Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1944 [PAGE 26]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

1942]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

23

gate the charges made by the Attorney General of the State against the Board of Trustees and the administration of the University. T h e Board also voted to invite certain organizations, including the American Council on Education, to investigate and report to the public on the truth or falsity of these charges. T h e American Council on Education is willing to make this investigation in accordance with the following statement of principles for conducting educational surveys: " T h e American Council on Education will undertake such surveys of higher institutions and school systems as circumstances permit. In all such instances there must be evidence of the need for such a study and a reasonable prospect that adequate consideration will be given to the findings. In order that there may be a clear understanding the Committee on Educational Surveys of the Council has prepared the following statement of conditions governing the conduct of surveys: " 1 . T h e Council will undertake educational surveys only on invitation of proper legal authority. "2. T h e American Council on Education will select all members of survey commissions and a director for each survey, subject to the approval of the body requesting the survey. All other members of the staff will be selected by the director of the survey in consultation with the President of the Council. "3. T h e entire cost of the survey, including the cost of any preliminary investigation, compensation for the services and expenses of members of survey commissions and of the staff, publication, conferences, all administrative charges, and all other expenses incident to the survey must be borne by the body requesting the survey. T h e Council will submit a budget for the approval of this body. "4. T h e proper legal authority must agree that it and each higher institution or school being studied will place at the disposal of the Council all information which is available and assist in obtaining such additional data or information as may be required. "5. T h e sponsoring body must agree to permit and facilitate the publication of such report as may be rendered by the Council at the end of the survey, and must take all reasonable measures to secure adequate consideration of the recommendations in the report." If the American Council on Education makes this survey it will probably ask five leading educators to serve on a Survey Commission. One of the members of the Commission or else a field agent will need to spend several days, perhaps two or three weeks, at the University securing factual material. W h e n all the data and information needed have been assembled, the Commission will then meet at the University to consider them, and following that the Commission will submit a report. It is estimated that the cost of such a survey, including the printing of the report, will be from $3,000 to $4,000. As an example of the type of surveys the American Council on Education makes of educational institutions, I submit the survey report it made of the Louisiana State University in 1040. T h e Louisiana survey cost $10,000 (of which $2,000 was for publication), but the survey of the University of Illinois need not be so extensive. I recommend that the Board of Trustees authorize: 1. A survey of the University of Illinois by the American Council on Education. T h e general scope of this survey shall be to investigate the charges made against the Board of Trustees and the administration of the University of Illinois by the Attorney General of Illinois in the following press statements issued by him, and any other charges he may make, to determine their truth or falsity: "I intend to prove that since 1934 a group of hand-picked political puppets have virtually built a political empire in Champaign and Urbana and have cloaked their operations and defended their illegal activities behind the shield of education. " T h e University has been on the downgrade since 1934 when control was taken over by a board of trustees who were not the choice of the people but were hand-picked by the downstate democratic machine and the Kelly-Nash machine in Cook County.