Wayne we had a building that ;vas endowed by the
Shapiro family, and the Joy dormitories, but that was
relatively small.
F--And they weren't super-rich anyway.
W--No.
F--What about the issue of popularism in higher education
versus elitism? Do you think that was an issue?
There was a lot of rhetoric about Michigan, Michigan
State, Ferris, and second-chance schools.
W- -Yes. In the public debates I used to sometimes find
myself on the defensive because I would defend Michigan
and its unique role that it had to play. This was not
to the exclusion, obviously, of Michigan State which
had a tremendous development in an academic sense.
On the Wayne Board I was always advocating a non­
competitive relationship, that we had to be concerned
about the total structure.
You look at the unrest of the sixties.
I had two
daughters at the Michigan campus at that time and
they were in the thick of it.
I once said to them,
"You ever wonder why you have so much fun at Michigan
and we have almost none at Wayne?" "Well," they
replied, "it's because they're kind of backward."
I said, "No, it's because they're 'on the make'.
They want to get someplace. You
have too many at
Michigan who come from families that have it made."
You know, at Wayne 7 5 percent of them are working,
many of them full-time.

A 654
Woodcock
F--As a matter of fact, Wayne has the largest number of
people who work and go part-time of any school in
the state.
W--I'm sure of that.
2
F--George Gullen was telling me--I can't recollect the
exact number--something like 100,000 people are on
the rolls that work, come back a semester, take one
course, take off two semesters, and come back for
one more.
W- -It used to be that on the average it was five years
plus to get the undergraduate degree.
F--So you think that that was one of the issues --the
popularism, the belief to do that --because Michigan
has changed its stance over the last years, has it not?
W--Oh yes. The impact of external circumstances and
Bob Fleming. A very conscious effort has been made.
F--I saw Fleming come in from the first. I have a great
admiration for him personally but I think you can't
change the character of an institution because that's
bred in its history. You can change the leadership
in ways to indicate a greater subtleness and desire
to accommodate yourself to that interest.
It may be that Hatcher was less easy in dealing in
the public sector.
W- -1 think that's a fair statement. I knew D r . Hatcher
quite well because he was president during the years
that I was on the Wayne Board.
His public relation­
ship was reserved, almost shy.
It was uneasy.
F--I personally had a great admiration for ICeast. The
m a n 's skill at rhetoric and the advocacy of the
academic model was fantastic, but he certainly would
have to be categorized as one of the those uneasy in
meeting the public and doing particularly poorly with
legislative clientele.
2

George E . Gullen, J r . ; President, Wayne State University.

A 655

Woodcock
W--He was a very eloquent man, as you have stated. He
came, of course, from a Cornell background, and the
University of Chicago.
F--And unfamiliar with the public...
W--...and unfamiliar with the aspects of dealing with the
Legislature and so on.
I think in the latter period
of his incumbency he became bored with the job, for
whatever reasons.
F--In my opinion Wayne is still an institution unfulfilled
in its potential. It hasn’t reached it.
W- -1 *d agree with that.
F--It doesn't serve the heartland yet and I think it can
and will.
If we use the concept of an institution of
higher education as a social engine, it's not doing
what's needed yet.
W - -1 agree with that.
F--How you fashion it into new models that will become
traditional in the future, I don't know.
You used the term "the urban institution," and yet
I'm not sure we have many urban institutions out of
the some 2,000 colleges in America.
W--Mere location doesn't make it an urban institution.
F--No. No.
W--What I mean by urban institution is what I'm sure you
mean, it would have to be a conscious effort.
F--Location doesn't mean anything to m e . I'm thinking
about what it does and how it does it. The barriers
to getting a degree in our society are still signifi­
cant with all the hoops you have to jump through.
I taught in a community college and I was always
impressed with the fear that people who had never
been to college had of going through the first time.
It's quite a frightening thing if you doubt your own
confidence or haven't built this kind of skill.

A 656
Woodcock
I talked to somebody who made a point that may be
important to your view.
They said you develop certain
kinds of skills in our society to be verbal, which are
useful in education.
In the world of work, frequently,
you develop skills that are tactile, manipulative, and
adaptive.
They are not the same kind of skills and we
place a higher value on one rather than the other.
So
if a man is very skilled as a machinist, he may not do
well in school, although his intellect and his brain
and his contribution to society are equally as high.
W--That’s true. A lot of this business about dehumanizing
work is a product of this attitude because work is not
necessarily dehumanizing. Because it is repetitive,
dull, and demanding does not mean it's dehumanizing.
F--No, but the historian in me suspects that people are
getting a little bit tired o f , not work, but of the
machine process. If you take a look throughout the
state, in every church basement and every YMCA people
are taking all of these courses to attain an avocational skill to make pots and the like.
W--Which is fine.
F--Which is work, but it's work that is pleasurable.
think it comes from a sense of achievement.

I

W- -That’s individual too...
F--That's right.
W - -...rather than the collective which is much of the
world’s work.
F--How important were vocational and occupational training
obj ectives in the enhancement of higher education?
W--Particularly important with regard to the proliferation
of the community college. I was strongly attracted to
that movement because it served two purposes: the
transfer system for the late-bloomer, and there are
such, as I know from personal experience; and also for
the one who had no interest in the pursuit of, let's
call it academic things, but wanted to learn a skill.

A 657

Woodcock
We should devote the years through the high school to
educate that human being for a living and then give at
least two more years beyond that so that individual
can be trained to make a living.
If you’re going to
have a democratic society, the educational system has
got to train people for living and not just to make a
living.
F--That really means an institutional engine.
For instance, the UAW has massive effects on our
society in the state. The fact that you are now moving
towards "30 and out" may effectively become of signifi­
cant impact in maybe ten years when significant numbers
of your work force, who are probably in their forties,
will reach their optimum opportunity to retire.
Institutions currently are really pre-puberty institu­
tions , in a sense. They are going to have to create
some kind of mechanism to retrain people for future
occupations. People aren't dying at 55 or 60 anymore.
It looks to me like there's a possibility of useful
life to 70.
That means that 20 years of your workers’ lives, or our
citizens ’ 1ives, have to be spent in something useful.
A man is too energetic to sit for 20 years by the water
and look at it. So the institutions will have to become
mechanisms for something beyond just credit.
W--I think that's true. Of course that's going to be
influenced to some degree by the demographic pattern.
If the birth rate keeps falling, then society isn’t
going to be able to afford the normal retirement age
o f , say, 55, which is the direction in which w e 're
now moving. Their work becomes so automatic that you
need only, say, twenty hours a week or whatever. Worklife is going to begin to expand itself, I think, say,
10 to 20 y'ears from now.
F--Let me push you on that. As a historian it appears to
me that up until quite recent times societies like China
have needed 85 to 90 percent of their population to allow
any kind of urban experience for the other ten percent.
In this country, 10 percent or less maybe if you

A 658

Woodcock
include part of the agribusiness complex, support the
other 90 percent,
W--It's more like 5 and 95.
F--It's that high?
W--Yes.
F--You take a look at the tremendous profits that come
out of the industrialized, automated sector.
It begins
to appear to me that many jobs that were formerly non­
economic are becoming possible for our society to afford.
For instance, the tremendous growth of social industries
which couldn’t have been afforded when we were young are
now regarded as perfectly suitable and paid for out of
the public sector.
I guess what I ’m thinking about is that I suspect --1
have to go over these numbers, and I'm ashamed not to
have them--something like 40 percent of the population
of Michigan is in a nonworking capacity.
There’s about
three million people in school, you take the people in
prison, retired, in hospitals, and people 0 to 5, you
start to come to a big chunk of that nine million.
It
looks to me, and you've got to be far more astute about
this than I, that less and less work is going to be
necessary to carry the economy at its current rate.
So two things can happen.
One, we can afford the wealth
to retrain people for an additional skill which would go
back into societal GNP. Jobs that formerly were non­
economic like social workers, health aides, all kinds
of avocational training for society and decentralized
mental health--which is much more costly but may be
much more humane--would be able to be afforded.
W--Which they do now in Sweden.
F--And I think Sweden has been, for a small, small country,
immensely well industrialized.
W- -Yes.

A 659
Woodcock
F--Well, is there some possibility that that will become
one of the aspects that will give us the wealth to
afford this?
W--Oh, I think so. We've gotten a bit off the track.
There isn't any question that the educational system,
which is essentially geared still to the prework life
period, has got to be geared increasingly to the needs
of those still in the work process and those who've
retired.
It's not a question of going back to work,
it's a question of having a useful, pleasurable use
of one's time.
F--Ok, I guess that's what I'm thinking about.
Two separate programs: the program of the College of
Lifelong Learning at Wayne and President Wharton's
desire and attempt to build a program of lifelong
learning, are part of that facet and the beginning
of the change, ceasing to regard higher education
only as manpower training.
I was in Kentucky and saw the program there where
anybody w h o 's retired, a senior citizen, could go
to college free. I attended a graduation and a woman
85 years old got her degree. Now, you can't make the
argument that she was going into the work force. The
value of that person for herself, for a sense of
usefulness, pride, achievement, and general mental
health, I think, is probably going to become a social
value that your organization and many others will
fight for.
Maybe we're a generation away from that.
W--I think w e 're closer to it than we think.
We had one experiment where we took our people who
did not have high school degrees.
They would not
involve themselves with others because they didn't
want to show inferiority, they lacked confidence.
But when we had those sessions in the local union
hall where they were with their peers, they would
come, they would respond. Out of that they got the
confidence.
F--That's the same thing when I talk about people being
afraid to go to college.

A 660

Woodcock
W--Right.
F--Even for an avocational course.
What about the role, Mr. Woodcock, of culture and the
arts? Do you think it’s had importance in the dialogue
over the growth of higher education? Did people say,
well, higher education will be the institution that
can perhaps encourage culture and the arts and we'll
put money into higher education?
W--I think in terms of the average person you would say
yes. But it’s not really very conscious. I'm not
saying this is a good thing.
We were just talking about Sweden.
When I was in
Gothenberg last year the trade union headquarters
had original paintings.
The Swedish labor movement
was the chief patron of their own artists.
That's foreign to American concepts, yet the American
strain is made up of all of the cultures where a high
premium is placed upon this.
One of the unforgivable
things about our society has been that up until
recent years, and thankfully it's changing, we pushed
everybody into the so-called American mold.
You were
taught to be ashamed if you were Polish or Italian or
whatever.
You wanted to become an American, whatever
that was.
F--You had to become homogenized.
W--Now we're realizing the great social and cultural loss
we've had.
I think we've turned the corner on that.
I would think increasingly there is a pride in one's
origins and that can be linked directly... in higher
education.
F--Two things probably have to happen. One is that
social institutions like the government, labor unions,
and educational institutions have to put a greater
premium on it and encourage it and reward it in some
way.
W--Right.

A 661
Woodcock
F--The second thing is--I harken back to your remarks
about Michigan--it's hard to think about culture
when you're involved with survival.
It may be that
now that we've begun to reach the level of broadbased education, we can begin to have the base for
that. We certainly have had no philanthropy involved
in the culture and the arts, where you have in other
states back east.
W--Certainly not to that degree.
F- -We don't have opera or theater programs that are
really husbanded or encouraged except through schools.
I think about Oakland and Michigan.
W--Bilberry.
F--Hilberry Theater ran some superb programs but it
didn't have a conscious programmatic objective.
It
was sort of inarticulate, without significant fiscal
support.
For example, let's take Hilberry Theater and the whole
theater program of Wayne.
I don't think that if the
institution hadn't wanted to do it, there'd have been
any pressure from the Legislature or government to
make it occur.
W--No. When I was chairman of the Board--! was chairman
five terms, five of the original six--when we'd go up
to the Legislature to beg, frequently that would be
pointed to as a waste of money, not needed. Thank­
fully we stuck to it.
F--It had to have a lot of institutional determination.
You didn't get rewarded the way you get rewarded for
football.
W--Exactly, exactly.
F--It's my sense that for all of the talk about democracy
this state ’s still run by a small elite.
It's a larger elite, I think, than I originally
thought of. Mr. Staebler said this may be 20,000
wide and a lot of it local, decentralized, not all
at the centralized capitol.

A 662
Woodcock
It's hard to deal with elites because they're hard to
put your hands on, they don't come out.
I'm trying to get a handle on where some of the major
social energies of our society were for higher educa­
tion. Where was labor?
W--Labor, traditionally, going back to its earliest
beginnings in this country, has had a dedication and
a support for free and public education.
It's
perfectly understandable because it was the aspiration
of the members to have their families become something
else. Internally there was never any difficulty in
getting commitments to support it. There's never been
a millage campaign, for example, anyplace where we have
members where we have not supported it. Now, our
members did not always follow the lead.
F--Did you get beat up inside the local democratic
structure of the unions--I mean at locals and through
the councils up to the international--for your support
of education?
W--No, never.
F--You didn't suffer at that at all.
It's obvious [however] that in some of the areas where
you were attempting to make social advances people
didn't understand and you had a large education...
W--Like gun control.
F--Labor has political clout. Y o u 've worked hard to
develop it because this was a Republican state up
until, o h , I hazard a guess , until '48.
W--What happened from the New Deal period until '48.
We normally elect a Democratic governor in the
presidential year and then the Republicans would
take it back in the off-year. Williams, of course,
was the first who broke that and was reelected six
times. And in the process built a Democratic Party
because until that time there was a strong Democratic
enclave in the metropolitan areas but there was no
Democratic Party organization.

A 663
Woodcock
F--I've studied the election statistics and until 1946
the Democrats had controlled the Michigan Senate two
years and controlled the Michigan House, I believe,
four years in its whole history.
You'd had three
Democratic governors: Ferris, I believe Comstock,
but I'm not sure of that...
W--Bill Comstock in 1934, and then Murphy in 1936-37.
F--And that was it until Soapy.
W--No, there was a Democrat in '41-'42.
name?

What was his

F--VanWagoner.
W--Right.
F--When you thought about Michigan from Massachusetts,
you thought of it as a labor state with a lot of
rhetoric that it was run by the union.
But when you
took a look at the Legislature in '46, there was
something like four or five members in the Senate and
18 or so in the House and they were all from Detroit.
Then from '48 on, as you won those six elections, you
began to build a statewide organization.
You began
to have a great deal of political power and you began
to curtail the power of the automobile dealers and the
companies themselves, which were quite active in the
Republican Party.
When you did that you obviously had people that were
sympathetic to labor interests in the Legislature.
Did you consciously encourage them to be pro higher
education?
W--I was a director in outstate Michigan in Grand Rapids,
Muskegon, Saginaw, Bay City, and the North.
I came
down here in '55.
In that period, n o , I couldn't
claim that.
F--My suspicions are that that's exactly the case for a
different kind of a reason. The reason was that
education had such broad societal support, across a
lot of the devisive factors of ethnic and economic

A 664

Woodcock
and geographical interest, that people could support
it and it didn't become partisan.
It doesn’t look
to me like education really was a partisan issue.
W — I think that’s true. Of course, in the immediate post­
war period the facilities available were swamped by
those taking advantage of the GI Bill. No, it was
not partisan.
F--And hence one didn’t have to go through the mechanism
of. . .
W--Partisanship wouldn’t show up until "who’s going to
pay the bill?” Then it would b e , "where is the money
coming from?" that would be partisan, not "who gets
it?"
F--Not "who gets it?"
W--Right.
F--There’s more today.
For instance, you take a look at
the welfare issues about even giving them the money.
They fight about the appropriations level. It's a
good political issue. No matter what the questions
of validity and social justice are, it’s a demogogic
issue. It doesn’t seem to have been that way in the
case of education.
W--That’s true.
F--It looks to me like you found it easy to cooperate
with industry and other sectors of society on these
goals.
People served on boards, served on blue ribbon
commissions. In spite of antagonisms you might have
had to Republican governors, you cooperated fully in
this area.
W--That’s correct. For example, my running-mate when I
first ran for the Wayne Board in 1959 was Mike Ference,
who was then the Vice-President of Ford Motor Company
in charge of research and engineering. We had the
ready consent of the top management there that he
would go into this kind of activity.
F--And Bluestone went to serve on the Grand Valley Board.

A 665

Woodcock
W--Ken Robinson serves on the Grand Valley Board.
Irving too?

Does

F--I guess I thought Mr. Bluestone did.
W--He is on the advisory group to the Dearborn Center of
the University of Michigan, I know, and he served on
many boards.
F--1'm sure that Bluestone was on the board, I'm not sure
if he is today.
But again that was a significant use
of labor talent and leadership.
W--Ken Robinson is our director, h e 's on that board. When
you take school boards and other boards, a lot of our
people in this state...
F--...served throughout the whole structure.
W--Right.
F--What was the position of industry in regard to higher
education?
W--Well, they were very supportive in general terms, but
when you get into the taxing area, then there might
have been questions raised.
F--It strikes me that industry had more enthusiasm when
it came to local identification: Grand Rapids with
Grand Valley, Saginaw with GM, and Dearborn with the
Ford people. And Oakland with the automotive people
that Woody was able to skillfully pull together.
W - -I think over the years they became more supportive
of the effort at Wayne than they were in the earliest
years.
F--One didn't sense that at Wayne in the beginning.
W--No, it wasn't there.
F--Was that the flight from the city, to some extent?
Or was it just a lack of institutional skill at
knowing how to reach these people?
W - -I think there was a little bit of both.

A 666

Woodcock
F--Can you make a distinction between industry and
commerce? I don't know that it's valid, but I was
curious about that.
W--I don't think so, not for sure anyway. My impression
was that industry was more supportive of the higher
education role than commerce would be. They would
be much more localized.
F--What about the role of agriculture?
it.
W--I'm not aware.

It's had to feel

I just had no contacts to know about it.

F--The union didn't become interested in the agricultural
sector until the United Farm Workers, really.
W--Well, the UAW as such had an involvement with the
Farmers Union, and subsequently with the National
Farmers Organization, but neither of those is very
strongly placed in Michigan so that there has not
been that much of a cooperative development.
F--We never really were a state that had major farms,
were we? We were still small farmers.
W--Right.
F--Small capitalists rather than maj or corporate entities
such as in California.
W--Yes. Most of the organizations were Farm Bureau with
which we had a distant relationship.
F--What about the pressure of the federal government in
the determination of educational policy? Did you
notice any?
W--Well, of course, it had a tremendous role in the grants
in the various areas. It wouldn't have been possible
without those grants. But I was never aware of any
policy...
F--In social policy, M r . Woodcock, one comes across the
fact that for every dollar there's a requirement, a
condition, a constraint. In social policy for welfare,
and for health, there are many barriers for every

A 667
Woodcock
dollar. Many times it appears the direct object is
to cut down entitlement.
It doesn’t appear to me to
have been the case in education.
W--No. I think that's a fair statement, certainly.
While I was active, I was never aware of any demand
that went along with the grant.
F--For instance, there was never any public policy to
discourage the taking of certain minorities and the
like.
W- -On the contrary, it was to make it happen.
F--What about the role of the private sector?
I'm quite impressed with its power because of the way
the boards are, the hold that some of these institu­
tions like Hope and Calvin and U of D have on certain
segments of our population. And yet I haven't been
able to observe that they fought the growth of higher
education, or that public higher education fought
entitlements or opportunities for enhancement of
private education.
Do you think that's a fair statement?
W- -I think so. My own experience was in the relationship
between Wayne State and the University of Detroit and
that was always very friendly and fully cooperative.
F--And very statesmanlike. I wonder if because that's
more a matter of personality than anything else,
because in other states that’s not always been the
case.
W--It could have been.

Father Steiner was the president.

F--And now Father Carron.
W--And now Father Carron. Both of them very forwardlooking men, very much interested in the public sector.
F--Do you have any ideas about the reasons for the failure
of the branch campus system that had begun to be
developed in Michigan with Oakland, Flint, and Dearborn?

A 668
Woodcock
What I ’m thinking about is: In Wisconsin you had the
University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, University of
Wisconsin at Milwaukee, at Green Bay; and in
California, the University of California system.
We didn't do that.
Somehow there was some kind of
conscious decision to turn away from the University...
W--There was a lot of feeling in the Legislature against
what they called imperialism, or whatever you want to
name it.
I know Wayne had opposition as an institution to that
concept. I don't know what the position of Michigan
State w a s , what with spinning off Oakland.
I don't
know quite how that came into being either.
F--Well, I ’ve been watching this human services bill.
There's a lot of energy for and a lot of opposition
against this super-agency concept. I'm quite struck,
as I watch this effort at government restructuring
fail, that in Michigan localism and the fear of
centralized government is a very strong psychological
aspect of our public makeup.
I wondered if that might
have been it.
W - -I think it probably was.
F--If you take a look at the Dutch, they are afraid of
big government, they're suspicious of it.
It always strikes me as somewhat amusing that people
who work in government are bureaucrats and people who
work in industry are management. The term bureaucrat
is highly criticized, management is highly respected.
Yet they do the same exact thing.
W--Right, that's true.
F--What in your opinion were the reasons that an insti­
tutional system for the coordination of higher
education didn't come about in '64?
That was when the State Board was created, you had
the Constitution go into operation, and yet no kind
of voluntary cooperative coordination ever did really
come about.

A 669

Woodcock
W--My own spoken feeling and position at that time was
to the concept of having a State Board which had
responsibility for the total system.
To be a
volunteer board was just a contradiction in terms.
I know the demand on my time as a volunteer on the
Wayne Board...
F--It was severe, wasn’t it?
W--It was as much as one could hope--to have some under­
standing of that complex an institution.
To have a
volunteer board that had the responsibility for the
whole, it just couldn't work.
F--No, and I suppose it still can’t work.
W- -1 don’t think so.
F--And there was a suspicion, I suspect. There is a very
delicate line between coordination and control, isn’t
there?
W--That *s very true.
F--And it takes men of great skill to walk it. There may
have been suspicion that they couldn’t do it.
W--And the competitive factor, you know.
The big three,
Michigan State, Michigan, and Wayne State would have
to "Ok, well, w e ’11 get our budgets relatively in
balance but..."
F--They didn't want it either, did they?
W--Of course not. We were always looking over our
shoulders at the others.
F--The other thing I'm struck by is that in 1964 the
state went through a massive flip-flop with the
Goldwater election and 8 Democrats got elected
[to the Board]. This state still had a significant,
and still has a significant, Republican vote. People
like Bentley and Briggs, some of those people didn't
get elected.
The Legislature wasn't preponderantly
the Democratic Party. You may have had men who had
the tag Democrat, but you still needed Republican
votes to pass anything.

A 670
Woodcock
W--That's correct.
But in higher education there were many responsive
people on the Republican side.
I know of my own
knowledge, going up to Lansing so many times.
F--They didn't have representation so that may have
weakened the Board and strengthened the institutions.
W--I think so, yes.
F--The Wayne Board, for instance, only put up two members
in '64, whereas the State Board ran eight.
So you had
Republican people on the Board.
I think of Stockmeyer
for one.
Who in your opinion were the significant opinion
leaders that helped fashion public policy in this
time? Who did you look to as the leaders, men of
great stature?
W--The men who themselves were heading up the institu­
tions.
John Hannah, I think, had a tremendous impact
statewide in this area.
I think Clarence Hilberry had
a great impact too.
In a different kind of way Harlan Hatcher had
considerable impact.
The members of the Legislature in both the House and
the Senate were sympathetic to the aims of higher
education. Again, until you got into the area of
"where is the money coming from?"
I know at one time--I think it was in '61-'62, around
in that period--we went to the Legislature from Wayne
with a proposal that we be allowed to charge the full
cost of the education to the individual.
The difference
between what was supplied by public money and what you
would be paying you would pay over a long period of
years at very low interest rates. We would set up a
revolving fund to which we asked a commitment from the
Legislature to make this possible.
We would grow over
a few years to a point where we were collecting the
total cost.

A 671

Woodcock
We got a lot of attention to that proposition by the
members of the Legislature but other institutions
were not very receptive.
In these days of ever
increasing tuitions we're beginning again to create
an economic barrier to access to higher education.
F--I suppose the loan program frightens people because
it could set up a tremendously long-term debt.
W--Yes.
F--And that would have the nature of discouraging the
poor from going.
W--But conversely, it could also make it possible for
them to go.
It would not blot out scholarship aid
so it's a reverse social security.
F--Right, that's true.
And there were people in labor like yourself, Bluestone,
you mentioned Ken Robinson, Reuther was interested,
Scholle was interested.
People mention Walker Cisler,
W- -Yes. In fact, Ken Morris, who is another of our
metropolitan area directors, is on the Oakland Board
and very much involved with Oakland affairs. Most
of our top leadership in one way or another has a
personal involvement.
F--So it was a broad-based thing. You talked about
Hannah and Hilberry and Hatcher.
John Porter, for whom I have a great deal of regard,
said, "Jerry, you have to understand that in Michigan
in this period there were giants on-line, men who had
national stature, who were great m e n ."
Henry went on to Illinois and built a great reputa­
tion after he left Wayne. Hilberry was highly
regarded. Hannah, of course, is just a fantastic man.
W- -Yes.

A 672
Woodcock
F--Maybe it was the strength of the institutions and the
strength of the society, too.
I ’m not one to believe
that education has ill-served the people or is in
dreadful trouble.
W--No, I don't think so.
I'm happy that you're making
this effort because it's a story well worth telling.
F--Thank you so very much for your time.
appreciate it.
W--Thank you.

I very much

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
MILTON E. MUELDER1

F--What in your opinion, Dr. Muelder, were the reasons that
led to the expansion of higher education in Michigan
from 1958 on?
And two subsidiary questions: What were the social and
economic factors that led to this significant growth?
What were the policy objectives that underlay this
expansion?
M--The response to this question lies in national develop­
ments of which Michigan is a very important part.
The date 1958, to me, would not be a meaningful date.
A more meaningful date would be from World War II to
the present.
The reason for this is that certain
dynamics were released as a result of World War II
which carried right through 1958 and, essentially, with
little interruption, until about 1968. From that time
there has been some tapering off, some retrenchment at
the federal level, which has affected importantly
developments within the state.
But nonetheless, even with the retrenchment that is
currently under w a y , the relative plateau at which the
total support of higher education nationally has occurred
is high.
There is no comparison at all between higher
education in the United States from the World War II
date up until the present.
What occurred during World War II, and then took on very
special meaning, was that higher education became a
Milton E . Muelder; Dean of Graduate School and Vice
President for Research and Development, Michigan State
University, 1959; Dean, College of Arts and Science,
Michigan State University, 1952 -59; member, Michigan State
Civil Service Commission, 1951-57, chairman, 1955-57.
Interview conducted June 14, 1974.
A 673

A 674
Muelder
partner with the federal government in the achievement
of certain national goals and ends. The legal basis
for such participation was prepared very neatly and
importantly by the relationship between the federal
government and the land grant institutions.
This dated
back first to the Morrill A c t , then to the Hatch Act of
188 7, wherein instruments were found whereby it was
possible for the federal government to give support to
universities without at the same time controlling the
universities.
This was the intensive debate and argument that existed
immediately before 1887 and which was resolved in the
mechanisms that were then established. In other words,
it was recognized that federal dollars can flow to the
universities without at the same time having control
by the federal government.
In World War II the universities represented an indispensable resource in aiding the federal government in
the prosecution of the war.
Large laboratories were
run directly by universities. So successful was this
endeavor that President Roosevelt engaged in corre­
spondence with some of the leading scientists to inquire
whether it would not be possible and desirable, somehow
or other, to turn this relationship to worthwhile
objectives during a peace period.
This led directly, after some correspondence, for
example, to the establishment of the National Science
Foundation. Other federal agencies took up the cudgels National Institutes of Health, the Atomic Energy
Commission, in addition to agencies of the Department of
Defense that were already involved. The largest single
change that has occurred is that whereas the Department
of Defense represented the giant share of research
support to the universities in the early period, this
has dwindled to the point where the Department of Defens
now represents one of the minor sources, relatively, to
at least, basic research at the universities.
F--That's not really bad though, is it?
M--No, it is not bad as long as the universities themselves
are clear concerning their own objectives and policies
so that the universities do not go after dollars merely
because dollars are present, but hold to a program and
policy whereby federal dollars, regardless of what the

A 675
Muelder
agencies are, are used to enhance the basic education
and research objectives of the respective departments
in the colleges.
Certain universities have gotten themselves into deep
difficulty because they have not been clear concerning
their own objectives in the acquisiton of foreign
dollars. Others have coupled this with getting involved
in the hiring of large staff on so-called soft money.
The traumatic experiences involved in the change to a
solid position of hiring on hard money has generally
taken place throughout the United States so that these
large adjustments, essentially, have taken place.
Fortunately for Michigan State University, w e , from the
very first, indicated in our basic policies that we
would go after dollars only to the extent to which these
were consistent and consonant with our own research and
teaching aspirations and programs.
F--For example, Stanford.
the coin.

That would be the other side of

M - -Stanford would be the other side of the coin. They
eventually set up the Stanford Research Institute in
order to become involved with types of work that would
not be appropriate for the university to undertake.
There was confusion, however, at times, what was what.
This became so difficult for Stanford University that
there is now a complete separation between Stanford
Research and Stanford University.
Other universities
have gone through a similar type of experience, such as
at Cornell and the Cornell Aeronautical Lab. There are
at least six or seven other maj or types of institutions...
F--We were not in Michigan, Dr. Muelder, one of the recipients
of the immense dollars such as went to MIT, Stanford, and
Chicago. Maybe we were lucky that way, not to have been
so oriented to just one aspect of the program.
M--Right. I think w e 're on the long-run fortunate not to
have become overinvolved.
The maj or involvement occurred with our Willow Run
Laboratory. That is, "we", meaning the University of
Michigan. However, there was much basic and significant
research involved in Willow Run, the most dramatic and
important being that of infrared sensory sensing, which

A 676
Muelder
has not only a military application, but it also has
an important peace application.
The University of Michigan, smarting under the attacks
that it was involved in classified research that was
too closely associated with the military, following
the steps of some of the other universities, has like­
wise separated itself from Willow Run--which has now
been set up as ERIM, meaning the Environmental Research
in Michigan. It is involved in both classified as well
as in nonclassified research. Its interests and
objectives, however, are primarily a peace-researchend obj ective.
The social and economic factors that led to this growth
are not only national, as indicated, they are also
state factors. But here is something that is very
peculiar to the American system of university adminis­
tration and needs to be underscored; namely, much of
the drive that we have in higher education in the
United States must be associated directly with our
system of decentralization to the universities, as
opposed to masterminding and control at the center,
whether at the state level or at the federal level.
Also following an extremely important historical devel­
opment is the fact that the universities have become the
home of science, for the greater part, rather than having
a wide array of national laboratories in which most of
the significant research is done.
An example of the latter is Germany where you had the
Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft, which has been renamed as
the Max Planck Gesellschaft. These administer a variety
of important laboratories that are disassociated with
the universities. In other words, they are somewhat
more like an industrial research organization in the
sense that they are independent of your universities.
You do not have degree-granting programs involved with
them. There's a certain sterility as far as the carrying
of the torch is concerned in the training of new and
important personnel.
In America, here at Michigan State University, as at the
University of Michigan, we have the training of graduate
students that are a part of our maj or research effort,
including those dollars that come from either the state,
industry, or the federal government.

A 677
Muelder
F--To amplify your point about Germany, I think about
England being very much the same way. And in Russia,
with the Academy of Science institutions spread across
the land, they are very product-oriented.
They are very
market-oriented and there may be a market for basic
research in physics but there may not be any market for
basic research in some other area such as biology or
social science. So that in the end these institutions
come out, I think, somewhat weaker in their social values.
M--Right. They come out weaker in terms of the long-range
development of research, per se, and without a basic
expansion of the fundamental research. We do not have,
then, the base for the applied and developmental research
which has the real economic and social benefits associated
with it.
Another thing to emphasize is the autonomy and the manage­
ment system that we have in the American universi ty.
Many of the research programs in which we are involved-social and economic as well as academic --are determined
internally within the university.
For example, the large water management research demon­
stration proj ect now under way at Michigan State
University was not initiated at the state level and was
not initiated at the federal level, it was initiated on
the basis of imaginative thinking on the part of faculty
who were very socially and economically conscious of the
implications of the need to do something about waste water.
I think that’s all.
F--Ok, let’s summarize. You would make the position, as I
understand what you say, that the growth of higher educa­
tion as an enterprise in itself is a national effort that
results from our experiences from the war and the develop­
ment of science in an institutional w a y . I don’t mean
that in a bureaucratic way, but in an institutional w a y .
Placing it in higher education institutions rather than
the Edison tradition of the handy tinkerer, o r , in other
words, the free-standing institute, is a deliberate
public policy.
M --I would have to emphasize that it was a deliberate public
policy to enlist the support and the resources of the
university to accomplish two large goals. One is to
deliver significant and important research inasmuch as
we are increasingly a knowledge-base society. And number

A 678

Muelder
two, only at the university
of skilled manpower.
These
and the training of skilled
can only be provided at the

can one achieve the training
two elements, new knowledge
manpower, are functions that
university.

However, there has never been, nor does there exist now,
a total plan at the federal level for the use of the
universities. This has both its drawbacks and its
advantages. Nor does this exist in detail at the state
level, despite all the coordinating actions and efforts
that exist.
F--I think there's another element, too. You made the point
in your discussion about the fact that this is not a
centralized land. I think, as a political scientist - -as
you are, as I am--you're much struck by the fact that the
basic political fabric of this country is decentralized
and regional. As much as people talk about the power of
the center in America, the power of the center is a good
deal more dissipated and weak than it appears to b e .
It strikes me that one of the strengths for higher educa­
tion which you didn't mention is the GI Bill, which
created the fiscal entitlement for a mass of the population
to participate in the advantages of higher education, not
only for skilled manpower, which I would suspect probably
was the number one criterion, but also for the value of
improving people's self-image and value of themselves.
So I guess that's not a federal sense of decision.
It
seems to be a marketplace decision by society which
changes Michigan State, for instance, from 4,000 to
40,000. Are you comfortable...
M--Very comfortable with that, emphasizing that the federal
government provided the financial resources to make the
GI Bill available. However, it was the decentralized
universities and colleges responding to their own sense
of a social, economic value that translated this into
actions both at the sophisticated university level as
well as in vocational and other meaningful ways.
F--Coming to 1946, there was a certain sentiment that you
couldn't recover from the terribly brutal experiences
of 1929 to 1941. They thought that the depression was
going to come back again. People who had looked at
economic institutions thought they were going right
back into the funk.
People said there will be no
prosperity.

A 679

Muelder
You had the attitude that some higher education institu­
tions had no sense of how they would be of use because
the concept of a mass market for manpower was something
America had not really approached before.
It was still
very much agricultural, mechanical, and blue-collar
oriented. And the knowledge industry, while it was
there as a result of the war, hadn't reached into the
psyche of people.
Now, when that comes about--this strong attitude that
there's a desperate sort of doomsday climate--how do
you explain this tremendous change and turnabout in the
society to enhance the role of the institutions? How
do you explain how the institutions were ready to do it?
It didn't occur equally because of the decentralization
at the same level all over the country.
In the East it
occurred much slower and in the South it didn't occur
anywhere near as rapidly as it did in the Midwest and
in the West. It seems to me there had to be something
about the populist tradition and the like. I don't
know the answer to that.
M - -I don't know the answer to that either. It's a veiy
fascinating question. I don't know the answer to that.
F--And men make institutions, too.
M--Men make institutions. And again, if one looks at the
Michigan picture, Michigan can b e , I think, extremely
proud of the fact that it has taken education as an
important an institution as it has, looking over the
long expanse of history, whether from the early normal
schools at Ypsilanti and these other institutions, plus
having institutions such, as the University of Michigan,
Michigan State, and Wayne State.
F--Well, that's the core of my question.
it a little bit.

Let me develop

I'm from Massachusetts, as you know, and the tradition
of public education has always been weak there. I come
to Michigan and I find a state that is equally as rich
as Ohio and Illinois. I find a state that has the same
kind of social, economic, and population mixes. Yet I
find that in Michigan--the seventh richest state in the
land’- -we had a long, long tradition of public education,
where the state had developed the first tradition of the

A 680

Muelder
high school with the Kalamazoo Case. We built a com­
munity college system of an amazing extensiveness. We
turned our backs on one of the models of the Morrill Land
Grant Act, which was that each state would have an agri­
cultural, mechanical school and a literary school, so to
speak, with the status going to the literary and the
agricultural and mechanical one not having the status.
We were one of the very first states in the Union,
particularly in the Midwest, to work on the concept of
perhaps two or three major universities that were comprehensive--perhaps Michigan State had a little less in the
hard science and Michigan had a little less in the
applied areas --but still so much like each other.
M--But even there, one has to remember that it was Michigan
State College, the old Michigan Agricultural College,
that was preeminent in science as it emerged. It was
the old Michigan Agricultural College that was so deeply
affected by the work of Liebig and decided that it was
in the scientific realm, primarily, in which it had to
grow.
It was probably unfortunate for Michigan Agricultural
College that for a period it lost some of its emphasis
on the sciences that it had in the initial period. If
you look at the curriculum of Michigan Agricultural
College as it was instituted, as opposed to a number of
eastern schools, originally, you'd find in place of the
Latin and the Greek, the hard sciences.
F--Yes, but in the history of American education, one of
the curiosities to m e , and one of the amusing things, is
that the majority of American education was built out of
the theology schools, and their rej ection of science was
quite severe. I can recollect that Yale turned back
science in the nineteenth century.
It was only after
Johns Hopkins and the German universities set the model
for the prestige that people found they were able to say
that hard sciences, which had the element of being dirty
or perhaps blue-collar, could be accepted.
But let me conclude the point. If you take a look at
Michigan--much like Ohio, much like Illinois --you find
that this state, besides the community colleges and the
high schools, and Ypsilanti (the first teacher-training
institution west of the Alleghenies) you find Michigan,
you find Michigan State. It’s an amazing enterprise
and I think widely reputed that before the Second World

A 681
Muelder
War we probably ran the first--or second or third-very best educational system in the country.
The dollars we've committed to education and the commit­
ment to research, which has not ever been something that
could be popular in a sense of popular support the way
athletics is almost a religion. We did an extraordinary
job. And other states have copied u s . We didn't copy a
federal initiative and I wonder...
M - -1 can only counter your inquiry by still another inquiry.
You come from Massachusetts. The same question has been
asked of me by one of my friends from the State of
Washington who is with the American University Field
Staff, Albert Ravenholt. Some years ago he asked me
what there is about Michigan that provides it with a
peculiar type of leadership so that it does things some­
what differently than other states and that exercises a
certain dynamic drive in the accomplishment of certain
goals in education and in other matters. The question
was asked, "Well, is there something peculiar about the
type of talent that got attracted to Michigan by some
accident, and that is growing to some extent, that
explains Michigan as such a unique state?" Again, I
don’t know the answer, but others notice it.
F--If we .were to take the time and do a sociological
analysis we could name thousands of men who came from
Michigan who head state institutions in Utah, Oregon,
California, and Texas. I think of Steve Spurr who was
your opposite number at Michigan. I think no other
state has had that degree of leadership.
I think there1s something in the environment, the history,
and the culture. I don’t know what it is, but I think
it1s a study worthy of analysis.
M - -It may even be associated with our climate.
F--As a matter of fact that’s interesting, because
Dr. Fleming and I talked about the differences that
occur, in my opinion and in his, in Michigan, Wisconsin,
and Minnesota in the traditions and the style, versus
the southern part of the Midwest. I think there's
something in that. I think, you know, the old New England
stuff about the frontier and the hardness of the climate
and the hard way to make a living. I think the fact that
the land was not as good as that of Iowa and Illinois.

A 682
Muelder
I don’t know, but the point is this: We are a great
state, we have great educational institutions, and we
have received the love of the people in a way beyond
the measure of many other states.
In another state
they would have driven a John Hannah out. They didn’t
do that here, they supported him. They stood for
educational diversities, too, because the presidents
were different and the schools were different.
In a
time of bureaucratic centralism, which I think was 1946
to the present, bureaucratic centralism has not
succeeded and hasn’t been sought.
Well, I think a historical analysis of what we are must
face some of these questions. One reason I'm talking
to you is that I'm trying to discern from your great
interest in political science, and encouraging the
research enterprise at the institutions--which is an
applied form of public policy of the best sort--and
your close observation of the MSU successes in the
enterprise over this last generation, if you could help
to give some insight as to why you think it happened?
M--1 just keep wondering about it myself.
F--I think one of the values of the study will be not that
the answers will come, because I don't think that's one
work, but I think it may be the broadening of the
dialogue past the process question.
I'm much taken by the fact that much of the curriculum
in the study of education is process and not as much
about ends and means as it should b e . I'm hoping to
broaden the base of the public policy dialogues so
people will understand what w e 've done and what are
the real questions.
M--Again, I can only add the comment of another American,
now from another part of the United States, namely,
Steven Bailey.
He is the Vice President of the American
Education Council for International Programs, comes from
Syracuse, and is familiar with the eastern seaboard.
After my recent presentation in Germany--at which he was
present--his comment at the luncheon was, "I can never
quite fathom and get over the dynamics of Michigan and
Michigan State University."
People sense that there's something about the institution
and its representatives, and I'm not speaking about myself.

A 683
Muelder
I think you and the others just naturally reflect a
certain dynamics that is something unique when you get
a group of people together talking about education and
problems of education.
F--What do you think were some of the social and political
objectives? You just don't create any instrument in
any government at any time in history that doesn't have
an end.
I have recognized, as you have so implied, that America
is not a land of planning. We haven't as yet followed
the Soviet model where it's all chiseled in granite, but
in 1958 the state appropriations in higher education was
$80 million. In 197 0 it's $250 million. What were the
obj ectives?
Some have talked about second chance. I've raised the .
question here --in questions 5 and 6 and 4-- indirectly.
Was it the attempt to break class and culture barriers?
Was it elitism versus popularism? What were the partisan
and parochial conf1icts in the attempt to attain the
objectives?
M--My own long association with Michigan State would prompt
me to say the following, at least about this institution:
This institution, in general, has transcended the question
of class. It has been proud of the fact that it has
attracted so many students who were the first of their
families ever to enter an institution of higher learning.
Now, what is the source of pride? What is the social
and even the economic objective? These were not defined
so much as broad social and economic obj ectives as they
were an obligation on the part of the institution to be
concerned about people
and to use
the individual asa
point of departure, to
see what it can do for the
individual to make him a more useful citizen in the
society in which he lives.
What are the hopes and aspirations of the individual in
the accomplishment of this in an increasingly complex
society? One has to provide a whole variety of services
that are needed.
F--I'm smiling as you talk because something of great
amusement struck m e .
I started this exercise
ences and reading some

of trying
two months

to draw on my experi­
ago. As you talkto

A 684
Muelder
the many fine and insightful people, your experience is
broadening and you begin to get beyond the Questions to
some of the more basic social forces.
When I moved into the questions I was much struck by the
rhetoric. For instance, Susan Jacoby's article in
?
Saturday Review about MSU being a popularist institution.
I was struck by that. It's a form of political rhetoric
that is much in favor.
I was much struck by the Marxian
models about a classless society which have controlled
our thought for the last 75 years, and the work of the
sociologists like the Muncie, Indiana people --whose
author leaves my mind now--who talked about a lower,
middle and upper class, and then they broke them down
into the lower middle and lower lower. So you built a
9-tiered society. One of the things that struck me is
that when you build some surveys you find 95 percent of
the population perceive themselves as being middle class.
I am struck by the fact that an institution as wide as
Michigan State, which moved to excellence, was not based
on birth but on what I'd call a meritocracy in Michigan.
I was quite critical of this in the beginning but I've
come to believe that you can't have a 40,000 elite.
It
really is, again, the meritocracy.
W e 're probably building--taking that 95 percent of people
perceiving themselves in the middle class--the classless
society of Marx from a completely different vantage point.
I'm struck by the fact that while the rhetoric of many
people is still very much in the Marxian, socialist,
anarchist modes, we have done something that people may
not have known that they've done: W e 're building the
first classless society through the mechanism of the
education enterprise.
M--If it is feasible, I would suggest that you try to inter­
view Tom Cowden, who was the long-time Dean of Agriculture.
Dean Cowden often made the observation and comment that
in America we have never had a peasant class.
It's an extremely important observation. Not only have
we not had it as a class in terms of the bundle of feudal
rights and responsibilities that describe the constraints
2

Susan Jacoby, "Power of the Word ," Saturday Review
World 1 (January 1974) : 40-43.

A 685
Muelder
that existed in terms of a citizen’s personal life, but
w e ’ve never had the mentality of a peasant class as well.
So that when you say most of the people consider them­
selves of the middle class, this represents an extremely
important observation.
In part it goes back to how people perceive themselves,
which is one of the most powerful forces which we have.
People did not perceive themselves as of a lower class
necessarily, and always looked to the mobility that was
ahead, responsive to certain skills and talents that
were obtainable through, again, the education system.
F--I don’t know if you've thought about this but there's
some nine million people in the State of Michigan and
virtually a third of them are in education.
If you think about it, the institutions didn’t break
down the way the Weimar-German Republic institutions
did with the dueling societies and the like. The insti­
tutions are themselves not crossed or striated by class
lines. If you take a look at a place like Michigan State
the elites are of interest and not of social position.
People are interested in agriculture and they congregate
in these social groupings. I think that's proof o f ...
M - -It is proof. When I was a graduate student in Germany
in 130 and ’31, I was asked once by some of my acquaint­
ances at the university what was the most impressionable
fact that I had of German student life. I replied, much
to their chagrin and to their displeasure, that I was
impressed by the fact that the German students themselves
reflected such a strong class consciousness. Even to the
extent, as I associated with all kinds of students, where
one student would tell m e , "I like you very much, I ’d
like to continue our association, but I cannot meet with
you and the other chap since he comes from another class
and I don't care to associate with him."
F--Well, Michigan institutions, and all American institutions
virtually, that I know of, even a place like Harvard, are
essentially classless. I’m struck much about how our
total society of which the institutions are just a tool,
had as their objective the building of a classless society.
The other think I am struck with: In a period here, we
had some great trouble, You have mentioned the watershed

Muelder
years of 1967 and ’68 and the national agony over the
war.
I think also because of the assassinations of
beloved leaders --which happened in Germany and Japan
in the thirties--one can see what that can do, and did,
in those two countries.
I'm struck by the fact that we made a deliberate policy
to bring in the minorities who were still isolated from
the mainstream.
They came to the campuses and after all
the rhetoric and nonsense was done with, were accepted.
You walk around this campus --and at Michigan and at
Wayne--and you see hundreds of women that you didn't see
before, you see Blacks, and you see Chicanos. In the
social ways of welcome that exist --you mentioned in
Germany the exclusion--I noticed inclusion.
Do you regard as one of the key issues of this period,
1958 to 1970, popularism in higher education versus
elitism?
M - -I think we can approach this from two points of view:
a certain attitude within the universities themselves,
and then attitudes outside of the universities. Both,
of course, are important as one comes to grips with
what is transpiring in higher education.
Within higher education itself, particularly on the part
of the researchers and scholars that were given oppor­
tunities to engage in exciting research of their own
interest in ways that they had never anticipated before,
their interest tended more and more towards elitism in
the sense that a number of them wanted to engage in
pure research quite independent of the relationship of
higher education to society as such.
This was a problem that concerned former President Hannah,
who was not opposed to basic research, not at all, but
felt that the long-range interest, not only in higher
education but likewise the long-range support of society,
required that the elitist approach be avoided and that
the tag of elitism not be attached to the universities,
particularly not Michigan State University.
This was
so much on his mind that he made a speech on elitism,
or one might say against elitism, in Chicago. I 've
forgotten the exact date--it would go back seven or
eight years and fall cleanly within this period.
This speech was attacked nationally by those who felt
that the land grant universities were taking the

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gasoline service station approach towards society and
that this was despicable, it demeaned the role of
education.
I can remember very well meeting with the
president of Brown University, who served with me as
a member of the Board of Trustees of the American
University Field Staff.
Shortly after this speech, and
certain attacks that appeared in the New York Times, he
joined in the attacks on President Hannah. I t w a s my
pleasure to come back extremely vigorously in defense
of the approach that President Hannah had taken.
In other words, elitism versus popularism was a real
problem and issue. Now, as we come closer to 1970, as
we pass this watershed of '67 and *68 which we mentioned,
when the universities began to realize that they could
not assume an unending increase of dollars for research
such as they had been accustomed, a new realism began to
dawn on some that perhaps it was in their own enlightened
interest to take a broader approach to both the role of
the university in higher education as well as the
relationship to society.
I don’t think that in a university, particularly in a
state public university, one will ever arrive at anything
like a complete consensus as to what the role of the
university and its relation to society should b e . I think
that one can, however, say that at this particular moment
the pendulum has swung more towards the identification of
the university with the needs and role of society'as a
service component to society. Obviously some balance is
extremely important.
From this point of view, I do not think it’s bad that
this issue exists. I do not think it’s bad that differ­
ences of opinion exist, but I think it is extremely
important that the issues remain open and that there be
strong representation of both as the university would
not be serviced if it merely became a service institution.
The university would not enjoy a secure future if it
became alienated and if too large a dichotomy existed
between the university and the people that support it.
F--That's an interest ing point. What you ’re really
suggesting is that the university--and I have to make
a distinction between a university and a baccalaureate
college or a community college, and add that not all of
the sectors of higher education have the same mission-has to remain autonomous in society and has to fulfill
diverse needs. Filling just one set ends up not really
filling the best interests of society.

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What about occupational and technical training? Did
you feel that they were of help in enhancing the
position of higher education?
M--Obviously the needs of vocational and occupational
training are real. In Michigan I think we were extremely
fortunate to have had the type of leadership that we had
in higher education--again including President Hannah,
who was in the forefront of those that espoused the
cause of the community college--to the extent to which
the community college was able to help take over the
role, not only of providing some basic training for
people that would then aspire to go on to the univer­
sity , but fulfilling an important role in vocational
and occupational training.
We see the results of this at Michigan State University
itself.
There are a whole variety of courses that
formerly were taught here, but had some difficulty of
survival in the development of the university and were
transferred to the community college. The community
college could do a better job of certain vocational and
occupational types of training than could the university.
One can refer to such things as typing, lower grades of
accounting, and draftsmanship, which at one time was an
integral part of the engineering training. It, again,
was done because there was no other unit existing to
take on these types of work.
But there are not only these types of trades, there are
a whole variety of other occupational and vocational
trades for which the university was n o t , in the twentieth
century, certainly in the middle of the twentieth century,
the best home. The development of the community college
has served a very important role.
F--But again this is a mixed problem, for several reasons.
Certain kinds of vocational programs, in spite of the
fact that they may logically fit in another echelon,
have to occur in universities because they are deriva­
tive of more technical programs.
For instance, we have a truly vocational program for
agricultural technicians. In view of the fact that
here at Michigan State our investment in equipment and
land and just capital for farming--1 don't know, could
be 100-200 million dollars--no other enterprise could
replicate that. Secondly, I think about the medical
schools being hosts for medical technicians, x-ray

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technicians, and the like.
Those people have to, in
the end, live in an environment where they have the
technical and...
M--Right. And there will be these types of rather
sophisticated vocational and occupational training
which the university should continue to perform.
F--The other part of the problem is the problem of status.
Status frequently gets in the way ofservice and
academic integrity.
For instance, much has been made
in a very jocular fashion about the fact that we at
Michigan State had a curriculum in mobile homes, whereas
nobody ever shook their heads about architecture. It
looks to me like the mission of both architecture and
mobile homes was housing. I'm not sure that it was fair
to be deprecatory about the one and thirst for the other.
M - -I don’t think that it would be fair either.
I think that
if that issue were raised today, as opposed to coming at
the peak of the availability of large amounts of federal
research dollars that enabled a number of faculty to take
the stance that the university should be concerned with
pure research as a fundamental thing, I would question
as to whether the mobile home and other related programs
would fall under this same type of severe criticism.
F--And institutions are different. I think one of the hall­
marks of our institution here is its skill with applicationoriented research rather than pure research... The social
utility of the water quality situation is amazingly high.
I ’m not sure I would call that pure research. I ’d call
it research that has a very definite social product that
is understandable to nonspecialists. I guess that’s the
distinction I ’d make between pure research and applied.
I don’t see that being criticized. I don’t see our having
a desire to turn our backs on it.
M- -1 think in the matter of the research concerning water
we have an interesting mix. Here we do have some basic
research and we do have much applied.
It is fascinating
because it combines basic research, applied research,
and then a type of an extension service in that it will
provide a demonstration for communities not only in
Michigan but throughout the country as well.
F--I think about my conversations in previous years with
Jeffrey Norman at Michigan, who was your opposite number,
and the work they were doing in airborne sensing. This

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is again that kind of felicitous mixture of the applied
and the pure.
What about the role and the importance of the growth of
culture and the arts in the dialogue over higher education?
M--I have written a little bit on this; namely, that in the
period since World War II we have seen in the United States
a tremendous advance in the sciences, primarily the
physical and biological sciences, including mathematics,
and also to some extent the social science. The one large
gap was that of humanities.
I have referred to the humanities, which of course
includes the arts, as representing the stepchild of the
federal government in this period.
It redounds to the
integrity, the education, and the insights of the sciences
that they are among those that were most aware of this
deficiency.
The creation of the National Endowment of
the Arts and the Humanities that subsequently occurred,
which is now just a few years old, in part, in great part
as a matter of fact, rests on the support of the scientist.
A fact that the humanists themselves do not wish to
acknowledge or may be unaware of.
It's the National Science Foundation representatives,
along with representatives of the humanities throughout
the country, that are responsible for the creation of the
National Endowment of the Arts and the Humanities. To
be sure, the amounts of money involved are still relatively
small but these are increasing every year and percentage wise are increasing faster than any of the other federal
agencies that are supporting education and research at
the various universities. While the amount is still small,
this again, administratively, is not bad. While there is
never enough dollars for any program in the sense that
the claims for dollars always exceed the dollars that are
available, it is a fair axiom to state that while dollars
are difficult to come b y , it is still even more difficult
to spend dollars wisely.
Hence, as you launch upon a new program, whether at the
state level or at the federal level--and if you can
anticipate development--it is best to move in stages and
phases rather than to, more or less like a shot out of
a cannon, make enormous sums available which then may not
be spent wisely.

Muelder
It takes time to set up a competent administrative staff
and it takes time to set up programming.
It takes time
to have a little bit of testing as you go along to see
what works, what does not work, both in terms of the
quality of people that you can bring in as well as types
of programs --which still have to be acceptable to
Congress. And you still have to evolve a whole variety
of fronts as you move ahead. This one is now there,
but it has lagged woefully behind.
F--What you’re saying is that, while it may now be coming
into its recognition, at the beginning of the period
from ’58 to '70 neither on the federal or state level
was it an important element.
M--Right.
F--What in your opinion was the position of labor and industry
and commerce and agriculture in regard to higher education?
M--My contact with labor is limited. I did have one or two
interesting exchanges of conversation with Walter Reuther.
I think labor was extremely fortunate in Michigan to have
a person of Reuther’s stature who was university-oriented,
and who saw in the development of higher education a real
source of strength for labor.
But also having in mind
the mobility that he wanted to retain in America for
people to move upward from the ranks of labor into the
higher ranks. The universities worked for Reuther--one
of the bridges for its fulfillment of both personal as
well as economic gain.
F--That relates to some of the earlier questions about class
and social mobility and the university as a social engine.
M--Right. Here at Michigan State we were one of the first,
at least among the first, to establish (first in con­
tinuing education, then as a separate school) the labor
and industrial relations program.
This was oriented
primarily towards the needs of labor, to some extent
management, but labor received and continues to receive,
I think, the major service from this unit.
F- -That ’s an interesting point. I hadn't thought, about
this in my questioning and discussions with other people.
Your remarks just have brought this thought to my mind.

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The curriculums really have broken down in many ways
across societal-force lines so that the college of
business related to one sector, colleges of industrial
relations to another, colleges of agriculture to another,
and the like.
So in a sense, the university and its
subprograms served it.
And that may mean, and lead to one of the comments that
I ’ve often heard, that the university in itself doesn't
have the support that the totality of its programs has.
Those who are for labor may not be for libraries, and
those who are for music may not be for labor--schools,
not the enterprise.
Therefore, the strength of the
university frequently is greater than it appears.
M--Right. Concerning industry: Ordinarily when we think
about getting appropriations or dollars, whether from
the state or from the federal government, we proceed
pretty independent of industry. Of course we have the
school of business and that interface, but in terms of
research maybe from 5-8 percent of our total research
will be industry-based.
F--There's not really a large tradition in this state
compared to Massachusetts and the East for philanthropic
support for public institutions, is there?
M--Not from industry.
There's another aspect in that respect. First, a basic
and very necessary 1 imitation. Industry is profitoriented.
Industry must of necessity be concerned with
a variety of proprietary rights and interests--both
information that it has--that’s needed to provide for
its survival. There are trade secrets and there are
patent secrets that they have to protect, so that
developing that interface with industry in the field of
research will not proceed as neatly or as fast as with
both government and foundations.
However, we have worked out with industry arrangements
of research whereby we honor those things that are right­
fully of industry.
We have no wish to be identified with
the proprietary interest of research that has already
been conducted in industry.
The only thing that we hold
to is that new researchs that can clearly be identified
with ideas and activities of our own researchers be the
property of the university.

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F--And in that sense, the property of the public.
M--And eventually of the public and of the public interest.
Increasingly we have worked out arrangements with some
of the very large industries for workable, viable
relationships.
But the amount of dollars that flow from industry to the
university in the research area is not very large. But
industry is in a way very beholden to higher education,
not only within the state but also nationally. Industry
could not continue to perform at the high level it does
without the trained manpower that it gets from the
university.
This will vary with the size of the industry, but Du Pont,
for example, could not exist without the flow of highly
trained manpower.
Dow Chemical could not exist without
the flow of highly trained manpower.
Some have insisted,
as special articles in the Wall Street Journal have
emphasized from time to time, that industry is not doing
its share in support of universities, given the highly
trained manpower that the universities make available.
Beyond the technical skills, whether in chemistry,
physics, biophysics, or in biochemistry, one of the
greatest assets provided by the university is in the
whole management field.
The training of people in business administration and
management is a tremendous asset that flows to industry
from the universities. Probably in the field of manage­
ment no country can equal the know-how and the skills
which we produce. Frequently foreign countries, above
all, are not so much interested in that technician, which
they likewise can produce--the physicist, the chemist-but in the management field. We, somehow or other, due
to a variety of circumstances, produce geniuses in this
field.
F--What about the role of commerce? Do you think you can
segregate it from industry, or would you sort of include
it together?
M--I would include it more or less together.
Sporadic attempts have been made in Michigan in the
commerce area, particularly the Bureau of Economic
Expansion that was inaugurated during the incumbency

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of Governor Romney.
Specifically, Mr. Conboy was
brought into the state government to see what he could
do in utilizing the expertise of the universities to
increase the diversity of the economy of Michigan and
tap the resources of the university.
The idea is sound but the execution was extremely faulty.
It’s to be regretted that an idea that was as sound as
the basic concept did not have the continuing support of
the Legislature. Nor did it have the administrative skill
needed in order to bring it to fruition. There has not
been in the past, nor does there exist today, the con­
tinuing commitment that is needed in order to bring such
a program to fruition.
F--I agree with you. There were some federal programs that
tried through the department of commerce...
M--Yes, the State Technica1 Services A c t .
F--The State Technical Services A c t . I kind of lean to the
belief that some day we will have to create a replication
of the agricultural extension service directly related to
the transmission of knowledge. One of the things that
happened in the 1880' s was the understanding of the
tremendous technical knowledge that was changing
agriculture.
I don't believe that small industry, or even major industry,
which has much more resource, can really survive without
developing some kind of dissemination and demonstration
service. I think it probably could be done quite cheaply,
$20 million perhaps.
M--This can be done. The interesting attempt at the federal
level occurred when they brought Holliman from, as I recall,
General Electric to head such a program nationally.
President John Kennedy included reference to a vast new
national program in extension for business and commerce
as a major thrust of one of his speeches to Congress.
He developed a sizeable sum of money in his budget to
launch the very thing that you're talking about: the
counterpart to the ag experiment station, an extension
to the field of commerce and of industry.
. M. Conboy; Director, Bureau of Economic Expansion.

Muelder
The interesting thing is that this thing got killed.
It
got defeated by large industry.
Specifically, the
Du Ponts and others saw in this a competitor to themselves.
If the universities, in other words, would begin to fulfill
the role of providing research and technical transfer to
other industries, this would flow then t o , let's say, the
competitors of Du Pont. I ’m not saying that they're right
in that, I ’m merely pointing out a type of problem that
existed at the federal level that helped kill this program.
The State Technical Services was all that remained of that
initial effort. It too was reasonably successful, but it
was very interesting that in the Technical Services Act
they strictly forbade the support of research, per s e .
They only supported the educational aspect, namely, the
transfer of technical knowledge which is still very
important. It was interesting that the program essentially
was killed before they completed the evaluation studies.
F--One of the things I'm struck with as you talk is that one
of the public policies that this nation has through the
Clayton and Sherman Antitrust Acts is the discouraging of
monopoly. I'm not sure that's really true, but that's
part of the rhetoric of the American political scene.
One of the real ways, instead of using the political and
legal and administrative methods to bring down the size
and cost of competition would be to go the other way and
enhance the smaller organizations. Currently one of the
reasons, in my opinion, for the success of large organizations in the marketplace, and the reason for their
continuing growth, is their capacity to have the wealth
to derive and gather the technology of our culture which
the small company cannot do.
So you could build quite a strong, significant, and
competitive model, I think, by doing that. The scale
or size doesn't necessarily have to work across the
whole spectrum of the industrial sector.
What about agriculture?
I'm thinking specifically of
its long historical support for Michigan State, but also
its role in the desire to enhance higher education.
M--Agriculture, because of the historical development of
the land grant institutions and the role of the
Department of Agriculture in this development, and its
own role, has traditionally been a friend of higher

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education.
This despite problems and issues that have
arisen from time to time.
This, however, does not necessarily connote continuing
strong political support.
In great part this is related
to what has happened in agriculture itself. Namely, the
fact that our society, which was at one time 95 percent
agriculture, now is something closer to 5 percent agri­
culture . Roughly, the whole thing is reversed. The
success of education and agriculture has transformed
completely our society from the agricultural base, in
terms of people located physically on the farms, to the
urban society. Politically this means that no longer is
there the strong agricultural block to express itself.
F--As a matter of fact I believe, and I ’m virtually positive
of this, that Michigan’s Legislature of 148 members no
longer has a single farmer in it. If you exclude
Senator Zollar, w h o 's an orchardist and a nursery grower,
I would think that there aren't any farmers. And 25 years
ago there was a significant number of men who made their
living and economic interest from agriculture.
M- -Yes, and on our Board of Trustees we have only one.
F--Yes, and probably few other institutions have even one.
I can't think of any of the other institutions that have
a man who makes his living from agriculture.
What were the pressures and influences in the determina­
tion of public policy, if any, from the federal government?
What I ’m thinking about is: I ’m very conscious of federal
programs for research, construction, scholarships, and
the encouragement of certain kinds of specific curriculums. In the social welfare area, every time you
receive a dollar from the federal government there come
constraints as to how it can be applied, how it can be
used, and it significantly inhibits the autonomy of states
and local government. I ’m trying to see if there’s any
sense that federal support for higher education involves
these kind of constraints.
M- -Let’s take the welfare area and relate it with the disadvantaged.
If you adhere strictly to the dates that
you have of 1958 to 1970, I would say that the heaviest
of the constraints and restraints that we feel have
developed subsequent to the 1970 period--the whole

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697

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affirmative action area and civil rights.
There are roots that go back earlier for these actions
but the firm guidelines that exist, and that are made
now essentially the law of the land for the universities,
have broken out somewhat more recently. A university that
has something over $2,500 of federal contracts falls under
the aegis of being a federal employer, and as an employer
utilizing federal funds must be beholden to the guidelines
that are expressed.
These guidelines now are very severe as far as the univer­
sity is concerned.
The university has no choice. All
protestations that the university is a unique institution
that should not fall under the same type of guidelines as
other units in the country, meet one answer: "You are an
employer and you will comply."
F--That's true. I suppose you could also cite the
Occupational Health and Safety Act as another act, but
these really have come from another mileau, from the social
ferment of the country and didn't really exist in the
period '58 to '70.
The occupational health and safety, the affirmative action,
and the civil rights requirements have really not come in
a way that was specifically aimed at universities in a
punitive way. They were aimed as sort of a cannon toward
the whole society, were they not?
M--Yes, and I do not wish to indicate in my remarks a feeling
of irritation about this. The irritation, if it exists,
for the university is primarily that there have come with
the new federal legislation constraints involving expend­
itures by the university that are not provided from either
the state or the federal government. Hence the university
must thereby weaken its own resources in order to comply.
It's unfortunate that as yet neither the state government
nor the federal government has put in a corresponding
financial resource in order to adequately meet the
requirements that are demanded by them.
For example,
this university, as it should, should open up its doors
in a maximum way to the disadvantaged people. At the
same time, it is inhuman as well as unintelligent to
bring people into such a large, complex, and demanding
institution and not make it possible for them to then be
successful.

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F--So what you are saying, really--it's very subtle of
course--is that simply the decision to create an oppor­
tunity without the reason or capacity to succeed is not
public policy.
It's really more like propaganda because
the universities can't perform this public-policy role
without the resource to accomplish it.
M--And hence there are supports and aids that the university
itself must supply.
Our whole office that is headed by
Dr. Hamilton of the Provost's office^, is one that would
never have existed if it weren't for the current programs
and legislation.
But without it we don’t really do the just thing to the
disadvantaged person that comes in. He needs supportive
services. We know from experience that a number of these
people with help can be made extremely productive members
of the university and eventually will take up the important
roles in our society which we want them t o . But there is
a cost factor.
F--And there's a morality factor.
M--There's a very serious morality factor.
F--In a way it's extremely dishonest to tell a man you can
come and then you don’t give him a chance to survive.
M--Yes, that's right.
F--What about the pressure of the private sector on higher
education?
I ’ve been struck by the fact that I haven't noticed any
unseemliness or real conflict between the two to prevent
the growth of the one or the other.
M--The private sector has this in common with the public
sector (I'm looking at this now from a point of view
first of all of the federal government): The federal
government from the earliest days has never been under
the constraint of channeling its programs through the
private or the public sector.
It could choose.
4

James B. Hamilton; Assistant Provost, Special Programs,
Michigan State University.

A 699
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Thus, the first land grant college in Connecticut was
Yale University.
This is a very interesting phenomenon
and it's related directly to the development of that
time. It was at Yale University in 1876 where the first
ag experiment station was created, well in advance of
the Hatch Act of 1887. But the significant thing here
is that the support went to a private university.
This
is precedent-setting in many ways.
Subsequently, based upon this and other precedents, when
World War II came along and the federal government found
it desirable and necessary to utilize the resources and
talent that existed in our universities, it did not ask,
"Are you a private university or public university?" It
went equally one to the other. Hence the dollars that
went in support of research and even administration of
some of the large national laboratories might go to a
private or to a public university.
Quite rightly the observation has been made that the
private schools are as much in the position of abject
dependence upon the federal government as a public
institution.
To some extent even more so, at least as
far as general research since they do not have the
support from the state government for the continuing
operating budgets.
F--I personally lean to the attitude that there is no such
thing as a private school in America. I lean to the
belief that there are publicly supported public schools
and publicly supported private schools. Because of the
tax shelters that they receive, because of the large
broad-ranging scholarship programs that they receive,
neither sector could continue long without public money.
M--That *s true, particularly because of the tax shelter if
for no other factor. In terms of other support, I think
that there are possibly a few religious-type schools
that exist fairly independent but they still do enjoy
the tax shelter.
Very soon now we are having the case tried in our courts
as to whether a private school can discriminate on the
basis of race.
F--You're talking about Bob Jones University?
M--This is one of them, yes.

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F--Right.
Probably the answer is no, unless they’re willing
to pay taxes.
M--But it does underscore the point that y o u ’re making about
the tax shelter representing an indispensable part of
the financing of the school.
F--I would take your caveat about the smaller religious
schools, but I was thinking about Stanford, M I T , the
University of Chicago...
M--Johns Hopkins...
F--...Johns Hopkins, and that roster of great institutions.
M - -1 think it speaks well for the statesmanship of both the
private and the public schools that they have not tried
to talk each other down when they are appealing either
to private or public sources. You always have individual
differences, individuals that will embarrass you, but for
the greater part they have supported each other in the
struggle.
F--I'm struck by the statesmanship of both sides. It
probably has been that they realize their obj ectives are
the same in the enhancement of society. And who can
quibble with that? Maybe one school put a greater
emphasis on worldly things and another put a greater
emphasis on religious things, but their objective was
the same.
M--The cost of higher education has become so horrendous.
This is not only caused by the need for highly qualified
professors, even more highly trained than in times past,
but the sheer cost of scientific equipment alone. It’s
such a forbidding thing for universities that it repre­
sents a real nightmare to provide the minimum necessary
financing in order to conduct a modern univers ity.
The recent requirements that are related to the social
revolution is another circumstance that has increased
the cost. For example, in legislation such as the
Title Four of the National Defense Education A c t . Not
only were fellowships granted to the universities to
then distribute among certain graduate students, but
there was a cost-of-education allowance. Thus, for
the student that would be getting $2,500 for, let's say
a year, the university was given a similar amount of
money because it was recognized that there was a cost
to the university in taking these students.

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Muelder
F--That’s passed by, though.
M--This unfortunately has passed by. This is one of the
basic things, for example, that President Wharton was
alluding to when he referred to the fact that if there
had been an institutional allowance made that would
correspond to the financial aid to the students it would
not have been necessary to have increased the tuition.
This applies to both the private and the public sectors.
Both now have this terrifying thing of constantly
increasing the tuition in order to keep up with the
inflation and the costs of higher education.
F--I'm troubled by something that you said. It’s been
pretty clear that the cost of equipment has gradually
precluded the private schools, except for a very, very
few of immense endowments, from maintaining graduate
programs and some undergraduate programs in the hard
sciences.
One of the things that’s beginning to be noticed as a
trend is the beginning of high cost for the liberal
arts programs, with computers and all of the audiovisual
equipment. I ’m afraid that that cost squeeze is going
to attack the social sciences and the humanities as it
has not done for the present. I fear for the viability
of many institutions because of that.
M - -Yes, there are computer programs that affect the social
sciences and the humanities. The general cost for labs
is not so high there, but this is offset by the great
cost involved in maintaining the modern library which
the humanist needs above all.
F--The economies of scale really don’t work, do they?
M--No, they don’t .
F--I don’t know why, but it's true. It doesn’t cost you
lots less to run a library with two million volumes than
one million. I wonder why?
What about the nature of regional and local pressures to
expand higher education in one location rather than
another?
Our institution and Michigan courted the communities of
Saginaw, Port Huron, Grand Rapids, and the like.

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Muelder
M--This has existed in the past in Michigan, less so now
than at the previous time. As always, you have the
role and interest of individuals that intrude themselves,
as well as possibly a larger societal interest.
First of all, let's look at the reasons.
Having a college
or a university is a great boon for any community.
This
is from time immemorial. In the Middle Ages, with all
the other problems that existed then, town and gown
quarreled. The city may be Bologna, Florence, Heidelberg,
Paris, Cambridge, or wherever, they all had their town
and gown problems and some of these broke out into riots
of all sorts. But cities still wanted the university.
Why? There’s a prestige factor, but beyond the prestige
factor there's the real financial advantage that accrues
when you start bringing in these students from all over
the state or the country; the professors that come into
the area; and then other things that are attracted to
the area because of the presence of a college or a
university. You have this as a kind of a given.
If you combine this with certain politics that a university might start engaging in, such as we had when
President Hatcher announced publicly that the University
of Michigan "will be glad to associate itself with any
group that wants to get established as a school out
there." You then are setting up two things: the ambition
of the university plus the natural inclination of a
geographical unit to have such a school. And I think
the University of Michigan in turn was engaging in this
as they saw Michigan State as a threat in terms of its
expanding extension programs and its expanding enrollment.
Well, somehow or other, this thing had to be dispelled.
It got dispelled in an interesting way in Michigan--by
the countermove of Michigan State to set up the school
that's now Oakland University, and in the establishment
by the Legislature (that got a little bit into the act)
not only of a system of community colleges but of the
axiom that no community college was to become a four year college. If justification existed for a four-year
college, this would be deliberated and acted upon in
its own right so that you would not have every community
college trying to convert itself into a four-year school.
Essentially, as you know, this is where we are now.

Muelder
F--Two things were there: The Legislature saw the value of
diversity of institutions rather than similarity; and
the period from '58 to probably '66 was involved much
in what I call civic energy, regional energy, and the
politics of imperialism.
I think that's true. And
Michigan State practiced that too.
And that leads to the next question.
What were the
reasons for the failure of the branch-campus system?
I'm not saying that Oakland, Flint, or Dearborn are
failures, but I doubt we'll ever have branches again.
I
doubt we'll ever go the California or Wisconsin way.
I
don't look for the day that there'll be a Michigan State
at Muskegon or a University of Michigan at Gaylord.
Why do you think that failed?
M--You've commented that these efforts are not necessarily
failures. I can only reflect upon Michigan State's
relationship with Oakland--which was first known as
MSU-Oakland and then merely Oakland University.
It was
born out of the sense of competition with the University
of Michigan. It was born clearly and strategically to
demonstrate that if the University of Michigan went the
route of setting up satellites, Michigan State
University would not only go that route but perform
this role even more effectively than the University of
Michigan. I think there was faith in our superiority
in management and administrative skill and drive that
if it came down to this route, this was a game that we
could play as successfully as the others.
In other words, this whole venture was not born out of
a desire to solve an educational problem of the State
of Michigan. It was born for entirely other reasons.
You can call it imperialism, or protectionism, whatever
it is. At the same time, once given the circumstance,
I think it is only fair to say that Michigan State
University went about this problem as intelligently and
with the greatest rationality that it possibly could.
One of the real exciting periods here at Michigan State
was the call nationally to outstanding leaders, as far
as these could be identified, to come and engage in a
series of seminars --which they did over a period of a
year--to decide if you could start from scratch, as they
could here, what type of an institution should be

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Muelder
established.
What are some of the really exciting new
ideas that could be tried in a new environment where
one is not beholden to a tradition, to a past? While
Oakland University was not born out of an educational
need, once its existence was legally established and
financially made viable, the process then began of
making it educationally as exciting and as fruitful
as possible.
So far so good, but that’s not the end of the story.
The end of the story is that these things, as far as
Michigan State is concerned, need to have a continuity
that was not provided administratively. Here we come
to maybe the business of the "failure." There are
essentially two directions that Michigan State could
have gone. They could have gone in the direction of
making Oakland completely in a line relationship to
the university.
F--As they did at FIint and Dearborn.
M--As they did at Flint and Dearborn.
Or they could go the
other direction of making it autonomous, giving it a life
of its own. The chancellor that was appointed there,
even though you had responsibility to the same board via
the president, was allowed maximum autonomy.
He was
given de facto autonomy, not de jure, but de facto. He
was given complete independence.
F--He was really a sovereign m a n .
M--This I can illustrate in a number of ways that I had to
deal with directly because I was asked to review several
of their graduate programs.
It became very clear in reviewing these graduate pro­
grams that our Board of Trustees did not want to have
their emerging graduate programs under any type of out side scrutiny, even that of Michigan State University.
The president did not want to take this on as a burden,
even though technically and legally he was responsible
for the administration.
The chancellor was his pro­
consul at Oakland. It was very clear that the president
did not want to take on the burden of Oakland in addition
to Michigan State University and the other things that he
wanted to concentrate upon doing, so that de facto you
had complete independence that really became recognized
later on.

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Muelder
F--That's a very good point because the deliberate policy
of encouraging the autonomy at Oakland can be taken and
looked at today when you see Michigan moving exactly
that way now at Dearborn and at Flint. Today, for
instance, on the Council of State College Presidents,
both of those Michigan pro consuls served on that
president’s board.
It begins to appear that they're
copying the Michigan State model.
If you take a look at the place--since Dearborn and
Flint are of the same age as Oakland, relatively
speaking, within a year or two of each other--Oakland1s
done fabulously well compared to a far more lethargic
and sporadic growth at Flint or Dearborn.
The test of
success has to always be resolved. I suppose that
success may have undercut the last discussion about the
inferior role. Probably the other part is the wideranging cutting off of civic energy by creating twenty
additional community colleges, or some number like that.
Do you have any observations about why the system of
coordination failed after 1964 when we had the new
Constitution?
M--1 am an outsider here and my comment should be treated
as that of an outsider.
What I have to say, I don't
know whether it's justified or n o t , and I do not put
it forth as an advocacy at all.
My first impression, and I think it's still the impression I have today, is that it failed not necessarily
because it was bad, but as so often happens in organiza­
tion administration, because it didn't have the right
people either on the board or giving it direction.
Having served on the planning group for several years
developing the plan of higher education, I was confirmed
in that impression.
During that period it could have functioned infinitely
better than it did, even given the restraints that it
had.
It could even today, from my point of view, with
other personnel, other direction, both on the board and
on the staff, be fulfilling a far more interesting and
exciting role than it currently is.
F--I'm completely comfortable with what you say.
I regard myself as an outsider. I came to the State
Board and worked for John Porter where I first met you

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Muelder
when you served on the Advisory Committee for the state
plan.
I was one of the higher education consultants.
My observations about the State Board are very simple.
One, because they didn’t end up politically balanced-there were no Republican representatives on the State
Board--and not the most qualified people got selected,
the Board was uneven in its quality.
Secondly, for
reasons perhaps of status and stature and life, we were
not able to recruit the kinds of academic men who had
the credibility to pass on programs.
I can recollect in 1966 receiving a program from Michigan
or Michigan State asking for State Board approval on a
program of astrophysics. There wasn't a man in that
agency who had the slightest knowledge of what astro­
physics was, what its implications were, or what its
value was. So therefore, how could they have a credible
stance toward the institutions? They could not.
And further, it seems to me that the institutions really
didn’t respect the agency and really didn’t want it.
M- -Yes, and I don't fault the coordinating group on that
ground because it was bound to run into some flak on
this. Nobody likes to be coordinated, and yet some
coordination in their own self-interest is desirable.
But let me give a personal example. The State Board
presumed to have the right to pass on all new Ph.D.
programs. This was disputed by u s , but at the same time,
if they asked for information, what new programs did we
envisage, we were glad to submit information because I
think every public institution should be open in the
submission of information. I can remember very well a
few years back submitting information on types of
programs that were under discussion in our own graduate
council.
Now here's a strange phenomenon, and again we get back
to the competency of the organization and of the
personnel in charge of the group. Michigan State
University received word from this coordinating body
approving these Ph.D. programs even before we completed
the decision-making process within our own university.
Well, this is really unhappy.
It's unprofessional.
This is another reason that I have to keep asking myself,
well, was the idea that bad or did it simply lack the
professional competence that it should have had.

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Muelder
F--I lean to the attitude that execution was poor.
I
believe the institutions could have been persuaded that
there was some value. But it takes tremendous political
acumen of the more skilled men to walk the line between
coordination and control.
M--Exactly.
There are so many people that are unable to
walk that line, that feel unless they have all power
immediately in their own grasp, that somehow or other
they can't help coordinate and can’t develop a consensus.
Well, nonsense.
F--The other side of it is the kind of frivolous nonsense
about the competition for a law school. There are three
schools requesting: Grand Valley, Western, and Michigan
State, competing without any kind of sense about what
was proper or fit for the state's interest. Coming back
to the imperial thing will lead us all to some degree
of forced coordination unless we exercise a greater
degree of statesmanship. I ’m distressed about that.
M- -1 am too.
F--I fault the institutions for that. They may yet lead
themselves into some quandries that they do not want to
face unless they have a greater degree of what I call
academic honesty.
Just as you talked about having
programs approved before your own evaluation procedure
went to the fore, I think an institution seeking a law
school, when they can’t run a credible degree-granting
program in the social sciences at the graduate level,
should not be seeking a professional school in that
area.
Now that’s harsh talk, I know that. But it’s indeed
possible, I think, with the right kind of people, with
the right kind of technical expertise, to build a
coordinating body that might be of use to all of higher
education.
But maybe the times weren't right. They
may come yet again.
M--They may come. Also, it could happen that if the
membership of the coordinating board is appointive
rather than elective we can bring in the spread of
talent and identification of expertise and dedication
that it needs. It needs a dedication to the ultimate
purpose. We have an opportunity here in Michigan,
given our performance that w e ’ve accomplished through

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Muelder
even halfway voluntary cooperation, that is really
commendable if you look at the country as a whole.
F--I also lean to the belief that we probably would have to
start picking astute people.
I have to lean toward the
National Institute of Health mechanisms, the program of
unusual panels of scholars, rather than professional
bureaucrats,
Because of the rapidity of the change of knowledge, any
one man could never, ever stay in an environment where,
if he wasn’t tied to research and instruction and growth,
he could ever really for a long period of time be very
credible.
M--This in many ways is one of the important recommendations
that we have expressed through the graduate commission
that John Porter did establish.
That is: It’s improper,
for example, for institutions such as Michigan State or
any other institution to stand in judgment upon another
college or university. I don't think that should even
be allowed.
However, a place such as Michigan State or University of
Michigan can establish criteria that are desirable and
necessary for Ph.D. programs. However, on the judgment
as to whether another institution should carry these out,
this should be based on external review as well as internal
review so that we bring in both the independence of people
that are not beholden to any institution in Michigan, plus
the expertise that's needed.
F--Who do you think were the major figures in this period
from ’58 to '70 that made higher education and the enter­
prise itself so successful?
M- -Beginning with the so-called four-year institutions--as
they used to be known--I think Steve Nisbet played a very
constructive, helpful role as we look at that longer
development that these schools had prior to the constitu­
tional change.
F--You’re talking about Eastern, Western, Central, and
Northern.
M- -That's right. Stephen Nisbet, because it was his board,
played a rather constructive role in helping these
institutions develop as they did into universities.

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Muelder
Their role, which is a very important and significant
one, was of real import.
The presidents of some of
these institutions conducted themselves very commendably.
I think we've been fortunate here at Michigan State in
having John Hannah, who stood out not only as an impor­
tant leader in the State of Michigan, but nationally as
well. Michigan State has been on the lips and the
thoughts of many people throughout the country in this
period, in great part because of the tremendous growth
that occurred.
The University of Michigan has had outstanding presidents
as well, despite any competitive situation that has
existed.
Alexander Ruthven enj oyed enormous respect as
a scholar.
F--And as a public figure, too.
M--And as a public figure. And as I recall it was the staff
studies that grew out of his commission that changed
Wayne from a municipal university to a state university.
F--And also Ferris.
M--And Ferris.
Keep in mind this is from a university president such as
the University of Michigan. He didn't ask how is this
going to affect the long-range interest of the University
of Michigan as far as state appropriations is concerned.
He was able to look at some of these problems in a very
detached manner.
The Michigan Council of State
Universities and College Presidents likewise emanated
with Alexander Ruthven.
This was created Dy him, as I
recall, in 1947 and still furnishes at least the base
from which further cooperation can evolve.
F--Well, then, we had Nisbet, we had Hannah, we had Ruthven.
The head of Michigan, no matter what his personal style
is, that1s such an important institution, so y o u 'd have
to say Hatcher.
M--Hatcher definitely, no question there. Now Fleming, of
course, who is highly respected not only within the
family of the University of Michigan but is highly sought
after for very important commissions.
I can refer, for example, just by way of illustration to
one of these: namely, the State of New York which carried

A 710
Muelder
out the major review of higher education, both the public
as well as the private sector. He served importantly on
that commission that led to one of the significant aids
to private education by that state.
F--I thought that was John Hannah.
M--Hannah, likewise, in an earlier study.
F--What about other people?
would cite?

Were there others that you

M--There are none that come so prominently to mind because
these combine both the political roles as well as the
education roles.
F--You mentioned earlier, Reuther, of course.
M--Reuther in the labor field, as well as his brother
Victor who headed the education program for his union.
F--It's always difficult to mention some people because by
that very act you skip others who are worthy of notice.
We had some very key legislators, too, who stood heads
and shoulders above legislators in other states. And
we had governors who cared about the process, and we
had industrialists who spoke out, and labor leaders.
It seems to me they *ve been an extremely felicitous
bunch.
M--And also keep in mind that in this period we had
G . Mermen Williams as the governor for twelve years.
While he will always be a controversial figure politi­
cally, there was nothing equivocal at all about his
stand on higher education, and he did this rising above
any personal loyalties that he might have felt to one
institution.
F--Ye s, we interviewed him and that came through very
clearly.
But Romney was one of the other party that
came through. I'm impressed with Swainson and Milliken
too. We've been lucky with these m e n .
M--Very fortunate. I will always remember with enormous
gratitude the tremendous support and help that we got
from Milliken at the critical period at which we were
negotiating the final stages of our water management
facility. We desperately needed to have a certain

A 711
Muelder
type of decision come out of EPA in Washington. He
intervened in our behalf directly with the White House.
F--I'm very pleased with that because I ’m struck, having
worked inside the political structure, that they do
these things for, in many cases, nonpolitical reasons.
I don't believe that that kind of activity delivers
five votes to the man.
M--No, as a matter of fact there were four of us that
were involved in these negotiations --there are only
four votes. Other than ourselves, nobody even knows
about the role that he played or that the then
Representative Ford, Senator Hart,and Representative
Chamberlain played.
They all played very critical
roles and there’s been no publicity to this.
We haven't gone to the newspapers and upheld this,
because if we did, we would have to reveal so many of
the weaknesses and the shortcomings of our form of
government and of the personalities that were obstructing
what we were after.
If you reveal the good, you're also
going to be forced to somewhat reveal the unsavory side,
which we don't do if we can avoid it.
F-- It strikes me then, in summary, that w e 've been
fortunate in this state. Because of the peculiar mix
of men and institutions, higher education has indeed
served the people and been well served by its
representatives.
Thank you very much.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
GEORGE ROMNEY1

F--Governor, from 1958 to 1970--which is the period I'm
dealing with--Michigan higher education went through
a fantastic expansion.
New institutions were created.
We increased the budget base from some $60 million to
some $260 million.
I'm curious.
What were the reasons, do you think, for
this expansion of higher education in Michigan?
F--Well, I think because during the crisis that developed
in the fifties, there was a growing realization that
there was a need to strengthen our educational insti­
tutions in the state.
As a matter of fact, one of the things that led to my
becoming involved in public affairs was my recognition
that we needed to improve our educational structure.
Among the things that government does, nothing is more
important than what it does in the field of education.
My concerns resulted in my heading up the study of
Detroit's school needs before I became involved in the
elective process.
My concern there resulted in my getting involved on a
state basis.
If you go back to the late fifties and the
early sixties, we were having difficulty supporting our
educational institutions.
The result was that we were
losing outstanding educational personalities to other
George Romney; Governor of Michigan, 1963-69; President,
American Motors Corporation, 1954-62; Chairman, Detroit
Citizens Advisory Committee on School Needs, 1957-58;
Delegate, Constitutional Convention, 1961-62; Chairman,
Citizens for Michigan, 1961-62; Secretary of Housing and
Urban Development, 1969-73.
Interview conducted
July 25, 1974.

A 712

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Romney
states.
I was shocked at the fact that we were losing
Nobel Prize winners to California and other states
simply because the higher educational institutions
didn't have the financial means to make it attractive
for them to stay in Michigan.
This was one of the things that led to my becoming
involved at the state level following my heading the
Detroit school study. It was one of the things that
motivated the establishment of Citizens for Michigan,
and the Citizens for Michigan effort led to two funda­
mental reforms.
One was constitutional reform and that constitutional
reform focused to some extent on the constitutional
aspects of higher education. And then number two, it
led to tax reform, and one of the principal reasons
for tax reform was to develop a more productive and
equitable tax structure that would enable us to make
adequate provision for our educational institutions.
So I think that the development was an outgrowth of
the broad public concerns that developed in the fifties
and the early sixties.
F--There are several themes that I want to try to explore
with you and get your insights o n .
I'm not a native of Michigan, I'm from Massachusetts.
This is an adopted state for m e , as it is for you .
I'm struck by the fact that throughout the state there
is a real rich tradition and pride in the public sector
in the quality of our higher educational institutions.
We were the first state in the Union to have an agricultural-mechanical college (at Michigan State),
University of Michigan is older than the State of
Michigan itself, and Eastern Michigan University was
the first teacher-training institution west of the
Alleghenies.
R- -As a matter of fact, the University of Michigan was
the first public university that established high
academic standing: academic standing comparable to
that of some of the private colleges in the East.
Furthermore, Michigan was one of the first states to

A

714

Romney
establish a department of education in the state
government.
You are quite correct that this interest in public
support for education goes well back into the history
of the state.
F--You were talking about the concern about people
leaving.
There is always an element, I suspect, of
civic pride in our educational institutions.
Rather
than just regarding them as manpower-training insti­
tutions, they were regarded as important to the way
of life we've built in this state.
R--I think that's right. I think there was public recog­
nition that the welfare of the state was linked
importantly to the quality of our educational institu­
tions . The result is that they had built up through
the years a degree of public support and public
interest that I think is not duplicated in many of
the states. I think that played a big part.
As people saw what they considered to be a very
important aspect of state life being adversely
affected, there was a response to leadership efforts
to do something about it.
F--Around 1958 came the Russian experience with Sputnik.
And, there was some concern about the future of the
automotive industry--some of which you adequately led
by your concern for compact cars, your testimony
before the Keefauver Commission, and the like.
There was some talk when I spoke with Woodcock and
Staebler that perhaps Michigan’s dependence on the
one industry was a dangerous kind of a problem and
they [state leaders] were hopeful that an investment
in higher education would create support for industry
to broaden its base.
R--I think there's a point to that. I don't think there's
any question but that there was great concern about the
dependence upon the one major industry and the need to
diversify: to provide the training necessary to enable
the state to become a source of research, a source of
management, a source of innovation, that would lead to
a broader economic base.

A 715
Romney
Sputnik played a part in jolting people in Michigan,
as it did in the nation.
However, in the case of the
city of Detroit, the effort to do something about
strengthening public support for the Detroit school
system preceded Sputnik by a full year and was inprocess when Sputnik came along.
But I don't think there's any question that Sputnik
and the concern that the Commmnists might be out­
distancing us in the scientific field, the technological
field, played a part in Michigan, as it did elsewhere.
F--Some of the social and economic factors that some have
talked about in previous discussions had to do with
the population boom in this state -- one of the fastest
growing states in the nation was Michigan--and the
large number of people who believed that they could
go to college based on the GI Bill entitlement.
Do you have some insights about what some of the
social and economic forces were for the growth of
higher education?
R--I think, again, that the people in the state have
always viewed education as a very important aspect of
our social and cultural life and fundamental to our
economic strength. The result is that they were
inclined to give support and to be concerned about
opening up educational opportunity on a broad basis,
particularly for people who had not been able to
secure education in areas in which they had lived
before coming to Michigan.
I think this played a part not only in connection
with higher education, I think it played a part with
respect to education across the state. I think it
led to the elementary and junior high school educa­
tional efforts in Flint. Charles Mott initiated a
community school program which has become a very
constructive approach to a more adequate utilization
of our school facilities and personnel.
But also, it *s very important from the social stand­
point . One of its basic obj ectives is to help
overcome the deficiencies in family life of those
who have come to the state without any educational

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Romney
background; recognition that if children are raised
in homes where they never see a person read or never
see their parents read or do anything involving the
use of education, they don't have the motivation
necessary to seek an education for themselves.
So, yes, I think there's been a recognition of the
importance of it from a cultural standpoint, from a
social standpoint, and also from an economic stand­
point .
F--I learned an interesting lesson when I first came to
work with the Legislature. Your administration was
pushing through the open-housing bill. All the
aggravation and blood there struck m e , as I watched
that. Education, health, and housing are not really
divisive issues. Those are the kind of social and
political issues that pull people together because
people want more of all three.
Your remarks about filling in the voids in other
sectors of the industrial-urban life we have with
the role of the schools is, I think, an instructive
one. I'm impressed with that. Many people talk about
secondary causes and don't mention the primary ones.
R--As a matter of fact, when you take a look at it, the
one area of activity where people come together on
the basis of common interest, without division with
respect to partisan considerations, or economic
differences, and so o n , is in the field of education.
In the field of religion people have differences, in
the field of economics people have differences, in
the field of politics people have differences, but
the school is really a place where people can be
brought together for the common purpose of helping
everyone to improve themselves.
F--The Flint example, which you talked about, is a good
example.
R--Sure, sure.
F--In 1962 you became the Governor.
R--1 actually took office January 1 , 1963.
I was
elected in '62, but I took office January 1, 1963.

A 717
Romney
F--For much of the previous six years you'd been involved
in civic activities in Michigan.
You had been with
the Citizens for Michigan, you'd been with the
Constitutional Convention, you'd been involved in the
Detroit School Study in 1958.
What were the policy objectives you had in mind in
your administration that underlay this expansion?
What did you want to accomplish?
R--Basically I felt that the educational structure of
the state had been deprived of the resources necessary
to maintain its quality and to maintain the broad
availability that had characterized our efforts in
earlier years. Consequently, one of my basic objectives
was to make it possible to provide greater support for
our educational institutions and thus benefit the state.
I was convinced that one reason why Michigan had
excelled economically, and had been outstanding in a
social and cultural way, was that Michigan had excelled
in education. That goes way back. I felt that the
future of the state was linked importantly with main­
taining that general pattern of leadership in the field
of public education.
F--For all of the fact that you were a Republican governor
in a state that was becoming increasingly Democratic-you were the first Republican governor since 1948 and
the Democrats increasingly had greater membership in
the House and the Senate --you always had the capacity
to get bipartisan support for much of your program.
I'm curious if you had as the objective in higher
education the breaking down of class and culture
barriers? For instance, by your programs to enhance
Wayne so that their programs could serve urban areas;
by the programs to encourage the growth of community
colleges throughout the state. In your administration
there was a prodigious growth of these institutions.
R--Yes, that was part of the obj ective. You take a look
at the overall effort during that period; a great deal
of it was directed at eliminating the obstacles that
had prevented people, because of race or other con­
siderations, from educational opportunity.

A 718
Romney
I've always felt that one of the distinctive aspects
of American life was the adoption of the concept of
universal educational opportunity, the recognition
that if people were going to exercise ultimate power
in our society, they had to be informed. And number
two, that to the extent that we could achieve it,
there ought to be equal educational opportunity.
To make that possible I felt it was necessary to
strengthen organizations.
Not only in the urban
areas, but also we did something to strengthen our
institutions across the state, [most] importantly in
the Upper Peninsula. If you would take a look at
what was done with respect to Tech and Northern and
also Lake Superior College...which made it easier
for young people in that area as well as in the urban
areas.
And of course the community college program...
F--Grand Valley was established.
R--Grand Valley came in, and then the one up near Saginaw...
F--Saginaw Valley College.
R--Saginaitf Valley, and of course Oakland was strengthened
a great deal.
F--You had Dearborn and you had Flint.
R--...and Dearborn and Flint, and so on.
One of the problems during that period was to permit
this broadening without losing the quality of the
higher education program.
I think one of the difficult
aspects of the situation was to enable the University
of Michigan to maintain its high standard and high
level of activity.
A state can't really support many institutions of the
character that the University of Michigan had achieved.
There was a broadening effort as well as an improvement
in the quality generally.
One of the objectives was
not to do all that at the expense of sacrificing the
University of Michigan's academic standards.

Romney
F--You've just said something that I'm curious about.
You said a state can't afford to do all of those
things.
R--It can't afford to make all of its institutions as
outstanding as the University of Michigan.
That's
what I meant by that.
F--Well, in most of the Midwest you have one land grant
school and one university.
In places like Indiana
and Ohio you have one good school and then more workman­
like schools. In Michigan, in your time, a conscious
policy, maybe not a conscious policy, but we began to
build two and start on three great institutions.
R--Yes, that's right.
F--You built Wayne into a school with very prodigious and
excellent graduate programs. You built Michigan State
into a school close to the quality of Michigan.
R--We didn't want to sacrifice the University of
Michigan's ...
F--No.

I understand that.

R--But we moved the other u p .

That's right.

F--In most of the states one of the definitions of quality
would be singularity.
We didn't do that here. We
moved for a colleagueship, and you began to move
towards enhancing Western too. That's quite a
different policy than occurred in other states: Take a
look at Ohio and Indiana.
I wonder if that was just sort of the energy of the
people or a deliberate policy, or both, or neither.
R--1 think it was. As far as I was concerned, I felt
that it was desirable to have good institutions
around the state as accessible as possible to the
young people so it would be easier for them to get
the benefit of higher education.
F--When all these schools were setting up--we had Grand
Valley, Saginaw Valley, Dearborn, and Flint --there
was a lot of hustle and bustle and pushing and
shoving, and beating up back and forth.

A 720
Romney
What were some of the reasons for this partisan and
parochial conflict that occurred?
R--Well, just good competitive effort between the insti­
tutions to make their institutions outstanding.
The
desire to have good colleges.
F--You weren't disturbed by that.
R- -Oh no, that's a good quality.
F--You liked that civic energy.
R--Competition is the life blood of progress when you get
right down to it. No one would ever run a mile in
four minutes if they hadn't any competition. Competi­
tion between educational institutions is a healthy
thing.
F--The technocrats like to
fits into a nice little
of conf1ict. It's been
the conflict wasn't bad

develop a plan where everything
niche and they rid themselves
one of my thoughts that perhaps
at all.

I talked to Bill Ryan and he said, "Well, it's not so
bad to have them compete because then they had to also
participate in other aspects of the budget system.
Before,these places weren't ever getting anything so
they didn't care about broadening the revenue base."
R- -Yes. Tension and drive and so on are very important
aspects of progress.
F--What about popularism versus elitism?
There's always been a certain kind of talk--and I'm
less comfortable with it now that I 've had 25 inter­
views than I was in the beginning--about Michigan
being elite, aristocratic, and snobbish.
R--You mean the University of Michigan?
F--Right, University of Michigan... and Michigan State
being second-chance, opportunity, and popularist.
But there are terms like popularist versus elite.
I wondered if you saw part of the energy in this
period from '58 to '70 as popularism versus elitism.

Romney
R--Oh, I never viewed it that way.
I simply viewed it
as a part of what had developed here in the state.
After all, in our earlier history I don't think the
state could have financially supported more than one
institution that had the status of the University of
Michigan.
As a matter of fact, the University of Michigan, as
I've pointed out, already was the first state univer­
sity to achieve really outstanding academic status.
I don't think there's much question but that that
was the result of the type of leadership the institu­
tion had and the support it received.
Consequently,
I viewed that as a very desirable thing. It was
helpful to have an institution that was as well
recognized from an academic standpoint as the
University of Michigan.
Now at the same time as the population in the state
had grown, and as the needs of the people had grown,
it was a good thing to see leadership come into
Michigan State University that was capable of
building that into a stronger institution, one that
had better standing and was capable of providing
educational opportunity for a far larger number of
students.
I never viewed it as popularism versus elitism.
I
viewed it as a part of the background of the develop­
ment of our educational institutions. We were very
fortunate that the one had developed status in the
academic world that made it very preemminent among
the state universities.
I think, as in the case of other fields of endeavor,
that when you have one institution that's outstanding,
it tends to lift all the others. It encourages the
others to emulate and to do as much of that as they
can. I think that has been beneficial to the whole
educational structure of the state.
F--That's one of the reasons I started this dissertation
effort. I became somewhat disenchanted with people
complaining about how tough things were. I felt w e 'd
done a fine job in this state and could be proud of
it, particularly compared to what I'd seen in other

A 111
Romney
states and my home state of Massachusetts.
I thought
there was a record that had to be put [straight] here.
Rr-In the automobile retailing field, for example, if
you have a metropolitan area where your dealers
aren't doing very well, the best way to lift the level
of performance of the dealers of that whole area is to
get one good, hard-hitting, able dealer in there.
Getting one good, hard-hitting, able dealer who can
really do a job will stimulate all the others and lift
them too.

I think that analogy applies to our higher educational
institutions in this state. I think they have benefited
from the fact that the University of Michigan became a
very outstanding public state university.
Other insti­
tutions in the state all aspired, you see, to lift
themselves to the level of the University of Michigan.
It made it kind of tough for the Governor and the
Legislature and the appropriation process because they
all wanted to use the financial support of the
University of Michigan as the yardstick for their
financial support. At the time when there was a need
to increase the opportunity for more students to get
an education and expand the educational system as
rapidly as we were doing, it put real pressures on
the financing aspect.
F--And you obviously had some objective of keeping the
tuition reasonably low too.
R--That's right, and make it as cheap as possible.
F--And that was a policy?
R--That’s right, that's right.
F--There was only so much you could afford to take out
of the general fund.
R--That's right. I go back to my conviction that there's
nothing the government does that is more important
than what it does in the field of education: that of
the services rendered by government to people, what
it does in the field of education is absolutely
fundamental.

A 723
Romney
F--You were in the Constitutional Convention and there
some very important things happened that relate to
higher education.
First, all of the normal schools were given the con­
ceptual right to become universities in title. That
caused some of that upwelling to broaden them just
from teacher-training institutions.
Their autonomy
was guaranteed.
In a rather cloudy and hard-tounderstand article the State Board was given the
right to plan for autonomous institutions that were
constitutional.
Have you some observations about what some of the
energy was there? It came out with a rather mixed
bag, indeed.
R--Well, I think it could have been a better bag. As a
matter of fact, I think the state would have been
better off if the new Constitution had provided for
a gubernatorial-appointed State Board of Education
subject to Senate approval. I'm convinced that it
would be possible to get abler leadership on the
State Board of Education if it were the result of
an appointive process rather than an elective process.
So I was disappointed in that.
I also felt that the major universities would have
been a lot better off with appointed boards, too.
I think it's exceedingly difficult for people to run
on a statewide ticket for election to a board of
control for a university when there's so many people
on the ballot at the same time. It means basically
that the people who are elected to the boards of
control of the three universities are pretty much
elected as a result of partisan selection as candidates rather than as outstanding...
F--Wei1, in an indirect w a y . What occurs is that nobody
ever gives any scrutiny to the members of the boards
of control from the three maj or institutions and
whichever man wins for governor pulls in the others.
R--Pulls in the others.

That *s exactly right.

F--11's a form of indirect gubernatorial appointment.
R--Yes, but at the same time it...

A 724
Romney
F--It's not a good process.
R--...it doesn't result in the type o£ membership on
those boards that I think it would be possible to
get if it were a result of the appointive process
rather than the elective process.
F--That's one of the later questions so I'll just
skip to it for a second.
I've asked some people why they thought coordination
didn't come about after 1964.
One of the questions
I raised with them was the tremendous political up­
heaval that occurred when Goldwater ran. We elected
eight members to the State Board who were Democrats.
People like Alvin Bentley and Briggs and the like
were not represented.
From that moment on, the
Board just didn't have the quality and the balance
it needed.
R--It was a disappointment that the Board didn't have
the status and influence that it was anticipated it
would have.
Those who were advocating the elective
board with the broad responsibilities that were given
to the Board of Education anticipated a board of such
a status that it would attract outstanding people
throughout the state to run for the State Board.
Well, that didn't really prove to be the case. As a
matter of fact, the early Board did take kind of a
partisan approach and made it difficult to develop a
coordinated effort between the Board, the governor's
office, the budget bureau, and so on.
F--Your office and your administration took away part
of their power to coordinate the community college
movement.
R--Yes, yes.
F--As I recollect, because of distress that they couldn't
come across with the needed data and recommendations
in time for you to put your own administrative
processes to bed.
But that's not the Board, that
must be a defect in the professional staff.

A 725
Romney
R--I think there was a lack of recognition of the
importance of that on the part of the professional
staff.
As a matter of fact, as I think back to that period
in my recollection, there was a good deal of, oh, I
don’t know whether you call it conflict, but there
were several disagreements between the two.
Instead
of composing the situation and developing a unified
approach, it tended to create more conflict and
confusion than existed earlier.
The objective was
the opposite, you see.
F--Many of the solutions of these things came through
executive and legislative action...
R--That's exactly right.

That’s exactly right.

F--...where perhaps the knowledge level wasn't as high
but the instincts were there.
R- -Yes.
F--What about vocational-technical objectives?
important?

Were they

R--Yes, they were a very important part of it.
I've
always been convinced that one of the things we need
to do is to strengthen the programs that enable people
to develop skills.
I think we have tended to reduce the importance of
that in our thinking.
I think we've tended to over­
emphasize the purely academic side and the professional
pursuits as compared to the crafts and the mechanical
skills and so on.
F--It has a sense though--you had paper technology and
aircraft at Western, for instance, and the building
of Ferris--that you had the intention of creating a
different tier of institutions to do that. Michigan
is probably not a good place to do vocational-tech­
nical training. Whereas perhaps Wayne, but Wayne
didn't work out, hence the creation of Wayne Community
College.
Did you have that as a direct policy agenda or did
these things just sort of...

A 726
Romney
R--That was part of the objectives.
I assume you've
taken a good look at the higher educational commis­
sion that I appointed and their recommendations on
it. They played quite an important part in this
little picture, you know.
F--I was quite amused about that because it strikes me
that one of the hidden jobs that people never under­
stand that the executive has to do is to find the
right people for the right place.
It's always very
tough to find that.
As I looked over the people you picked, like Heavenrich
from Saginaw, and Bluestone from the UAW, and a man
from Besser Industries up in Alpena, I was struck by
the very clever and astute mixture of industry, labor,
there was a doctor on it. Geographically, Muskegon,
Grand Rapids, Flint, Saginaw, Detroit were represented.
It was a very careful, skilled m i x .
R--Well, the objective was to get capable people and to
balance, and a recognition that the state was facing
a new era in the field of higher education because
of the Constitution and also because of the economic
situation of the state.
The need to broaden the
educational opportunities related to the future of
the state.
F--One other thing that struck me, and I want to chat
with you about it, is that one of the mechanisms that
Mennen Williams used to create the public opinion to
create legislation--since he had so few votes inside
the Legislature--was the civic commission.
The civic commission has in a rather subtle way been
the force frequently to create the initiative and the
pressure on more recalcitrant members of our govern­
ment structure to move. You used that with the
Citizens for Michigan.
Your membership on the Detroit
school thing was another mechanism to go outside of
the government structure.
The comparison between the Blue Ribbon Commission
that you selected and the latest one where the
Governor has set up this higher education reform
commission are instructive.
I suspect--and I'm

Romney
asking this directly after that long preamble, if
you’ll excuse me--the very act of picking these
kind of people as a civic balance thing made the
event happen.
The latest one with Governor Milliken
wasn't well-balanced, wasn't broad, it was small,
only 5 to 10, and you had about 50. That Blue
Ribbon Report that occurred in your administration
was the most effective thing that's occurred in this
state in 30 years.
R--For such a commission, in my opinion, to be fully
effective, it has to be not only outstanding in terms
of the membership and balance, but it also has to be
composed of people who can have influence on public
thinking and the media and so on, so that you create
public support which in turn translates itself into
political support.
Sure there was a good deal of concern about structuring
the Commission so that it would have impact on the
state and the people in the state.
F--I'm sure of that. I think what I was thinking about
is that from 1948 to the present, when you wanted to
get beyond governmental, bureaucratic, or narrow
policies, and you wanted to go for broad-base policies,
you have to really go outside of the power of the
governor's office in dealing with the Legislature and
the executive and create a public force, don't you?
R--0ne of the things that I think we have failed to
recognize adequately in our process of dealing with
basic problems is the limitation of the political
process. The political process has certain inherent
limitations in it. One of the inherent limitations
is that it's difficult to get those who depend upon
the elective process to take positions that aren't
well supported by the public. After all, their basic
function is to identify the possible and to get it
done. The possible is what this public will support
basically, or what can be presented in a way to
secure public support, so that they will give the
political support necessary to make the necessary
changes. You can't have progress without change.

A 728
Romney
Now, Richard Goodwin, who was John F. Kennedy’s speech
writer, then he was Johnson's speech writer--I was
reading it in this book here, The American Condition-talks about the congenital incapacity of the political
process.
He's talking about the same thing I'm talking
about: the inherent limitations of the political process.
Where you have a society where ultimate power is vested
in the people and the people exercise that ultimate
power at the ballot box, if you're going to get support
of those who depend upon the results of the ballot box,
they've got to be reasonably convinced that if they
give support it won't hurt them at the ballot box.
Consequently you have to pursue a process that will
create public support or make it evident that there
is public support.
F--And that's what I guess I'm deriving from what you did
and now what you say. A governor not only has to lead,
and the politicians not only have to discern what is
the public mood, but you have to create the impetus to
educate the public, to create the additional public
understanding, to create the need and the demand and
the consensus.
R--That's right.
F--Now the commission is a good and subtle way to do that,
isn't it?
R--That's one way to do it.
F--The governor has to get out there on the stick talking
to people and really moving around.
He can't just
stay in.
R--That's right.
F--On education issues, though, you didn't have much
trouble, did you?
R--No, because there'd been, as I have indicated, a good
deal of ground work done in the process of my becoming
governor. After all, the concerns that developed in the
late fifties and the sixties and the public discussion
that was occurring, the media coverage that was
occurring, all created a good deal of public support
for needed action.

A 729
Romney
F--It was quite large, wasn't it?
R--Yes.
F--Was there any agenda in the growth of higher education
for the growth of culture and the arts? I don't have
the sense of it except at Oakland.
R--No, not that I know of.
E--At Oakland, I thought that Woody Varner was just
amazingly astute.
Where John Hannah was selling
football players, Woody Varner was selling ballet
dancers.
R--Well, after all, I think what happens at the individual
institutions depends a good deal upon the leadership of
the institutions.
F--And the public that lives around

them, too.

R--I don't think JohnHannah would have built as big an
institution if he had focused it around the arts and
so on.
I think he was out to build a big institution.
F--That's true.
But you've also lived in Lansing and you
know that it's not a town where an orchestra that plays
classical music can pull 50 people.
R--That's right.
F--If they brought in
the Grand Ole Opry you wouldn't be
able to get within 50 blocks.
R--If it were the Beatles, you'd be swamped.
F--What about the role of labor in the growth of higher
education?
R--Well, I always felt I had their support in what I was
trying to do. After all, Woodcock and Conway^ and
Bluestone and others were involved.
I never had any
indication that they weren't supportive.
2
Jack Conway; Assistant to Walter Reuther.

A 730
Romney
F--Had you had relationships with them over a long time
at American Motors that made the dialogue easier to
begin?
R--Oh sure.
F--They certainly had large numbers of votes that they
could deliver from certain areas that you couldn’t
deliver.
R--Well, I've had relationships with them going all the
way back to the time I came to Michigan.
I think another thing. You know, I never tried to
figure out what to do from a political standpoint
primarily.
1 tried to figure out what needed to be
done and what was the right thing to do and then I
went out to do it.
I never worried much about trying
to determine just what the reaction to different
individuals would be.
And furthermore, I never got into bargaining with the
legislators.
I never told any legislator, all the
time I was Governor, that I would do a specific thing
if he would vote for something I wanted.
I had some
of them come in and want to do that, and I said:
"Look, I don't operate that way. Either this is the
right thing to do or it's the wrong thing to d o . Now
if you think i t 's the wrong thing to d o , you vote
against it. If you think it's the right thing to d o ,
w hy, you vote for it. But I'm not going to get into
a bargaining situation and try to buy your vote."
I think that worked out, and I think I was able to
identify things that needed to be done, that were
right, and they received support. Some things I had
battles on with some individuals, some legislators,
and so on.
But as far as the unions and education are concerned,
I never had any sense of opposition on their part to
what I was trying to do.
F--I wondered about that.
R--I think there was some partisan effort in connection
with the boards of control of these institutions. I
think there was quite a battle with respect to the

A 731

Romney
Board of Control at Michigan State University--as
between the Democrats and the Republicans and so
on.
I think that aspect was not too sharp, but...
F--I don’t think that's a labor problem.
I think that
comes back to an issue that’s perhaps embarrassing:
that higher education was more political on some of
these boards in the state than it was in the
Legislature and in the executive...
R--Well, that's right. I think it was probably quite
political at Michigan State University during the
period I was there.
F--It may have been personalities.
R--I think that played a part, yes.
As I say, I never had any feeling that the unions
weren't basically supportive of what was being done
in the field of education.
F--What about the role of industry?
easy to feel that support.

It’s a little less

In terms of local areas you had Seidman in
Grand Rapids, you had M r . Mott in Flint, you had
Matilda Wilson at Oakland. You had people who had
become rich through working in industry, who saw the
value of higher education, and had a deep dedication
to it, as you alluded to earlier.
But there's been
a long history of Michigan industry fighting
increased appropriations.
R--Well, I think the most difficult thing that had to be
done in connection with making it possible to do what
was done with higher education and education in general,
was to secure tax reform. After all, there'd been
long opposition to an income tax in this state.
The business community, I think, naturally views
changes in the basic tax program as something that
might affect them to a very substantial degree.
Consequently, such business concern that was related
to what was done in the field of education tended
to relate to tax reform rather than to what was done
with respect to the various institutions and the
appropriation process after tax reform was secured.

A 732

Romney
It would have been impossible to do what was done if we
hadn’t been able to secure a state income tax, and if
we hadn’t been able to broaden the tax base and develop
a more productive and equitable tax structure.
F--It was easier for you because of those things and because
also of the prosperity of the state when you were Governor.
The revenue base was significantly enhanced and you had
for the first time the opportunity to do a great, great
many things that had not been possible before.
R--But of course that was a part of the preparation that I
made before I became Governor. The Citizens for Michigan
effort decided that two things were essential: One was
the new Constitution and the other was tax reform. And
there was a broad educational effort in the state.
F--And had been conducted for a long time, too.
R--Sure, it had been conducted for a long time and I 'd been
very active in that, as many others had been.
In any event, it enabled us to do what is seldom done in
this state. You know, usually when a governor gets tax
reform and gets an income tax, he gets liclced. That’s
what happened to [Richard B.J Ogilvie in the last election
in Illinois. It happened with [Russe11 W.J Peterson in
Delaware.
The most dramatic example is what happened to [Richard B.]
Chafee in Rhode Island. In 1964, in the face of the
Johnson landslide, he got 82 percent of the vote in Rhode
Island. He got licked at the next election because he
indicated that the state might need a state income tax.
He didn’t go after one, he just said they might need one.
He got defeated. That's how big this thing can b e .
Now, in my case, I was able to get the state income tax,
and get a broader tax base, and in the following election,
even though they tried to use it against m e , I got the
biggest plurality in the history of the state. That was
because the people of the state had an appreciation of
the relationship of that to the things that they thought
needed to be done. And there's support for education,
you see.

A 733

Romney
F--That comes back to your observations about the need
to educate the electorate as well as to lead it.
R--I don't think we have an adequate process for doing
that, as a normal thing.
It happens occasionally as
a result of some special effort of some character
such as was made in this state.
F--That's why I have a great deal of admiration for your
efforts with the volunteerism. I think it can develop
into another useful aspect in institutions in our
society.
R--I happen to think that we have to supplement the
present political process. The people expect the
parties and the candidates to educate the public with
respect to these highly controversial issues. But
they really can't do that without j eopardizing victory
at the polls. It conflicts with their basic responsi­
bility .
The basic responsibility of the political process and
the political candidates is to compete for responsi­
bility to govern, and to win on that they have to win
the most votes. And to win the most votes, they can't
discuss problems people don't yet understand, or that
are highly controversial. They stay away from them,
you see, and we drift.
That's what's happening in the state. That's what's
happening in the nation at the present time. You take
Nixon's talk on inflation last night. He kisses off
the thing that none of the politicians in the Western
world want to deal with in an effective way. That's
what happens in the wage-price area. They talk about
fiscal policy and monetary policy and all those things,
but they don't want to deal with what needs to be done
in the wage-price area. The result is that cost-push
inflation keeps upsetting what they try to do with
demand-pull inflation. Even last night he said, "Well,
we hope that labor and management will voluntarily
pursue the right policies in the wage-price area."
Well, that's a long story but I simply cite that as
an example of the extent to which those in public
office, and even those aspiring to elective office,
tend to stay away from the most highly controversial

A 734
Romney
issues that really are the most pressing at times.
Now in Michigan we dealt with those, you see. We
developed a broad base of public effort, before I
ever took office, through Citizens for Michigan and
through the Constitutional Convention.
There was a
process of public education that went on during that
period and it was unusual.
F--You had the League of Women Voters there, too.
R--Oh sure. As a matter of fact, I think they are the
most experienced organization nationally in this
process of education.
I've been delighted to see
them eliminate their membership restriction because
I think they can be more effective than they are as
a strictly women's organization. I hope they will
become fully effective.
I think y o u 're quite right. And I think one of the
problems that w e 're going to have to face again as
we come to new thresholds in higher education, is to
create mechanisms to explain them to the public. And
we aren't doing it. No question about it, no question
about it.
F--Do you have any observations about why the branch
campus system failed? They were starting in Dearborn,
in Flint, in Oakland.
R--No, I don't know too much about that.
F--...and it failed. And it probably failed at Con-Con.
Now, I'm not saying that Oakland was a failure. I'm
saying that the California model, with one imperial
campus with colonies all over, didn't happen here.
R--Well, there just wasn't an acceptance of that concept
here, as I think back.
F--Jim Farnsworth and I talked.
for Jim.
R--Yes.

Jim's an astute fellow.

I have a lot of regard

A 735

Romney
F--And Jim said, "This state's suspicious of big institu­
tions.
It's suspicious of big government, it's
suspicious of big colleges and universities." He said,
"At Con-Con we didn't want colleges to get up to the
size of California where..."
R--Well, I think that's right. I think there was resist ance to the idea of a super educational institution
that would dominate the whole scene. I think that's
quite true.
F--The other point that Jim made is that our people
wanted schools to belong to them, to be part of their
own community.
R--I think that's right.
F--You talked earlier in our conversation about civic
energy.
You said they wanted them to be home ruled
and not run from Ann Arbor or East Lansing.
R--I think that's right.
F--He thought that those were some of the reasons that
it failed.
R--I think that's right.
F--Do you think that there's credit to that?
R--Yes.
F--Why was there no state coordination after 1964?
W e 've talked already about the quality of the Board
itself.
Some have said, well, John Hannah and the
big institutions just didn't want it. Do you think
that's correct?
R--I think there was resistance to it, plus the fact that
I don't think the Board itself pursued policies that
helped to bring it about.
F--Flint was a perfect example of that, wasn't it?
R--Yes.

A 736
Romney
F--They picked the fight over the Flint campus right
off.
I wonder if that might have sealed their doom.
Some say yes, some say no. But that was early and
you were right in the middle of that, weren't you?
R--As I think back, they never pursued an approach that
resulted in establishing a good working relationship,
even in my office. Maybe that was my fault, I don’t
know.
Ira Polley-- my recollection is that that wasn't too
happy a selection.
F--There was a split, and there was a period of time when
they didn't select anybody. Kloster^ was acting
superintendent for a while.
R--As a matter of fact I think that was a disappointment
to the institutions and a lot of people in the
Constitutional Convention.
They had visualized
attracting an outstanding educator and leader and so
on, and they didn't . I think there was a feeling that
Polley was not a man that measured up to what they
expected.
F--Well, I do know that in the
Board, the first meeting or
then one of your key aides,
a while. Then gradually it

beginning of the State
two you attended, and
O r l e b e k e ^ , attended for
just ceased.

R--As a matter of fact, he might be able to give you
more background on that than I can.
F--But it was not in your vieiv an effective coordination
between this executive agency...
R- -11 did not develop, n o .
F--Who were the key opinion leaders in this period in
your opinion? Who were the major figures in education
3
Alexander J. Kloster; Deputy Superintendent of Public
Instruction.
^Charles J. Orlebeke; Administrative Assistant to
Governor Romney.

A 737
Romney
in this state that had to do with the growth of higher
education?
Not just in education, but throughout the society.
Certainly some of the people that you selected to the
Blue Ribbon Committee obviously...
R--They played a big part in it. Those individuals stand
out in my mind, together with the members of the State
Legislature who had to be convinced, and so on. They
played a key role in it.
F--Were any of the big three presidents close to you?
R--I don’t at this moment recall others who were pursuing
it actively.
The Blue Ribbon Commission, the members
of the Legislature, people in the field of education,
and so on.
F--Bentley certainly was a very key...
R--He was chairman of that Commission, wasn’t he?
F--Karn was...
R--That's right.
Karn was chairman, but Bentley was on
the Commission.
F--And most influential.
R.--He played a big part, there isn't any question about
that. Against his background, politically, he was
able to swing a lot of people who would have normally
opposed programs.
F--Cushman was there as vice-chairman.
R--Yes, Cushman was there. As I say, that Blue Ribbon
Commission was really the source of a good deal of...
F--It included a lot of people.
Were there other people inside the schools themselves
that you looked to?

A 738

Romney
R--I used to meet with the university presidents and so
on, but no, I don't recall others in the schools
themselves.
F--Were those meetings with the university presidents
fruitful or were they...
R--Oh sure.
I learned from them and I used to meet with
them regularly.
It gave me an insight into their view
of their needs and I used to discuss things broadly
with them.
I don't recall other people, particularly,
that I spent a lot of time with.
But I was working pretty closely with the Blue Ribbon
Commission, the Legislature, the university people
themselves, and people in the field of education.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
JOHN A. HANNAH1

F--Dr. Hannah, what in your opinion were the reasons that
led to the expansion of higher education in Michigan
from 1958 on? In 1958 the appropriations from the
state for higher education were some $80 million but
had reached the level of some $280 million by 1970.
H--Well, there were several factors. The great upward
push in higher education came immediately after the
war with the return of the veterans and the GI Bill.
Michigan State, and all the other institutions in this
state, went through the war period when they had women,
a few returned veterans, people who couldn't meet the
physical standards of military service, or were [in
military] training. Michigan State *s campus became a
military camp. We had ASTP units^ and a very large
air force unit which took over all the dormitories,
the Union, and other places.
At the end of the war education became available to
12 million men who came out of the military forces
and a large number of them took advantage of the
opportunity.
John A. Hannah; President, Michigan State University,
1941-1967; Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower,
1953-1954 ; U.S. Chairman, Permanent Joint Board for
Defense U.S.A. and Canada, 1953-1964 ; Chairman, U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights, 1957-1969; Delegate, Michigan
Constitutional Convention, 1961-1962 ; Administrator,
Agency for International Development, 1969-1973; Deputy
Secretary General, World Food Conference, 1974.
Interview
conducted October 28, 1974.
2
Army Specialized Training Program.

A 739

A 740
Hannah
The GI Bill really' was the consummation of what started
a hundred years earlier with the Morrill Act.
It was
based on the theory that there ought to be an oppor­
tunity for every youngster that wanted an education to
get it, but really it wasn’t achievable. With the
GI Bill it was.
There was a great increase in births and these kids were
enrolling in the public schools. It was also clear that
we had a new pattern in this country--a much larger
fraction of people were going to go on to colleges and
universities.
Colleges and universities were being looked to not only
to provide educational opportunities for the young
people, but they were being looked to by government and
industry to answer all sorts of questions. The utiliza­
tion of the research potential of universities was
beginning to be seen.
All of those factors played a part. It was clear that
as the public schools were gearing up to take care of
the enrollment then in kindergarten, down the road a
piece they were going to be coming to the universities.
Education was probably better appreciated, at least in
the Middle West and West, than it ever had been before.
Well, I ’d say better appreciated in the whole country.
Of course the eastern United States always had sort of
an aristocratic idea of education.
They never got the
notion that it was the role of the public to make avail­
able educational opportunities, not only through primary
and secondary schools, but through colleges and univer­
sities for kids who would make use of it.
Your question is a little limited. You say what are the
reasons? Well, there were many, but these were the basic
reasons. It was a response to a demand which was pretty
powerful.
F--I want to digress a moment. I*m a historian by training.
I ’m from Boston, Massachusetts. I came out here and was
really quite struck by the long tradition and sense of
the value of public higher education that existed in
this state, by the excellence of its public service,
and its public life. It was quite in contrast to other
midwestern states. Michigan built the first land grant
school, built a great public university (to the contrary
when most of the great universities in America were

A 741

Hannah
private at the beginning), built a community college
system without a great deal of fanfare, and had the
first normal school west of the Appalachians at
Ypsilanti.
Do you have some sense why this occurred here in the
north Midwest--I think about Wisconsin, Michigan,
Minnesota--when it didn’t seem to take such fallow
ground in the rest of the Midwest?
H--The State of Michigan was sort of a cul-de-sac so far
as the western migrations were concerned. The routes
for the people moving from the East, to the Middle West,
to the West, were all south of u s . The State of Michigan
in the early days was regarded as a swampy, mosquito-,
malaria-ridden place--not the kind of a place that you
really wanted to go to live. They came here for other
reasons: They came here for the timber and eventually
for the farm land.
But you move down into Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana;
during the western migration movements they established
their privately supported colleges and universities at
almost every crossroads. There were very few in Michigan.
The University of Michigan came into being, legally,
many years before it actually was an institution--from
about the time Michigan became a state.
F--It was a Territory...
H--The institution it claims to have grown out of, the
Catholopistemiad^, was in the Territory.
So you had in Michigan not people that were for the most
part moving on, but people that had come to stay, this
was going to be their home. As in all this country in
the early days, it was largely agricultural, almost
everybody lived on farms. If they didn’t live on farms,
they were concerned with making what farm people needed,
or taking what they produced and processing it into
something else, to be shipped somewhere else. That
played a role in it.
The University of Michigan was the first of the really
high-quality state universities, the first one that
3

Floyd R. Dain, Education in the Wilderness (Lansing:
Michigan Historical Commission, 1968), p. 119.

A 742

Hannah
compared with the Ivy League schools as an educational
institution.
Later, California, Minnesota, and the rest
of them caught up. The first of the agricultural
colleges was here, and that’s an interesting story we
don't need to get into today.
The teachers'
college at Ypsilanti you mentioned.
You might have
mentioned something else: The Kalamazoo Case was the
landmark case that made it possible for high schools
beyond primary schools to be supported by...
F--...Public funds.
H--A11 of those played a role.
The point I want to make is
that there was no scheme to develop from what we were to
something else. There was a great need and it was a
state that had always been generous to education.
In the very early days they had given the University of
Michigan constitutional status to keep it free from
political influences.
At an early date they had
extended the same independence to the Agricultural
College--it later became Michigan State University.
There is some interesting history about those conversa­
tions and conflicts in the early days. Michigan had a
good school system and a legislature and state government
that, at least all during my early experience, kept their
institutions out of politics.
The old practice of having the elections in the spring
for the judges and the school board members was theoret­
ically good.
It worked well when it was primarily a
one-party state, at least you got away from the hassles
within the party.
When it became strongly a two-party
state, again it was influenced in part by the fact that
the UAW played a very important role in the Democratic
Party, it never really focused on the role of colleges
and universities.
They didn't intend t o , I'm sure, but [board elections]
were towards the bottom of the ballot when they finally
came to putting them all on the same ballot. And
unfortunately too often, when they had to balance the
ballot to have representation of certain racial groups,
or geographic groups, or religious groups, or whatever,
they did it by using the educational boards. Which was
unfortunate so far as this institution was concerned.

A 743
Hannah
F--Well, there's an advantage to this.
I recognize some
of the disadvantages (and there's some talk about going
back to off-year elections for State Boards) but in
Michigan, generally, election to the State Board or to
one of the three university boards wasn't a pathway to
higher political office. Men served for the social
prestige rather than, as in Massachusetts, running for
an educational post in order to run later for governor,
senator, and the like.
H--It really wasn't for social prestige. Most of them ran
because they were interested in education, they were
interested in the basic obj ective. We were very fortu­
nate at this institution in the early days, and in my
early experience, in having exceedingly able and
competent people from both parties.
Parties never made any difference --they came to the
Board via the party route, but once on the Board, party
didn't mean anything.
F--This is part of what I'm going to try to explain in the
ambience of Michigan, because that's not been the case
in other states. The parties really haven't , over most
of the history, significantly intervened.
Y o u 've talked a little bit about the climate. Do you
want to say more about what the social and economic
factors were that led to this significant growth?
H--First of all is the desire on the part of all parents
to provide education for their youngsters. It is
recognized generally that that's the way you provide
mobility in society.
That's the way people who are
born at the bottom can fit themselves for roles at
the top.
It was an important source of strength in this country
that the new immigrants, that didn't speak the language,
and lived down near the gashouse, or were the section
hands on the railroad, could say to their youngsters,
"You go on to school and in your lifetime you w o n 't
have to be section hands, you w o n 't have to be peasanttypes. Maybe you can become a president of a bank,
maybe you can become governor, maybe you can become the
president of a university." And they could always single
someone out. "Look at J o e , who was raised in this com­
munity just like you, he did just what y o u 're doing, he
worked on the farm, he peddled milk, now he is in a very
important role."

A 744
Hannah
Now this is one of the factors that...
F--It really has come through, hasn't it.
H - -It made America what it is.
F--It's been very true in Michigan.
By and large, people
who are in positions of influence and who make great
contributions--their origins weren't from the very rich
and the very powerful. This is what I've called the
incentive to the Horatio Alger dream--it did come true.
President Fleming made that very clear when he said,
"You know, my father died when I was a young man and
I worked my way through college. We haven't forgotten
our origins." It strikes me a lot of people haven't .
That's one of the strengths of the willingness to
invest in the public sector of schools.
H--Well, of course, I can say the same thing. My father
was a market gardener, didn't have any money, and [we]
kids were raised in a family where it was a hand-tomouth operation (of course we didn't know it), but
there was an understanding that the kids would go to
school.
When I got through high school I was very fortunate that
one of the first junior colleges in this country was in
Grand Rapids--Grand Rapids Junior College. It was on
the top floor of the Central High School. I went to
South High in the south end of town and I walked or rode
a bicycle several miles every day.
So there was a way
to get the first two years of college at home at low cost.
I would have been perfectly happy to have been a farmer
but my people convinced me that one ought to have higher
aspirations. And so I was admitted from the Grand Rapids
Junior College directly to the law school at the
University of Michigan.
But financing it was something
else, so I borrowed some money from Dudley Waters, who
was a banker in town--the market garden business wasn't
very good financially, then.
I went through the first year of law school and watched
my colleagues in the law school and those that were going
out into the world to practice law--that was back in the
early twenties. The average young lawyer went out and
hung up his shingle and became a practicing lawyer. They
didn't go through the big law firms as they do now.
If

A 745

Hannah
you happened to have an uncle who was Newton Baker^ in
Cleveland or something like that, of course you could
start off pretty well.
I had to make this decision because the head of the
poultry department here at Michigan Agricultural College
came down to Ann Arbor and suggested that I come to MAC
and get my degree in agriculture.
He would give me a
job at $2500 a year, which was a stupendous sum to me
then.
It wasn’t an avocation because long before I
went to college I had been in the poultry business and
Secretary of the State Poultry Association, in charge
of the poultry department in the State Fair at Detroit,
and so on.
So I had to face up to whether I wanted to go on to
finish law school. To make a long story short, I owed
M r . Waters a good deal of money--it seemed like a
colossal sum, a couple thousand dollars - -1 would be a
long time paying him back and I would owe him a good
deal more.
So I came up to MAC and talked to the Dean of
Agriculture, Dean Robert S. Shaw (later President of MSU),
and Elton Hill^ to see what would be required for me to
get this first degree in agriculture. I found they would
give me full credit so far as hours were concerned but I
would have to take all the required courses, basic
courses in chemistry and other sciences, farm crops,
soils, and all the rest. But, if you could satisfy the
professors that you knew enough about them and could pass
an examination in the subject matter, you could waive
them.
So I came up and in one year took all the required
courses (or waived them) in the College of Agriculture,
got a degree in agriculture, and went to work in the
extension program.
[I spent] ten years in agricultural extension.
I was
unmarried and I averaged 200 days a year away from
East Lansing. I got to know well the geography of this
state, and held farmers’ meetings in every county.
There was no town or community in Michigan where I didn’t
4
Newton Baker; Member law firm of Baker, Hostetler,
Sidlo and Patterson, Cleveland, Ohio; City Solicitor of
Cleveland, 1902-1912; Mayor, 1912-1914; Secretary of War
under President Wilson.
^Elton B . Hill of the Department of Farm Management.

A 746

Hannah
know people, and that’s when I became imbued with the
idea that the potential role of higher education was
very great.
But I don't want to get carried away with this bio­
graphical discussion...
F--No, but you have to face the fact - -1 know you’re not an
egotistical man--that you were a key figure at a key
time. Certain things did happen in this state that other
states in the nation can look to with pride and to
emulate. Some of the social agendas were satisfied--I
don't know that they were planned, but they occurred.
Now I asked the question, "What were the policy objectives
that underlay the expansion?" When I think about obj ectives, I think about equal opportunity, I think about
creating the opportunity for people to bust out of social
classes, to create a middle class, to create a profes­
sional class rather than a blue-collar class. I think
about the concept of turning our backs on the elite
education [as distinguished] from mass education.
I don't know that there was a strong ideological agenda
that people understood was point one, point two, point
three, but it seems that the events moved that way, that
they did happen.
I wonder what your thoughts are about
that.
H--I don't disagree with anything that y o u 've said.
I
always believed with conviction that it was education
that unlocked the doors for people that had the basic
intelligence to make use of it; that God gave them
between their ears something that made it possible for
them to acquire this ethereal thing we call education.
It's a combination of knowledge, experience, aspirations,
and basic intelligence. It widened the horizons, opened
the opportunities for people.
I believe, with conviction, in that basic commitment that
resulted in the old Peoples' University Movement --out of
which the land grant colleges came. It was always clear
to me that a public university like this one provides an
opportunity to affect the lives of more people for good
than any other institution in society. It was clear to
m e , very early, that money or position is relatively
meaningless. What really is meaningful is the basic
philosophy that people are not necessarily born equal

A 747

Hannah
but that they should have an equal opportunity to develop
their God-given potential so that the maximum number can
develop their talents and competencies in order to enable
them to contribute to the society of which they are a part,
and in return live satisfying lives. This was widely
held, this was something that you could convince legis­
lators and others who were important...
F--Something happened here, Dr. Hannah, that was interesting.
In most of the midwestern states they had a very rigid
idea of the higher education structure that history had
brought them from the Morrill Land Grant Act, which was
one university for the arts and an agricultural and
mechanical-technical university for the artisans.
In this state we created three universities. Certainly
Michigan State has that strong position with agriculture,
but they also permitted it to build strong scientific
and humanities programs to make it comprehensive. We
didn't have a franchise only for the University of
Michigan.
It worked that way with Wayne and it appears
that Western is on that threshhold--perhaps thirty years
back.
How do you account for that?
H--The Land Grant Act, as you know, provided for institutions
where they were to be concerned with programs in agri­
culture and the mechanic arts that are now called
engineering. But, including in the Act itself such
additional subjects as were authorized as "are from time
to time deemed desirable for the educational improvement
of the industrial classes in the various professions and
pursuits of life." That's the language in the Land Grant
Act as it originally passed the Congress, before it was
vetoed by President Buchanan. M r . Lincoln revived it in
the second year of his administration and added "and
including military tactics" because he was having
difficulty officering the Union Army. And so military
tactics was to be offered, not compulsorily, necessarily,
but as it developed, it was ultimately made compulsory.
When I came here in 1922 it was primarily an agricultural
college, but it was clear that you couldn't train good
agriculturalists, good engineers, good home economists,
or good veterinary medicine people unless they had a good
basic grounding in the sciences, unless they had some
understanding of the history of our society, unless they
had some competence in language, unless they had some

A 748
Hannah
perspective of history.
If you were going to do a good
job and train people in agriculture and these other
fields, you had to undergird it with a strong liberal
education.
F--I understand that...
H--This was recognized very early here because we had real
competition with the University of Michigan who thought
otherwise in the early days.
F--If we go to other states, if we talk about Wisconsin,
Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota--those universities were
predominant and no competition ever really developed
across the full range the way Michigan State has.
Michigan State is not only an agricultural and mechan­
ical institution, it's a full-range, complex university.
H--And a very good university.
F--Indeed.
But that happened in this period from 194 0 to
the present--in the last generation-and-a-half. That
was to the contrary of other states. Have you some
thoughts about why that occurred?
H--Well, it was a fertile ground here. There was some
courage and leadership on the part of the people that
were involved in the administration of the university.
And the old State Board of Agriculture was composed of
very strong, able people.
My first role, as I saw it, when I became involved in
the central administration of the university--this was
back in 1934 or ’34--[was] not to look at Ann Arbor or
at Harvard, but to put the emphasis on trying to figure
out what was the appropriate role for this institution
if it was going to serve the people of Michigan.
We always had a definition of "people" as "all people,"
not rural people, city people, poor people, or black
people. We were interested in providing on-campus
education for those that wanted to earn degrees, but
we were also interested in providing the kind of educa­
tion that might make it possible for people that never
expected to attend college at all to do a better job.
We would design a course or a program in extension or
continuing education, in the early days, for any
substantial group on any subj ect. If it had nothing
to do with their living, if it was only a program that

A 749

Hannah
might make life more interesting or satisfying, we
would do that. We had a very broad definition of
education.
This became the comprehensive pattern of this institu­
tion. That meant you did the on-campus program just
as well as you could, and you did off campus whatever
would be useful or advantageous to people. You didn't
have any fences that you couldn't get over.
F--And in that way, probably, came the identification with
newly arriving aspirational classes who then had a place
to look to the higher education enterprise. One of the
strengths of this institution came to be that arriving
middle classes were looking to Michigan and Michigan
State, but particularly Michigan State, as a ladder.
H--We always felt, even before there was organized labor,
that the people that did the work for hire, that they,
too, were people.
You see, I have the conviction, that I have never lost
and I carry it very proudly in the present international
role, that only people are important.
F--I'm comfortable with that. When I had a discussion with
Senator Lane he made the case that Ohio's costs were
cheaper and Michigan's were expensive.
He and I had a
very sharp exchange. I pointed out to him that in the
end, the best investment that you can ever make is
society's people, and that one that is cost-effective
and failure-oriented toward the values of men is not a
successful system.
What about the partisan and parochial conflict?
things just didn't happen easily.

These

H--Well, first of all, there were never partisan conflicts.
Of course there are always Republicans and Democrats
and minor parties in this state --people have to partic­
ipate in one of the parties if they are going to be
elected to office. But there was always the recognition
that education was just as important to Republicans as
Democrats or Socialists or Farmer Labor or whatever they
were. And there was never a partisan development in the
Legislature--it didn't make any difference whether the
governor happened to be a Democrat or a Republican, or
who had control of the Legislature--it didn't make any
difference in their attitude toward education. Higher
education never got lost in this way.

A 750

Hannah
Now, about parochial conflicts --you had in the public
schools, of course, a different attitude. You had in
some of the private schools in the state a good deal of
resentment of the public schools that were financed with
tax money.
Communication between private and public
colleges and understanding that both roles were important
took a lot of doing in the early years.
I remember
spending much time at it.
It was like pulling teeth in
the early days--to get the private schools to even meet
with u s .
It was a fault on both sides. They had the notion that
we made it very difficult for them to get students
because of our low tuition rates.
Some of our people
were inclined to look down on the quality of what some
of them were doing, and all this sort of thing. But we
developed some organizations that encompassed not only
the tax-supported institutions but the whole educational
fraternity.
I don't think that parochialism was much of a problem.
There were individuals in the church-related schools or
in the private colleges that were difficult at times,
but they eventually became supporters and recognized
that...
F--I suppose parochial was a euphemism for the disabilities
between the major public institutions. Institutions, it
is my impression, sometimes are more concerned about how
their rivals do than what their own agenda is. It has
been my observation that frequently schools that seek
programmatic support really don't care for the program­
matic support as much as invidious comparison to their
rival.
Part of the difficulty, for instance, when
Michigan made a really significant fight over changing
the name of MSC to MSU, seems to have been some lack of
statesmanship on their part.
H--Well, it hurt them, of course.
F--It hurt them because they lost.
H--This institution had been a university for a long time,
for decades, and the idea that they were going to keep
it from being known as a university because it was
going to somehow derogate or diminish the U of M role
was silly.
F--When you came to the Constitutional Convention that was
an issue that didn't have much entity because you had

A 751
Hannah
already won it in the Legislature for yourself,
H--Well, that's true. The rivalry between MAC and the
University of Michigan started very early--and I'm not
going into that history at all. They repeatedly, and
for several years, tried to take over the institution
in the Legislature by having the agricultural school
transferred to Ann Arbor.
When I came to the presidency, Alexander Ruthven was
the President of the University of Michigan.
They were
arrogant, as they always had been, but Mr. Ruthven was
a fine man. We sat down together, first in his office
and later in mine, and talked this all through and made
it very clear that we were going to ride in the same
boat. There wasn't any way that you could change that.
Michigan and Michigan State were going to ride in the
same boat, so far as public support was concerned, and
we needed to find a way that we could fulfill our roles.
The only thing that I asked of him was that we deal faceto-face and co-equal: I to sit on one side of the table
and he to sit on the other.
If there was anything we
were doing he didn't like, or that they were doing that
I didn't like, "let's talk things over." And Alexander
Ruthven, in all the years that he was president, from
that time on, so far as I know, never said or did anything
that made it more difficult for us; and never, in all of
the years that he was president, and long after he was
president, did we ever derogate the University of Michigan.
F--You've made a rather subtle point and I'm going to try
to pull it out.
It strikes me from my observation working on the appro­
priations committees that much is frequently made of the
tactics of individual institutions striving for a trifle
more. A lot of attention is spent on the differences
rather than understanding that the whole higher education
enterprise is in the same boat and that they should work
together to widen the pool rather than fighting over the
same size or diminishing pool.
It strikes me that one
institution can't really, for the long haul --maybe one
year you can do better--do well when the others suffer.
H- -1 agree with you entirely. Of course there is another
facet to it and that is that there is a limit to the
number of universities that there needs to be in a
single system; there has to be a delineation of roles
for the different institutions.

A 752

Hannah
You mentioned a while ago that you have a complete
institution at the University of Michigan, a very
complete university here (and a very good one), and
Wayne is a pretty good university, but they have a
potential beyond what they've realized. Western Michigan,
because of the population in southwestern Michigan and
the geography of the state, is increasingly, at least in
some areas, a graduate institution.
It, too, is a very
good university.
But you have seen happening in Michigan what you have
seen all over the United States. I have always said if
you try to out-Harvard Harvard, you can’t . When you get
all through, they *11 still be Harvard and you111 be some thing else. If you don’t watch yourself, you will have
forsaken your good role for which you could get support.
Somebody else will take that one over and your institu­
tion will be out in the cold looking in.
This has been one of the great disservices to higher
education: this aspiration of every little crossroads
university to have graduate programs across the board,
every little college to have all the trimmings of the
university, a football team, a band, and all the rest
of it. And they *re relatively unimportant.
F--Maybe that’s partially your fault in the sense that I
think about your remarks in relation to Oakland and
Eastern. We don’t have the time to go into them, but
Oakland started one way and realities forced it to
become a different kind of place, and Eastern lost its
constituency and will have to find it again. While
you have been away in the last few years some of these
things have happened.
But you were so successful at building an institution
up that people sometimes paid more attention to the
trivial traffic--the football, the bands, the relation­
ships in the community--and didn't understand that you
had to have a sense of your own institution and where
it fit in as a contribution to society. People often
have gone for the traffic rather than the sense of what
the institution should be.
H--Well, I think that’s possible. Of course a university
first of all has to be a high-quality educational insti­
tution. You know, "Madison Avenue" doesn’t work for
very long. You can succeed for a little while, pretending
to be something that you aren't, but long-range you ’11 do
well, however good you are, if you are recognized [to be]
as good as you are.

A

753

Hannah
If you're going to build a university, you have to
build a university and it has to be high quality across
the board. You have to have competent, able people and
provide them with a climate where they can work and
widen their horizons.
Football and all the rest of that-that's just window-dressing.
F--But it takes a very subtle kind of understanding for
some of that.
You speak and sound as if you believed in some of this
cooperation, yet at the Constitutional Convention
George Romney had this sense of coordination run by the
State Board, and you and Roscoe Bonisteel and some others
had a sense of the autonomy of the institutions. That
came through in a very mixed way. The State Board ended
up with constitutional language but no real prerogative
because the institutions came out with a sense of their
historical importance as institutions with legal power.
H--1 think you're mixing up two things. Every time the
State Constitution has been rewritten, since the
University of Michigan was given constitutional inde­
pendence , this matter has come u p . You say Bonisteel,
myself, and maybe some others insisted that we not lose
our relative independence from the Legislature, from
having our internal affairs managed by political forces.
It provided no problem, really, to extend this to the
whole system.
There was a recognition that there had
to be a coordination.
There had been various limping
movements before and it was perfectly clear that sooner
or later it was going to b e .
I was on the Education Committee, as was Bonisteel,
though that wasn't my primary role in the State
Constitutional Convention. The mistake we made, looking
back on it, was in providing for the election of the
State Board of Education. No one could foresee that
that first slate of candidates for the Board would be
picked by people that didn't seriously regard what they
were doing.
If half of the first Board had known something about the
role and purpose of public education, it would have been
one situation, but by and large, they didn't have that
understanding. There weren't even any strong members
that could educate them and they went off in all directions.

Hannah
F--Without getting involved in personalities, because
that's a delicacy, I have the sense--and I've said this
in some of the other interviews --that nobody expected
eight members of one party to win.
It happened in '32,
but the rest of the time things had been balanced.
We ended up without strong representation from people
like Bentley and Briggs and the like. We ended up with
a Board that wasn't of high quality. The election
process frightened out some of the people who weren't
politicians but were men of civic responsibility.
H--They would not go through the process of being nominated
and elected. I think now, I didn't at the time, that
all of the educational boards would, by and large, be
better off if they served long terms, were selected by
appointment by the governor, maybe with approval of the
Senate, for the good reason that you mention.
There are
very few people who wouldn't gladly serve on these boards,
but very few of them will go the election route. They
just won't go through that requirement of nomination by
a political party and required campaigning all over the
state.
F--Therefore, you lose from the boards a certain talent
stream in society that the institutions and society
need.
H--What you really need is some management skill and compe­
tence and understanding. You need the point of view of
people in the middle categories of society, you need
agriculture to be represented, you need labor to be
represented, you need all of these points of view working
towards the common obj ective of the kind of an institu­
tion that will serve the purposes of all of them.
F--Did you regard one of the key issues of this period as
popularism in higher education versus elitism?
H--Oh yes, I 've always thought that--if we have the same
definition of elitism.
F--Well, I'll tell you what mine is. It seems to me that
admitting an elite and then graduating them was different
than admitting a mass and making them competent and then
graduating an elite. It struck me that schools that
selected from the very best and then just processed them
through weren't fulfilling a social purpose. It strikes

A 755
Hannah
me now that Michigan is more like Michigan State and
Michigan State is more like Michigan.
Some of the
differences have been blurred.
H--Maybe for the wrong reasons.
F--For the wrong reasons, perhaps, but twenty years ago
some of these attitudes of status were strongly held
and still to be beaten.
H- -Yes, that's right.
I come back to my concept that I
mentioned earlier, that only people are important.
There is not much correlation between the potential of
a youngster to make a substantial social contribution
and where he happens to be born.
The banker's children
may have wider horizons, they may understand the society
they are a part of, and so o n , but there are people down
on the very bottom that have it too. The trick is to
give them the opportunity to grow, because in a free
society you have to harness the competence of the
largest possible percentage of your people. You've got
to develop their potential so they can make a contribu­
tion to society,
F--As your experiences in the international sector point
out, when you don't have that relief valve, those
people move into revolution.
H--That's right.
F--They have the wit and the brains and the energy and if
there's no mobility...
H--I believe this with conviction.
I spent twelve years
as Chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, which
dealt with this very problem.
The system we had was
pretty intolerable and it wasn't going to be very easy
to correct it.
F--What about the destruction of class and culture barriers
as one of the objectives that higher education is
supposed to have?
H--Well, I hope it did have. I used to use this as an
argument in favor of compulsory military training on
a land grant campus. The head of an automotive corpor­
ation in Detroit sent his son out here to school with
more money to spend than was good for him, and somebody
else came down from what used to be the cutover areas

A 756

Hannah
of northern Michigan or the gashouse area of any city.
The first thing we did was to require both of them to
wear what we called "monkey suits." We put them in
uniform and put them out on the drill field. They
looked just alike.
It was a very useful factor in making it clear that the
university really wasn't interested in the wealth or
the social position of a person's parents.
You could
come from the bottom or you could come from the top and
all we were really interested in was what was in you,
what you had in your head, what you had in your attitude,
what you were willing to try to make out of yourself.
Now a youngster comes up with a big convertible and more
money than anybody ought to spend and it's pretty easy
for him to get into all kinds of difficulties and have
the wrong not ion entirely. I don't worry so much about
him because he'll get his edges knocked off, but what
is much more difficult is the fellow that comes out of
nothing and feels inferior--he's lost. How do you give
him the not ion that, "Fella, your limitations are your
own. What are you going to do with you? Don't worry
about these other people."
You talk about elitism and social barriers. In public
education--the role and purpose from the kindergarten
through the graduate school should be to develop the
potential of people.
F--When I started with the Appropriations Committee, I was
green as grass. I didn't have the training about some
of these things to understand the political process, but
I had some sense of the history of it all. Having myself
been the first member of my family ever to go to college,
I had that sense that these institutions were social
engines that could make it work.
When I came to write the dissertation, I was much struck
and offended by the prattle of how tough things were,
how bad it was for higher education. Some of this
capacity for self-pity I regard as a great weakness in
the higher education system.
My personal view was that higher education had done right
well, that people had done right well by it because it
had done right well by them as an effective social insti­
tution , and that that regard that exists in society for
institutions 1 ike Michigan and Michigan State, and the

A 757

Hannah
local strength that junior colleges had at Grand Rapids
and other communities as they developed, was part of
that success of making the world better.
Now, maybe higher education isn't perfect and I won't
say it is. You have to look about. What are better
institutions to do the things you have to do? There
aren't any.
H--Well, they are not perfect, but they have performed the
role pretty well.
This has nothing to do with your dissertation, but they
have in them something that troubles me a good deal.
I
used to say it simply: that education is too important
to be left to educators. It deals with all people, the
course and the pattern of their lives, and it shouldn't
be left exclusively to the professionals.
W e 've built up an educational system--primary, secondary,
and particularly at the university level --where too large
a fraction of the pros have forgotten the role and
purpose. W e 've come up with a machine geared primarily to
serve their own convenience. All of the emphasis on
tenure, and perquisites, which are important, but...
F--Now I agree with that.
H--...they are not willing to recognize, whether it's
osteopathic medicine, Michigan State University in total,
or Podunk Junior College, that society has put the faculty
in a place to perform a social purpose. They are inclined
to forget it, and they forget it at all levels from the
very bottom to the top.
The teacher doesn't remember that when she's teaching
Johnny to read, it isn't the reading that's important,
it's Johnny.
The objectives are these human beings
that are going through the mill and how you help them
to grow.
F--That's what I call the "licensing syndrome." I thought
President Ford's remarks at Ohio State when he talked
at the Commencement probably a month ago were much in
this line that you're making now.
H--I read his talk.

A 758
Hannah
F--It strikes me that that's one of the future stresses
on the institutions, not to become such a licensing
agent, asking, for instance, not what do you know,
what can you contribute, but what is your degree?
The world of knowledge isn't divided by degrees.
That's men that do that.
It's possible that somebody
that has a major in engineering can make a contribution
to art.
H--Of course, and you can put it another way. One of the
problems has been that we have been inclined to equate
education with schools. For those of us that are lazy
the easiest way to get an education is through the
schools, but there are very-well-educated people who
have had precious little schooling and there are many
people with doctor's degrees that have little...
F--...Have little knowledge.
How important were the occupational-vocational training
objectives in this state?
H--They were pretty important. Now, you're talking about
the whole educational system.
F--You were an experimenter, you went for packaging
(which was a highly criticized enterprise), you went
for mobile homes...
H--Hotel management and various other things. Of course
Bob Hutchins tried to make a monkey out of us on some
of those courses.
But he failed in this, he failed to
understand that this does not downgrade the basic
university program. You're doing something that fits
people to something with which they can earn a living.
F--That was curriculum elitism again. I went to a Jesuit
school, Boston College, and they wouldn’t give a man a
bachelor's degree in the arts unless he took Greek,
Latin--a lot of language. Their attitude was that
there were things of the mind that were useful and
there were other things that were beneath recognition.
Whereas my experience has been that all things have a
discipline of their own and a value of their own. The

A 759
Hannah
hotel management just struck their sense of--I don't
know how to put it but it brought out everything that
was bad in them about elitism.
H--I never worried about that.
F--Why?
H--Well, because I don't think that's important. I think
that that's the role of education, the role of this
university.
If we could do something to make better men
and women out of boys and girls, that fitted them for a
job, and gave them a little inspiration that might cause
them to want to continue to grow, that's fine. If they
never earned a degree, that was all right too--if they
had benefitted from their MSU experience we should be
satisfied.
F--I had another part of the question, too. It struck me
that the willingness to invest in engineering programs,
other direct job-related programs, the building of Ferris,
the building of community colleges, the encouragement of
vocational education in the K-12 sector, the enhancing of
those programs in the colleges of education, and also the
support of research at Michigan and Michigan State. Both
the Willow Run and the Phoenix Projects” at the University
of Michigan were attempts to invest in two factors: one,
to create an intellectual structure to bring in different
kinds of industry rather than just automotive; and two, to
create a more skilled work-force that aspired to better
than being "fender-benders."
H--Well, beyond that, Jerry, one of the great misfortunes
was that it became the universal desire to get everybody
through this machine and get a bachelor's degree--graduate
from college. When you're putting vocational emphasis in
the junior colleges, or in these other institutions, you
help deemphasize the importance of a degree. It has
nothing whatever to do with people either making money
or living lives that are interesting and satisfying to
them.
F--That comes back again to elitism. We said that the world
of sweat, and blue-collar, and labor didn't have as much
/C

The Wi11ow Run laboratories were used for many research
proj ects in engineering. The Phoenix Proj ect was a program
of research on the beneficent uses of atomic power.

A 760
Hannah
value. Then we begin to worry that we will come to be
a nation like Egypt where we turn out all these college
graduates who are lawyers and have no place to work in
a contribution to society.
H--That's happened many places.
I£ we had followed the
route that this country was following, in a few years
that's where we would have ended up.
It's very encouraging to me to see that many sensible
people are now beginning to recognize that it's not
essential that every boy and every girl graduate from
Michigan State, the University of Michigan, or, as you
say, Boston-Harvard.
There are many other experiences
that can fit them to live interesting and satisfying
lives.
F--But that's coming back to--you don't use the term
"lifelong education"--the extended university.
It's
important that every man have a sense of his own value.
H- -That's right.
F--I think of my dad who was self-taught--he's a printer.
He's a very wise man, I admire him a great deal, but
he has that sense that anybody who has a college degree
is better than he. He couldn't attain it because of
the economics of the world.
I regard my dad as a very
wise man, and I don't want to see people waste their
potential. You were talking about that earlier.
H--I think it was about 2 5 years ago that we began talking
about continuing education.
I remember very well when
I first presented the Kellogg Foundation with the
request that they provide a facility and some funding
that would make it possible for me to get on without
taking the money out of the university appropriations
because Elmer Porter, former State Senator from Lenawee
County and long-time Chairman of the Senate
Appropriations Committee, and people of his stripe
wouldn't tolerate that.
I was writing proposals and going down to see--in?the
beginning--old Mr. W. K. Kellogg and Emory Morris .
7

Emory W. Morris; President and General Director of the
W. K. Kellogg Foundation.

Hannah
This was a far-out idea, but they really had the notion
then that as long as we were in the extension business
in the rural areas, there wasn't any reason why we
shouldn't offer the same kind of service to people in
cities or wherever they were.
F--Did you have the sense, Dr. Hannah, that culture and the
arts had importance in the dialogue over the growth of
higher education?
H--1 think they have an important role, certainly.
In the
educational business you need to have substantial
emphasis on the arts. There should be some awareness of
the contribution they can make to interesting lives.
F--1 guess I don't have the sense that state support in the
encouragement of culture and the arts was part of the
agenda.
H--Now, you ask the question again, because I was going to
get around another way. The training of artists,
musicians, and so on, as such? Or are we talking about
putting in the program an appreciation of the arts for
what they can give to the meaning of life?
F--I guess I'm taking it in a third way. In Massachusetts,
where I come from, there is a large body of private
support for cultural institutions. They don't have to
exist through the higher education mechanism.
In Michigan, it struck me that theater, music, art, and
dance, didn't have wide support. When you went to the
Legislature to seek support there was not what one could
perceive as a great deal of enthusiasm.
H--It was practically impossible. Michigan perhaps got some
public support; we got none. What we did in art, origi­
nally in music, was funded from outside. After Lewis
Richards established the School of Music we included it
as part of the College of Liberal Arts.
F--It strikes me that the culture that exists at Western,
Michigan, and at State, exists on some precarious...
H--Jim Miller did pretty well. That fine arts building he
built in Kalamazoo is superb. He got to Gar Lane and
your people to approve it--of course I 've always been a
great supporter of Jim Miller, I think h e 's a great chap.
It was great for Western Michigan and it was good for
the whole area.

Hannah

A 762

F--It was a feat of fantastic legerdemain because it
actually turned out to be paid for by state funds when
you went through the whole self-liquidating game--it's
too complex to explain--and I wish we had it.
H--No way to do it here.
F- -But maybe he hit the thing at the right time.
know.

I don't

H- -It's a feature that this institution could use.
F--It also piggy-backed in small theaters and demonstra­
tion rooms.
Even Michigan doesn't have anything as good.
But I think about that because why didn't they do that?
An academic man wants to say, "Oh yes, they supported
civilization and the arts."
I don't think that was the
way.
H--You had art and you had music, but you justified it when
you were training music teachers for the public schools,
you were training art teachers for the public schools.
Whatever you did in dramatics or music or art was justi­
fied because you were training teachers for the public
schools.
F--And not a conservatory or...
H--That's right.
F--What about the role of labor in regard to higher education?
H--Labor, like agriculture, always supported it. The laboring
man always \vanted an educational opportunity for his
youngster, just as the farmer did. The group that you
could always count on--or that I could always count on in
the many years that I was dealing with the Legislature -was labor.
F--How did you make the accommodation between labor and this
university? Governor Williams said that he urged very
strongly that Dr. Hatcher make an accommodation with labor
because that's the way the world was going to be. He said
he could never understand why they didn't. And then they
look around and one day you had accomplished it.
H--Well, I never thought of it as a particularly noble thing.
They played a very important role in our society and our

A 763
Hannah
society wouldn't be where it is if it hadn't been for
organized labor.
Sometimes I have been irritated by some of their atti­
tudes, but we have always recognized the important role
they played in society.
It was important that they have
a role on university campuses, that they had a place
where they would bring their people for educational
experiences. We welcomed them.
F--I know you did.
H --11 wasn't done for public support but because we thought
that was part of the public service.
F--Woodcock said something to me that I found very interest­
ing. He said it was foolish to win more dollars for wages
without having a legitimate place for it to be spent so
that the workers can enhance themselves.
H--That's a good statement.
F--That kind of broad view had not necessarily been the view
of specific interests in other states.
It struck me that
perhaps Gus Scholle and Reuther were extraordinary men.
H--The Reuthers were, and Gus was too. You know, Gus was a
pretty broad-gauge guy. Many people never understood him.
F--There was no advantage to being for it except that they
perceived it as being right.
H--Right, and good for their people.
interesting for their people.

It made life

F--What about the role of industry in regard to higher
education?
H--You were never able to harness them because they were
always inclined to equate it with tax cost. One of the
problems in the early days was--Soapy would remember-the difficulty financing with the state and various
industrial groups questioning the costs of education at
the university.
I remember going round the state with him in a series of
meetings, talking to these people, and finally getting
under them that, after all, "How are you going to get
your people to run your corporations?” General Motors

A 764

Hannah
and Ford could see that but the middle level were
inclined to resist.
It was always a continuing struggle.
We didn't stop it. They didn't just automatically say...
F--I guess my perception was that labor supported higher
education across the whole program's scope and industry
supported it in specific areas for their own interest:
regional colleges and specific programs like highway
traffic safety...
H- -. ..Engineering.
F--...engineering, but not across the spectrum that an
industrial base can't succeed without.
H--Our attitude toward agriculture may be biased because
of the role that this institution always played in
agriculture. Agriculture always gave us complete
support, and as far as I can figure, it was across
the board.
F--In other areas, D r . Hannah, you could point to people -in industry and in labor--and say, "These were the
spokesmen." I looked in agriculture and I couldn't
think who were the men. Agriculture is really a vital
underpinning of our prosperity in this state, even
though people think this is an automotive state.
Somebody said, "Well, there was really no need to have
a spokesman because John Hannah spoke so well for that
in the institution--Michigan State --through the ag
extension service and the like."
H--That might be part true, but there were some early
leaders. Clark Brody, who was the Secretary-Treasurer
and General Manager of the State Farm Bureau, and on
our Board of Trustees for a great many years, was greatly
respected in this state as a spokesman for agriculture.
Win Armstrong, the Master of the State Grange for a
long, long time, was on our Board of Trustees and
highly regarded.
Originally I think he was a rural
mail carrier, or something like that. Of course, the
Grange was always part social. We never had a strong
Farmers Union in this state, but had there been one...
Agriculture, through the 4-H Club programs, the
Extension Service, and the research backup for agri­
culture , has been pretty well tied to the land grant
colleges.

A 765
Hannah
F--Did they support other areas, the regional college?
H--I think they did.
F--Community colleges and the like?
H--There was support for all of education--the public
schools, the rural-area public schools.
F--I have wondered, though I haven’t been able to find it,
if as the farm changed and the acreage was no longer
able to support the larger family, they were interested
in education as a way to find occupations for their
children.
H--Oh sure.
F--They couldn’t farm the 40 acres and keep five boys alive
on it.
H--They didn’t even keep one on the farm in most cases.
F--Therefore they had to support local institutions and the
like, but people don’t seem to have that sense of it.
H--It1s a different kettle of fish nowadays. There’s no
farm audience anymore. More people live in rural areas
and work in Detroit or Grand Rapids or Lansing.
F--As a matter of fact, it's interesting to observe that
there is not one man in the Legislature today who claims
his occupation as farming--out of 148.
H--I think it would be a good thing if at least one member
of the Board of Trustees understood agriculture, because
there is a continuing role of supporting agriculture
that is just part of a land grant university. There is
only one now, and that’s Frank Merriman.
If he is
defeated this time round, there will be no dirt farmer
on the MSU Board of Trustees. There ought to always be
somebody on the Board of this university that understands
agriculture from the point of view of the farmer.
F--What about the role of commerce?
H--What’s your definition of commerce?
F--Professor Hooker and I talked about that. We usually
talk about industry, but I thought about big industry

Hannah
and then I thought about the fact that in the
Constitutional Convention, and then Romney's Blue
Ribbon Committee, there were people like Heavenrich
and the like, who were retailers.
And I think about the role of the banks--Seidman of
Grand Rapids and the Old Kent Bank--in building some
of these schools, if commerce had a different position
than industry.
I'm not sure about that.
It's an
experimental question.
H--I think you would have to define what you mean by
commerce.
There are people out of that area that have
been very active, and interested, and helpful.
F--You don’t see that there was a difference in the way
they acted? In the Legislature one can see the retail
store merchants and the like having a different interest
and...
H--...different lobbyists.
F--...different lobbyists.
H--I'm not surprised at that.
across the board.

Education is pervasive, it's

F--What about the role of the federal government in the
determination of public policy?
In the area of welfare, for every dollar you got, you
had some kind of requirement for that dollar.
It didn't
strike me that the federal government's requirements in
education were that restrictive.
I wondered what you
thought about that.
H--Until recently, the federal government didn’t play much
of a role. The funding that came to the land grant
institutions came in block grants and there was never
more than cursory inquiry as to how that money was spent,
excepting that the agricultural extension or the agri­
cultural research allocations had to be used for those
designated purposes.
F--The land grant interest was peanuts in terms of running
this place.
H--Yes.
F--It was $300,000 or some such...

A 767

Hannah
H--It used to be about $180,000.
F--Well, whatever it was, you couldn't keep the place going
a day on it.
H--And they never dabbled. Then when the federal government
got into sizeable grants, veterans’ education and so on,
they had all sorts of restrictions.
By and large, in
those early days when you were getting used to the federal
government, you learned early that you might as well do it
their way because you’re going to have to in the end if
you’re going to get your money.
I get the feeling, though
this is not based on my personal experience since big HEW
grants to this university have come only in recent years,
that HEW, if you let them, are going to determine every
aspect of university internal operation.
F--Up until 197 0 is one thing. For instance, in our medical
program we get $20,000 per pupil from the state, which is
a sizeable amount of money compared to the university
average of about $1,800.
The federal government is giving
us $2,000.
For the $2,000 they expect to hold us hostage
for the entire $22,000. That’s the kind of thing that
wasn't true before, I think. Maybe it will become to be
more so.
H--1 'm afraid, unless there 's an effort expended...
F--What about the role of regional and local pressures to
expand higher education in one location rather than
another?
H--Here you're talking about statewide institutions.
You're
not talking about junior colleges because generally, from
the very beginning, there was a feeling--and of course I
helped to lead the procession--that there ought to be a
publicly supported junior college within driving distance
of every youngster in the state. And that’s partly
because of my background.
I never would have gone beyond
high school were it not for Grand Rapids Junior College.
If you think now that geographic support plays a role-of course this institution was always statewide. We were
always much more statewide than the University of Michigan.
Because of agriculture we had students from every county
and every community. This, plus the common touch that
goes with agricultural and extension services, helped
greatly with the Legislature. U of M had the doctors

A 768
Hannah
and the lawyers, which were regular backers, and in the
early days that was a great advantage for the University
of Michigan.
Wayne, I said a little while ago, has never quite grown
up to its potential. If they had ever really used
intelligently the political oomph that they have, they
could have made Wayne a much better institution than it
has been. They have had a series of naive administrators
down there that never understood what it's all about.
F--The potential is immense because they *re tied into the
greatest conduit, because the city and the suburban area
around Wayne has the majority of the people of Michigan
there.
H--They control the Legislature --those three or four counties.
F--Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb.
It would be hard to get
around that. But they haven't used it...
H--They haven't known how to use it.
F--No.

That doesn’t mean it couldn’t be done.

H--It could.
I ’ve always thought, you know, that if they
ever got themselves harnessed, they could give Michigan
and Michigan State fits. But they never did and they’ve
waited too long.
F--Because the transportation networks have changed.
H--They've changed.
important.

But geographic influence is still

F--I guess what I ’m going to ask you is this. I was struck
by the logrolling that went on between Grand Valley and
Saginaw Valley; Michigan went to Flint, we went to Oakland,
they went to Dearborn; there was talk about Michigan State
going to Saginaw; they thought about going to Saginaw.
And all of a sudden this state turned its back on a
branch-campus model, which in Wisconsin they built and
in a sense they built in California.
I wondered why
that didn't come about.
H- -1 don't know as I can answer you very well. Of course,
Michigan pioneered it when they went both to Flint and
Dearborn, and then they began talking about the possi­
bility of a branch in Grand Rapids and Benton Harbor.

A 769
Hannah
That’s when the decision was made here. You see, we had
to compete with Michigan, we had to keep them boxed
somewhat--or we thought we did at that time.
This was a part of the initiative that resulted in the
establishment of Oakland, because we figured we could
cut off Michigan moving into Oakland County.
They could
be in Dearborn, they could be in Flint, but we would
have the high-toned bedroom of Detroit districts that
they were really striving for.
F- -So in a sense you were looking for a standoff.
H--That's right. Of course Mrs. Wilson had been on our
Board, she’d been interested in agriculture, and I ’d
known her and her husband very well for many years.
They knew they were going to die someday and they were
talking about the possibility of using their Meadowbrook
Estate for some kind of an institution.
I went down and
talked to them and found this is what they wanted to d o .
They wanted it --whatever it was--to be affiliated with
Michigan State. I remember this very well. The Fords
had provided the Dearborn site and some money for
buildings and equipment.
I said w e ’re interested but w e ’ve got to have enough
money to build the first building and that meant not
less than $2 million.
F--Mrs. Wilson, I think, was always happy with Oakland
University.
H--Always. She had a great interest. She used to come and
visit the boys and girls in their dormitories and
entertain them in Meadowbrook and in the home she lived
in.
It meant much to her life in her later years.
There had always been some Oakland feeling down there
that it ought to be an independent institution.
I
don't think, if I ’d stayed here, that I would have
moved as fast as our Board did in releasing it.
I have
no objection to it being independent, but...
F--I don’t know what happened, but somewhere, right about
the time it spun free, it ran into trouble and they're
not out of it yet.
H--There were various kinds of trouble.
F--But the point was that perhaps...

A 770
Hannah
II--It’s some personnel problems.
right kind of people.

They didn't have the

F--But that institution is far ahead of Flint or Dearborn.
H--Well, we gave them the full prestige of MSU. Michigan
never gave the University of Michigan prestige to either
Dearborn or Flint.
Every department in Ann Arbor controls
the department out there.
From the beginning we made it
clear that it was an independent institution.
It was not
required to copy anything at MSU.
It was free to do its
own pioneering.
F--Was that a deliberate policy, a Board decision?
H--A Board decision, and when we were talking about the
person to go over there to head it up, we were looking
for a vigorous, independent leader and that's why Woody
Varner was chosen. We brought in people from all over
the country seeking their advice and counsel.
It was
a laborious process, but it would be independent, it
did not have to be in the MSU pattern.
F--And in fact that became the model in a way. Because
President Fleming, except for political factors, doubts
that Dearborn and Flint will be part of the University
a decade from now.
H--I don't think they should.
F--I don’t think they do either.
H--The other side of it was that they began to see here that
Oakland was going to cost much money. When it was a part
of the Michigan State budget, there was a feeling in some
timid souls that it should be separated because it was
going to be damaging here. And that was one of the
reasons they let it go.
F--But then this institution didn't have to pick.
It had
its own constituency at Oakland so therefore you weren't
competitive.
H--Oakland built its own constituency from the beginning.
It grew locally, out of citizen support.
F--Do you have any observations, Dr. Hannah, why an insti­
tutional system for the coordination of higher education

A 771
Hannah
did not come about after *64?
that lacked stature.

We talked about a Board

H--I don't know why.
I've always thought it would, I
assume it still will. I think higher education costs
so much, the probabilities are that eventually the
politicians will insist on some kind of coordination.
You know better than I.
F--Well I guess what I think about is --this is beyond this
study, but--what I regard as the astonishing, flagrant
competition for a law school by the three institutions...
H--Oh, that's stupid.
F'-It's stupid and in a way diminishes the public regard
for education.
H--You know that1s the fault of this institution. Three
or four years ago when the Legislature didn't turn their
request down, all they had to do was to get on with it.
The Legislature did not say "no", MSU could have started
the law school and put the controversy with others to
sleep. They never did. Now they've got themselves
boxed. Having gone to the Legislature twice, they're
going to have to get legislative approval before they
proceed with it.
F--1 know that one doesn't want to get involved in critical
remarks about the management, but the lesson of how the
medical school was established... I came in '68 quite
late-on to the Senate and did the Legislature's first
staff study of medicine.
It was a report that was not entirely satisfactory to
them. They wanted me to say that one should continue
the two-year program and not go to four. I said to
the committee, based on the curriculum and academic
style--just the facts --one had to either abolish the
program or go to four years, two years wasn't viable.
They didn't like that.
But for seven years you ran it out of your own money,
you didn't get a dime of money. While today we have
not one medical school, but two. You wouldn't be
cognizant of the facts, but Michigan gets some
$11 million in state money for their medical school,
Wayne gets about $9.5 million, and w e 're up around
$8 million--and that's $8 million in five years.

A 772

Hannah
H--You people have done well. You know the institution
would never have gotten off the ground if we had waited
for absolute assurance.
If you wait to be approved by
everybody--you never move. When the Legislature did
not disapprove it, that battle was won. All MSU had to
do was go on with the law school, but they didn't.
F--Optometry became another example where I believe the
institutions are setting themselves up to lose some of
the autonomy that they have had in this ten years,
because I think that autonomy comes with responsibility
too.
H--What's happened to optometry?
F--Well, Wayne asked for it first and then backed away.
Michigan State said they didn't want it but if they got
a law school, they'd take it.
H--You know they started that movement years ago. I
wouldn't become enthusiastic about optometry because I
figured then w e 'd never get the medical school. I wasn't
going to trade and take optometry in exchange for the
eventual medical center.
F--Now it's at Ferris, but they're starving it out without
money.
Nobody has a law school. Western started to build that
political structure in the west that's unfulfilled yet.
I have two last questions.

They're really one.

Who in your opinion were the significant opinion leaders
in higher education in Michigan; and who were the
influential individuals whose insights were of greatest
significance to you, Dr. Hannah?
H--Now, w e 're talking about '58 to '70 and w e 're talking
across the board.
F--Right.
H--Was Ruthven gone by '58?
F--I think Hatcher was in, but Ruthven had done the Ferris
study a little earlier.
I guess Ruthven wasn't there.

A 773
Hannah
H--I think he had retired.
Steve Nisbet, certainly, on
the State Board of Education, and at Alma College, and
in the public school business, an ex-professional
educator.
Lee Thurston, had he gone by '58?
F--I think Bartlett was there.
H--Lee Thurston, who had been State Superintendent of Public
Instruction, made some significant contributions.
A couple of people on this campus that came rather late
played a very substantial role. One was Floyd Reeves-I guess he's still alive. The other gentleman, who was
ex-president at Montana and Dean at Northwestern, is
still here. His name is D r . Ernest Melby. They had
very broad horizons.
I mentioned Floyd Reeves. Floyd Reeves was a very distinguished leader of the advanced thought and the right
connotations in education. He was raised in a sod hut
out in South Dakota and became Head of the Education
Department of the University of Chicago. I brought him
up here on a consultancy basis and then convinced him
that he ought to give up the professorship and the head
of the department at Chicago and come up here, at no
more money than he was getting, and take his chances on
retirement. He brought the questions which this institu­
tion had to face up t o . As much as any person, he made
it possible for Michigan State internally to move. Back
in the New Deal days he had staffed the TVA in its
beginning. He had a great capacity to ask the right
questions and persist with them until he got the right
answers.
F--1 took a course from him.

It was an exciting thing.

H--Dr. Melby is still on the staff. He was well into his
eighties, but he never grew old. He was one of these
people who could make people think, in the public
schools and within the higher institutions.
F -- Do you think about other institutional presidents,
other sections of society, political and social leaders?
H--In various ways. Of course, to really answer this
question intelligently, you’d have to sit down and
think the thing through.

A 774
Hannah
No governor had a great interest in education.
They were
supportive, none of them were destructive, but this
wasn't of high priority.
The teachers'college presi­
dents- -Charlie Anspach and Gene Elliott , and Sangren.
Jim Miller was different. He did a great job at
Western Michigan.
He was very useful at this institu­
tion. He's a Grade A guy.
F--Well, the purpose of the question is this.
It's always
bad form to ask, "For the record's sake can you
remember?" Then you'll slip on somebody. What w e ’re
really trying to do is not to get a long, long list.
Every m a n 's vista is partial. No one interviewer ever
sees the whole picture.
H--Sure.
F--You were standing at one place, another man at another,
and he sees some part of the landscape better.
H--And I 've been away from it for almost six years.
makes a lot of difference.

That

F--And we were saying, "Are these people alive that we
should talk to that we don't want to miss?" Well, many
of these people we will talk to but some have passed o n .
When we talked to Governor Williams he couldn't remember
Dr. Haber's name, and I said one second after...
H- -Bill?
F--Yes, and I said one second after I walk out the door,
you'll remember.
I understand that you brought him to
this state.
H--Bill Haber was on this campus and he was ahead of his
time. That was before I was involved in the administra­
tion of the institution. He headed up the state WPA and
that was a little much for President Shaw to take so he
went to the University of Michigan and had a great career
there, a distinguished Dean and a great guy. I have often
told him that he made a mistake when he moved from East
Lansing to Ann Arbor.
O

Eugene B. Elliott; President, Eastern Michigan
University, 1948-1964.

A 775
Hannah
F--An intellectual and contributing man,
Thank you very much.

TRANSCRIPT--INTERVIEW WITH
HARLAN H. HATCHER1

F--Dr. Hatcher, you have a good vista over much of the
time of our concern. As you know, the study is
interested in what happened in Michigan from 195B to
1970. You were one of the key participants as the
President of the University of Michigan.
What in your opinion were the reasons that led to the
expansion of higher education in Michigan from 1958 on?
Enrollments went up, fiscal support, which had been some
$80 million, by 1970 was some $250 million.
H--Well, let me reach back for just a second, for two or
three observations.
In *51 when I arrived we were just seeing the last wave
of the GI bulge graduating.
In this particular univer­
sity the enrollment, which had reached somewhere in the
neighborhood of 24 to 25,000, slipped back down to
approximately 17,500 to 18,000.
So that the first breathing space that universities had
had in many years began to be visible.
They had
suffered through the long depression when nothing what­
ever could be done, they just had to hold it together-no building.
Then we went right into the war with all
of its strictures and before anything further could be
done, we added the GI's.
So we had one, two, three long crises periods which had
practically arrested the growth or expansion of the
physical plant.
F--It had about 20 years, in fact, of time when an institu­
tion never could follow any kind of plan.
^Harlan H. Hatcher; President, University of Michigan,
1951-67; Vice-President, Ohio State University, 1948-51,
and Dean, College of Arts and Science, 1944-48.
Interview
conducted January 17, 197 5.
A 776

A 777
Hatcher
H--None whatever.

It was subject to whatever happened.

It was then obvious through population studies that we
had only a limited amount of time to get ready for
another bulge and the question before me--before all of
us here at Michigan--was: "Can we get together the right
plans and the right support so that when we move into
the next big enrollment pressures, we will be in a
reasonable shape to guide it and direct it instead of
being buffeted by it."
So the expansion which you pick up in '58...
F--...is the second pulse.
H--That's right.

It is the wave that goes on.

In framing the question you mentioned the budget. It’s
worth noting, particularly in your study--and I take
this institution again, but it applies to the others in
proportion--that the Legislature in the spring of ’51,
shortly after my election as president, passed the
largest budget in the history of the State of Michigan,
the largest appropriation for the University of
Michigan.
It was a little under $15 million.
F- -11’s worthwhile to observe that right today in 1974
it's probably close to $117 million.
H--Yes, somewhere in that general vicinity.
But the interesting thing about that was that it was
the biggest budget ever. But then, as we moved into
the early fifties, we ran into the very severe
financial pinch.
I discovered when I first went up to Lansing to talk
with Governor Williams and the legislative leadership
that I felt no animosity, not even an adversary spirit,
but one of reasonable effort to try to understand what
the problem was and then meet it. But they were faced
with the very severe problems of income and tax, so
"we can’t give you anything but love" was their attitude.
Now there’s a very interesting point here, a turning
point, I think. When the Legislature was unable the
following year to come anywhere near meeting the needs that
the state felt, the federal government revised its income
tax, and that very year when the Legislature had said

A 778
Hatcher
that we had no money in Michigan to support higher
education, the federal government took an additional
$2 billion out of the state in federal income tax.
It was at that point that I had a personal conference
with Governor Williams, and Governor Williams decided
to set up in various parts of the state a series of
what I would call seminars.
The leadership in the
various communities--Detroit, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo-came together. We had a pie chart of the budget, a
picture of what the needs were including higher educa­
tion, and I spoke to several of these groups on the
higher education aspect of the budget.
Following that came the new tax program that added the
business tax and other things that gave us the first
leeway to break out of the constriction and started the
upward wave of appropriations that preceded your 1958
date, to which I will be glad to come.
But I think
it's important to get the feel of these early fifties
from the point of view of leadership in order to under­
stand the expansion.
F--I'm comfortable with that because there are several other
points that your talk has brought to my mind.
Probably,
and truly not until 1962, had the revenue machine really
been cranked to the point where there were ample
resources.
So for most of the period under study the
recognition of legitimate need and fundable need will
probably always be significantly at variance.
H--Yes.

I think that's correct.

F--It's probably only in the latter part of your tenure
as president that there really was significant money,
because you had the recessional period nationally in
'59 that cut in.
I was also curious about your remarks about the pie
chart and the seminars, because we have talked to
Governor Williams and it's an interesting mechanism
that he developed that has fascinated me.
He never had the control of the Legislature in any
meaningful way. He was the first Democratic governor
who really built the first Democratic machine in the
state in its history. And he built the citizen com­
missions as a mechanism, not for fact-finding, but

A 779
Hatcher
really as a way to reach beyond the Legislature to the
opinion elites of the public to create some sense of
value and support.
Does this statement agree with your feeling?
H- -Yes , that's exactly right.
One of the first things we did here in the state as a
group of college presidents was to have a study made
on population projection.
That was the first one that
any of the educational groups had done anywhere in the
nation and it was printed and widely circulated.
It
simply indicated what the Legislature and the state
would have to expect as the new birth rate came through
the system.
Our basic point was that they were already responding on
the elementary level--I spent a lot of time dedicating
[elementary] schools and then the high schools in those
days.
So we wanted a little lead-time here to get ready
mi the college side.
That was coupled, of course, with the population increase
and, as you are perfectly familiar with, the increasing
percentage of that population wishing to go on to posthigh school education.
This became a very significant
increase in addition to the population.
F--Did institutions, Dr. Hatcher, have something to do with
that? It's not all that difficult when you had Thaden^
and Goldberg^ on the campuses to do the population
studies to know virtually with a certainty 12 years
before a freshman appears on the college level, who's
enrolled in the kindergartens of the state.
So you're
dealing with a finite rather than a propaganda number.
The thing that always struck me was that in states like
Ohio, and many other states with the land grant tradi­
tion, they said that every student could go to college
who was a graduate of a high school. They didn't have
O

^John F. Thaden; Professor Sociology, Michigan State
University.
•-’David E. Goldberg; Professor of Sociology, University
of Michigan.

A 780
Hatcher
the admission procedure where they wouldn't accept a
student unless they had a place for him for four years.
And in places like Ohio the size of the freshman class
is three, four, five times as large as the sophomore
class, creating, I think, a large amount of antiintellectualism in America because of the sense of the
lack of worth in the individual--the failure mechanism.
It's simply done because in Ohio and other midwestern
states public policy decisions were not to create the
number of places but to keep the percentage of those
who had the choice to go to college at a constant.
Now, not only did the decision get made here that there
was that second bulge, as you put it, coming, but the
percentage of Michigan citizenry who went to college
was increasing.
How did the acceptance of that ideological, important
public policy point come about?
H--Well, I think that leads into some of the questions you
ask later on. The results of the GI experience led a
whole new group of people who had previously not been
oriented toward college to see the value of it and
anticipate that as the way they wanted for their
children, so that the post-GI generation became the
added increment there.
But there are two other very significant points. One of
them is indicated by the date that you have taken.
I
don't think enough stress has been laid on the impact of
the Sputnik of '57. That was a bombshell in American
education, nothing short of it.
I saw it from all sides because I happened to have a son
and a daughter, both of whom were finishing eighth grade
going into high school at that point. Although no
pressure was put on them from our household, it was
perfectly obvious what was happening over in the school
as the drive for intensive application, particularly in
the fields of the sciences, came on.
The result was that we turned out, after '57, a group of
high school graduates who were far beyond anything we
had imagined, motivated to carry forward in higher
education.

A 781
Hatcher
F--I'm comfortable with that. W e ’ve talked to a lot of
people and you have just recapitulated some of that
sense.
The general impression I have received was that there
were multifaceted causes.
One, of course, was the
increase in population that was observable.
Secondly
was the increase in social aspiration by people who
believed that they could participate in higher education,
and that it wasn't exclusionary but was inclusionary.
There was also a rising level of expectation of the
ability based on increased wages to be able to purchase
this product.
And the last was the shock to the system
of the Sputnik challenge to the American sense of its
competitive position.
Now, some say that that was a national thing. I think
there are national aspects to it, but I think there are
some peculiar Michigan aspects too. My sense of it -and maybe it’s parochial, I may be historically biased-is that Michigan put a really significant chunk of its
public dollars behind higher education, went for a large
expansionary program of new institutions, enhanced old
institutions, and built a public higher education system
that, to my mind, is probably the first in the nation.
And you say to m e , "Well, what about California?" I
think the California system wasn’t built with enough
suppleness to stand the political strain. Although we
had our political crises in the state in ’68, and they
also had occurred earlier in the communist-McCarthy,
anti-intellectual period, the mechanism didn’t break
and was able to dissipate the heat and the strain.
So I think we built the best system.
else will think that’s parochial.

I know somebody

H--Well, let me footnote that for you for just a moment
with two points. First, the California educational
system for higher education was taken over lock, stock,
and barrel, and word for word, from the Michigan
Constitution.
F--I did not know that.
H--That's right, absolutely lock, stock, and barrel, even
to the separation of Berkeley from Davis, and the
provision for branch campuses.
In our state here, we very early gave up two parts which
are still in the California system.
California kept the

A 782
Hatcher
single unit with branch campuses and it kept political
officers on its board.
Michigan removed the governor
and other state officials from its boards of control
and made them autonomous--gave the institutions their
autonomy.
F--That's an extremely vital thing.
H--Surely.
In fact, I have somewhere in my files still
one of the copies of their alumni magazine in which
they were celebrating their centennial, and the central
fold is a tribute to Michigan for its basic contribution
to the University of California's system.
This state was able to carry on in a much more flexible
fashion but with a kind of general plan.
It was a far
better plan than people realized, much more planned than
they thought when the strain first came upon it.
As it was originally conceived before population pressures
came on, you had our world-renowned teachers’ colleges,
particularly Ypsilanti and Western, and you had the worldfamous Michigan State at Lansing, basically the Purdue
and the Cornell of the system, and you had the University
of Michigan which was basically professional. Around
that kind of division of labors, Michigan was able to
take care of most of the needs that had come prior to
the great population pressure.
The other thing that is often overlooked about the
Michigan system is that, unlike Ohio, it is the first
state system that you meet going west. As you move on
west they become more and more exclusively "state" in
higher education.
Michigan still has a few, and some
very distinguished, small colleges, but nothing like
the Ohio tradition.
You see, Ohio State came in during the 1870's under the
land grant when Ohio already had the largest number of
private colleges of any state in the Union.
Pennsylvania
and Massachusetts were both high but Ohio still ranks
first.
So that in Ohio, from the very outset, the
State University was always looked upon as an interloper,
or it was a "Godless institution corrupting youth when
they ought to be getting a Christian education."
Michigan escaped that and from the very outset the whole
mind-set was toward the fostering of very distinguished

A 783

Hatcher
higher education institutions. We were able to utilize
that very effectively as we went through these crises
periods of the fifties and sixties.
I just want to emphasize that it wasn’t a formless affair;
it was a carefully devised affair and it worked extremely
well, but when we got the terrific pressures on it, it had
to be modified. What you're dealing with, really from '58
o n , is how Michigan modified what had already been recog­
nized as one of the best systems so far devised in the
nation for taking care of the problems of higher education.
F--I 'm not personally an advocate of a bureaucratic struc­
tured system, but w e 've come to an age where people don11
understand some of the subtleties of voluntary systems,
the mechanisms of the balance of power and the accommoda­
tions that have existed. So w e 're getting the technocrats
in who want everything drawn on a piece of paper with lines
and charts. I'm suspicious of that because clarity and
definitiveness... I believe in a little romance, a little
mystery--if the thing works.
I do believe it has worked here. I believe it worked
because there was suppleness in the system and there still
was accommodation. I don't believe the advantages of
swapping it for a centralized bureaucracy are all that
intelligent a set of decisions. I rej ect as the only
choice, for instance, the differences between coordina­
tion and control which are very subtle differences.
I think that we do have a system but I don't think people
can understand it because they say, "Where's the document,
where’s the hierarchical, bureaucratic chart?"
You struck something that is fascinating to m e . You talked
about Ohio and Michigan being the first station on the way
west with public higher education.
I come to this state as an immigrant and I come from
Massachusetts with a large tradition of private schools, and
an immensely poor and impoverished tradition of public
institutions. When I went to college in 1961 at Boston
University in the African Studies program, tuition was
$1700 a year. Here in 1974 at Michigan State the tuition
is $600 for a program of far greater value and complexity.
I think about the fact that in Michigan, the University of
Michigan's origins were before the state was created, when
it was a Territory. It was also probably the very first
great public institution to stand on a par with those
privately funded like Stanford and Duke and Harvard; the
very first institution that had great professional schools.
I think about Ypsilanti, the first teachers’ college west

A 784
Hatcher
of the Alleghenies.
I think about the fact that we built
a Michigan State, not as a second-class institution, but
as a unique and comparable institution.
I think about the
fact that we went for the first urban institution before
they thought of the concept at Wayne.
I think about the
fact that we built this whole system of community colleges
without a good deal of talk but with a good deal of energy.
And then, D r . Hatcher, I think about the fact that the
Kalamazoo Case occurred in Michigan, which was in the
1870's, I think it was 1875.
It set up the first right
for students to have high school. I think about the fact,
and I'm not sure about its social impact, that the University
of Michigan and not the state government was the accreditor
of high schools through your Bureau of School Services, and
had a direct relationship into education quality of the
secondary school. And I am told that before 1932 the
University of Michigan had the right to levy a tax on
property for its support.
Those are indications of a tradition that's hard to under­
stand. W e 've had an immensely good government, uniquely in
a tradition of noncorruptibility compared to other states - I think about Illinois and the like. I 've had the sense that
Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan were somehow different,
and they had a deeper and abiding love for higher education.
Do you have some sense of why that could have been? The
privates never became a competitive force the way they
were in Ohio. And I believe that one of the strong elements
in the whole history is the immense love that institutions
have received from the public.
H- -1 think that's right.
Michigan, but they had
did have it.

I think they earned it here in
to have good leadership and they

F--Do you have some sense of why it might have occurred?
Do you think that's a misapprehension of reality?
H--I don't think it's any misapprehension of reality.
I don't
know just exactly why it occurred because these are all
very elusive forces and they depend heavily upon personal­
ities . It's the same kind of quest ion you've got when you
think of the first several presidents that we happened to
have for the United States. To have a success ion like
Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and John
Quincy, gave you time to solidify and get a great tradition.

A 785
Hatcher
Well, the same way here. We had Judge Woodward^, we had
Monteith^, the people with great vision back in the
colonial period, and you had some very fine governors.
Then you had extraordinary leadership --people like Tappan
and later Angell? in this particular institution insisted
from the very outset that it be a service institution,
that it would be of as high distinction as possible.
I'm sure that the great, research and professional dis­
tinction which arose here so early was largely the result
of Tappan who brought to it the German concept of dedica­
tion to scholarship, and he brought in a half-dozen great
people.
You get that sort of thing rolling and they begin
to appoint others.
We've also had a succession of leadership governors,
carry them on, even down to Governor Williams.
Mennen
Williams was really a great constructive force here in
this state.
I've praised that man immensely for his
understanding.
He had problems, but I never had any
problem in sitting down with Mennen Williams and talking
over these matters as we did.
F--You assisted him in creating the public climate.
H--Planning the action.
This building where you are right
now is a perfect example of it. This doesn't destroy
your chronology, but let me tell you.
It was a period of national mourning in '57 when Sputnik
went up. You'd have thought we'd been invaded and
carried off to Siberia, or something.
It is hard to
describe it unless you lived through it.
^Augustus B. Woodward; Supreme Court Judge of the
Territorial Government of Michigan, 1805-1824.
^Reverend John Montieth; First President of the University
of Michigan.
^Henry Phillip Tappan; President, University of Michigan,
1852-1863.
7
James Burrill Angell; President, University of Michigan,
1871-1909.

Hatcher
Shortly afterwards, I brought together here about a dozen
of our top scientists in the physical field and sat them
around the regents’ room and I said, "We know almost
nothing about what's going on in Russia but we've cer­
tainly had a demonstration that something has occurred.
Now, since you don’t know, extrapolate for me what they
would have had to know and what developments they would
have had to undergo in order to do what they have now
done." And they proceeded to do that and gave me a
reading on the scientific backgrounds necessary to put
a satellite in orbit which we at that time couldn't do.
We didn't even have the explosive power capacity, we
didn't have the metals to resist the heat of the
atmosphere, and so on.
As a result of that we formed a kind of a scientific
institute. I went up to Lansing on a cold and bitter
day, much worse than this because it was snowing and
raining. Governor Williams had a very bad cold. We
met in his private house, they didn't have a governor's
mansion then, he 1ived not far from the Capitol.
We charted out a program for the Institute of Science
and Technology on the general grounds that here were the
great resources that had been accumulated at the
University of Michigan in these particular scientific
fields that were comparable in their way to the magnif­
icent work that had been done at Michigan State in the
field of agricultural research.
So shouldn't we draw
these resources together in much the same way that our
sister institution had drawn them in for the purpose of
agriculture and allied sciences.
And that's what we did. With Governcr Williams' help we
went to the Legislature; they understood, made the appro­
priation for this building and it really started us in
this period that you're talking about. It's one of the
important elements in your discussion of some of these
questions.
It prepared the University of Michigan to become, for the
period under your survey, one of the central research
institutions in the nation. During the sixties--I don't
know what the situation is now--there was more of the
research of the nation going on on this campus than on
any other single campus in the entire nation, not
excluding Berkeley and Harvard and MIT.
Your basic question was how do you account for it, and in
a nutshell it's that almost elusive and random thing of

A 787
Hatcher
having, somehow or other, brought together the right
people in the right place...
F--At the right time.
H--...at the right time.

And they proceeded, and got support.

F--So hence the social and economic factors were that the
people were there, for reasons that we can't quite pin
down, and there was a societal acceptance of the value
of what higher education was and what it could be.
H--Then there became a strong, a very strong, pride in this
state in its institutions, which was widely shared.
The
citizens were proud of the University of Michigan, of
Michigan State, of Ypsilanti--those were the three big
ones.
F--What were the policy objectives that underlay this
expansion?
H--Well, I think we sort of touched on them but I speak now
again from my own responsibilities here, where one of the
rewards of being President of the University of Michigan
in that period was that I had opportunity to make plans
and get support for them and carry them out, as opposed
to this period where it's so heavily a period of manage ment and you find the whole thing is...
F--You have retrenchment, in a way.
H--...and you could see things get done, so you could envision.
The policies were of all sorts.
First of all was to realize
what kind of service would be required of these institu­
tions , both on the quantitative level of accommodating
students, and on the qualitative level of the programs
which you would offer them once they had come to you.
Our policy then was a statewide one. It was not local at
all. For this institution it was obvious that it ought
to do everything it could instead of, asmanypeople
suggested, just close down and say, "We have all we can
do now so we stop." I said, "No, we buy the North Campus
and we watch it. We grow so long as we can grow without
sacrificing the quality of the service which we are set
up to provide."
So we came over here, bought the North Campus and started
building engineering, architecture, music, and so on--to

Hatcher
get out of central campus so we could expand. Now that's
one policy element: We have got to expand and improve
this dilapidated and obsolescent plant with which every
one of the universities was saddled.
I'm sure that my colleagues up at Michigan State have
spoken of this. They were in an ideal situation because
they had lots of land available and all they needed was
proper support to allow them to expand. They had not the
city-urban problems that we had here.
So our policies then were to provide plant and equipment
and to look toward the orderly increase of our capacity
to serve the students.
F--Well, then, there was a very definite social objective,
you would say, that you were going to serve the number
of expected students.
There was a decision to go forward
and meet the objective of meeting the market, to serve
the people who wanted and needed the service.
H--That's right.
F--Instead of saying, in the name of quality, we would limit
access.
So there was obviously, therefore, the decision
to educate people, as we alluded to earlier, beyond the
previous share of high school graduates who had,post­
graduate experience.
H- -Exactly.
F--And this institution, therefore, began to prepare for it,
as others did.
What were some of the conflicts in the attempt to attain
this--institutional energies, conservative versus liberal
forces?
H--Are you thinking within the institution itself or are you
thinking statewide?
F--I'm thinking statewide.
H--I didn't encounter anything I would call conflict.
By the time we had reached your period we had brought
together what I found to be a very effective group, our
Council of State College Presidents.
We met regularly
indeed, going over these things, had studies made as a

A 789

Hatcher
group, discussed strategies, discussed ways and means of
minimizing even the possibility of conflict.
Particu­
larly before the finance committees, by setting out
those things that were common to all of us like the
rising price of coal, or the expansion of plant--[We said],
"Let's get those outside and all agree that every institu­
tion has to have x percent increase just to keep up with
its services."
F--I understand that there were common issues and you all
frankly faced some of the same dilemmas.
But it takes
a great deal of statesmanship.
One of the problems of the appropriation game is that
institutions frequently don't really know what they need,
as much as what they want compared with others.
H--Now that's a sound observation.
I think one place where
there were differences of opinion--maybe it's conflict,
although I think of conflict in slightly different
context, as being kind of a fighting issue as opposed to
differences of view.
But, for instance, the very nature of the operation here
at this university, with its professional schools and
its scientific apparatus, required a type of personnel
at a salary range that was not common, for example, at
Ypsilanti. It's perfectly understandable to us and I
didn't consider it a conf1ict, that Ypsilanti would say,
"A professor at the University of Michigan is getting
$15,000 to $18,000, and therefore we ought to have
comparable scales."
F--I guess I want to get beyond what I call the invidious
comparison.
My experience with the special pleading
of the appropriation processes was that any man who
can't make an invidious comparison with somebody else
is a fool. Everybody's going to be at the top of
something and by the very nature of being at the top
of one category you have to be somewhat lower in
another category because the money that comes to all
institutions is a very finite number.
Let me talk about what I think some of the conflicts
were.
Some said--and I'm not assessing validity to
these things--that baccalaureate and graduate institu­
tions attempted to prevent the growth of the community
colleges. Some said that institutions attempted to
prevent new institutions from being created, to 1imit
the dilution of the pie. I'm thinking about Gran 1
Valley, Saginaw Valley.

A 790
Hatcher
Some said the decision to create the branch-campus
system, where Michigan went to Dearborn and to Flint,
and other communities were romanced and some romanced
you--I think about the talk that you romanced Grand
Rapids and the fact that Saginaw romanced you--was an
attempt to prevent the Michigan system from functioning
as a voluntary, autonomous system.
They said that the conflict between Michigan and Michigan
State was the attempt by Michigan to prevent Michigan
State from receiving the appellation of a university.
I
believe that conflict occurred about 1959, settled quite
easily later at the Constitutional Convention.
Some have pointed out the status models, between graduate
and professional visions of their contributions versus
more generalized disciplinary experiences, attributed
lower status.
Some have seen this very definitely in
terms of popularism versus elitism, with Michigan being
elitist and Michigan State being popularist.
When I talked to Dr. Fleming, I had some problems with
that.
I think some of these things are true, and I'm
going to be curious about your responses.
But an institution of 40,000 human beings--because when
you talked about an enrollment of 24,000, those were
FTE numbers and there were many more people--a group
that served a significant 25 percent of all of the
people going into higher education in the state, I don't
regard as exclusionary. I don't see that the institution
in fact really acted in an elitist way.
I'm trying to
distinguish between what's football talk, which is easy
for people to romanticize, and ascertain what you think
is reality.
H-~I'd like to take those up one by one because each point
that you've made has had some discussion and assertions.
I don't respond to those at all. From where I sit, from
where I sat and the way I worked, it's a very different
story indeed from what came through in this more popu­
larized, journalistic type of effort to create conflict
where there was none.
Now let's take, for example, the question of community
colleges. The community college movement had my support
from the very beginning.
It had John Hannah's support.,
John and I personally, together, went to the legislative
committee, at one of the critical moments, and explained

A 791
Hatcher
to them why it was absolutely necessary that they support
and foster a strong community college movement in this
state.
When this Ann Arbor community was loathe to support
Washtenaw Community College, I called together about 50
of the leading business people in this city at the
Michigan Union Anderson Room and made them a speech on
the role of the community college.
[I explained] why it
was absolutely necessary to complete the educational
opportunities in this particular area, and asked them to
give Washtenaw County seed money to get the thing going,
and they did.
I honestly still do not know where the concept arose that
the leadership of higher education here was opposed to
community colleges because it is just contrary to the
truth.
The new institutions, when they were proposed, were
actually a very serious and, to me, high-minded and
statesmanlike attempt to analyze it --what was the best
way to meet the needs of those particular areas: Did they
need it so quickly that one of the established institutions
needed to come in and get it going, or did they need to
plan it from scratch, or did they just need advice and
help?
In each instance that was the way it was done. But there
was never any opposition to the founding of those institu­
tions, because they were badly needed by the time they
came along. We finally got round in the two areas where
they were underpopulated for four-year services, which
were basically up in the Saginaw-Bay City-Midland area,
and then Grand Rapids.
F--Are you saying there was enough to go round anyway so...
H--That was my point.
Look, after w e ’ve all gotten through,
we still haven't done the job.
For heavens sake, there
can't be any rivalry in this respect.
Let's get as many
institutions as are needed.
Of course by that time we
had the Russell Report which had indicated quite clearly
from an outside source the demands that would need to be
met and a plan that might make them regional.
Now I can't give any validity to that although I do know
that the headlines were there.

A 792
Hatcher
F--I'm not saying that there is validity.
I want to rest
these dragons and that’s why I raise them with you.
H--I think, compared, as I saw it, with other states, (and
I went to many of them on their invitation to talk with
them about how we were managing things here in the State
of Michigan) we were doing the job with a minimum of
friction and centralized interference.
Many of them are
not able to do it.
Now you spoke about the branch campuses.
There was a
great deal of misunderstanding on that one, brought about
for lots of reasons that we don't have time here to go
into. But the basic points are these.
If you take yourself back to the period of the late fifties
when the whole new generation was beginning to pour into
the colleges, we were turning away perfectly qualified
students because we did not have the space, or in some
instances didn't have living room for them. At one point
we were actually turning away students because there was
no place for them to live.
Combine that pressure for enrollments with the rapidly
rising costs of students living away from home--their
board and room particularly--plus their tuition made it
very difficult for many of them. The question came up
almost as a corollary of the concept of the junior
college: "Why does a student have to go to East Lansing
or to Michigan to continue his education when he might,
at much less expense, carry right on in his own home
community?"
F--So this was the corollary across the whole baccalaureate
system of the John Dale Russell Report concept of having
a college or higher education opportunity within driving
range of a person's home.
H - -Yes. And then you extend it further--do you mean a twoyear college or a four-year college?
F--Well, as the case may be.
H- -Yes, as the case may be. What we said was that if we had
the strength and the capacity in our faculty to set up a
worthy continuation in a community, such as Flint, we
would be willing to do it.
In the case of Flint you had the excellent community
college already in existence doing a very excellent job.

A 793
Hatcher
You had a great philanthropist in the case of C. S. Mott
who agreed to give us the funds necessary to build the
building if we would carry on the second two years-junior and senior.
F--That's right.
It was originally established as a third
and fourth year at Dearborn and at Flint.
H--That's right.
Instead of bringing people into the campus
at Michigan, couldn't we extend the campus there for those
who wished to carry on. That was the concept of it.
The Legislature was highly pleased with that concept and
though I haven't an overwhelming number of pleasant
memories of going to Lansing, one of them was when
C . S. Mott and I went down to the committee, in which
Senators Beadle and Garland Lane were the most prominent
members at that time, and laid before them the concept
of an added two years of work at Flint coordinated with
the junior college, so that if they wished, they could
go on, or could transfer.
Now behind this concept at all points was this: If and
when and at any time this kind of institution ever needed
to go out of existence, or to become locally autonomous,
freestanding, it would certainly do so. But what we were
concerned with was that the lead time, the pressures and
all that part were so great, that it seemed sense to
everybody that we talked with, and it certainly seemed
sense to me as the president of this institution, to say
that we can give almost instantaneous existence to a
first-class continuation by this method which you cannot
possibly do without a long, difficult lead time.
So we
set up Flint and we set up Dearborn.
F--To some, though, it looked like the California model or
the Wisconsin model was attempting to be set up, with
[the University of] Michigan controlling all the schools.
H- -Yes, I know that was an interpretation of it. Some
own colleagues in the Council of College Presidents
fearful of that, particularly Spathelf, who thought
we were embarked upon some kind of Nazi conquest to
over.

of my
were
that
take

F--Well, he viewed it as an imperialistic drive...
H--...Which it was not at all. Now I don't know how to
explain that beyond saying what I did.
I know what the

A 794
Hatcher
motives were and why we did it and where we went with it.
And it worked and it gave [University of] Michigan
immediately a new form of continuation in these two
institutions.
F--Well, some regarded it that in the locus of power in
this state you have Detroit, you have Flint, you have
Grand Rapids, you have the suburban part and then you
have the rural part. The rural part was diminishing
in influence because of the migration and the change
in the nature of American agriculture.
Some, therefore,
did think that Michigan moving to Flint, to Dearborn,
and being strongly romanced by Saginaw-Bay City, and
with its preeminent position in Grand Rapids where you'd
been a long time--for instance, you still have a radio
station there --was an attempt to bring them all in under
one tent with Michigan as the head of it.
H--Well, as I said, that was

not true.

F--Then, you see, how do you regard Michigan State's going
to Oakland? Some would regard that as an attempt to
cut you off from the rich bedroom communities and to
balance it out.
H--Well, I don't know about that. I think it was a needed
institution there and it gave them a quick and distin­
guished start which they otherwise would not have gotten.
F--There seemed to have been some energy between the rich
Mathilda Wilson and Ford. They-looked a trifle competitive.
H--Well, I don't know about that. They may have been . But
I think that you could give other motives to it too. She
had this great estate that was not doing much good there
any more than Fairlane was doing for the Ford people.
Education was needed. I understand from Dr. Ruthven that
she had offered this to the University of Michigan at one
point. [But] it didn't seem at that point a wise thing
to do because the pressures for institutional expansion
were not present there as they were in the period when
these things came along.
I think the only element of conflict that I ever sensed
in Oakland was that it did stir the community college
people. Because when we set up Dearborn and Flint, we
set them up as senior colleges, that is, you went right
on--junior and senior. Whereas Oakland started with a
freshman class so that particularly the community college

A 795
Hatcher
people viewed that as an intrusion and brought it into
a conflict that otherwise it didn't need to be.
But that was soon obviated by the fact that as the young
generation came on, there were so many that even with
all these facilities we still weren't doing more than
an adequate job in taking care of them.
F--Let me ask you a question then about your administrative
style. Michigan State created Oakland, to some degree
as an autonomous institution virtually from the start.
There’s been a lot of rhetoric that said Dearborn and
Flint were strictly controlled and managed from Ann
Arbor.
How, then, do you square that with the oppor­
tunity that they could become freestanding when
circumstances were right?
H--I think you have a couple things here.
First, at the
outset, the campus in operation at Oakland was almost
exactly parallel to this. They had the chancellor, the
Board of Trustees of Michigan State was the governing
board, and Woody Varner had the same relationship to
the president and the board...
F--That you had with Stirton.
H--Yes. Oakland was in a very important area for educa­
tional services.
The fact that it had begun as a
freshman-sophomore and soon became a full four-year
institution, gave it a different kind of status as a
full-fledged institution, than these two operations
which were just the third and fourth years of the
extended College of Arts and Sciences and of Education
in these two campuses.
Now I think, as time has been
tentatively because I haven't
more recent years --apparently
moving along the same general

moving on--I'm saying this
been in too close touch in
these institutions are
road.

F--Yes, I think that's true.
H--And they have been elevated, as the responsibilities
and services required at the point have developed.
F--My observation is that once the political and social
conditions are right, these institutions are now viable
to become freestanding if such is their desire.

A 796

Hatcher
I have a curiosity, it's a subsidiary issue.
Intellec­
tually, rationally, and managementwise, the concept of
a third and fourth year makes such eminent good sense
to me that if I were starting again, even knowing what
I do, I would still recommend that. Yet it seems to
have failed.
I wonder why? Do you have any thoughts
about that?
H--Well, I do--1 don't know how valid and important they
are.
It ran against the grain of tradition--"high
school and college".
There was a difficulty apparently
in finding the precise kind of community in which this
kind of thing could flourish. It can't just be anywhere.
Before those things could develop, the tremendous pressure
and need for what became the services of the junior and
community colleges would just overwhelm the nation.
And at that time you had the drive for centralized boards
of education, as in Ohio and elsewhere, so that this never
quite caught on. It requires delicacy of operation to
make it work, and the other is simpler.
F--I suppose it is.
H--I think it's a very good scheme, as a matter of fact.
F--So do I , but it just hasn't taken...
H--One thing that made me think about doing this in the first
place was studying the enrollment records. I discovered
that we were having coming into the University of Michigan
almost as large new junior class as we were freshmen.
They were coming from Grand Rapids and from Flint and
from Dearborn [community colleges]. Also they had used
the two-year and the four-year smaller colleges as a twoyear community experience before coming to the university.
We had more girls from Smith, Vassar, and Wellesley, for
example, coming into our junior class than we had from
any other single constituency.
People would go to these
institutions for two years --their families thought, "No,
we don't want you to go to that great big booming Michigan
or Michigan State. We want you to have two years of an
intimate experience.
Then maybe you could go where the
big currents are flowing fast."
F--I'm not sure of the numbers, but I am of the opinion that
today the number of first-time-in-the-university entrance
is more at the junior level in Michigan's maj or institu­
tions- -I'm thinking of Michigan, Michigan State, and Wayne
than freshman entrance. If it's not more, it's very close

A 797
Hatcher
H--It's certainly pretty high.
F--It's an astonishing change in the model of higher educa­
tion that was traditional for over a hundred twenty-five
or thirty years.
Let's go to the next issue that we talked about which was
the one that received all of the...
H--The status models?
F--No, I was thinking about Michigan State versus the
University of Michigan. Were you people locked into
some kind of conflict?
H--No.
F--Did you begrudge them...
H--Not in the slightest.
In fact if you will look at the
records, and I could give you a letter from my good
friends at Michigan State, when Michigan State had its
great anniversary party...
F--1957.
H--1957. That's right.
I made one of the speeches and I
spoke about the university status of Michigan and
Michigan State, and they have quoted that and used it
as a part of their campaign.
This is difficult to get across because a thing like this
entered into the alumni with the football background of
Michigan State being the warm-up team for mighty Michigan,
to get the season going. To accept Michigan State on an
equality was difficult for some of the old-line alumni.
So I don't minimize that.
But to come to the real point, and the sole point of issue
When the system was set up here in this state, the
University of Michigan said at the outset it didn't feel
that it ought to, given the setting, undertake the land
grant aspect of the state system.
So they supported
strongly the formation of a fine institution in the
center of the fine farming land of the Red Cedar which
was their sister institution, Michigan State College,
as it was then, the agricultural arm.
Michigan was the first one to set up that system and it
was followed by several others in the Big Ten. You have

A 798
Hatcher
Indiana and you have Iowa as the two leading exponents of
the separation of the two functions--the ongoing univerwith with its graduate and professional schools, and the
agricultural college.
In the case of the East you had
Cornell taking on the land grant aspect of it.
Our sole point was, it is confusing to say the "University
of Michigan, Michigan State University," on the parallel
of Ohio State or Illinois or Minnesota where they are all
combined.
Isn’t it possible to follow, say, the Indiana
line and get a name that is distinctive, like Purdue and
Indiana?
This got lost in translation into the controversy that
University of Michigan was opposing the recognition of
the university role which Michigan State had already
long-since developed into.
F--There are two points.
I talked to Bob Waldron who was the
Speaker of the Michigan House and whom I have a lot of
regard for. He was a sensitive man and concerned about
education in a citizen’s way rather than the occupational
way as you and I are. And I have the feeling that there
was a good deal of alumni talk, a good deal of football
talk.
But one of the things I've been struck by--and I ’m going
to talk about that later with you--is the general civility,
goodwill, and statesmanship that occurred in this state
between all of the areas; the lack of conflict between
public and private schools, the regard that the schools
had for each other.
I have the feeling that some of this
conflict was not institutional in nature.
I've been struck very much by the fact that if [University
of] Michigan, because of the machine it has, had the
political power to prevent certain things from happening-tied in as you were to the bankers, the journalists, the
musicians, the artists, and the whole culture force, and
tied into industry in the particularly intimate relation­
ships you had with the automotive industry, and the fact
that you had been building that critical mass for 150
years--if you really got down to a tough fight, it could
have been pretty bloody.
It didn't seem to me that you
used the power that you had, and so I suspect it was
what I would call "locker-room talk.”
H--Most of it is, yes.

A 799

Hatcher
F--You were talking about the land grant--that's an area
that is of great concern to me because in Indiana, in
Illinois, there is a sharp distinction between the
agricultural and literary arts. You have a school for
literary arts and you have a school for the agricultural
and mechanical arts.
It struck me that Michigan is one of the few states that
made a decision to erase and blur that 1ine by the concept
of creating two great comprehensive universities, and
w e 're on the way to creating a third at Wayne. The day
may come in a generation when Western will reach that kind
of goal. They're probably where Michigan State was in
1940--they're not far away in terms of century. They're
starting to build that critical mass.
It's true that Michigan State is different than Michigan.
-You have strengths that Michigan State doesn't have and
they have strengths that you don't have. But the
colleagueship (I think particularly as I sit here in this
Institute of Science and Technology Building) in things
like scanning for crop evaluat ion--it was a mesh between
the agricultural experiment service at Michigan State and
your Willow Run inst itute--is an example of peculiar and
felicitous arrangements.
That hasn't occurred in other states. They still have
that status line between the hewers of wood and carriers
of water and the elite.
Do you have some explanation of how that happened, because
I think it's quite good.
H--1 don't think there's anything except this same elusive
matter we talked about earlier, that the people who were
basically at the key decision points were not of that
[argumentative] kind of mind at all.
F--This institution didn't fight that occurrence.
H--Not in the slightest.
F--What about the graduate-professional versus the more
generalized disciplinary conflict?
H --We11, that one has a little more substance to it, but it
has to be understood. As we moved on into the rising
enrollments and the budget pressures, the Legislature,
as you know, is always seeking a formula, and the best
formula is a head count.

A 800
Hatcher
F--Right.
H--And where the conflict entered--and it was more conflict
there than I think in any of these other areas--was the
attempt on the part of some simply to take all institu­
tions as though their needs were the same, and say this
one has x number of students and this one has y number
of students and we give them x number per head. So the
budget comes out thus and so, without taking into account
the fact that there is quite a difference between, we'll
say, the incoming freshman class here at this university
and Western.
The costs that you incur in medicine and
dentistry and engineering are of a very different order.
So the conflict on status was solely in the effort to
arrive at some kind of, as nearly as we could, objective
evaluation of costs that were involved in these different
missions and apportion the budget, as opposed to the head
count.
We encountered some opposition on the part of some of our
colleagues--that feeling that Michigan was getting more
than its share.
F--That comes back, Dr. Hatcher, to my discussion about
invidious comparisons, because the nature of averaging
in saying Michigan received, probably at that time,
$1500 per FTE, and somebody like Western, $900--they say
they're being disadvantaged by $600.
They didn't get involved in the cost of the high load of
subprograms--engineering, music, medicine, versus the
more economical costs of teaching something like English
or history with the faculty responsibilities and the
ratios and the amount of resource you have to put into
the training.
The undergraduate ratio was probably 17,
18, 20 to one, and the master's and doctoral ratios were
probably eight and nine to one.
I was struck as you were talking about that, to think,
"Well, why has some of this conflict ebbed?" And I
think it's because of the nature of the previous dis­
cussion that Wayne, Western, and Michigan State are
becoming more like Michigan.
Hence they have the same
problem, and therefore the advantages of the argument
of the averaging don't work out for any of them.
I
believe that one can make the case that Michigan State
is growing more like Michigan and Wayne, and I think
it's the significant social application and addition
of graduate programs.

A 801
Hatcher
I think there are almost as many people in graduate school
today as there were in undergraduate school when you
became president.
H--That's right, and it’s been growing, of course, right
along.
F--Well, let's deal with the last one which is...
H--Elitist concept?
F--Populism versus elitism.
H--I think that’s nonsense.
I really do. This institution,
I think, most uniformly simply tried to have its doors
open to those who were qualified and willing.
F--But there’s a mythology...
H--Yes, I know there is. The mythology comes in when it gets
into the headlines--"More SAT 800’s entered this freshman
class than in any other one," or, "We had more scholar­
ships of this sort..." You can't control that discussion.
F--That may be the fault of your own people at a subsidiary
level.
You set a policy; your drum-beaters, your propa­
ganda ministers in admissions, in athletics, and ours-I'm not just saying Michigan--I'm saying the nature of
those kinds of personnel responsibilities with the SAT
from the admissions, the 90,000 straight wins, the fact
that our medical students are the best.
I ’m at a medical school now.
I'm just aghast at the
social errors of what in fact goes on. Most of what
people believe about candidacy for medical school is
utter trash.
I don't think the nine million people in
this state have any idea how Michigan is attempting in
its medical schools to pick average, solid people and
not all 4.0's.
I think your average admission is about
between 3.2 and 3.5 based on a multiplicity of personal
characteristics and not just grade point.
But if you and I walked out on the street and talked to
people, they'd believe the 800 SAT, they'd believe all
of those numbers.
That's part of the mythology of elitism.
Harvard College when I was in Massachusetts had 1,000
freshmen.
Places like Albion and Reed, truly did have an
elite, constrained market that was limited to those who

A 802
Hatcher
had already proved that they were capable.
In a way,
matriculation was a congratulatory process in many ways
rather than an education process.
But you have here--I don’t know-- 5,000 freshmen? I'm
sorry I don’t know that number.
But you have 40,000
FTE’s, which is probably 65-70,000 human beings.
It’s
hard to make a case for elitism.
I don’t think any
Michigan institutions were really elite in a sense of
denial.
H--No they’re not.
F--I don’t think a man can beat-up on an institution that
says, "We will graduate a qualified elite," because I
think that’s the role of an institution, to improve
people.
But to say, "We will only admit an elite;"
I think that that’s a case that's been easy to propa­
gandize against, particularly in view of American
politics.
But I don’t think it's true.
Now I'm not trying to make the case that there weren't
missions to be done. We had underserved parts of the
market --minorities, Blacks, Chicanos, women. Enough
wasn't being done to reach those people and to draw
them in. But I don't think you canmake acase that
Michigan was a school for the rich.
H- -11 certainly was not.
F--Well, we have covered a lot of issues.
I'mglad you have
spoken to them in this very direct way because I think
that some of the propaganda, if we allow it to stay, will
create a problem of future reality and prevent people
from doing what they will have to do as new forces come.
What about the role of vocational and occupational
training obj ectives in the enhancement of higher educat ion?
We sit in a building, the Institute of Science and
Technology, that in a sense is an objective that became
enhancement. This building was created, as you talked
about earlier, to meet one part of that. I know I'm
taking a broader view of vocational and occupational
than just hands -on and blue-collar work.
Do you think that vocational and occupational obj ectives
were important for the growth of higher education in
Michigan in the period from '58 to '70?

A 803
Hatcher
H--How widely are you using it? Would you consider a
graduate engineer, for example, as being vocational?
F--Yes, I certainly would.
H--The answer is that it bulks very large, because there is
a very large number of our students who have had, in this
sense, vocational goals.
I don't know where you distin­
guish between professional and... I s a doctor in
vocational o r ...?
F--While he wouldn't admit it, he certainly is.
highest status tradesman there is.

He's the

H--The school of nursing, one of the largest in the country,
is here, and dental hygiene.
F--Let me speak to that for a moment.
Earlier I talked about one of my concerns about not just
looking at education as manpower training for the first
job.
I think that's the current error of the appropria­
tions policy evaluation of institutions and their true
role to society.
I believe that you have to train man­
power so they can be skilled for all jobs, all challenges
and skilled to live their lives.
Further, I would say the demarcation between professional
and nonprofessional is frankly the acquisition of skill.
And I'm not so sure that we won’t eventually create
ladders where a man can go through a series of experiences
to attain broader responsibility.
In fact the community
college is a mechanism that he can use here, as the first
rung of the ladder.
The Master's of Public Health degree
is another attempt to take people back from the field and
increase their professional skill.
So I say that the whole spectrum of work, that was tech­
nological, intellectual, skill-oriented, is vocational,
and just because there was a specific marketplace at the
community college for one skill level and another market­
place at the baccalaureate institution, and another at
the graduate and professional, I regard that as a continuum.
What I'm trying to say is if there was a strength, did you
regard that strength as an important tool for the enhance­
ment to the institution?
H--Well, let's take a specific vein.

A 804
Hatcher
In the field of engineering and its allied supportive
sciences, mathematics and physics and whatnot are highly
integrated. When we entered into the new period after
the war, with the nation becoming acutely conscious of the
need for and the rewards of research, there entered into
the educational program a second element that may or may
not be vocational but certainly is allied to it, and that
is the post-graduate or the step-beyond kind of thing
represented by the atomic energy research here, the space
program, and much of the work carried on for the Defense
Department at Willow Run.
We had two important objectives there. The first was to
give an outlet and make available to the need of the nation
the capacity of the institution to do this kind of research.
But we had also two other things in mind. We could not
have, with the budgeting that we received through the
normal state channels, support for engineering on this level
because it goes beyond the reasonable bill that you could
bill the state for. By having the research program we were
able to do the service.
At the same time we had adjunct funds with which to bring
here professors that we otherwise could not have afforded,
and to build up plant which we could not have afforded,
and we were able to offer opportunities strictly for
graduate and post-graduate work to students who otherwise
wouldn1t have been able to continue. We had about 4,000
of our graduate students in this area.
F--One of the questions I am thrusting at is that it is my
impression that while the rhetoric still is very much in
terms of instructional credit hours generated, and an
artificial concept between state support, student support,
and self-liquidating funds, that for the first time in
this period, significant dollars were appropriated by the
state for research where they had not been before.
H--That’s correct.
F--I assume that not only the energy to create programs for
draftsmen, millwrights and tool and die makers at the
community college, on one part of the spectrum, but also
the willingness to support basic research in the atomic
energy, Willow Run, automotive units and in medicine, was
part of that same energy.
H--That's right. In the period you’re talking about, Michigan
had two or three very severe crises because of the f1ight

A 805
Hatcher
of industry from the state and the failure to create new
replacements for those.
In Romney's day, particularly, one of the drives was to
enhance and increase research and development and to flow
that out into marketable products in order that the
economy of Michigan might be sustained to support the
other things that we had in mind.
It was largely in that
drive that I got going the research sector down by 1-94
and here on the North Campus, of a high degree of con­
centration- -Parke Davis, Climax Molybdenum, and...
F--KMS[KMS Plastics, Inc.J ?
H--KMS and all the rest of it. Now, that was a definite part
of this picture in the time you are talking about.
It’s
a concrete outcome of what you would call the vocational
aspect of it as an absolute and inescapable practical need
for.the economy of the state in order to support any other
things that we had in mind.
F--One
of the other thingsI have been trying to do is refine
the
understanding of aninstitution of higher education as
a social engine. Not only has it been for the production
of baccalaureate degrees and credit hours.
I had the sense from talking to Leonard Woodcock and
Governor Williams and Governor Romney, that they thought
that Michigan was too strongly based as a one-industry
state, which was a bad public policy.
They thought the
only way to broaden the economic work-base of the state
wasto encourage research so that things like the 1-94
park and the North Campus could create exactly the same
kind of ambience that had occurred in Massachusetts
around Route 128. Hence their willingness to support
politically appropriations for research which are always
easy to make fun of.
It takes no effort at all to find somebody studying the
teeth of chimpanzees, where this basic research is hard
to understand.
By the time the applied research delivers
the social
product, the people have forgotten that they
beat-up on
the poor investigator that did the work,
because usually there is almost a generation lag.
What about
the role of culture and the arts?
Did that
have a value in the importance in the dialogue over the
growth of higher education?

A 806

Hatcher
H--It had a very great importance.
It was difficult to sell.
The easiest thing to sell was engineering and the second
was medicine.
From there on it was tougher and tougher
sledding, but there was a latent interest in all of these
matters.
I think one of the most beautiful campus
buildings anywhere around is the one you see as you come
up the driveway here, the School of Music.
Nothing that I did in my 16 years here was tougher than
this School of Music. We had one of the fine schools of
music and it was housed in impossible rooms over the
stores there in the arcade near where Jacobsons’ store
now is. You could hear it for a mile down the street -these poor kids no place to practice in.
We worked on that with support from all over the state,
got all ready to go with a wonderful bid out and bid back
in, when the finances of the state tumbled and all building
was cancelled.
It lay there for four years, no movement.
Then we got just a little bit better in the economy.
I got Frank Beadle and three or four of the other leaders
and I said, "Now, look. You've done thus and so and thus
and so in your records, but just for once, do something
out-and-out spectacular for the field of arts and the
humanities and put music in your building program." And
they said, "By golly, w e '11 do it."
F--I think back to what some have told me about the activities
of some of the members of the Appropriations Committee 1 ike
Elmer Porter or Harold Hungerford, and I 've found that
generally the empathy for this kind of thing was quite
minimal. But the strain to advocate such was quite high.
In Massachusetts culture is so established that institu­
tions that have cultural bases --symphonies, theaters,
museums--exist in and often by themselves with their own
clienteles for support. It strikes me in Michigan that
cultural institutions cannot really subsist in the state
without the support of higher education, to the contrary
of the experiences I had in Massachusetts.
Neil Staebler said, "This is a state that's still to some
extent in the fender-bender stage." It's a felicitous
way to put it. I was struck by the fact that, except for
some of the inst itutions --1 think particularly about
Michigan and the glorious days of the May Festival with
Eugene Ormandy and the like--these things haven't existed,
and institutions had to pull it out of their hides to do
it because the appropriations process didn’t bring that
support.

A 807

Hatcher
Further, my sense is that institutions did it because they
thought it was important and they paid the price for that.
The support of culture and the arts didn't enhance the
institution in the growth of higher education when you
had to build that clientele almost by a bootstrap mechanism.
H--I think at Michigan that was true. We started here what's
caught on nationwide, the university theater program;
they have a nice branch of it there at Michigan State, the
Professional Theater Program.
One of the things I do, by the way, when I can find a
moment, I am national chairman of the University Resident
Theater Association of the nation. That's been copied,
we have 35 institutions now on the theory that the only
continuum you can now have to give permanence to a venture
of this kind is in a university setting. And the decen­
tralization of drama out of Broadway forever into these
communities is there.
But it is about 40 percent self-supporting on the average
through the ticket office. The rest of it comes in one
form or another institutionally or from gifts through the
theater program, plus the endowment which the institutions
are able to give with heat, light, nontaxes, and whatnot.
F--What you're saying in fact is that except for special
situations, the cultural thing is not economically viable.
H--That's right.

It has to be subsidized.

F--It has to be subsidized because of its social and
intellectual value.
H--That's right. No university budget yet, in itself, supports
that.
It still requires a great deal of private philan­
thropy.
F--What about the role of labor in regard to higher education?
Did you find it supportive?
H- -11 was supportive, yes, but I never felt as supportive as
it might we11 have been. It's hard to indicate. It was
never very helpful in securing appropriations, for example,
or in the general planning. I found it not unsympathetic
and wanting the benefits thereof, but compared to, for
example, the more aggressive efforts on the part of the
business community, I never found those in the labor
community too eager or effective.

A 808
Hatcher
F--The labor community has a lot of political muscle in this
state to the contrary of the experiences in many other
southern and western states and even eastern states.
They didn't deliver that muscle for you for appropriation
levels?
H--I was never very much aware of it.
F--You couldn't pick up the phone and call Walter Reuther?
H--No, never.
I talked to Walter, but Walter would have been
no help to me in getting appropriations for the University
of Michigan. He was a good friend of mine too.
F--I understand this was a man interested in cultural things.
H--Yes he was. Now you have to say this very delicately.
I'm not saying that labor was opposed to education or
that they argued against it, but they were...
F--I put my question, Dr. Hatcher, in an extremely affirma­
tive way.
Did they deliver their muscle, their strength
to it?
H--No they did not.

I don't think so.

F--Because in the Legislature, Michigan had some votes,
Michigan State had some votes, industry had some votes,
a senator, say, from Midland may have represented Dow
in a very intimate way.
Labor had some votes.
It would be foolish to say
otherwise. And they did not deliver those votes.
H--No.

They never used them against us.

F- -1 understand that.
If the governor recommended an appropriation of x, always
it's a cruel decision about splitting the pie to give
somebody a greater share for the improvement, beyond the
necessary level; to enhance quality and to do a greater
degree of services. That means an affirmative decision
to take money away from somebody else.
They weren't
ready to do that.
H--No.
F--What about the role of industry in regard to higher
education?

A 809
Hatcher
H--Well, I found them throughout always quite supportive of
higher education and frequently most helpful. This was
both in their willingness to support the programs in
general, and their generosity, particularly in periods
when they had reasonable prosperity, in their out-andout personal and corporate support of matters in gifts
for buildings and whatnot.
F--That’s an interesting point that you make.
wonder if that’s only true for Michigan.

Because I

H--Well, I don't know and I can only speak here for what
happened as far as we were concerned.
I know that there were a few occasions where the question
of the general appropriations rested heavily upon what
the expected revenue would be, and naturally business and
industry were not eager to pay more taxes.
But they did
go along.
I spoke earlier of the general seminars that we held.
The attitude of business there was they were willing to
pay their fair share, they were not opposed. They felt
that in some cases the tax system was unjust to them, but
on the whole, as I say, they were very supportive.
F--And yet it was not until your presidency was concluded,
virtually, that the new monies came in any real generous
way, because Soapy and the business community involved
themselves in some very cruel and bitter fights about
taxation.
H--Yes they did.
F--The institutions of course were sort of captives of that
fight, even though they probably weren't involved in the
crunch. You can’t have more money when it's not there.
You see, I think about philanthropy. When you retired
they had a large fund-raising drive to build a library,
the Hatcher Graduate Library.
I think that’s a wonderful
and fine thing.
But I look at the other institutions in this state and
I think that most of them virtually haven’t made a nickel
from anything except the taxpayer.
This institution has been skilled, fortunate to raise
money.
Perhaps it may be that your view of the business
community is more generous than it may have been in the
systemwide.

A 810
Hatcher
H--That could well be.
with them.

But I had very close relationships

For example, we established way back in the early fifties,
a Council for Financial Aid to Education.
It was New York
based and had some of America’s leading business people on
it. I think that they published records each year.
It’s
phenomenal the result of that campaign to make businesses
and corporations conscious of their responsibility to
higher education and increase their gifts.
In fact we saw through the first legislation that ruled
that corporations could use corporate earnings for philan­
thropic, particularly educational, purposes. We got it
up to, as a goal, one-point -something of the earnings
and a few places like Cleveland actually did that.
F--Cleveland what?

Cleveland Cliffs?

H--No, the whole City of Cleveland, the business and industry
there.
There was also quite a movement at that time to incor­
porate university presidential leadership into the workings
of the business community itself.
It was the beginning of
the reciprocal process.
Businessmen dominate boards of
education.
There were almost no educators on boards.
F--I’m glad you mention that.
H--John [Hannah] and I and others served--we had to select
from quite an array of them--so that almost all of the
leading university presidents were on boards.
It proved
to be a very important thing for the interpretation and
give-and-take in the board rooms and educational...
F--I have the feeling that the Attorney General, Frank
Kelley's decision about conflict of interest was too
narrow a decision because of the importance of cross­
fertilization and communication as you suggest.
H--The only one that affected most of us was the banks and
I think they based that on an entirely erroneous concept.
There does not exist the conflict that was indicated or
was feared in that particular one.
F--I always think that one has to worry about conflict when
there is a demonstrable evidence of misfeasance or
malfeasance, and there was never the slightest evidence...

Hatcher
In fact a place like the Ann Arbor Bank and Trust was
immensely crucial to the growth of higher education from
1946-47, and on because of their mechanisms for the
bonding program. They sold bonds that your own officers
could never have sold, not that the bonds were bad but
because they had the access.
Did business ever affirmatively go forward to the state
level and seek help? It’s hard to see that except in
places like Dearborn, Flint.
H--No, I don't think I ’d say that.
On the other hand, the word was frequently passed from the
large corporations to their representatives in Lansing, who,
in their conversations, either did not oppose or passed the
word of support.
It was done in that fashion and there was
never...
F--I regard the automobile lobbyist and the merchant lobbyist
and the utility lobbyist as terribly important people.
H--Their support became helpful particularly in the sixties
when they became aware of the importance both of the
research aspects of our various institutions, particularly
Michigan State and the University of Michigan, plus the
awareness of the fact that they were highly dependent upon
the product of those institutions.
F- -I t's a form of public support for them.
What about the role of commerce?
I had some difficulty,
because when you look at things like the role of people
like Max Heavenrich on the governor’s Blue Ribbon
Commission, merchants appeared--Old Kent Bank, Seidman of
Seidman and Seidman, and the like.
If there was a separation between industry and commerce,
commerce has a tendency to be far more local. I wonder
if there was a difference in interest in regard to
higher education.
Did they support it equally as well?
H--I don't think so.
I think you got more from industry than
you did from commerce in the terms that you have defined
it here.
F--Did you think it was a separateness of interest? Because
in fact, in Lansing they use different lobbyists.
H--Yes.

Yes, I think they’re quite separate.

A 812
Hatcher
F--And you think that there was a separate point of view.
H--Well, I think particularly with people like Seidman, there
was more evident outright opposition to the needs of higher
education rather than careful study of its needs and proper
support.
F--I've been curious if in fact some of their interests were
parochial, local rather than contributory to state and
national needs, and negative about the investment of money,
because much of commerce is frequently more marginally
capitalized.
What about the position of agriculture in regard to higher
education?
I have some questions.
I understand the special relation agriculture had to
Michigan State through the agricultural agents in the
counties and the Agricultural Experiment Station and
the like.
But I wondered whether agriculture supported higher educa­
tion across the large spectrum. Were they interested in
enhancing other institutions as a way of keeping their
children at home, because it was obvious that 40 acres and
a mule no longer could support the family size that they
had? Were they interested in enhancing institutions like
Michigan so that other career options would be there for
them?
H--I don't think you can lump them into a single group, call
it agriculture and say "yes they did." There were indi­
viduals from rural areas and agriculturally oriented who
were supportive, but not as an organized group.
Again, I'm saying the same thing about them I would about
labor. They were not hostile or antagonistic, but on the
other hand neither were they aggressively...
F--But organizations, Dr. Hatcher, like the Grange, were
powerful organizations --the county agents, the specific
subgroups of agriculture like fruit growers, and bean
growers, and cattle and truck farmers. They have
influence and power,
H--Yes. I think their interest, however, was highly con­
centrated in the areas of particular concern to them.

A 813
Hatcher
F--And not a broad societal interest.
What were the pressures and influences in the determina­
tion of public policy, if any, from the federal govern­
ment? Let me take a moment to explain that.
In the area of social policy for social welfare and
health, for every dollar of federal assistance there
is a constraint, a requirement, a strong mechanism for
control that inhibits the autonomy of institutions and
government structures.
In the period from '58 to *70, while the role of federal
money for research, student aid, construction, loans, was
significant, I have not been conscious that federal con­
straints were high.
I am curious about that though
because that’s to the contrary of many other federal
programs where such is true.
Do you feel that the constraints and pressures on your
determination of institutional policy by the federal
government were severe?
H--No.
F--I say that because now some of the post-1973 regulations
are much more arduous.
I ’m thinking about equal oppor­
tunity for women and the like.
H--Yes.

That had not yet become a critical issue through ’67.

F--The federal monies for enrollment didn't mandate require­
ments about quality of the admissions and the like.
H--I don’t think so.
F--I’m not aware of that either.
H--No.
The federal programs were many and varied, of course.
By far the biggest chunks came in in places like public
health, but there were no special constraints that I was
aware of there.
F--11 may be that the federal market was different.
I'm not
sure of this but I have the suspicion that much of federal
aid was project research, behind specific things for
specific objectives and not generalized support as some
of the federal programs are now tending to become.

A 814
Hatcher
H--I think in general that was true. We spoke about the
Sputnik era. You know there was quite a period of federal
support for almost crash training or recycling of teachers
of science to get back to the high schools to teach the
oncoming young generation. There was lots of federal
money for the physical plant in many of these fields, for
libraries and for public health and so on.
F--But you didn't regard it as coercive.
H--No, not at all.
F--What about the role, Dr. Hatcher, of the private sector
in the determination of a policy?
I think about Massachusetts, Ohio, and some of the western
states, where the strong private schools have fought
vigorously the growth of public institutions because they
diminished their view of themselves and their capacity to
compete.
I'm struck here that the relationships in this sector, as
in others that we have alluded to before, had a high degree
of statesmanship.
There wasn't an outright attempt that
I can see to constrain the growth of Michigan by the
private sector or other schools.
Is that true?
H--I think in general that's true. There were some complaints,
criticisms along the way when the private schools felt that
they were being put in unfair competition through the large
outlays the state was making to other institutions which
had low tuition.
They felt they were losing students that
might have come to their institution because they could get
a much cheaper but good education at Michigan State or
University of Michigan.
There was some pressure --1 can't evaluate the intensity-but there was some pressure to raise the tuition rates.
F--In some geographical sectors of the state like Saginaw
with its strong Lutheran constituency and the western part
of the state with its strong Dutch constituency, you didn't
feel pressure?
H--Not particularly.
F--The other part is--you left in 1967--the tuition-grant
program of state grants to students going to private
schools was already in operation.

A 815
Hatcher
H--Yes, it was beginning.
actually set up.

I have forgotten what year it was

F--I'm going to have to check but I suspect it's 1965 or '66.
H--Somewhere there.
F--The public schools with their power didn't fight this
program, did they?
H--No, not at all.
F--If the dollar pot stays constant, that was a diminishing
of your opportunity.
Did you ever fight back?
H--Not at all.
We expanded the concept of the Council of State College
Presidents to include the presidents of the private
institutions. We had at least semiannual meetings of all
of our groups to discuss these questions in an all-day
meeting, meeting around at different places. That in
itself helped to keep the air cleared and the channels
of communication flowing, and I think minimized areas of
conflict.
F--We've already talked about the branch campus system.
Do
you want to add anything to what you've said? I say that
they were failures. What in your opinion were the reasons
for the failure of the branch campus system?
I think that this state will probably never create the
California or Wisconsin model.
Do you have some thoughts
about that?
H--Yes, but I wouldn't use your phrase of "failure" because
I think they accomplished, or are accomplishing, what
they set out to do.
F--Well, let me make one editorial comment.
I'm not trying to make the case that the individual insti­
tutions are a failure.
I don't think that's true at all.
But I think the concept of developing a branch system
rather than individual, freestanding institutions, failed
in this state.
H--Well, I wouldn't say that it failed because that suggests
that there was a plan to go out and make branch campuses

A 816
Hatcher
and that something happened that it had to be given up.
That was not the concept at all.
F--But we talked about that earlier and there were some,
Dr. Hatcher, who would say that that was exactly it,
H--Well, I say that that's wrong because I was at the center
of it and if there was any one person responsible for it,
I was, and I happen to know what the concept was.
It was an emergency way of taking care of these tremendous
pressures, of having a kind of an instantaneous campus in
another community, not the concept, as Vic [Spathelf] used
to put it, of a great conquest.
The concept was that this will be an evolutionary process.
As long as this is an adequate and proper way of getting
at this problem where there are communities prepared to
cooperate, that's what we will do.
If that is not the
case, this will not be continued. When these campuses
are able to stand on their own, they can be autonomous.
[The problem is that] at some point somebody dug up out
of the history the kind of institution the University of
Michigan first was.
F--Right, with the constitutional prerogative of having five
branches, you mean?
H--Well, not only the constitutional prerogative of it but
in the beginning the University of Michigan was a series
of branches in Ann Arbor and other communities. Now
those didn't function too well in such separation.
F--At that time it probably wasn't technologically possible
to run it that way, because of communications difficulties.
H--That's right.
So with the formation of the state and Ann Arbor giving
inducements, it was set up here. But the concept of the
university as being something that could be as California
is and was, indefinitely extended wherever a need came,
was in this original concept.
F--So, again, to straighten out that dragon, you were
attempting to solve an immediate and crucial problem with
the most expeditious manner and did not have the intent
to create a branch system.

A 817
Hatcher
H- -Absolutely.
F--I find that somewhat rational to believe for one reason.
I do not have the sense that Michigan's people like
centralized government structures. There's a good sense
of Michigan individualism and a sense of regional
autonomy.
I have always had the strong feeling that
Michigan was particularly suspicious of the control
mechanisms of the government and put a great deal of
pride in that sense of autonomy.
Autonomy is not the abrogation of responsibility as some
would say; it was colleagiality and colleagueship and
cooperation, but it still meant that you weren't
enveloped by the government.
So a branch system, in a way, only meant that some day
you would be enveloped as California was with the dis­
tressing thing of a governor having a regents' platform
to play to a large stage for political advantage, which
was not possible here.
H--The state made that fundamental decision about the question
of expanding education to include agricultural and
mechanical arts.
It would have been just as easy for
Michigan to have gone the way of Ohio and Illinois and
Wisconsin and Minnesota and said, "This is the University
of Michigan, even if you change the campus." But it was
not that concept and never has been.
It was the concept
that you would do these things better by individualized
responsibility.
F--If you'd have used the Ohio model, Michigan State might
have picked up all of the mechanical, technical programs
all over the state. This is the way it works in Ohio.
H--How do you get a quality, instantaneous institution to
serve the needs in the late 1950's and 1960’s. You see,
it's a simple question.
"Do you have to bring kids down
here in this overcrowded place to teach them undergraduate
education? Is a unversity a piece of land?"
F--As a matter of fact that's one of the current problems
of the greatest demoralization to me because people have
built the medieval concept of the castle and the moat.
H--Yes.
If you don't get your education inside the moat, we
don't recognize it.

A 818
Hatcher
F--And we further say that no matter about the constitu­
tional statements about equal rights, if you don’t have
the wherewithal to travel to the campus, you can't have
instruction.
For instance, this is past your time now, but in the last
year or two we've put into the appropriations process
extremely bad public policy that says off-campus instruc­
tion will not be compensated through state funds. This
says that every taxpayer who pays for his education cannot
receive a benefit unless he is able to travel.
If he is
fortunate enough to have a class in Saginaw taught by the
University of Michigan or Michigan State, he can't receive
any credit for that because he's not able, because of his
work or his age or his lifestyle, to come to Ann Arbor.
Now I regard that as frankly a wretched public policy,
but it's the moat concept again.
It's also the franchise monopoly attitude of institutions
based on geographical regions rather than a broader
demographic sense.
I think it's that parochial view.
I
worry about it.
I regard Michigan as much an institution of mine as I
regard Michigan State.
I'm paying for it. And I wish it
well as I wish every other one well. Just because I may
not consume the services of a Ferris doesn't mean that my
neighbor may not.
Why didn't the coordination come about? Now, I recognize,
Dr. Hatcher, that it's a very delicate line to walk
between coordination and control. Much of the rhetoric
about coordination may disquiet one to think they really
meant control.
I'm dealing with the Constitution.
In '64 the State Board
of Education was created.
It says they shall coordinate.
The Constitution also says the institutions, all of them,
shall be autonomous, which you and I have discussed as a
felicitous decision.
Why didn't coordination come about?
H--Well, it's a highly complicated picture and probably a
little difficult to recreate.
First, the Constitutional Convention was called for totally
different reasons than to deal with higher education.
F--That's true.

A 819
Hatcher
H--Higher education was not an issue or critical point
because, as everybody
acknowledged, we had one of
the best [systems] tobe found anywhere in
the nation.
F--I would assume the critical issues were the reorganiza­
tion of Michigan government and the development of a
more modern taxing system.
H--Sure.
But there was a group who extraneously dragged in
the concept that in the new Constitution they ought to
tamper with the system of higher education in Michigan.
It was quite a powerful group who were determined they
would have one central, all-powerful board with absolute
control over all institutions.
I had to oppose that.
And if there is any one individual
responsible for the failure of that concept of a board, I
think I'd have to take the responsibility for it. We were
able to prevent the formation of the kind of overall, over­
seeing board that had been proposed for Ohio and elsewhere.
F--So therefore at Con-Con you obviously supported John
Hannah, because Roscoe Bonisteel was there, and beat
Romney in the attempt for that more all-pervasive...
H--That's right. We did not want it at all.
other ways of doing it.

There were

Now, in the course of the deliberations, they came out
with this strange--1 suppose you would have to call it
compromise.
F--1 'd call it contradiction.
H--Well, it is a contradiction.
In fact--I'm sure they still
have the records on my testimony--I said, "You're putting
up an unworkable thing here because it is self-contra­
dictory and has within it a complete chaos. This cannot
possibly work in the form that you are presenting it."
That was passed with these amorphous words in it, with the
attempt on the one hand to preserve the tried and tested
and proved autonomy of the institutions to run their own
business, as opposed to some form of intercommunication
that would prevent unwarranted duplications.
Now, the next thing is also delicate to state, but it was
not a very distinguished first Board.
I believe they
were elected, weren't they?

A 820
Hatcher
F--Yes, and what happened was we had the Goldwater sweep
and you got eight Democrats.
H--That's right. And people that were put in by the Party
were not well qualified--and I blame the Party for not
carefully selecting high-grade people for that first Board.
They could have done something if they had done it properly
but they didn't.
In fact, some of the leading members of
the Democratic Party were aghast when they realized how
the Board was going to be constituted. They were not
educationally distinguished statesmen.
Their initial concept, instead of trying to wrestle with
the problems, was to send me a telegram at midnight
telling me to get out of Flint.
F--There was a lot of dime-store rhetoric...
H--Well, to call me up and say get out of Flint with all
the commitments we had there --1 said you better think
this one again.
So they got started off at the very outset on a kind of
power-play, low-level undertaking, without trying to
bring together the people who were responsible for educa­
tion, and working out a framework by which the things
that needed to be done in this state through a coordinating
board could be done.
F--I 've talked to a lot of people about this.
I didn't
mention this to you while we were talking, but I came
from teaching Russian history and western civilization
in Lansing in 1966 to work on my doctorate at Michigan
State.
I was one of the very first employees of the
Bureau of Higher Education as an intern.
I believe I
was one of the very few people in that Bureau who had
ever taught in a college.
Most of these people were bureaucratic personalities
that had moved from one place to another, and they were
trying to make jusgments about whether Michigan or
Michigan State could have a doctorate in astrophysics
when there wasn't a single individual competent to make
that judgment.
Many people have indicated that the quality of the Board
was quite low and an astonishing example of not putting
the finest citizenry together for that.
Some have
indicated that these kinds of people aren't ready for
the rough and tumble of electoral politics and this

A 821
Hatcher
Board probably should have been appointed rather than
elected.
Further, nobody could have anticipated in '62 that this
fantastic election would occur, with the tremendous
upheaval that had not occurred in Michigan since 1932,
and that all eight Democrats would get elected and no
Republicans, whereas the state was still about fiftyfifty Democrat versus Republican in many, many areas.
The sense is that this state is a conservative state.
It's not a wildly liberal state.
It may do progressive
and philanthropic and charitable things, but it's not a
state to follow the will-o'-the-wisp quite quickly.
Our people are slow to jump to political romance.
Others have said that the Board got into political
conflict right off by the conflict over picking the
superintendent and they immediately took an extremely
muscular approach with institutions of "we're going to
control you", as you alluded to with the 12 o'clock
telegram.
I can recollect some of that rhetoric because
I was here in the state.
Further, it was said that if they had taken a policy of
putting in competent staff, working with the institutions,
and developing relationships of professional trust and
respect, that gradually many things could have been done.
But rather than attempting to find out where the middle
ground was--that delicate line of coordination--they
immediately opted for control and picked a fight, which
I want to talk to you about, over Flint, which was both
foolhardy and stupid.
I've talked to Senator Lane and he believes that the
reason for the lack of coming about of coordination was
the fight they picked at Flint.
I talked to Ira Polley
and he does not believe that because he thought that
there were other ambient reasons and that that's an
erroneous reading.
I also have the sense that, as some have said, the insti­
tutions did not want it. You have said quite clearly
that you did not want it.
I further have the sense that
Michigan's public leadership elite--and I mean by that
to broaden it beyond the Legislature to the five or six
thousand opinion makers in the state and in every com­
munity whose sense of the well-being of (the running of)
institutions is so crucial--had the sense that Michigan's
institutions were running well, were doing a good job.
They really weren't eager to make changes unless the
system was unresponsive.

A 822
Hatcher
In spite of the rhetoric, it's my feeling that the
majority of the citizenry, even today, right to this
moment, have no belief that Michigan's institutions
are nonresponsive, as Reagan was able to sell in
California.
Hence, for instance, my lack of personal
belief that a higher education reform mechanism will
come through the Legislature quite the way some of the
members of this current commission believe it will.
I have the sense, from reading the Davis report, looking
through the materials, going through the detail, that
this State Board in 1964 picked an extremely unfelicitous
fight, and that it destroyed their credibility because
they couldn't win it. They couldn't win it because the
people of Flint weren't with them and they weren't able
to make that colonial plantation kind of simile fit.
Is that a fair view of it?
H- -Yes.
F--Were they really suckers to pick that fight?
H- -Yes.
F- -...And you whipped them.
H--Facts did.

I was unyielding on it.

F--Although you have indicated to me earlier in the dis­
cussion that in your mind there was a preparation for
a proper time to allow Flint to be a freestanding insti­
tution, if such was the pleasure of the community and
the public.
H--Right.
I said that to the Board in their public hearings.
Never any question about that.
F--Were you more offended by the crude way they approached it?
H--Well, I was offended by the whole business. It was so
out of their possible authority, it was in such complete
violation.
We had already enrolled our kids there, they
were all ready to come to class. It was just a foolish,
almost unbelievably stupid thing to do.
It was not a
crisis. Why in the world,with all the problems that
the Board of Education had before them, would they try
to interfere with a going concern like that?

A 823
Hatcher
F--I think about my investigations of the way Bentley, who
had the reputation of being such a clear-cut conservative,
changed when he served on the subcommittee of the Blue
Ribbon Committee. He saw, by examining the evidence,
the need for additional funding, took a very statesmanlike
role, and became an extremely valuable member to the public.
H--He certainly did.
university.

He did a terrific service to this

F--And then served this institution well until his early
demise.
H--Yes he did.
F--That State Board would have been more advantaged to have
a man like him on the Board. Was he not a candidate?®
H--I don't remember who the other candidates were.
F--So, it also would have struck very definitely at the
concept of autonomy, would it not, if you had allowed
them to push you out?
H--Sure.
F--So Flint was, in a sense, a subsidiary issue, was it not?
H--Yes.
F--Do you think there's any value to my observation and
opinion that generally across the State of Michigan,
in the small towns and villages and cities, that there
is a strong sense that the institutions are fulfilling
their public trust?
H--Yes, I think that is right.
I feel very good about the
way things have gone and about the work the institutions
are doing. And when I locv at Les Biederman and his
leadership and group, what they have done at Traverse City,
and then the way the Saginaw Valley has come along...
F--Zumberge at Grand Valley...
H--Zumberge out there. We recommended him strongly for
appointment.
It's a marvelous institution out there.
These are strong elements, products of the system,
O

See Appendix IV.

A 824
Hatcher
and out of the cooperative system. It's perfectly possible
in this state without the authoritarianism of the central
board...
F--Isn1t that really a system of cooperation and a subtle
mechanism of no one trying to squeeze anybody else?
H--Absolutely.
F--I've been at this in one way or another really since 1968.
A historian cannot, Dr. Hatcher, work in an environment
without attempting to rationalize it in some way.
I ’m much struck, as I think about this, with the overall
sense that the public vision of the institutions had been
high because they have in fact performed a good job, and
that the people are not ready for mechanisms to change
the way they work. The Horatio Alger dream of each man
improving himself with the aid of institutions, and the
quality of life being enhanced by research, is still the
central core and one of the fundamental tenets of this
state's social and intellectual philosophy.
H--I think you're correct in that.
F--Who were the key leaders in the period?
as the key change-agents?

Who do you see

H--I wondered what you had in mind in that particular question
when I read it.
F--Well, originally we started the question, "How do you make
up a list of whom to interview? Whom do you talk to?" A
legislator looks at the whole in terms of the Legislature,
the governor in terms of the executive office, educators
often times in terms of their colleagues. We were trying
to say, "Who were the key people?" I ’m cognizant of the
difficulty of going through the laundry list of names and
then turning out to forget...
H--Well, the way it was phrased seemed to indicate that I
have personally some person out here whom I was looking
to for insight.
F--1 think that was the second question because for instance
in the governor’s office it’s much too onerous a task for
the man to do the detail work, and I don't think in a
presidency you can do the detail work. There have to be
specific ministers that do some of that.

A 825
Hatcher
H--Well, that’s what I wondered, whether you meant your
internal group, because there was no person out in the
state to whom I went and asked what to do.
F--No, but people like yourself, Dr. Hannah, Governor
Williams...
H--I think the two of us were a key in the leadership from
the point of view of the institutions.
I think that
Governor Williams was a man of exceptional insight and
perception working amidst most overwhelming difficulties
but doing it with patience and a great deal of skill.
He did an outstanding job in that respect.
Within the Legislature itself you had some very fine
people like Arnell Engstrom, for example. He knew the
political real ities, but at the same time he was a man
of great understanding.
F- -In gentleness and had some greater vision than his own
district.
H--That's right. He was very helpful in this, not favoritism
in the sense of picking out an institution, but he wanted
what you and I are talking about here, for this state.
The same is true of Frank Beadle. He was a stalwart in
this respect. Although he was different in many respects,
Elmer Porter had many very substantial qualities and was
much more helpful than he's given credit for in general.
These are the people I think of basically.
Garland was
helpful but he was, by the very nature of things, more...
F--He was a Democrat in a Republican-controlled...
H--Yes, and he was heavily oriented from Flint so that I
don't put him quite in the same category with Frank and
Arnell who were more broadly gauged and forward-thinking.
Now, when you come to, "Who were the significant opinion
leaders?" and then, "Who were the influential individuals?"I kept at all times here at the university strong planning
groups and committees of the finest people round the
campus with whom I met regularly to keep me informed. I
gave you one very specific example here when the crisis
came with the sciences and what we could do about that.
F--You did the same thing with music, did you not?

A 826
Hatcher
H-~The same with music, the same with dentistry, the same
with architecture, the same with education, and so on.
So we were always at work here trying to look down the
road to see what kinds of things we ought to be engaged
in, and then how we would plan the steps and the leadtimes to get there.
F--I look at higher education, and I see that you have put
in your whole life, and 16 years specifically here, and
I think to myself that later men will look back at this
time, a generation distant, and say, "This was the time
of giants, this was the time when the institution was
capped out, when they built this thing solid and strong,
from coast to coast, and it served all of the people
and was the basis of culture in society and a well-being
that's societal, that will last us for another hundred
years." It seems to me, therefore, very important to
talk to some of the people who did it, so that what they
did will be on the record.
I want to thank you very much.
It's been exciting to
talk to you and I appreciate the fact that you have
given us so much of your time.
It was very generous
of you.
H--Well, it's a pleasure to see you, I must say.
it's been helpful to you.

I hope