Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1944 [PAGE 118]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

1942]

U N I V E R S I T Y OF I L L I N O I S

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tions resulting from this study. Naturally, it has taken several weeks for the President and principal officers of the University to familiarize themselves with the contents of the Report, review its findings and the reasons therefor, and prepare the following statement for the Board of Trustees. In no single instance during the six months the Survey was in progress did the Survey group suggest any immediate change in our present business methods, administration, and organization. Such suggestions had been invited initially and the invitation was repeated during the period of study by letter under date of April n , 1942. T h e Board may secure a general conception of the results of the Survey by reading first the letter of transmittal dated August 1, 1942 (page 113 above). It also seems appropriate to present to the Board certain general comments on the main results indicated in the letter before proceeding to a detailed discussion of the Report itself. It should be obvious, even from the letter, that the Report is concerned not with one but with two major problems, viz., the educational organization of the University and the business management of the University. In spite of the fact that the announced purpose of the Report limited the investigators to business operations, the two problems mentioned above are inextricably interwoven into a single plan of reorganization.

I I . BASIC CONSIDERATIONS

The most important aspect of this entire study is the concept of a University as reflected in the attitude of mind of the Survey group who did the work and formulated the conclusions. They state (p. 65) 1 that "the proposed plan recognizes three major functional areas: (1) Education and Research, (2) Business, (3) Public Relations." These areas are then dealt with as of coordinate importance and placed under the complete administrative control of three new officers, who are assigned great authority in their respective areas. A university has only one major function, which is education and research, both conceived in their broader senses. T h e business operations of the institution are secondary and incidental to this function, and so are its general public relations. Both of these agencies serve the first function, but are not coordinate with it. A great university is a collection of strong departments covering the various fields of knowledge, grouped into colleges or schools for the purpose of administering the processes of teaching and research. If distinguished and capable scholars head these departments and suitable conditions and opportunities exist, they will collect a competent staff of professors and the institution as a whole will become distinguished. A few top administrators will not make a distinguished university unless the faculty itself is distinguished. The professional reputation of the University of Illinois has rested in the past, and now continues to rest, on a large and notable group of distinguished professors. The University of Illinois will become a greater institution of learning when it can secure the funds to find and retain a larger number of such distinguished professors in more of its departments. T o be sure, it must conserve its funds. Its business affairs must be and are well managed. In order to secure appropriate funds, it needs greatly to improve its public relations. But these are accessory activities. Educational leadership requires the closest possible cooperation between the President and the departments where the education and research programs must originate, and be directed. In my judgment, the group who made this Survey appear to think in terms of a commercial business where all important ideas and policies originate among the top management officers and are passed down to the organization to execute. They announce on page 1 that " T h e University of Illinois is an educational business." T h e phrase "educational business" is used three times in the letter transmitting the Report to the President. This language is a clear revelation of the frame of mind of the investigators toward all aspects of this study. But in a great university the top management officers cannot possibly expect to exercise a similar type of control over the many distinguished departments and professors in such an institution. It is in the departments, under the stimulus of great scholars who are also great teachers and research men, that educational and research programs normally originate. These are the programs that must be encouraged, coordinated, and facilitated by the Deans and the President through business operations and administrative plans.

'Page references are to the Report itself.