The Augusta Courier

Georgia Needs Great University On Campus At Athens
Trained Leaders In All Fields Necessary For Progress

Patch-Work Program Neglects Adequate Support Of Vital Colleges In System

Georgia's greatest need today is a greater University.

Yet, we are neglecting the building of a greater University on the campus in Athens.

We can never have a greater system of public education until we first have a place in Georgia for the training of leaders in the field of education, in the field of business and in all of the professions.

This is one thing that cannot be built from the bottom up.

The first movement in Georgia for a system of public education started with the University. The University was created before any other public school system was devised.

When Abraham Baldwin came to Georgia he was instrumental in securing the passage of a bill creating a system of public education.

It first created the University and then authorized the creation of a system of academies.

Abraham Baldwin in his wisdom knew that you must first have teachers and leaders before you could build a system of public instruction.

Consequently, he devised and the Legislature of Georgia adopted his plan for a University at the top of the educational system.

The Board of Regents will initiate in the next few days a seven million-dollar building program and yet not a single dollar of this amount will be spent at the University.

It will be spent at some of the other various institutions and some of it will be spent at institutions that are and will dry up.

Our need for today is for a plan for the building of the kind of an educational system that we ought to have and the entire system is dependent upon building a greater University at the top of the educational structure.

We have built some wonderful professional schools and other schools devoted to a particular purpose in Georgia.

For instance, we are building in Augusta a twelve million-dollar teaching hospital to be used in connection with the Medical School and we will spend another six hundred thousand dollars to build another building at the Medical College to be used for classroom and administrative purposes.

These buildings and the equipment which goes along will give us the finest physical plant for the operation of a Medical College and a Medical Center to be found anywhere in America.

At Georgia Tech we have built a great institution for the training of engineers
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Patch-Work Program Neglects Adequate Support Of Vital Colleges In System

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and, with the exception of one classroom building. Georgia Tech is in fine position to handle an engineering student body of five thousand.

While nearly one-half of the students at Georgia Tech today are not taking engineering it is hoped that in the immediate future the enrollment will consist of engineers instead of those taking a course in business administration.

We have built up other institutions serving a particular purpose.

The University of Georgia has been neglected. While at Augusta we have a Medical School and at Georgia Tech we have an Engineering School, on the campus of the University of Georgia are to be found many schools.

Included in this list is a law school, Franklin College, the school of liberal arts, the teachers school, the school of agriculture, the school of veterinary medicine, the school of pharmacy, the school of forestry, the school of business administration, the school of journalism, and the various schools of sciences.

So, at the University there are a great many schools and each of them is just as important to Georgia as is the school of medicine and the school of engineering.

The building of the school of medicine and the school of engineering has been a fine thing for Georgia and a great thing for Georgia.

But, we cannot become a great people with a few doctors and a few engineers.

It is going to take something more than doctors and engineers.

We need a great institution for training of our people in all of the professions and all of the callings.

We need leaders today in every line of endeavor as we have never needed them before because we are today facing our greatest opportunity for progress and development.

Yet, in this State we do not have the kind of a school of agriculture that we ought to have.

There ought to be five thousand students at the school of agriculture alone.

Georgia's economy today is still based agriculture and while we have a fine opportunity for developing our agricultural economy we are today failing to train the type of leadership needed.

We are also living in an age of atomic energy and a day when scientists are solely needed.

Yet, in all of Georgia we do not today have a place where we can train as we should students of chemistry, of physics, of biology and all of the other fields of science.

The greatest need at the University is a great science center where we can train scientists in all these fields.

Today we are forced to import our scientists from other states. We are forced to look to other states for our experts.

This fact is an imminent discrimination against the Georgia youths because we are not giving to them the same opportunities that youths in other states receive.

Likewise we are importing our college teachers because we do not have the kind of a place to train them that we ought to have.

We have not developed the University itself to this extent.

We are also prone to stress the material side of education and to forget the cultural and spiritual side.

The training of people in the fields of the arts is just as important to a people as training in the fields of sciences.

No people can ever reach a great development without being trained in the arts and without developing a fine culture and without developing spiritually.

And in addition to all of these other things we must recognize that the success of our State depends upon the training of the youth of this State in the fields of business administration of every kind.

In times past people have opposed development of a greater University in Georgia on the grounds of prejudice. They have believed that universities were created for the idle rich.

This misunderstanding should be cleared up in the minds of the people.

The average boy and the average girl who attends the University does not come from the ranks of the rich.

They come from people of modest and moderate means and they struggle and work to earn their way through. Many of them borrow from relatives, friends, banks and loan funds in order to secure an education.

Many more work during the summer month and during their off hours during the school year in order to complete their education.

Instead of being an institution for the sons and daughters of the idle rich, it is a great workshop for the average man and the average woman in Georgia and it is one of the absolute essentials for the development of a great State.

In Athens we have the foundation for a greater University and there one can be and should be built in keeping with the hope, the faith and the destiny of the people of Georgia.

The University should be neglected no longer.