College and Research Libraries


56 I College & Research Libraries • January 1972 

activity that utilizes an average of 10 percent 
of the file each day, less than 0.1 percent of a 
library's catalog will be used each day. There 
is thus a relatively small base of activity over 
which to spread costs. The investment in con-
version, storage, and maintenance must there-
fore be justified by "increased benefits" to a 
much greater extent than in business data proc-
essing. 

Such warnings are well taken. 
The volume seems uneven and is re-

dundant in many places; for example, Fig. 
19.7, List of Representative Data Bases, 
p.692-94, and the Inventory of Available 
Data Bases, p.829-75. If more time had 
been taken in organizing and editing the 
text, this would have proved to be an even 
more valuable contribution.-Henry Voos, 
Rutgers University. 

Any Person, Any Study; An Essay on 
Higher Education in the United States. 
Eric Ashby. New York: McGraw-Hill, 
1971. 110p. $4.95. 

Newman, Frank, and others. Report on 
Higher Education, March, 1971 (HE 
5.250:50065). Washington, D.C.: U.S. 
Government Printing Office, 1971. $0.75. 

That higher education in the United 
States is in trouble today must be fully ap-
parent to anyone who does a fair amount 
of reading. Unfortunately, this is often 
clearer to almost any segment of society 
than the one most seriously affected: the 
academic community itself. Part of the 
problem, as we are accustomed to telling 
each other, comes from the enormous ex-
pansion of enrollments and facilities during 
the sixties with its corollary promises of 
more education for a larger proportion of 
the college-age populace. For many of us 
the short-term problem, as Ashby notes, is 
M-0-N-E-Y (p.5). Yet these are not the 
only problems and we delude ourselves in 
thinking that they are. Fortunately, these 
two books, one an analytical but highly 
readable treatise by a British educator and 
the other a report destined to have signifi-
cant impact upon the federal government, 
appear at a propitious moment in academic 
history. Both should find their way onto the 
shelves of all academic libraries. They 
should also be read and discussed by aca-
demic librarians both on campus and off. 

Any Person, Any Study is the first of a 

series of essays by "distinguished authori-
ties in other countries" under the sponsor-
ship of the Carnegie Commission on High-
er Education, whose books by this point 
should be familiar to every academic li-
brarian. These books are having an impact 
upon the general public that hasn't been 
achieved since James Bryant Conant took 
on the American high school in the late 
fifties. Almost every new volume in the 
Carnegie Commission series results in news-
paper headlines, the most provocative so 
far being Earl Cheit's The New Depression 
in Higher Education ( 1971), with its thesis 
that 71 percent of some forty-one of the na-
tion's most prestigious colleges and univer-
sities are either in serious financial trouble 
or heading that way. 

Unfortunately, Sir Eric Ashby's book is 
not likely to achieve such headlines, though 
it deserves more attention than many other 
Carnegie volumes. For Ashby, master of 
Clare College, Cambridge, and formerly 
vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, 
has challenged one of the basic premises 
of American higher education: that it 
should be. for everyone. Hence, of course, 
his title, taken from Ezra Cornell's famous 
statement that he intended to found a uni-
versity where any person could find any 
sort of study he wished. Cornell's idea and 
the land-grant movement went hand in 
hand, so that a hundred years later his am-
bition is close to fulfillment in many institu-
tions. 

What specifically does this British acade-
mician, with some forty years of intermit-
tent experience in American higher educa-
tion, see as the major question for our so-
ciety? He answers on the first page of his 
chapter on "Analysis" (p.23): " ... if en-
rollments continue to rise and finance con-
tinues to :Bow into higher education, will 
it be good enough simply to enlarge or 
multiply institutions without reconsidering 
their pattern, their curricula, their social 
purpose?" Ashby obviously thinks not and 
the Newman Report in its analysis concurs 
(p.61, 82-'83). For both books see an ur-
gent reexamination of institutional mission 
as necessary, with Ashby opting for the 
university as a place of rational enquiry and 
discourse, a posture he believes it is now 
in danger of losing. 

Basically, Ashby's book is a well-written 



description of some current problems in 
higher education, including the lack of con-
sensus on what should be taught under-
graduates, the high attrition rate of fresh-
man students, the overemphasis upon the 
Ph.D. (while recognizing its continuing 
usefulness for its original narrow purpose), 
testing, credentials, university administra-
tion and governance, and the extent of stu-
dent participation in university policy-mak-
ing. Omitted are comments on two prob-
lems where he lacks familiarity: higher ed-
ucation of blacks and the future of Catholic 
colleges (p.1). As one might expect, Ash-
by's descriptions are literate, cogent, and 
challenging. In passing one might note his 
suggestion that lucid, simple writing might 
well be a fundamental skill for undergradu-
ate education, which he thinks the British 
teach better than the Americans (p.49) . 

Whether Ashby is commenting upon the 
notable lack of success of cooperative en-
terprises ( p .17) , or arguing for the ade-
quacy of ETS tests (p.61), or touting a less 
structured approach to university adminis-
tration (p.68-73), he takes the reader back 
again and again to fundamental assump-
tions, for the .. gravest single problem fac-
ing American higher education is this 
alarming disintegration of consensus about 
its purpose." (p.104) Because universities 
have undertaken more functions than they 
have the ability to discharge, they have 
both neglected their chief function of un-
dergraduate teaching and have lost any 
consensus about the relation between uni-
versities and American society. 

Whatever one may think about Sir Eric's 
.. Personal Speculations," as he calls his last 
chapter, he has raised questions which 
many academic librarians will find provoca-
tive, and which they and their faculty col-
leagues had jolly well better face realistical-
ly if they expect continuing support from 
the tax-paying public. 

In the Newman Report one finds similar 
concerns, indeed some striking parallels in 
both approach and solutions. Naturally the 
government report is more forceful in its 
recommendations. Surprisingly, it is almost 
as readable as Ashby's book, and is refresh-
ingly free of the «governmentalese" so 
often characteristic of such efforts. Unlike 
Ashby, Frank Newman, associate director 
of University Relations at Stanford, is not 

Recent Publications I 51 

a well-known name in academic circles. 
Moreover, his task force, appointed by 
HEW Secretary Robert Finch and funded 
by the Ford Foundation, deliberately con-
tained no "big names," either from univer-
sity faculties or administrators. (See Chron-
icle of Higher Education, 15 March 1971.) 
However, the Newman Report has already 
had a profound impact upon the Nixon ad-
ministration's higher education proposals. 
That it will get even more attention is ap-
parent from Secretary Elliot Richardson's 
enthusiastic foreword which notes that "It 
is provocative without being irresponsible; 
unconventional without making a fetish of 
being so; blunt and critical, yet clearly 
written by individuals who are higher edu-
cation 'insiders' deeply committed to their 
profession." (p.v) Obviously such attention 
from high governmental officials merits seri-
ous attention in academia. 

In analyzing the problems facing higher 
education in the 1970s, the Newman Re-
p01t focuses on the growing homogeneity 
of institutions; the professionalization of 
the faculty; discrimination against minori-
ties, the old, and women; the growing trend 
toward centralization and bureaucracy in 
state systems; the problem of drop-outs, 
and the isolation of the academic communi-
ty from the society it serves. The last point 
receives special attention and runs like a 
thread throughout the report. While recog-
nizing that American graduate education 
has become the envy of the world, the writ-
ers find that there is a serious isolation of 
faculty and students from society as a 
whole ( p .19) , that graduate education 
tends to reinforce this isolation (p.4-5), 
that the graduate university model has been 
shamelessly copied by other institutions to 
their own detriment (p.12-13) , and that 
there are few practitioners in graduate pro-
fessional schools who can relate highly the-
oretical knowledge to life as it exists out-
side the ivy-covered walls (p.77). In the 
long catalog of academic sins in chapter 5, 
"The Professionalization of Learning," most 
of us can recognize a few of our own. Li-
brary school faculties , particularly, which 
have moved toward emulation of other re-
search disciplines, had better give this part 
of the report special attention. 

Yet the sins are not all within the acade-
my. There is a growth of bureaucracy 



58 I College & Research Libraries • ]anum·y 1972 

which stems from legislative concern and 
multicampus systems. Such systems have 
not yet gone very far in management, but 
now that their building programs are over, 
they probably will. The result is less au-
tonomy for the local campus and less au-
thority for the local president (p.26). To 
hasten innovation and reform the report 
calls for the educational entrepreneur but 
recognizes that "Entrepreneurs rarely thrive 
in a climate of detailed budget review, 
pressures for equal treatment, statewide in-
terest groups, flagship campus dominance, 
or concern for political expediency." (p.27) 
Among the other bureaucracies needing at-
tention is the interlocking directorate of 
universities and accrediting agencies. Medi-
cal licensing is a national scandal but is far 
from the only one (p.41). Moreover, the 
relationship between academic training and 
success in a profession is not nearly as di-
rect as is frequently assumed (p.39-40). 

The Newman task force suggests that the 
time is critical for change in the system, 
though it does not underestimate the diffi-
culties. What can one do about all these 
problems? Society can create new enter-
prises with different missions and provide 
new enterprise funding. State governments 
can utilize competitive grants similar to 
foundation grants or to the University 
Grants Committee in Great Britain (p.65; 
cf. Ashby, p.85-89). Federal funding can 
adopt a marketing approach where the stu-
dent takes an institutional grant plus his 
own grant and selects the institution best 
for him (p.65-66). Universities can diversi-
fy their faculties by bringing in "practition-
ers who are outstanding in their jobs, and 
... given full status within the institution." 
(p.77) They can also reduce discrimination 
against women and older students and 
adapt minority education to the students 
rather than making the student conform to 
the traditional mold (p.79). Most of all, of 
course, institutions can reexamine their in-
dividual missions, especially necessary if 
cost effectiveness is to work in academic 
programs. Community colleges, for example, 
must cease being dominated by the four-
year institutions and meet the specific needs 
of the students they serve (p.60). For the 
real problem is "How can skill in resource 
utilization become a factor in the system 
of academic rewards?" (p.86) All of this 

is a rather large order, but the task force 
is not pessimistic about solutions, if they 
can stimulate debate on the problems. For-
tunately, their report is short enough and 
inexpensive enough to be placed in the 
hands of all those interested in the future 
of higher education. That group should 
surely include academic librarians and the 
professional associations to which they be-
lang.-Edward G. Holley, University of 
Houston. 

Tales of Melvil's Mouser; or Much Ado 
About Libraries. Paul Dunkin. New 
York: R. R. Bowker Co., 1970. 182p. 
Q. Pimbran Thotwon put down the book. 

Heady stuff, this. 
A book by a librarian ( P. Dunkin, to 

woe and to wit) could and did declare out-
rageously tongue-in-jowl war upon the host 
of sacred cows to which we all ( 'cept you 
'n me) bow down. Why, is nothing sacred 
anymore? quoth Thotwon queryingly. In-
deed, a perusal of the tome revealed that 
Melvil's Mouser was indeed a clever cat: 
he several times took poor Thotwon for a 
dunking in his own chuckling perplexity. 

Surely it cannot be a verity that the 
venerable NLA always comes out third-
best in every two-sided battle? And yet, 
pondered Thotwon ponderously, perhaps 
there is something peculiar about an institu-
tion which seems ever on the brink of dis-
covering that it is! 

Surely, stammered Q. Pimbran, some li-
brarians have been overeager to snatch at 
schemes: but surely only some catalogers 
have sat at the stoop of the Seer of the 
East and swallowed the many facets of the 
Five Laws ... ? 

Surely, turbulated Thotwon, IMCs (Q.P.T. 
knew what that meant even in his sleep-
Instructional Materials Centers) do need 
promotion: after all, aren't we all heathen 
looking toward the salvation of the funny-
looking missionaries? (Somehow Thotwon 
was dimly aware that his words had tripped 
up somewhere-but never mind, he'd read 
it somewhere.) 

And surely, tremulated Thotwon to him-
self, library education is not in a shambles: 
"The broad sweep of the library universe" 
swam before his ken as he fondly recollect-
ed dear Miss Bittybotty and her class in 
Foundations of Librarianship many years