University of Virginia Library

Academic Standing

Although we disagree with a great deal
of what "The Heretic" wrote in his column
in yesterday's Cavalier Daily, it is true
that judged on many national standards the
University remains definitely in the second
rank. Let's take the study made in 1965
by Allan M. Cartter of the American
Council on Education as an example.

Writing in the Southern Economic Journal
(July 1965), Mr. Cartter discusses the slow
growth of higher education in the South in
relation to the general "economic lag" of
the region. He considers higher education
"a clearly distinguishable industry producing
a small number of fairly standardized products
(e.g., B.A.'s, M.A.'s, Ph.D.'s,
etc.)"-a viewpoint that perhaps would
irritate some humanists but one which lends
itself well to statistical study.

Examined on these grounds, the University
appears to be lagging in its
"productivity." Despite the fact that before
1925 this school had awarded half of the
doctorates in the South, in the years since
we have been overshadowed in many ways
by such universities as North Carolina,
Duke, Rice, Tulane and Vanderbilt.

Let's consider some of the statistics Mr.
Cartter offers.

One way to judge the quality of graduate
education is by examining the quantity of
doctorates awarded. Mr. Cartter uses national
standards to calculate the minimum
size for an effective doctoral program in
16 academic fields. Of the Southern universities,
only North Carolina earned an
"A" rating (meaning the minimum was
achieved); the University was rated "B-"
on the basis of programs offered, "C-"
on the basis of all 16 fields (due to the
fact that no doctorates were offered in
three fields). It is interesting to note that
in a 1957 study not a single Southern
institution was ranked among the 20 leading
graduate schools in the nation.

As for faculty salaries, the University
came in fourth in the South (for 1963-64)
with an average of $11,000. Duke lead the
list at $12,800.

On a table of number of national fellowship
holders for 1960-64, the University
ranked 28th in the country with 96 fellows.
Harvard lead the list with 936; North Carolina,
Vanderbilt, Duke, Texas and Tulane
were ahead of Virginia.

The University made a better showing
in a ranking of national fellowship holders
as a percentage of the first-year graduate
class. We ranked 16th in the nation, surpassed
in the South only by Vanderbilt
and Rice.

Perhaps one of the most illuminating
statistics in Mr. Cartter's study was that
the state of Virginia in 1963 had one of
the lowest per capita appropriations for
higher education in the South-$7.90. West
Virginia, in contrast, appropriated $12.54
per capita. This figure should be considered
in light of Mr. Cartter's conclusion: "The
greatest danger lies in a tendency of State
legislatures to put quantity above quality-for
a combination of local political pressures
and a traditional distrust of intellectual
pursuits to invert the educational
priorities most essential to economic development."

These statistics cited here are several
years old, of course, and do not reflect
the results of the great academic drive
of the University's administration in recent
years-what has been called, with a mixture
of contempt and admiration, "Harvardizing."
The University has suffered
somewhat in these comparative studies in
being a smaller school than, say, North
Carolina. Statistics, furthermore, at best are
a rough approximation, much given to distortion,
which cannot measure subtle differences
in quality. Yet it should be obvious
that the University cannot afford to be
complacent about increasing its lagging
"productivity" and that its students should
not be condescending toward other, ostensibly
less fashionable" institutions.

Another remark from Mr. Cartter is a
fitting conclusion: "In an age of national
rather than regional competition-for
faculty, students, foundation support and
government contracts-southern higher education
must become quality conscious or be
left behind."