College and Research Libraries


MARY F. BERRY 

Higher Education in 

the United States: The Road Ahead 

Achievements of the federal administration in education during the Ninety-
fifth Congress are summarized as well as plans for the Ninety-sixth Con-
gress. Considering the future of higher education in the United States, the 
author looks at possible changes and what they may mean. Elements dis-
cussed are the composition of the student body and of the teaching faculty, 
use of campus facilities~ financing of higher education, kinds of academic 
programs offered and their quality, and the role of the federal government. 

I AM DELIGHTED to join you here on the 
anniversary of your organization. I under-
stand that the association celebrates a "big" 
birthday as you meet here in Boston this 
week. So congratulations on reaching your 
fortieth _ anniversary and best wishes for 
many more. 

I am told that this is the first national 
conference for this particular body of the 
American Library Association, the Associa-
tion of College and Research Libraries. I am 
happy to join you on what apparently has 
resulted in a very successful first voyage in 
this effort, too. 

THE PRESENT RECORD 

Though I have come here to speak on the 
future of higher education, let me take a 
few minutes to share with you some ·recent 
events that make these exciting times in our 
nation's capital, especially for those of us in 
education. 

Since April 1977 those of us at the federal 
level have been bringing messages that 
were predictive in nature-telling our audi-
ences what this administration intended to 
do in the . field of education. Today I can 
come before you with enthusjpsm and with 
much sense of accomplishment in the sue-

Mary F. Berry is assistant secretary for educa-
tion, United States Department of Health, Educa-
tion and Welfare, Washington, D.C. 

cesses which we achieved during the 
Ninety-fifth Congress. 

Let me say at the outset that: 
- If ever there was a champion of educa-

tion; 
- If ever there was the embodiment of a 

commitment to education; 
- If ever there was a friend of education; 
That person is Jimmy Carter. 
Having experienced a dearth of that kind 

of commitment in recent administrations, 
those of us in education are beginning to be 
"born again" in the belief that education is 
rightfully gaining its due as a number one 
priority in this society. 

President Carter requested-and got-
the largest single increase in education ser-
vices in our nation's history. Education ap-
propriations were signed in October. 

The reauthorization of the Elementary 
and Secondary Education Act of 1965 com-
prised the most significant rewrite of that 
legislation since it was enacted. 

The centerpiece of that legislation is on 
the development of basic skills-an indica-
tion of the president's heartfelt commitment 
to provide our country's children with the 
basic tools to function in this society. 

This legislation: 
1. Reaffirms and strengthens the com-

mitment established thirteen years ago to 
programs which ensure access and equal 
educational opportunity to poor and educa-
tionally needy children; 

I 103 



104 I College & Research Libraries • March 1979 

2. Ensures that all children in the nation's 
schools master basic skills of reading, writ-
ing, and arithmetic; 

3. Creates a new federal, state, and local 
partnership to help carry out these priorities 
while reducing the paperwork burden. 

Specifically, this legislation authorizes 
about fifty _ programs, including a dozen 
major new ones, and provides for spending 
of more than $55 billion over the next five 
years. We hope this will mean more stu-
dents entering higher education institutions 
who know how to read, write, and think 
and who will be able to use the library, that 
most important facility, from the start. 

In higher education, we are proud of the 
Middle Income Student Assistance Act 
which ~as signed just this last week and 
which represents a landmark commitment 
to aiding families with children in colleges 
and universities. 

This bill authorizes several significant 
changes in the student assistance programs. 
The changes will provide more generous 
grants to low-income students and make 
eligible students from families with incomes 
up to $25,000. In fiscal year 1978, about 2.1 
million students from families with incomes 
up to $15,000 were eligible for Basic Educa-
tional Opportunity Grants. An additional 1.2 
million students from middle-income 
families will now be eligible. This marks the 
largest infusion of funds for middle-income 
students since the 1944 GI Bill. 

The bill also expands the Guaranteed 
Student Loan Program so that any student 
who has the need will be eligible for feder-
ally guaranteed and heavily subsidized loans 
of up to $2,500 a year. No interest will be 
charged on those loans while the student is 
in college. 

This particular legislation, passed in the 
final hours of Congress, was the president's 
alternative to various tuition'ttax credit pro-
posals which failed in the Ninety-fifth Con-
gress. 

Ultimately, we came through the 
Ninety-fifth Congress with the largest edu-
cation budget in history-$12.4 billion. 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act 
appropriations were well over the $3-billion 
mark with an increase of over $358 million 
in the previous year. Financial aid to stu-
dents totaled nearly $4 billion with an in-

crease of over $668 million. The total Edu~ 
cation Division appropriations increased by 
over $1 billion in the previous year. 

While we were not successful in the pas-
sage of legislation which would establish a 
separate Department of Education, we are 
determined that we shall not fail in that goal 
come the Ninety-sixth Congress. 

President Carter has reiterated his com-
mitment to this goal in recent days. He will 
sen<! that bill back to Congress in the com-
ing session. The Senate, as you may recall, 
passed the bill, but the clock ran out on the 
House side, and the bill did not come to a 
vote. Vice-President Mondale has recently 
stated that President Carter- will have a 
signing ceremony on this bill before the 
Ninety._sixth Congress adjourns. I plan to be 
there for that ceremony. 

I believe this is an education record of 
which we can be proud, and we are hopeful 
that our proposals for the reauthorization of 
the postsecondary education programs will 
fare as well in the Ninety-sixth Congress. 

HIGHER EDUCATION AND LIBRARIES 

If there is one fact about colleges and 
universities, it is that they have changed at 
a faster rate than ever before in the sixties 
and seventies. 

Our student bodies are more diverse than 
ever before. Students who once would not 
have attended colleges are attending. Unfor-
tunately, there is not much diversity in 
faculties and administrations. Enrollments 
have increased. Our curriculum has been 
influenced by our changing society, 
technology, and the needs which we per-
ceive as a nation. 

In recent decades, academic libraries 
have managed to maintain the changing 
pace necessary to provide the essential re-
sources which these times demand. The key 
to that adaptability has been in their ability 
to discern trends of importance before they 
occur. But the challenges may be even 
greater for academic libraries today and in 
the future. 

Reading skills of college students are not 
what they once were. Where yesterday's 
college student came to college predisposed 
to reading and libraries and took pleasure in 
them, today' s college freshman is said to ar-
rive on campus with _an experience of 



[ 

"t5,000 hours of television viewing. One 
does not dare to speculate how much read-
ing accompanied that student to the cam-
pus. We hope our new legislation will 
remedy this, but, for now and the next few 
years, you will see the disinterested reader 
in your institutions. 

Today we are faced with extremely varied 
student bodies, with extremely diverse skills 
and needs. Demographic patterns will con-
tinue to alter the composition of the student 
body in the decades to come. Indeed, the 
challenge of the future may be in serving 
the same individual at different periods in 
his or her life. 

But the test for all academic libraries will 
be in serving all of these students ade-
quately. Libraries need to use new 
technologies that make reading seem as 
much fun as television viewing. They must 
find resources to fund technological im-
provements and book purchases. And they 
must be creative in finding ways to store 
and retrieve materials consistent with realis-
tic space demands. They must persuade 
presidents, foundations, and legislators to 
increase their budgets. 

Federal support for college library re-
sources in fiscal year 1979 totals $9,975,000 
and $6,000,000 for research libraries. And 
we are requesting an additional $2,000,000 
in supplemental funds for library demon-
stration projects. In the reauthorization , we 
will fully consider what, if any , changes 
need to be made in our efforts. 

LOOKING AHEAD 

What do we foresee in higher education? 
While -predictions are guesswork at best in 
this fast-changing society of ours , we can 
point to some developing patterns that 
every institution must keep in mind when 
decisions are made about the future. 

The Students 

The profile of the traditional student will 
continue to change in the years ahead. The 
1980s will see a decrease in the numbers of 
traditional college-age youth (eighteen to 
twenty-four). An older population, those be-
tween twenty-five and thirty-one, will con-
tinue to rise at least until 1988. 

While the traditional college-age group 
will decline in the next decade , that will 

Higher Education I 105 

·not be the case for blacks, Hispanics, or 
Hispanic-blacks until a few years later, since 
these groups have younger populations. 

During the early seventies, higher educa-
tion experienced an increase of 145 percent 
in students who were over thirty. We found 
many traditional college-age students stop-
ping after high school to take jobs, secure 
incomes, and pursue other endeavors before 
continuing their education. 

We knew male students would enroll-as 
an alternative to the draft, at least during 
the Vietnam War. Now we have a lottery 
system and a change to an all-volunteer mil-
itary. We also have a phaseout of the GI 
Bill. 

The narrowing of the earnings gap be-
tween those with and those without college 
diplomas may have discouraged potential 
college-bound youth . 

An older student population will need 
flexible postsecondary-'educational oppor-
tunities-at the undergraduate and graduate 
level and in experimental nondegree pro-
grams. 

The combined forces of demography and 
attendance of traditional and nontraditional 
students are anticipated to have an overall 
stabilizing effect on enrollment. 

What will be the impact of these factors? 
1. Part-time education will become in-

creasingly popular, particularly as institu-
tions make strong efforts to attract those in 
the twenty-five- to forty-four-year-old age 
groups. 

2. The rising trend in enrollment for 
graduate study is likely to continue but at a 
lesser rate than during the current and past 
decades. 

3. The slackening of the high-pay job op-
portunities for college graduates, the nar-
rowing gap between earnings of those with 
college diplomas and those without, the 
sluggishness in the wage .increases of the 
college graduate are likely to continue if we 
do not solve our economic problems. 

It is hard to determine the extent to 
which these perceptions of the future will 
affect the current college-going decisions of 
youth. 

It could mean that college-age ·students 
will be more selective about education in 
anticipation of job and earning oppor-
tunities. It may be that the college gradu-



106 I College & Research Libraries • March 1979 

ates not able to find suitable jobs will be in-
clined to continue their education. Maybe 
the new higher education standard will be-
come graduate degrees. The impact on soci-
ety, in general, may be that we have cap-
tives in school who shouldn ' t be there. 
Another approach could be to maintain cur-
rent standards with a focus on quality and 
the scaling down of the academic enter-
prise. But, of course , we are experiencing a 
period of expansion. 

The Faculty 

We know that personnel costs account for 
more than one-half of budgets. Although 
salary opportunities have not increased, the 
percent of college and university faculty or-
ganized by unions in recent years has in-
creased from less than 1 percent in 1967 to 
almost 12 percent by 1976. There has been 
a rapid emergence of collective bargaining 
through unionization. Not unexpectedly, a 
high priority of faculty unions is to save and 
preserve the security of the experienced 
professors. 

There was the rapid tenuring of the fac-
ulty. Between 1970 and 1976, the propor-
tion of all full-time faculty that were either 
full or associate professors grew from 40 
percent to about 47 percent. In 1977 the 
percent with tenure had grown to 56.4 per-
cent. 

A sharp decline in new faculty job open-
ings and the strengthening of the tenure 
system have resulted in an older faculty , 
which likely will continue to age as fewer 
people leave and fewer are hired. Median 
age of full-time faculty was 38.5 in 1970 and 
40.6 years in 1975. No new blood in the 
faculty can have a devastating effect on 
quality. 

Since 1959, pay raises for professors and 
administrators has gone up about 6 percent 
annually , while pay for other workers has 
increased by 8 percent. The lag may be at-
tributed to an adjustment after the rapid 
surge of the sixties. On the whole, however, 
there has been a worsening of faculty 
wages, and pressures to correct this are 
likely to increase in the future. 

Also significant is the increase in part-
time personnel. Between 1973 and 1977, 
full-time faculty grew by 9 percent com-
pared to 38 percent in part-time faculty . 

The growth of part-time faculty in two-year 
schools is even more dramatic at 80 per-
cent. For many institutions, hiring of part-
time faculty circumvents costly fringe ben-
efits, provision of office space, and making 
hiring commitments leading to tenure deci-
sions. What effect will this have on part-
time personnel? The effects could be posi-
tive if there were job sharing and tenure, 
but there might be a negative impact on 
productivity. We must watch this develop-
ment very carefully. 

It is premature to speculate on the impact 
of no new faculty on quality educational 
services or the rise in the numbers of part-
time teachers on the learning environment 
of institutions. 

The Campus 

What happens to the campus physically 
will be determined by the growth or de-
crease in student populations. 

Plant utilization and growth will be put to 
the test not only by financial constraints 
which have always accompanied higher edu-
cation , but by new constituencies such as 
the handicapped which we are legally obli-
gated to serve. 

Facilities sharing may become an attrac-
tive option. Some of this already is occur-
ring in consortia-like arrangements. 

Finances 

A number of.---factors have begun to ad-
versely affect revenues of institutions. They 
include depressed wages , higher tuitions , 
cutting operating costs, and deferring main-
tenance and investment in plant and 
equipment. Though these actions are neces-
sary to meet current financial situations, we 
do not believe that they are a permanent so-
lution to budget problems. 

Further, most private institutions have 
had to devote a larger share of their reve-
nues to student aid, partly to offset the 
low-tuition advantage of public institutions. 
But relief to this situation will be provided 
by the Middle Income Student Assistance 
Act. 

Additionally, endowment income to 
finance private educational expenditures has 
steadily declined, and there is no prospect 
for a reversal of this trend . 

Other serious threats to private liberal 



arts colleges and to liberal arts programs in 
all institutions are the reduction in the at-
tractiveness of the liberal arts education and 
the perception, of students and sponsors 
alike, that the weight placed on a liberal 
education may not be warranted. 

In 1970 one in six of all students enrolled 
in postsecondary schools for the first time 
selected a vocational program that did not 
lead to a degree. The ratio went up to one 
in four in 1975. Choice of vocational sub-
jects is prevalent in two-year colleges. 

These factors raise legitimate questions 
about the appropriate source of funding for 
the continued existence of some of our post-
secondary institutions. Who should pay to 
keep them going? 

Program Offerings and Quality 

In the face of financial difficulties and 
stable or even declining enrollments, in-
stitutions have continued to increase the 
number and diversity of the programs which 
they offer, in part, to stem the tide of de-
clining enrollments. 

The response has not necessarily been to 
the potential demand from new clients. In 
many cases we can see that old wine is 
being offered in new bottles under different 
and more attractive labels. 

Judgments on the quality of students, in-
stitutions , and programs are difficult to de-
termine and may not be appropriate for us 
as federal officials . But there is a general 
presumption that standards of college edu-
cation have been eroding. There is general 
agreement that entry standards are declin-
ing as measured by the long-term decline 
in SAT scores. 

Current attempts are being made to as-
sess the quality of institutions and their 
programs in a number of states. 

In the future we are likely to witness a 
growing interest and movement within 
higher education institutions toward mini-
mal standards for college education and 
stricter justification for offerings in terms of 
size and quality. 

A. related development is the renewed 
interest in "core" curriculum or a reinstitu-
tion of general education requirements . The 
proliferation of courses of little or no 
academic value and the enormity of course 
choices allowing a student to opt for less 

Higher Education I 107 

structure and diluted content have prompt-
ed debate on alternative means of tackling 
the problem. Some institutions have already 
put a back-to-the-basics or an almost-back-
to-the-basics emphasis into effect. 

One set of proposals involves prescribing 
that students take an agreed group of 
courses before graduation. A second alterna-
tive goes a step further by attempting to 
define a set of testable knowledge skills as a 
requirement for graduation. 

THE FEDERAL ROLE IN THE FUTURE 

Tile overriding premise offederal support in 
the past has been that qualified students 
should have an opportunity to attend post-
secondary education and that the responsibil-
ity for financing education should he shared 
among parents, students, the private sector, 
and various levels of government. That prem-
ise has resulted in the development of a com-
mitment to: 

- Reducing financial barriers to postsecon-
dary education through entitlements for stu-
dents in need of financial assistance. Passage of 
the Middle Income Student Assistance Act is 
the most recent example of this continued 
commitment. 

- Enhancing the capacity of students to 
finance their own education through loans and 
incentives for part-time employment oppor-
tunities. 

- Assisting in meeting the needs of 
specially disadvantaged groups such as 
minorities, women, and the handicapped. 

- Providing selective support for improv-
ing the physical, financial, and intellectual ca-
pacity of postsecondary institutions, in par-
ticular those that serve special purposes. 

-Finally, there has been a commitment to 
stimulate the supply of some specialized skill 
areas and research in selected fields that are of 
national interest. 

During the reauthorization of the higher 
education legislation we need to reexamine 
our role in education. 

- We need to reconsider the premises and 
the commitments to which the federal gov-
ernment has adhered in the past. 

-There are some who would argue that the 
current patterns of financing higher education 
are totally irrational from an economic 
standpoint. 

- There are arguments that there is a 



,. 108 I College & Research Libraries • March 1979 

surplus of college graduates and that any fu-
ture student subsidy will merely contribute to 
the unemployment rolls of college graduates. 

- Do we continue to provide financial 
stress aid to developing institutions , and how? 

- Should the needs for changes in physical 
facilities in higher education required by law 
be met through federal assistance? How much 
aid should we provide to institutions? 

All of these issues "will challenge the federal 
role in the immediate future. 

As one observer put it: "The next decade 
will try the souls of those connected with col-
leges and universities. Enrollments are pro-
jected to go down. Funds for instruction will 
grow more slowly than in any period since 
World War II. The 1980s may well become the 
Dark Ages ofhigher education as college grad-
uates will find it increasingly difficult to land 

jobs which utilize the training they received.'' 
The decades ahead will, of course, be trying 

times for policy analysts , for planners, for edu-
cational providers , for administrators, for 
those who work in higher education, and for 
the society they will shape. Going into that 
time frame with a budget-cutting mentality 
will make it no easier. The point is that innova-
tion and adaptability will be necessary in meet-
ing the challenges of the future. 

At the federal level a sensitivity, concern , 
and commitment to education , as that more 
recently illustrated by the Carter administra-
tion, will serve as a positive environment in 
which to seek the solutions . No less important 
will be the role of those in higher education to 
define , shape , and help us determine that pol-
icy which will ultimately affect us all.