NATIONAL GOVERNORS' CONFERENCE
HONOLULU, HAWAII
June 27, 1961

The Chairman of the Conference Planning Committee has
suggested that I open our discussion by reflecting some of my
own views on the financing of higher education. I have chosen
to approach the topic from familiar ground, i.e., from our own
experience in Florida.

The experience of Florida may be of peculiar value
because we have compressed into so few years so much of our
growth. In 1950 there were 2.8 million people in Florida. Today
there are over 5 million. In 1950 there were 3u,000 students in
college in Florida. Last Fall, Just 10 years later, there were
6h,000 students. The larger part of this growth came in insti-
tutions which operate with public support -- they experienced an
increase in enrollment to 25 times that size during that period.

Because we expect a continuation of this growth pattern,
we must plan for higher education as we move.

At the beginning of this decade our problem became
apparent and our Florida Legislative Reference Bureau undertook to
make a study of post-war developments of the state university
system. Following that year our governing board of the institu-
tions of higher learning organized a council of distinguished
educators from across the nation to assist us in making an
appraisal of higher education in Florida. Without that study we
would have found it impossible toanticipate or meet the expansion
that we have experienced. Without that study and subsequent
studies we would be unaware that the 64,000 students now in our

institutions would number 158,000 by 1970.

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of less than degree length that are apprOpriate vary from
locality to locality. If these local variations are to be taken
into account there must be local participation in the support
and in the control of institutions that are able and willing to
provide such programs. In Florida we have community Junior colleges
in 14 areas of the state to offer such services along with strong
programs of general education, and all of these institutions
receive local as well as state support. These institutions
afforded an important dimension to higher education, and the
local support they receive is another approach to the financing
of college level education.

Some people eye the ever growing student body itself
as a source of additionfal revenue. Perhaps they are right in
doing this, but I do not believe that this will prove to be an
acceptable solution in the long run. Individuals are no longer
the principal beneficiaries of higher education, for society
itself is so dependent upon its college educated manpower that it
is to our common interest tolrovide educational opportunities
beyond the high school for all who can profit from them.

The democratic institutions in this country, in my
Judgment, are more secure by virtue of the fact that we have
strong, privately financed, and privately controlled institutions
of higher learning. As we obtain adequate support for our publicly
controlled institutions, we must avoid the disruption of the flow
of support to private institutions. If indeed through our tax
structures or otherwise we stimulate private interests to step
up their support for private colleges and universities we will
be meeting our educational needs, and at the same time we will

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help assure the diversity in higher education upon which our
freedoms depend.

As Jefferson recognized the necessity for education in
a democratic state, so let us recognize that now it is the wide-
spread diffusion of knowledge and understanding at the college
and university levels upon which our further progress depends.
This recognition will prompt us to find the amount and the kinds
of support that are really required for this basic function of
state government.

This we can do, and this we must do, without endangering
the very ends we seek.

I mention one more very important source of educational
funds: the private grant. Because Florida is so young we have
not accumulated the social capital which many of you are fortu-
nate to have in your Jurisdictions. Within the last month,
however, we have established an education and research foundation,
and have secured the commitment thereto by large corporate
entities within the state for the purpose of supplementing salaries
of both public and private institutions of higher learning to
insure that we are able to secure at least some of the finest
minds in the world.

While frugality may not be in vogue today, certainly
frugality is not a new concept in America. With each step
westward, on each new frontier our fathers found that resources
were scarce and that the stakes were high. As the frontiersmen
of yesteryear demonstrated clarity of purpose, and as they made
very careful application of their limited resources to the
attainment of those purposes, the expanding horizon of each new

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frontier became reality -- a part of the stable and settled
America.

In our determination to make appropriate but demanding
programs of higher education to as many of our citizens as can
profit therefrom, we are on a new frontier. If the horizons
before us are to become a settled reality in the American culture,
we must recapture the arts of frontier frugality, for once again

the resources are limited and the stakes are high.

One of the most significant tools with which we met this
enrollment explosion was the system of community Junior colleges.
In 1950 we had 5 such colleges. Today we have 25. Just last
week I signed into law a measure creating 3 more, at the same time
vetoing a measure creating yet a fourth. The increase in enroll-
ments over this decade in Junior colleges in Florida has been
16 fold, and we are Just beginning. Indeed, some of the facili-
ties, if not the bulk of them, are still very temporary in nature
pending completion of construction programs now under way.

For many years our university system in Florida has
consisted of two White universities and one Negro university.
These institutions have been rapidly and continually expanded and
improved. In addition we have begun a new institution of higher
learning which already has the first 2 years of enrollments under
way; we have scheduled another institution for construction during
the coming biennium, and we have yet another such institution in
the planning stage for the biennium two years hence.

This is the background for our financial needs. In
addition to the vast quantities of money for capital outlay
required, we have attempted to upgrade our faculties, and in the
legislative session Just completed provided an increase of
salaries for staffs at our institutions of higher learning approx-
imating 20% across the board.

As we look ahead, it would be easy to panic. Some would
eliminate or greatly reduce, college enrollment by arbitrary
limitations. This is an unacceptable alternative in Florida
where our need is to expand educational opportunity rather than
contract it. We have made the decision for better or forworse

that apprOpriate educational opportunities beyond the high school

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will be provided for all our young people who are both willing

and able to profit from rigorous intellectual programs at the

college level.

Yet I would point out to you that while we see the ever
expanding financial need we are conscious of the need of providing
an economy into which young people graduate which preserves for
them at least as much Opportunity for advancement in a free
society as that which was granted to their less well educated
forebears. At the same legislative session at which we increased
college salaries 20%, we balanced our budget and did so without
any increase in taxes. Obviously this required a dedication in
an increasing proportion of our state revenue to education, and it
is perfectly clear to us that the new industry which is coming to
Florida in such volume and the expansion of our native industry
which is going on at such a great pace, is occurring not only
because of our favorable climate but also because of our favorable
tax climate. If it be true that tax structures developed else-
where in the nation are driving the geese that lay the golden eggs
to Florida, we do not intend to claim so many of those eggs that
the birds abandon their new nest. Basically, therefore, our
challenge is that of challenges of all states, somewhat inten-
sified because of our rate of growth: to find the ways in which
our proper governmental functions can be carried on successfully
with the resources which can be gleaned from our expanding economy
without stunting the very growth which we profess to cherish.

we in Florida are dedicated to the proposition that,
saving only the will of God, the minds of men, young and old,

are our greatest resource, have the greatest potential for good,

and must be provided with maximum opportunities for deveIOpment.

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If we are to provide such opportunities in the long run, we must
find ways in which every dollar that we spend for higher education
makes its greatest possible contribution toward the ends we prize
most.

In my Judgment there are three principal avenues in which
to channel our efforts to obtain a maximum return for the money
spent on higher education.

First of all we must determine precisely what it is that
we seek to accomplish through our expenditures for higher educa-
tion. While there is something inherently exhilarating about
institutions of higher learning, we must be clear in our under-
standing that colleges and universities are means to ends, and not
ends in and of themselves. A clear definition of our objectives
for our systems and institutions of higher learning must be formu-
lated in such a way that we can concentrate our resources at
those points best calculated to serve the purposes we value must.

Secondly, we must provide appropriate mechanisms to
facilitate and adequate incentives to prompt the development
within higher education itself, of more effective procedures and
practices than now generally prevail.

Third, we must insure that in the process of developing
great universities we do not permit uneconomic duplication of
instructional areas and unwise proliferation of instructional
offerings.

We have deemed it wise in Florida toprovide one board
of control for all our universities so that they might be operated
as part of a coordinated unit. We have strengthened, and propose
further to strengthen the staff services for this board to enable
it to deal more effectively with the complexities which confront it.

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While I understand something of the hesitation that

educators evidence when their "institutional sovereignty" is
threatened, I am fully convinced that a well-coordinated, state-
wide, effectively Operated system of institutions, each with its
own distinctive character and purpose, is a necessary prerequisite
to the meeting of our responsibilities for higher education within
the resources which we can properly dedicate to that function.

The ways in which we can and will provide such systems of higher
education will vary across the nation, and quite properly so.

Whether it be through a state-wide governing board,
through a coordinating board, through a board of educational
finance, through a commission on higher education, or through
some other mechanism, we must provide the incentives which will
prompt the institutions of higher learning toutilize their
resources more effectively than they are doing now. Ways of
increasing the productivity of the teaching faculties must be
found and followed; that is, we must utilize ways by which the
talents of our best qualified teachers will reach with undiminished
effectiveness greater numbers of students than they now reach.

We can do this if we are willing to provide incentives
so that (1) students will be encouraged to select programs which
they can pursue with profit, thus reducing the drain which occurs
when students undertake to do that which they cannot do, (2)
instruction will be given in groups that are no smaller than is
demonstrably necessary to achieve effectively and well the
purposes for which the instruction is given, (3) increasingly
larger share of the responsibility of students will be placed
upon the students themselves, (h) the deadwood in the curriculum,
i.e., that which is not required to accomplish the purposes of

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the institution, is identified and eliminated, (5) electronic
and mechanical devises will be employed to conserve teaching
manpower, (6) semi-professional assistants will be employed to
permit the professionally educated faculty members to concentrate
on that which only they can do, and (7) the instructional load
will be distributed more uniformly throughout the calendar year,
thus utilizing both the faculty and the physical plant during
the summer months to a greater extent than is now commonly done.

If we provide faculty salaries which are commensurate
with those paid to similarly qualified people in business and
industry we can increase the manpower available for teaching.
This means, however, that we must concentrate our resources more
aimanpower and brainpower than on mortar and bricks. While Florida
colleges and universities utilize instructional space somewhat
more intensively than the national average, we cannot and will
not continue to add instructional space with the expectation that
a room will be used no more than 20 periods per week. We must
spend on construction and on the Operation of the physical plant
no more than is required for the programs of the institutions to
be carried out with a high degree of efficiency. A significant
part of the enrollment increases which we anticipate will be
accommodated through the more intensive use of instructional
space.

Furthermore, if we are to be successful in our effort
to win for higher education the consideration and the support it
requires, we must formulate our legislative requests in ways

that will enable the Legislatures to act upon them more intelli-
gently.

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Once it was assumed that the more details we could
obtain about the operation of our colleges and universities, down
to the names and the salaries of each clerk and each Janitor, the
better we would understand the financial requirements of those
institutions. While some peOple still insist upon having great
volumes of data, there is now widespread recognition that the
great masses of insignificant, uninterpreted data reduce the
probability that college and university budgets will be acted
upon with understanding.

It is my Judgment that one of the most significant
developments in the financing of higher education is now to be
found in the ways in which budget requests are formulated and
presented to the Legislatures for consideration.

In Florida, until recently, our legislative budgets
looked like the composite of the telephone directories of New
York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Honolulu. The new budget
form, in similar terms, is more nearly the size of the telephone
directory of Bus or of Kaneohe on this island. But the brevity
of the document does not limit its usefulness because it is designed
to focus on the basic elements in the budgets and upon the
policy questions on which the budgets are based.

The budget requests for instructional services are based
on precise statements of the anticipated instructional load,
showing the number of student semester hours of credit at each
of three levels (freshman and sophomore, Junior and senior, and
graduate). The proposed student teacher ratio for each of the
three levels is identified, and the number of fulltime-equivalent
teaching faculty members being requested is calculated and shown

in the request.

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The requests for personnel for research and for extension
show the number of full-time-equivalent positions requested for
these functions; and the number of these positions is related to
the number of instructional positions to indicate the emphasis
to be given to research and to extension in relation to that to
be given to instruction.

In addition t>the total amounts for salaries, our
budget requests reflect policy decisions relative to the distri-
bution of the faculties among the several faculty ranks as well
as to the average salaries to be paid. The requests also show
the number of positions to be filled by graduate students and
by student assistants.

While we must do all that we can to assure that the
dollars spent for higher education make their maximum contributions
to the ends we prize most, we have to recognize that the expanding
enterprise of higher education will require larger sums of money
than we now spend.

As we seek to identify additional funds for higher
education for any and all functions of government for that
matter I would urge that we expect each level of government to
provide, to the fullest extent possible, the support that is
required for the functions which are appropriate for it to manage
and to control.

Personally, I resist every effort to shift responsibility
for the financing of any governmental service to a level of
government above the one through which that service can be

provided effectively and efficiently.

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As I have watched the state government in Florida assume
the major responsibility for the support of the public schools,

I have observed that the local school districts (which in Florida
are the counties) have grown increasingly reluctant to do for
themselves all that they can do. With each decrease in local
initiative with regard to the schools we have moved that much
closer to a state-wide system of public schools with the Legis-
lature making the kinds of decisions which local school boards
really ought to be making.

If Federal funds are granted for the purpose of assis-
ting education at college or any other level, it is my hope that
these grants will be made as a refund to the states of income
taken from her people through the greater taxing resources of the

Federal Government, and not as grants for the accomplishment of
specific objectives.

It is my Judgment that the best solution to our problems,
both state and national, is for the higher levels of government
to serve as collection agencies, turning back to the states and
to the local governments revenue to be used for the purposes and
in the ways determined by the receiving governmental unit. In
that connection, let me point out that I advised the Legislature
of Florida in its last session that although I resisted any more
state taxes for state purposes, I favored the use of the taxing
power of the state to meet expanding needs of local governments
in view of the fact that the ad valorem tax, the traditional
work horse, was carrying in many instances a maximum burden.

While the state as a whole is generally the appropriate
unit for the management of publicly supported higher education,
the kinds of technical, semiprofessional, and terminal programs