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Caption: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1944
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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS IIO3 For a university to say that it is providing opportunities for higher education gives no indication of its real purposes. For a college of liberal arts to say that it offers a college education really says nothing definite. Any educational institution should be clearly conscious of just what it is trying to do for its students, and should have reliable information as to how well it is succeeding. But it is not enough to know these matters merely with reference to the present. A university should have a constructive educational program as it faces the future. An institution that looks mainly to maintaining its own internal organization and its own administrative checks and balances cannot do this. It must be keenly alert to the needs which mean educational services in terms of its clientele's needs; it must be constantly studying those needs and projecting its thinking into formulating programs for future educational development. The Commission has been impressed by the serious, conscientious attitude of all the interviewed administrators and faculty members toward the duties which they believe to be theirs. Nowhere has there been observed any indication of taking duties lightly. At the same time the Commission records with deep concern the over-emphasis on the "mint and annis and cummin" 32 to the neglect of the weightier matters of educational goals and programs. There is a marked lack of clearly defined educational goals in general education and of progressive construction of educational programs to give definite direction to the University's future educational development. Again in justice it should be said that as far as the Commission has been able to observe there has been no further dereliction in this respect since 1934, although by force of necessity perhaps first attention has been given to providing for urgently pressing physical needs. At the same time it has been during this period that the needs of a well-formulated, well-administered educational program have been thrust to the front because of the unprecedented increase in the number of students enrolling in the University. It is the judgment of the Commission that there is a lack of coordination and over-all educational planning for the institution. " M a t t h e w 2 3 : 23. [A.C.E. Report —85]
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