Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 16]

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History University of Illinois

different people with a wider outlook, with higher ideals than ever before. As in many other fields, so in this of education; as in many other institutions, so here in Illinois, all that we have accomplished will seem small compared with that for which we shall be reaching out, all that we have done mere preparation for that which we shall do. Our successors, because of their larger outlook and alas! because of our own short-sighted vision will possibly find in our work little inspiration. They will only wonder that our outlook was so limited, our views so narrow, our plans so incomplete and unsatisfactory, our foundations, in the laying of which we take so much pride, so inadequate to the superstructure which they will wish to raise. It will be a new world into which human society will advance when victory comes and peace is assured; old standards will be displaced by new and higher ones set up in each department of individual and national life. We shall be thinking in terms of billions of dollars instead of millions, in terms of opportunity for all instead of for a few, in terms of freedom and liberty and democracy instead of privilege and caste, in terms of the development of the ability of all our people instead of that of a few limited classes, in terms of spiritual life instead of material life. As to what concrete forms this new spirit shall clothe itself in, we have, I think, now little notion, and even our dreams are not large enough to take in the reality, but I venture to mention a few points in which the University of Illinois in 1968 will be different from the university of today. We think now of a university with low fees for instruction; then we shall see a university with no fees. Now a university in which boys and girls with little money can come and make their way; then we shall see a university in which every boy and girl, who is able and willing to profit by a university education, will be able to get it, no matter how poor their parents, no matter how difficult the conditions under which they have lived. We think now of a university with half a million books; then we shall see one with five millions. Now of a university with few laboratories, with very inadequate equipment; then we shall see an institution made up of numerous laboratories and furnished with all the equipment which can be of use in making the laboratory turn out the largest and best output of scientific truth. We see a university now in which only a few of the subjects which have stimulated the human intellect and stirred the human