Education: Amalgamate?

The new President of Western Reserve was not without work on his desk. The day after his inauguration, the Cleveland Foundation, an organization founded in 1914 for “civic, educational and philanthropic work,” reported on a survey it had lately completed. This report dwelt on Cleveland’s higher educational needs, recommended the formation in Cleveland of one large new university through an amalgamation of Western Reserve University and the Case School of Applied Sciences.

Western Reserve—in whose history and upbuilding such men as John Hay, U. S. Secretary of State under Roosevelt; Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th U. S. President; Myron T. Herrick, U. S. Ambassador to France; Newton D. Baker, onetime U. S. Secretary of War; and Samuel Mather, Cleveland coal and iron man have figured—has specialized principally in the liberal arts. The Case School is chiefly scientific. Where the two overlap, waste motion is now seen. The proposed amalgamation would leave each institution separate autonomy under unified control, would, by extension of their activities, try “to lead higher education out of the sequestered academic grooves into the common life of all the people of the community.” A business school, with a “downtown” extension was one proposed departure.