March 1982
COLUMNS
Page 5
EDUCATION $ $
$ $ c c
By Chuck Johnson
Once upon a time... Education was
very important in America. Once
upon a time... It was more important
to educate someone than to build
weapons to destroy someone. Col
lege education is rapidly becoming a
"once upon a time” thing. With
Reagan's budget cuts, millions of
now-college students will have to
return home to the gas stations and
textile mills. Millions more will never
even make it to college. Reagan's
proposed cuts have shocked thou
sands. In North Carolina, 51% of
college students will be cut off from
federal aid in 1983. That is approxi
mately 61,300 students. The Ameri
can dream of being able to climb the
ladder from the bottom to the top is
rapidly becoming that: a dream.
While the proposed cuts will not
truly affect college students until next,
fall, they have already begun to
change college campuses in many
ways: a student migration from
private to public colleges has begun;
out-of-state students are going back
home to school; administrators are
toying with exotic . new tuition
charges; minority students are
dropping out in record numbers:
there are fewer student services
available on campus; campus health
officials are even worried that student
stress levels are becoming danger
ously high. It has been predicted that
the suicide level of college students
will rise even higher than they are
now.
Dr. William Pickens of the
California Post Secondary Education
Commission hopes the cuts this year
are too big to be true. "Maybe I'm a
pollyanna, but the cuts as we have
heard them rumored are so extreme
that they constitute a complete
reversal of national policy for the last
ten years. Our minority and female
population is decreasing, and this
campus is reverting to a typical white
male student body," confirms Clay-
,ton Lewis, Student Government
President at the University of
Washington. Statements such as
these seem to point out a past era
when only the upper-class, white
male was able to attend college. At a
time when great advancements are
being made in science and tech
nology, it would be a tragedy to lose
all advancements that have been
made for equality and civil rights. The
leaders of our past have worked
much too hard to lose out to the
leaders of today.
The problem is grim, but the
solution may be even grimmer. The
military may begin to take over
college campuses. In 1980, Dr.
George Stelmach, a physical educa
tion/dance teacher at the University
of Wisconsin, received a $107,000
grant to study how the brain tells the
body what to do. "It has a practical
application to everything we do -
speech, the aging process, whether
we fly an airplane, or use a
typewriter," says Stelmach, who also
heads the University's Motor Be
havior Laboratory. He envisions a day
when his work could aid sufferers of
Parkinson's Disease, or improve
sports performances. But Stelmach's
grant came from an unlikely source:
the U. S. Air Force which presumably
wants to learn more about pilots'
reaction time than pole vault records.
Stelmach's uncertainty over taking
the money is going on more
frequently at major research cam
puses these days. The Pentagon,
taking advantage of receding mem
ories of college anti-militarism, is
muscling its way back into academia
in a big way. Military research on
campus, in fact, is virtually the only
segment of the higher education
budget to grow in recent years. The
College Press Setvice
straiion.
NTvN
MARCH
4
GRANTS
Pentagon's campus spending has
rocketed from $495 million in the
fiscal year 1980, to an estimated
$709.7 million for 1982, according to
the National Science Foundation
which monitors federal research fi
nances. The same sum would pay the
salary of 215,000 fully-tenured pro
fessors making $33,000 a year, or
swell the entire U. S. teaching corps
by more than 40%. Even though they
can't use the money for new
professors, colleges are undoubtedly
the main beneficiaries of the Reagan
Administration's $20 billion research
budget. Over the previous three
years, campuses have enjoyed a 70%
increase in military research grants.
The bulk of the increased spending
has gone to the hard sciences. Funds
for engineering, physics, chemistry,
math and computer science projects
are way up, while funds for political
science, sociology and other liberal
arts fields are down. There is also a
20% increase in military funding for
psychological research.
Academic objections and worry
about military research have in
creased as dramatically as the military
spending. "The worst thing about
military spending," argues Dr. Sey
mour Melman, a Columbia University
professor who has authored several
books critical of the Pentagon
spending, "is that it sets the tone for
the university. It sets the tone for
foundation money, and each time
leaves a woeful absence of work in
other areas. What you're going to
have is two kinds of money (on
campus), he predicts. "One kind is
'classified', which means closed
doors and armed guards. A piece of
the university becomes an armed
camp. And for unclassified research,
you have to remember that the
military always has areas of special
interest. The money becomes a big
magnet, and for every ten applicants
(for it), you'll have another ten
thinking, 'What does the Defense
Department want?' The obvious
answer to what they want is
frightening. Because with Reagan's
policies, they will soon be able to take
it - the higher education system as
well as its students."
In the next issue: How to fight back
nnd survive the Reagan Admini-