Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1922 [PAGE 190]

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184

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

[February 18,

Facts Bearing on the In juiry and Recommendation (1) Attendance at veterinary colleges and schools of the country has, almost without exception, declined within the past five years. There are a few excellent veterinary colleges connected with the larger institutions of learning, particularly in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Michigan, and Iowa. These colleges all give a four-year course leading to the degree of D. V. M. (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine), and some of them are equipped with excellent facilities for research. But the attendance at every one of them has been declining for some time and, in general, they are only about half filled. It was a realization of this situation that induced the authorities of the State of Wisconsin to abandon a plan which they had approved for the establishment of a veterinary college in connection with the State University. The enrollment at Pennsylvania has dropped from 150 to 55 in the past four or five years* The attendance at other state veterinary institutions is only about half the number that could be readily accommodated. It is clear that there are now facilities enough in the country to take care of many more students than are attracted to this field. Therefore, if the University of Illinois were to establish a veterinary college of the ordinary type, it would have to be in all respects superior to any other school of its kind in the country. This woutd be a large and expensive undertaking. The cost of the physical plant alone may be appreciated when it is stated that the buildings and equipments of existing institutions like those in Iowa and Pennsylvania represent expenditures of half a million or more, which would now require approximately $1,000,000 to duplicate. The mere cost of a building such as was planned for the proposed veterinary college in the Union Stock Yards in 1908-09 would be approximately $600,000. Your commission thinks it would be very difficult to justify the necessary expenditure for the establishment of such a college of residence teaching alone. Moreover, the field of study in the veterinary profession has shifted. The stress used to be laid on anatomy, materia medica,. and therapeutics, where it is now laid on infectious diseases and methods of control of epidemics. All of this has vastly increased the cost of instruction in the veterinary courses and accounts in large measure for the failure of the private veterinary colleges. It also accounts for the fact that the best advices are that what is needed now is not so much a school for the turning out of more practitioners as it is better endowment and facilities for investigation. Non-residence teaching or veterinary extension This is a field in which the University can render much service to the live stock industry. But its prosecution implies, of course, the cooperation of a research and diagnostic laboratory at the University. Indeed, the University is already doing a good deal of this work in the Division of Animal Husbandry of the College of Agriculture. The Division of Animal Pathology submits the following from its laboratory records as an example of the aid it is at present giving in this important field. Specimens for Diagnosis Received Jan. 1, 1920—June 1, 1920. Horses 13 or 1 % of total. Cattle 127 " 9 . 8 % " " Hogs 1021 " 7 8 . 0 % " " Sheep 31 " 2 . 4 % " " Dogs 3 Poultry 61 " 4 . 6 % " " Feed & Misc. material 36 " 2 . 7 % " " Veterinary research The outstanding demand from veterinarians and live stock men upon the University is for information relative to the causes, prevention, and treatment of many poorly understood animal diseases. The importance of this phase of the subject cannot be over-estimated. The following table gives some idea of the loss due to the absence of proper preventive measures and this absence, in turn, is due, in the main to lack of proper knowledge which can be obtained ordinarily by further research. (3) (2)