Repository: UIHistories Project: Commencement - 1922 [PAGE 9]

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c mmonwealth are able to provide. Upon this princi u ill ail institution of our kind either stand or fall Last year and after mature deliberation the Univ sity and it advisers put up a ten-year plan calling fo biennial investment of ten and one-half million dollars the discovery and promulgation of knowledge and application in the State of Illinois. The program yed the most sweeping endorsement ever accorded edu^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^b^ ^ by the people and their ^^ representatives at the Capitol Only an administrative accident disarranged the details and greatly impaired the effectiveness of the large sums that were provided The State should embrace the first opportunity to resume this program and as the initial step restore what has been cut out of a closely knit, well-considered plan of development to meet demands already upon the institution. We hear too much about educating for leadership. What the world wants is not leaders, of whom it has a surfeit, but rather information and trained habits of thinking that it may select its leaders wisely. This all means the closest possible working relations between the institution and the citizenship of the state; between those who, feeling the pressure of unsolved problems, realize the need of better information, and those whose business it is to supply the need. A university so guided will rem close to the people and close to its problems. A university that so functions will not come very far from fulfilling its highest usefulness, and a university so favored will not, in the long run, want for support, tho its because the load fore the relief. Such a university has no special schemes to pro no propoganda to " p u t over." It is a public bl rimes nd plac< where knowledge is needed, drau Upon r) it world in turn for all it is able to COntribut | iblic welfare through the medium of its evcrvdaJ exJ en nets. Such a university is a clearim h u of

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