College and Research Libraries T h e Quest for Quality In Higher Education BY R A L P H E. E L L S W O R T H TH E I M P E N D I N G Berlin crisis as it ap-pears in July dampens our enthusi- asm for long-range thinking or planning. Most of us, nevertheless, tend to hope that if we can just manage to keep them talking, neither of the two K's will get around to acting. T h e r e is hope in this theory. It has been used by us librarians for years and constitutes the basis for the healthy condition of the ALA and most of its divisions! Now it is true that every recent com- mencement speaker, and every newly in- stalled college or university president, has used the theme of "quality" or "ex- cellence" in education, and the theme has become a cliche in the jargon of the day. We have reached the point where our talk has become a satisfactory sub- stitute for really coming to grips with the problem. Again, this indicates the appropriate- ness of the topic for an American Library Association meeting! Perhaps I should remind myself that this is a meeting of A C R L , not ALA, but in that case my gentle irony would be wasted! Allow me now to talk about quality in higher education as I see the issues today. First, the recent, widespread interest in quality has been generated from within universities, not from the ex- pressed wishes of the citizenry, although there has been a small amount of that. T h e motives for this appear to be in some cases selfish and in some quite the opposite. When university presidents use the public's interest in quality as a de- Dr. Ellsworth is Director of Libraries, Uni- versity of Colorado. As incoming ACRL president, he delivered this speech to the general meeting of the Association of Col- lege and Research Libraries, at Cleveland July 12, 1961. vice for browbeating state legislatures into making appropriations that enable the institutions to inaugurate programs for which they are unprepared, as we have seen in Illinois, Michigan, and else- where in the nation, I call this selfish. But when the pressures come from ad- ministrators who have conscientiously re- lated their requests to their ability to produce, or to raise the quality level of the work of their institutions, one should applaud. Second, I should like to mention sev- eral interesting ways in which the quest for quality reveals itself. T h e decline in students' interest in professional training that students asso- ciate with preserving the status q u o — such as law, medicine, and business— and their renewed interest in liberal ed- ucation and in those professions that show promise of effecting social change —such as social service, clinical psychol- ogy, and teaching—is a trend I find heartening, not because the first group of professions is unimportant, but be- cause the trend may convince these schools that they need to alter their ap- proach to education. T h e honors programs that are being created in great numbers are taking new forms and, it seems to me, having a real impact. T h e y are helping to break up the long-standing monopoly of departmental regimentation and helping to emphasize independent study. I refer not to the well-established nineteenth century pro- grams of upper divisional privileges given for outstanding achievement, but to new kinds of courses and teaching methods that permit students to formulate an at- tack on learning without regard to the old system of departmental requirements for the major. T h e upgrading of public institutions of higher education—particularly the country-wide transition from the teach- ers' college to the university, and the state college to the university, painful though it may be to the old state uni- versity in each state—would seem to be in the public interest. Although critics of higher education see signs of increasing conformity among our undergraduates, I see the opposite. T h e obvious decline in interest in inter- collegiate football and in fraternities and sororities is an important sign, and so is the widespread interest in contemporary music and art and the "experimental" film. One can achieve real status among one's fellow students in many admirable ways quite apart from the fraternity sys- tem. Various ways of freeing students from the constricting influences of the lecture system are gaining headway. T h e honors programs mentioned earlier (see files of The Independent Student) are one ex- ample. Popularity of the plan of making a year abroad an integral part of the four-year liberal arts course is another. Here and there one sees the results of truly enlighened programs of laboratory teaching in the high schools, even though, unfortunately, few colleges are prepared in their general educational level of courses to match the work of the best schools. And, of course, it is perfectly clear, although the idea is resisted with typical academic obstinancy, that tele- vision teaching, if properly conceived and used, can place the teaching of most of the elementary college courses on a fully independent basis. We have learned how to teach students to read well enough so that they can learn from books, and if we can do this with books I'm sure we can do it with television! And now to a few observations on the obstacles in the path of our quest for quality. R I G H T K I N D O F B O A R D M E M B E R S One of the most serious problems fac- ing us is the difficulty we have in getting the right kind of people to serve on our boards of regents or trustees for state- supported universities. T o o often the only people who will serve are the ones who are interested in getting the liberals (whom they call communists or "com- mysymps") off the faculties. It takes a courageous board these days to hold off the forces of bigotry, right wing extrem- ism, and fear. It also takes courage to fight for the amount of money the uni- versities need if they are to live up to their responsibilities. Have you ever heard of a regent or trustee whose good work was appreciated in a tangible way by the people of his state? I haven't. Another obstacle is the way in which state legislatures are now exercising di- rect participation in the administration of universities. T h e y do this by establish- ing super boards, by hiring their own educational experts and calling them chancellors, and by using the power to appropriate as the right to dictate poli- cies. T h e i r "experts" organize nationally and agree on the policies they will urge the various legislatures to follow and they develop so-called standards of perform- ance against which requests for money are measured. T h e trouble with these is that they are based on the worship of the median, which means that excellence is equated with waste. California and T e x a s are the leading sinners in this respect. 8 C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S T h e nature and complexity of public university administration today deter- mines the kind of man who takes the posts. T h e r e seems to be no place any more for the scholar-administrator who has an intimate understanding of the process of scholarship—including needs of libraries. T h e r e are exceptions, but fewer and fewer each year. Few sensitive men can stand the grueling pace and abuses that are an inevitable part of the work. T h e unreasonable emphasis upon re- search and publication1 that characterizes so many of the larger public universities, does, in spite of pious claims for how research enriches teaching, have an ad- verse effect on teaching for the simple reason that faculty members in the uni- versity can't afford to spend too much time on good teaching unless this con- tributes to their own research. T h i s is tied to the fact that in most subject areas there is so much easily available grant money for research. T h i s seems to bring out everyone's latent talent for boon- dogling and may therefore have a serious effect on the desirable image of the pro- fessor. Unless you have a project going these days, you are reactionary. T h e amount of research grant money you bring into the department may become a measure of your worth. T h e old-fash- ioned idea of the humanistic scholar quietly at work on the ideas that in- terest him suffers in the atmosphere we are creating today in our universities. T h e influence of the foundations that concern themselves with the teaching processes worries many of us. Some of it is obviously good, but when these funds are dispersed by men who never achieved real distinction in their subject areas, who have always shown a tendency to be on every bandwagon that comes along and who show an overwhelming love for the new, then the possibilities for harm 1 Earl J. McGrath, The Graduate School and the De- cline of Liberal Education, (Published for the Institute of Higher Education [New York] Bureau of Publica- tions, Teachers College, Columbia University, T1959]) p. 56. are great indeed. We can be grateful that the Council on Library Resources has thus far been guided by a man whose judgment is good and who carries the respect of his colleagues. Unwise external control of universities by national associations by means of ac- crediting and state licensing represents a serious weakness in higher education to- day. T h e professions of law, architec- ture, and education have been the most objectionable in recent years. Examples of good performance can be found in business, home economics, and library science. T E A C H I N G VS. I N D O C T R I N A T I O N Failure of colleges and universities to make clear to the American public the differences between teaching and indoc- trination has left the public with un- justified fear that higher education is subversive in the fields of the social sci- ences. T h e recent practice of diluting the value of the doctorate both directly through real dilution and indirectly through the establishment of special doc- torates—doctor of education, of library science, of business, etc.—would seem to many a most serious weakness. Slowness of our faculties to free them- selves from the provincialism of a west- ern civilization base for the humanities and the social sciences may prove to be our Achilles heel. T h e sciences have long since freed themselves of this provincial- ism, but the other parts of the universi- ties have not. T h e other parts of the world resent the condescension that is implied. T h e inability of higher education to meet the needs of a rapidly expanded population growth through a sensible economy of institutions is understand- able, of course, but still a serious matter. Is it wise to let our campuses grow to enrollments of thirty thousand? Why are universities reluctant to allow these swol- len enrollments to be taken care of by a J A N U A R Y 1 9 6 2 9 larger number of rejuvenated or newly created universities? One wonders if they are not thinking muic aoouc their own self-interests than they are the needs of the public. A C A D E M I C L I B R A R I A N S ' C O N T R I B U T I O N S In this, the third and last part of my paper, I propose to evaluate the contri- bution we academic librarians are mak- ing to higher education. On the positive side, I think we li- brarians are more progressive in our thinking about education than are other people in universities. Most of us have had the benefit of a liberal education, and our outlook is broad and not so highly specialized. W e take seriously our responsibility for self-criticism and self-evaluation, and we have available excellent statistics as working tools. We have a good national association to help us-—both ALA and A C R L — a n d we have an enlightened foundation with money—the Council on Library Re- sources, Inc.—to help us solve our prob- lems. W e are mostly humanistically inclined and we, therefore, view our problems in terms of their relevance to the needs of individuals. On the negative side, we have limited our ability to attract into our ranks enough people who have a good back- ground of subject knowledge and pro- fessional training because we have al- lowed our system of professional train- ing to become a bottleneck. We place too much emphasis on the particular kind of professional training we have developed at a time when we should have been adapting our library schools to meet the needs of higher education. We are probably the least doctrinaire of all the professions in this respect, but that does not relieve us of the responsibility for acting more quickly. I will begin to rejoice when I see the library schools stop pretending that one kind of pro- gram meets the needs of all kinds of libraries. I thought Larry Powell of U C L A was going to be courageous enough to staff that school for the training of librarians for higher education, but I see that he, too, fell into the same old groove. W e also have some problems with our national associations. A C R L has not yet found a peaceful co-existence with ALA, nor have we resolved the problems of re- lationship between A C R L and the As- sociation of Research Libraries. In the new ALA structure, how are we to solve our problems when the associa- tions based on activities (and this is an expression of the wishes of the mem- bership, not the result of dark thoughts among ALA officials) glorify the type of activity? T h i s organization inevitably makes it more difficult to keep activities in their proper relationships within the type of libraries. This, it seems to me, is the problem we, as members of an association, must solve if we are to give to and take from our association the best that can be of- fered. Recruiting Material Available L i b r a r i a n s who counsel p o t e n t i a l l i b r a r i a n s o r who work with counseling services will want copies of the recently revised list of sources o f financial aid for study in the field o f li- b r i a n s h i p , Fellowships, Scholarships, Grants-in-Aid, Loan Funds, and Other Assistance for Library Education in the United States and Canada ( C h i c a g o : A m e r i c a n L i b r a r y As- sociation, L i b r a r y E d u c a t i o n Division, 1961). U p to ten copies are available from the Li- brary E d u c a t i o n Division w i t h o u t charge. Also available soon, for d i s t r i b u t i o n , are the first two of the D e m c o r e c r u i t i n g b r o c h u r e s — t h e general p a m p h l e t a n d the p r e s e n t a t i o n of op- p o r t u n i t i e s in library e d u c a t i o n today. 1 0 C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S