Solution of Higher Education 
 
 Program in New Mexico 
 
 Fitz-Gerald 
 
 
 
 
 
DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 DURHAM, N. C. 
 
 
 

 
 SOLUTION OF 
 
 Higher Education 
 Program in New 
 Mexico 
 
 
 
 Report fo Governor of New Mexico 
 by Prof. John D. Fitz-Gerald 
 
 University of Illinois 
 
 
 

 
E5535 
 REPORT TO GOVERNOR 
 of NEW MEXICO 
 
 by 
 
 : Prof. John D. Fitz-Gerald 
 
 University of Illinois 
 
 
 
 Y 
 ! A To His Excellence, O. A. Larrazolo, , 
 The Capitol, 
 ; Santa Fe, New Mexico. 
 Your Excellency: 
 
 Somewhat over a year ago, following the 
 first of the two Educational Conferences 
 that it has been my privilege to conduct in 
 
 New Mexico in the summers of 1919 and 
 
 1920 (under the auspices of the American 
 Association for International Conciliation), 
 
 , you asked me to study as an outsider the 
 problem of the higher education of New 
 
 Mexico. I have been working thereon as 
 opportunity permitted ever since and in an 
 
 L interview that it was my privilege to have 
 with you in July, 1920, I gave you a rough 
 outline of the conclusions I had reached and 
 you asked me to send them to you in detail. 
 The purpose of this letter is to comply with 
 that request. 
 
 By higher education I have understood, 
 for the purposes of my study, those institu: 
 tions entrance to which is based upon a 
 high school preparation and whose courses 
 are four years in length, leading to some rec- 
 ognized, academic degree, and in addition 
 to those institutions all work beyond them 
 which is usually connected with a graduate 
 school of some kind. Obviously, therefore, 
 what I have to say does not apply directly 
 to your two normal schools: The New 
 Mexico Normal University at East Las 
 Vegas and the New Mexico State Normal 
 School at Silver City, although each of them 
 earries technical pedagogical work for two 
 or more years beyond graduation from high 
 school. Nor does it concern the New Mex- 
 
 P44e2 
 
ico Military Institute, which likewise has a 
 course carrying the student two years be- 
 yond graduation trom high school. 
 
 INSTITUTIONS CONCERNED 
 
 The institutions | have in mind are all 
 those separate tacullies ‘or institutions in 
 your state which eisewhere are grouped 
 within the corporate body of Our great pri- 
 vately endowed universities or our great 
 state universities, as, tor example, the New 
 Mexico State School of Mines at Socorro, 
 the New Mexico College of Agriculture anu 
 Mechanic Arts at State College, and the Uni- 
 versity of New Mexico at Albuquerque. And 
 what I say of these would apply equally to 
 any other faculties that might later be estab- 
 lished, such as a faculty of law or a faculty 
 of medicine or a college of journalism or 
 dentistry or pharmacy, etc. , 
 
 STATE NOT WELL SERVED, SAYS _ 
 
 It seems to me that under your present, 
 method of procedure with the School of 
 Mines and the College of Agriculture and 
 Mechanic Arts and the University, so called, 
 all appealing to the legislature separately 
 and independently for appropriations, the 
 State is not being served to the best possible 
 advantage. Each of these institutions, and 
 quite naturally and very properly as things 
 now stand, tries to get from the State all 
 the funds it can for its own development, 
 without any regard whatever for the needs 
 of the sister institutions. Furthermore, your 
 State University as at present constituted, 
 seems to consist of only two faculties: The 
 College of Arts and Sciences and the College 
 of Engineering, together with an embryonic 
 graduate school]. A university in the nature 
 of the case should consist of more faculties 
 than that, and the force of your State Uni- 
 versity is weakened by the absence from its 
 jurisdiction of the other two schools that 
 you have already established, namely, the 
 School of Mines and the College of Agricul- 
 ture and Mechanic Arts. 
 
 DUPLICATION WASTE 
 
 It would seem further, to an outsider, as 
 though there must be a good deal of waste 
 by duplication in the fact that your School 
 
of Mines and your College of Mechanic Arts 
 and your College of Engineering, all of 
 whose fields are so closely akin, are actually 
 located in three different cities. 
 
 My first set of recommendations then is 
 as follows: 
 
 Have the legislature pass a bill merging 
 all these institutions as separate faculties 
 of the State University, with one single 
 Board of Trustees, who should be elected by 
 popular vote. 
 
 WOULD HAVE NINE TRUSTEES 
 
 It would be well to have these Trustees 
 nine in number, elected for six years and 
 divided into three classes. Every two years 
 one of these classes would retire from office, 
 but its members individually could be re- 
 elected. In each class there should be one 
 woman representative. In addition to these 
 nine elected members, you would probably 
 find it desirable to have the following offi- 
 cers serve ex-officio: The Governor of the 
 State, the President of the State Board of 
 Agriculture, and the Superintendent of Pub- 
 lic Instruction, all of whom should be elected 
 to their positions by popular vote. The offi- 
 cers of the Board would be elected by the 
 Board. This Board, and this Board only, 
 should have the power of appointment for all 
 members of the faculties, including the Pres- 
 ident and the Deans. The Board should not, 
 however, have the power of nomination for 
 faculty members. Such nominations should 
 come from the other experts on the faculty, 
 (usually, but not necessarily, through the 
 Deans) to the President, who would present 
 them to the Board of Trustees. 
 
 TO CO-ORDINATE NEEDS 
 
 The various departments in each of the 
 colleges would prepare their respective 
 budgets and present them to the Dean of 
 their college. The Dean would proceed to 
 co-ordinate to the best of his ability these 
 various departmental needs. The several 
 Deans would then present their budgets to 
 the President, who again would proceed 
 with an attempt at co-ordination of the va- 
 ried needs of the several colleges. This co- 
 ordinated budget the President then would 
 
 P4422” 
 
present to the Board of Trustees, who would 
 approve it, or amend it with a view to fur- 
 ther co-ordination. This final budget, thus 
 co-ordinated, would be presented to the leg- 
 islators for approval and passing. 
 
 In this unified budget it is evident that 
 the element of waste by duplication, inev- 
 itable in the system you now have, would 
 be reduced to a minimum. 
 
 WOULD MERGE ALL PHYSICAL PLANTS 
 
 The full advantages of this unification of 
 administration would be obtained, however, 
 only when you would have likewise have 
 merged the physical plants of all the schools 
 concerned. Many of the results, however, 
 can be obtained by the mere administrative 
 unification and more will be obtained as the 
 physical unification progresses. 
 
 Possibly for climatic and soil reasons the 
 College of Agriculture might have to be lett 
 where it is, but I can see no reason why the 
 other faculties, including that part of the 
 College of Agriculture which is devoted to 
 Mechanic Arts, should not be merged with 
 the rest of the State University as speedily 
 as the State can afford to make the physical 
 transfer. And however expensive it may be 
 at the present time to make that transfer, 
 it should be borne in mind that it will 
 always be more expensive to make it later 
 on. 
 
 Intimately connected with this question 
 of the physical unification of the University 
 is that of the place that should be selected 
 for the University’s home. As an outsider, 
 my judgment would be in favor of Santa Fe 
 for the following reasons: 
 
 SANTA FE CULTURAL CENTER 
 
 Santa Fe seems to be the cultural center 
 of the Southwest. It is a city permeated 
 with memories of the past and has a cultural 
 atmosphere that is comparable to some of 
 the great cultural centers of Europe. While 
 your state library is not very large, what 
 there is of it is located in Santa Fe. Santa 
 Fe is also the home of your two great his- 
 torical museums which house the collections 
 of the Historical Society of New Mexico, the 
 
_School. of American Archaeology, and. the 
 New Mexico Museum of Arcnaeology. 
 
 Concerning the general desirableness of 
 Santa Fe as a place to live in, you are even 
 better informed than I. Its lying off the 
 main line of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa 
 Fe railroad should not be counted as a dis- 
 advantage. Princeton University is similar- 
 ly located with relation to the main line 
 of the Pennsylvania railroad. Let me point 
 out, too, that the near proximity of the 
 Pecos Forest Reserve would not be espe- 
 cially disadvantageous to a forestry school, 
 if the University should ever develop such 
 a school. 
 
 For all these reasons and several others 
 that you can readily imagine, I should rec- 
 ommend the immediate transfer of the pres- 
 ent State University (with the College of 
 Arts and Sciences, its College of Engineer- 
 ing, and its embryonic graduate school) from 
 Albuquerque to Santa Fe. 
 
 While I do not know the reasons that led 
 to the University’s being established at Al- 
 buquerque, I do know that during the sum. 
 mer I read an editorial news item in one of 
 the Albuquerque papers in which it was 
 stated that a number of the leading citizens 
 ‘of that city had come to the conclusion that 
 if it were best for the state to have the 
 State University located. somewhere else, 
 they were willing to have it so located. 
 
 OUTSIDER’S VIEWPOINT 
 
 As an outsider looking at the matter pure- 
 ly from the point of view of what will make 
 the University most serviceable to the State, 
 it seems to me that the reasons I have 
 given for the immediate transfer of this 
 part of the Ultimate State University to 
 Santa Fe are entirely sound. As one who 
 studied in some of the foremost universities 
 of the world (Columbia, Leipzig, Berlin, 
 Paris and Madrid) and who has visited many 
 other universities equally: famous (Yale, 
 Princeton, Pennsylvania, John MHopkins, 
 ‘Trinity College, Dublin, Oxford, Leiden, 
 Heidelberg, Jena, Bonn, Bordeaux, Zaragoza, 
 Barcelona, Valencia, Sevilla, Salamanca, 
 Buenos Aires, La Plata, Montevideo, Santi- 
 ago de Chile, and San Marcos of Lima), I 
 
know what it means for a student to be 
 making his studies in a place that has an 
 atmosphere of its own and that is permeated 
 with memories of the past, while possessed 
 of a spirit that is looking eagerly toward 
 the future. All of this your students would 
 have if your University were located at 
 Santa Fe. 
 
 e 
 
 Under separate cover I am sending to you 
 for your further information, a copy of the 
 laws of the United States and the State of 
 Illinois, concerning the University of Illi- 
 nois. For the same reason I am sending you 
 a copy of a Report of a Special Senate Com- 
 mittee authorized February 6, 1911. “To 
 make a thoro investigation of * * * organiza- 
 tion and efficiency of the University, with 
 a view to drafting ultimately a constitution 
 for the University of Illinois.” This report 
 has never been adopted, but the several fac- 
 ulties concerned took it up part by part and 
 reported their several judgments on the 
 various phases thereof that most intimately 
 concerned them. I am enclosing a copy of 
 those reports. 
 
 The copy of the Senate Committee Report 
 that I am sending to you I have amended in 
 all points where the Senatesin considering 
 both sets of reports actually reached a deci- 
 sion. I trust you will find these reports 
 helpful and suggestive in drafting your new 
 State law and your new constitution for the 
 new University of New Mexico, which shall 
 combine under one administration all of 
 your institutions of higher learning except 
 the two normal schools and military insti- 
 tution. 
 
 If you are able to develop at this reor- 
 ganized State University good strong cour- 
 ses in the liberal arts and sciences leading 
 respectively to the degree of Bachelor of 
 Arts and Bachelor of Sciences (according as 
 the student shall have taken the majority of 
 his work in the liberal arts or in the scien- 
 ces), I should strongly recommend that in 
 the further interests of avoiding waste by 
 duplication your two normal schools be dis- 
 couraged from carrying their work further 
 than two years beyond high school gradu‘- 
 tion. At the same time those of their stu- 
 dents who wish to go on for their bachelor’s 
 
degree in arts or in sciences should be en- 
 couraged to do so by having it understood 
 that tne University wili accept their two 
 years o: Normal College work on a Liat basis 
 or one-half of all the work required tor the 
 respective bachelor’s degree, upon the un- 
 derstanding, of course, that the University 
 shall convince itself periodically that the 
 Normal Colleges in those two years oi work 
 are maintaining proper collegiate standards. 
 A concrete exampie will serve to show you 
 what I mean in this last respect. While J 
 know nothing of the actual standards of the 
 New Mexico Normal School, i do know that 
 the New Mexico Normal University is main- 
 taining a two-year normal course of standard 
 grade; and | know it for the reason that a 
 year ago a graduate of the New Mexico 
 Normal University was admitted to Junior 
 standing in the University of California as 
 a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of 
 Arts. 
 
 If for any reason there be undue delay in 
 thus reorganizing your State University and 
 in developing strong curricula therein lead- 
 ing to the respective degrees of Bachelor of 
 Arts and Bachelor of Sciences, as indicated 
 above, then it would probably be advisable 
 to encourage your two Normal Schools at 
 East Las Vegas and at Silver City to develop 
 such curricula for themseives. They al- 
 ready possess some of the machinery 
 therefor. 
 
 If there is any other respect in which I 
 can be of service to your Excellency I beg ~ 
 you to command me; and I wish to assure 
 you that my two summers of teaching in 
 your state and mingling with your people 
 have given me a very real interest in your 
 educational affairs. 
 
 With great respect, I have the honor, Sir, 
 to be 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 (Signed) JOHN D. FITZ-GERALD. 
 September 1, 1920. 
 
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