Pixley professor of humanities and chairman of the English department, he is the senior member of the Illinois College faculty. He has been a member of the Jacksonville City Council since 1973.
ONE of the best-loved stories of the Old Testament is the one about the little Jewish boy and his contest with the big bad Philistine. Even people who no longer read the Bible know how Goliath taunted the Israelites and dared them to pick a champion and to send him out to do battle with the giant. And they remember that David accepted the challenge; maybe they don't remember the defiant words young David flung out to his opponent, but they do remember the slingshot and the pebble and how little David saved his people from death and destruction and slavery. This contest and its comforting message are part of our mythic heritage. We want to believe that size is not everything in this bloated impersonal world of calculators and computers. But the myth may also lull us into a sense of security that is not justified, a certainty that little Davids always triumph. During the past few years I have been examining the history of one little David, Illinois College in Jacksonville, where I have spent most of my teaching career since 1939. Illinois College will celebrate its sesquicentennial in 1979 and in preparing a new history for the occasion, I have been reading over the college's significant documents, especially those relating to the crises of survival that have occurred with cyclical regularity since 1829. There is surely a touch of the miraculous in the outcome of some of those struggles, so there is good reason why our alumni and friends appear to have bought the David and Goliath explanation. I have recorded hundreds of hours of conversation with former students and faculty, administrators and friends. Their recollections and their points of view vary considerably, but there is one note that is struck in almost every one of them. The nation continues to need small, independent colleges. More than ever. I am pleased to hear this, but when I have asked whether these same people think that Illinois College and others like it will survive the competition of the state-supported schools into the 21st century, they are likely to say, "Well, I certainly hope so." Then a note of hesitation and uncertainty creeps into our conversation. And with good reason. Almost everyone knows of a fine old college that has gone under in the past 10 years, and almost everyone knows of many others that are in perilous condition. In Illinois alone, the shift in percentages of those attending private colleges and universities, as compared to those attending public institutions has undergone a dramatic change. Before World War II, about 60 per cent of the students in this state were attending private colleges and universities as against 40 per cent attending public institutions. By the 1950's, the percentages had been reversed. The GI Bill helped to reverse the proportion, and the shift was accelerated by postwar prosperity and the rapid growth of the college-age population. Both of those factors caused a rise in the numbers of college attenders that only the public sector could care for. Both the number and the size of the public institutions ballooned. According to the Data Book on Illinois Higher Education published by the Illinois Board of Higher Education in 1976, there were 159,296 undergraduates enrolled in public universities and community colleges in 1966; there were 83,035 enrolled in private institutions that year. A proportion of roughly 2 to 1. By 1975, the comparable figures were 365,216 and 85,733. The proportion was now 4 to 1. During those 10 years, the enrollment gain in the private institutions was 2,000 students; in the state universities the gain was 45,000 students; and in the community colleges the gain was a whopping 161,000. Lumping together the gains in the public sector, we get an increase of about 200,000 students compared to 2,000 in the private sector. 100 to 1. This is what has already happened.
Meeting higher costs January 1978/ Illinois Issues/ 21 easy to get as they once were, no governing board wants to cripple the program of its university or college, so somehow or other, the necessary funds will be secured from the public domain, perhaps by a modest increase in tuition, or by a tax increase. The private college and university has no tax supported uncle in Springfield or Washington. It may get some help indirectly through students who qualify for state scholarship funds. Illinois has been a pioneer in this kind of assistance to the private institution, and this is one of the reasons why most of our private colleges have been able to survive at all. Foundation money is usually made available not for operating expenses but for research grants, and these grants are more likely to go to universities than colleges. Appeals to alumni have brought encouraging responses, for the small college has generally had a much greater sentimental hold on its graduates than has the large university. Still, this source of support has been tapped so often and so deeply that it cannot be expected to yield much more than it now does.
Pricing out of the market It is likely that a college education at a private college or university will cost about $40,000 by the year 2000 Even if it could be demonstrated that the education received at a private school was twice as good as that received at the public school — and of course it cannot — most students and especially their parents will choose the less expensive. In the same 10-year period used earlier to show the shift from private to public schools that has been occurring, the consequences of rising costs to individual schools have been clear and drastic. Some examples of changes in student enrollment at some well-regarded colleges of this state are shown in the table. These are some of the more ruinous figures taken from the Data Book on Illinois Higher Education, 1976. Inevitably, colleges struck by such declines in enrollment must make serious adjustments in their staffs, programs and services. Such adjustments may make them less competitive, causing a further decline in enrollment. If they raise tuition and fees too precipitously, they will commit suicide. Adding to the woes of the private institution is the fact that endowment income has not kept pace with inflation. In some cases, endowments have been encumbered in order to balance budgets, thus further reducing income. Staying alive in these parlous times is not easy for the private college. Some will say that the colleges that go under during these years of stress are the weaker ones, that as elsewhere the law of the marketplace culls out the weak. That is not as logical as it looks at first glance because the struggle between David and Goliath is not being waged on equal terms. The comparative figures given earlier on the charges at private and public schools, showing that the student or his parent pays about twice as much at the private institution, are misleading because the cost per student for the college is about the same, whether he goes to a public or a private school. One way or another the taxpayer picks the difference. It is therefore not in taxpayer's interest that private schools should be squeezed out of existence, the students who might have gone there will most likely migrate to a put college or university, and the taxpayer will pick up more differentials. There may be some who think that this is as it should be, that the private system of higher education is an elite system, that it breeds the snobbery the Ivy League, and in a democratic society, the sons and daughters of well-to-do classes should get no better an education than the sons and daughters of the less well-to-do. Let the cream and the skim milk of society be homogenized. But acceptance of this attitude means a lowering of academic standards and the acceptance of mediocrity.
Community college clash As if there were not already more than enough community colleges to serve the legitimate needs of the state, there was introduced into the last session of the legislature House Bill 1524, which would have required every school district of Illinois to be included in a junior college district. This bill is not a new one; it has been introduced before in varying forms. The argument for the proposal is that the community college is a good thing, and that every school district should either form one of its own (if it has a sufficient tax base) or be annexed to an existing community college district. Some members of the 22/ January 1978/ Illinois Issues legislature believe there is a "mandate" to achieve 100 per cent adherence to the master plan. However, previous bills have permitted, either by statutory provision or gubernatorial amendment, a referendum which allowed the voters of each district to indicate whether they wished to be annexed to an existing community college district or to pay "chargeback" tuition expenses of students in that school district who wished to attend a community college of their own choosing. This would seem to be a fair way of handling the problem. The Jacksonville school district, #117, where both Illinois College and MacMurray College are located, voted 9-1 against joining a community college district in its last such referendum in 1974; other districts in the area voted as high as 14-1 against annexation.
Legislative outcome Gov. James R. Thompson saw the cogency of those arguments and vetoed H.B. 1524. There was no attempt to override because the bill's sponsor, Rep. William Walsh (D., LaGrange Park), decided not to pursue it. But it may be expected that a similar bill will be introduced in some future session. The certainty of additional tax bases for supporting the public sector of education, the lure of statewide uniformity of educational facilities and programs, and the very desire to "complete the system" seem to be hard for some legislators to resist. But it has also been an American desire to allow freedom of choice, to encourage legitimate competition and to provide the best climate for research and experimentation. Lil' David was small, and he's been getting smaller. Goliath was big, and he's been getting gigantic. This Goliath is not going to be brought down by a slingshot and a pebble, and in fact, this David never wanted to bring him down. He has been and is willing to settle for coexistence. And almost every educational theorist, including those in the public sector, believes in the necessity of coexistence of public and private institutions in order to maintain a strong system of higher education in Illinois and throughout the nation.
23 / January 1978/ Illinois Issues
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