Federal Aid: Going It Alone

FEDERAL AID Going it AloneMost college leaders, public and private, plead for more federal funds as the only way out of a cash crisis that grows increasingly serious each year.

Yet a hardy band of holdout colleges is stubbornly bucking the irreversible trend toward greater reliance on Washington. These schools even shun the federal help already available, prefer to try to make it on their own.

The resisters range from Mormon-run Brigham Young University, largest U.S. private school (enrollment:

20,670), to tiny Wabash College (840).

They include such high-quality liberal arts schools as Claremont Men’s Col lege in California and Hanover College in Indiana. Also among them are New Mexico’s Artesia College, which is still too new to be accredited, and a dozen little-known institutions operated by fundamentalist churches.

The church opposition, especially among Baptists, is based on the constitutional principle of separation of church and state in its strictest form. This is often combined with a conservative political philosophy that distrusts strong central Government and big federal spending. Brigham Young President Ernest L. Wilkinson, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1964, argues, for example, that the federal debt already is too high and that B.Y.U. does not intend “to be a party to the insolvency of our country.” Federal gifts, he holds, lead inevitably to federal control, since “it would be an irresponsible Government if it put up the money and didn’t know how it was being spent.”

Muscle Y. Fat. The most articulate aid opponent is John A. Howard, president of Rockford College, a middle-quality liberal arts school northwest of Chicago. He is concerned less about outright federal control than a possible loss of academic diversity if Government funds become overly important. “If you’re dependent on federal money, you’ve got to figure out what you think those bright young men in Washington think you need,” he argues. “You can’t be yourself.”

Leaders of the holdout colleges also cite the time-consuming red tape involved in securing federal grants, the Government’s emphasis on science and defense-related studies, and the discouraging impact of public grants on private giving. Yet some of the opposition has more of a rhetorical than a pragmatic ring. Declares President J. Donald Phillips of Michigan’s Hillsdale College: “I don’t like to see the vibrant muscle of independence and incentive turned into the flabby fat of dependence.”

Actually it is hard for the anti-grant spokesmen to pinpoint specific instances in which the Government has attached restrictive strings to its aid. Though religious services may not be held in a Government-financed science building, a college could easily build several chapels with the money it would otherwise have to spend on a science center. Beloit College President Miller Upton, who readily accepts aid, notes that some federal construction requires the temporary erection of a building-site sign with Lyndon B. Johnson’s name in letters three inches high—but Upton agrees that this hardly hinders the academic program. President George Benson of Claremont Men’s College sees no coercion in construction grants, notes that “once the building is up, there isn’t much the Government can do about it.”

Practicality v. Principle. Some of the holdouts are getting along well enough, mainly by hunting harder for private dollars. Rockford has built an entirely new $24 million campus since 1960, pushed the pay of full professors from a top of $7,000 to an average $11,000. It draws 86% of its annual $2,000,000 operating budget from private gifts —highest rate in the nation. While President Howard prefers to credit this success to donors’ excitement over academic innovations at his school, his anti-aid stance has created wide publicity that appeals to some wealthy donors. Shunning federal money is about the only way in which Rockford is different from hundreds of other colleges. Officials at Hanover College concede that they gain more in private gifts than they lose in federal grants by appealing to anti-Government sentiment.

The holdouts are showing some give —and take. Brigham Young lets its professors accept federal research grants. The reason is not simply, as President Wilkinson argues, that “the research we give is worth every cent we get,” but also that the grants help him attract competent scholars to strengthen a generally mediocre faculty. Even Baptist opposition is softening. Such Baptist schools as Baylor, Wake Forest and Mercer have risked the ire of some church officials by accepting aid. Says M. Norvel Young, president of Los Angeles’ Pepperdine College, a wavering holdout: “We’d like to paddle our own canoe as long as it’s feasible—but we don’t plan to commit academic suicide.”