University of Virginia Library

Growing Pains

In his fourth "Report to the University
Community" released last week, President
Shannon deals with a question "which
American public universities can scarcely
afford to debate," to use his own words. Mr.
Shannon, in some 2200 words on the subject
of the University's growth, reports to the
community that we will and must grow if the
University is to educate all qualified
Virginians and maintain high-quality graduate
and research programs.

In a little less than a decade the University
is projected to grow from its current
enrollment of 10,852 students to 18,000 by
1980. The student body will grow by more
than 1,000 students next year and by 1977
there will be 14,000 students in
Charlottesville.

And so we are slated for rapid growth over
the next decade, a fact which is not new to
most members of this community. Most
members of this community support Mr.
Shannon's reasons for growth, and the debate
has moved on to a discussion of what type of
growth the University will experience over the
next decade.

The sad part of the President's report is
that it provides so little opinion or even
information useful to the current debate.
"Plans for the future," Mr. Shannon writes,
"recognize that the University will continue
to emphasize graduate and professional
education while at the same time continuing
to support a strong College of Arts and
Sciences essential to any strong graduate
university."

We wish President Shannon had included
some specific details about the growth of the
University. There are many questions over the
subject of growth which need answers. What
type of housing will be available to the larger
number of high school graduates in the State
who will want to attend the University in
1980? How will they get from one part of the
Grounds to another? Will the sons and
daughters of the less affluent be able to get
the financial assistance which will enable
them to attend this school? Will there be
enough professors to teach these students the
courses they desire? Will we have a library and
faculty office space to attract good
professors? In short, will there be growth or
merely impaction? Are we going to grow
smoothly on a well-planned scheme or will we
go from one crisis, such as the current housing
shortage, to the next?

It appears as if many new students will be
admitted before the academic buildings,
dormitories, and transportation systems
designed to accommodate them will be ready.
A few words of warning that the crowding on
the Grounds will get worse before it gets
better might have added a note of realism to
the President's report. Already there are long
lines of students trying to get into courses
which cannot be expanded, a lack of
dormitory space, parking problems and other
growing pains.

We realize that predicting the future is at
best a chancy business, one which our
President would like to avoid. Many of the
answers to the questions concerning growth
lie with State authorities who must supply the
money for a growing state system of higher
education. Perhaps it was to State authorities
that Mr. Shannon's report was aimed.
President Nixon has proposed a budget for
higher education which will merely maintain
the federal share of the expenditures of
colleges and universities at its existing level of
about 25 per cent. This means that the
increased support for higher education will
have to come from either the students,
through tuition and fees, or the State.

It is no secret that the taxpayers of the
Commonwealth and their representatives in
the legislature are not exactly anxious to
increase radically the State's support for
higher education. It seems as if we must
become overcrowded before the State will
pay for new facilities. And, although that is a
poor way to run any business including the
business of education, it just might be the
reality in this case. If that is so, then
legislators, who are so concerned with campus
violence, should know that the most violent
demonstration on the Grounds in recent
history was not the strike of last May, but
rather the car riots of 1957. Students, in
other words, will not enjoy living in
substandard housing, or being crowded into
classes and they might react in a rather violent
fashion, particularly if they are forced to pay
more for a lower quality of education.

An ill-planned, under-financed expansion
of the University can undo all of the good of
the careful planning of the past. In any
growth some things will have to go. We hope
that the "academical village" will not lose its
sense of community, among other things.

If the administration really "will welcome
the counsel of all members of the University
community" on the questions of growth then
Mr. Shannon should, in some future "Report
to the University Community," be a little
more specific about current plans for that
growth.