AN ANALYSIS OF THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF SENIOR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES IN WEST TEXAS: GEOGRAPHY AND VITAL FORCES by DON R. FISHER, B.S., M.A. A DISSERTATION IN EDUCATION Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF EDUCATION Approved Accepted May, 1988 Copyright 1988 Don R. Fisher ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have on occasion longed for the quaint simplicity of being on the end of a log in one of the two roles—educator or student—in which I have spent much of my life. But we live in complex times, and Mark Hopkins notwithstanding, a number of people helped me make this study a reality. To them, I extend my sincere appreciation for their support and encouragement. Dr. Sabe M. Kennedy, Chair of the Advisory Committee, always found the time to provide the guidance and assurance I needed to complete the project. Dr. Dan L. Flores reminded me that Texas, with its long and colorful history, offered endless possibilities for studying people and the institutions they produced. Dr. Clyde Kelsey directed and supervised my PUP research project and motivated me to further examine the unique aspects of higher education in West Texas. This study is dedicated to Virginia C. Fisher, my wife, who is also my best friend, my editor, my typist, and my word processor extraordinaire. Ginny kept me going, and, like many long-suffering spouses, received far less than she deserved in thanks and appreciation for all her good work. 11 Sul Ross State University 86 Texas Tech University 92 Other Four-Year or Degree-Granting Institutions West of the lOOth Meridian . 98 V. REGIONALISM AND FUNDING 102 Equity and the Permanent University Fund . 105 The Ad Valorem Tax Fund Ill Other Arrangements and a New Fund 119 VI. VITAL FORCES 124 Regionalism 125 West Texas Matures 134 Turner and Webb Revisited 140 Planning and Coordination 144 SOURCES CONSULTED 151 IV ABSTRACT The development of higher education in West Texas mirrored the state's experience with colleges and universities. For more than a century, Texas lacked a plan for development of higher education. Political considerations were paramount, and West Texas best characterized the state's bits-and-pieces development process. As they had done in the eastern part of the state during the decade of the Republic and the early years of statehood, Protestant church groups founded colleges in West Texas well in advance of state-supported institutions. Many of the early church-related colleges failed, but those which survived marshalled local support and became symbols of community solidarity and regional pride. The first publicly-funded college in West Texas, appropriately named West Texas State Normal, opened in Canyon in 1910. In the next fifteen years, three other state colleges were founded in West Texas: The School of Mines, Sul Ross State, and Texas Technological College. Boosters hailed Texas Tech as a people's college with a mandate to serve the young men and women of a dynamic region. The University of Texas and Texas ASM benefitted for years from the largess of the Permanent University Fund (PUF). However, until the advent in 1947 of the ad valorem tax fund, colleges in West Texas and other parts of the state had difficulty funding major construction projects. The ad valorem tax fund satisfied construction needs until its demise in 1982. Responding to requests from Texas Tech and other institutions, the voters in 1984 approved a constitutional amendment to establish a new dedicated fund and to distribute PUF benefits more evenly among UT and A&M system institutions. The geography of West Texas and the>people who settled there combined to produce vital forces which are clearly reflected in the colleges and universities of the region. This particular brand of regionalism sparks some internal competition but presents a united front in the face of apathy or neglect, real or perceived. The vital forces which emerged from the West Texas frontier experience made higher education with its abundant opportunities readily available to all the people of the region. VI histories of several West Texas colleges which seem to have much in common. Finally, this study deals with human behavior and how that behavior was and still is molded by both environmental and societal forces. The very size of Texas and its settlement patterns, the location of constitutionally established institutions, and the perspectives of many people all contributed to the development of a unique group of colleges and universities in West Texas. Vlll CHAPTER I BEGINNINGS AND COMMITMENT In 1925 a select group of educators from around the United States assembled in Texas in the capital city of Austin. These men and women had come to Texas under the auspices of the Legislature to be a part of the Texas Education Survey Commission. The Commission members included a number of people who were college or university professors and administrators. They served on a committee which devoted its time to evaluating the many aspects of the state's system of higher education. The year 1925 was indeed a propitious time for anyone— resident or visitor—to make such an evaluation. From 1876 to 1925 fourteen state-supported four- year institutions opened their doors.^ Although another twenty-three came into being in the next fifty years, most of these degree-granting institutions and their respective centers or extension campuses had their origins in the 1920's. In short, while the state's senior colleges and universities have undergone phenomenal changes in the past sixty-odd years, the Ijune Rayfield Welch, The Colleges of Texas (Dallas: GLA Press, 1981), pp. 2-254 passim. system was largely in place when the Survey Commission's committee on higher education made its report. The committee reached this conclusion: There is in Texas no more interesting question than that presented by the program of higher edu­ cation. The size of the state, the varied conditions found in its different portions, and certain constitutional provisions affecting some of the institutions of higher learning, all contribute to make it an extremely complex problem.2 In its conclusion, the committee recognized a salient feature of Texas higher education: it was complex. According to the committee, this complexity resulted from factors related to geographical (size, climatic and soil conditions) and constitutional (by implication, political) considerations. One may assume that the committee felt that these issues played a significant role in how the system had begun and how it had expanded to that point. This study will place the committee's findings in historical context and show how West Texas best represents the bits-and-pieces development process that characterized Texas higher education for the better part of a century. Although this study will focus on a geographical entity and the perceptions and forces which flow from it, it is essential at this juncture to deal 2Texas, Legislature, Texas Educational Survey Commission, Higher Education, by D.L. Coffman, et al., vol. 6, Texas Educational Survey Report, 1925, p. 3. 1 with the origins of the educational system in Texas, with special emphasis on higher education. Early Higher Education in Texas On 2 March 1836 a few days before the fall of the besieged Alamo, delegates assembled at Washington-on-the Brazos adopted the Texas Declaration of Independence. George Childress, credited with the authorship of the document, bitterly chastised the Mexican government of the period, for failing to provide for the education of the children of the Anglo-settlers. In Childress' words: It [the Mexican government] failed to establish any public system of education, although possessed of almost boundless resources (the public domain) and although, it is an axiom, in political science, that unless a people are educated and enlightened it is idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty, or the capacity for self government.^ With the Anglo-Texans in control, nearly fifty years passed before the framework of a bottom-to-top educational system appeared in the state. For a long while apathy was to blame, but once that was overcome, a lack of planning was the major problem in higher education. The earliest concept of a system of public education, to include higher education, for all of Texas ^Texas, Declaration of Independence, adopted in Convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos, 2 March 1836. belongs to Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar. Lamar, one of the heroes of the Battle of San Jacinto, became the second president of the struggling Republic of Texas on 22 October 1838, two and one-half years after the battle. In his first message to the Texas Congress, Lamar expressed his belief that a "cultivated mind is the guardian genius of Democracy" and that education was "the only dictator that freemen acknowledge . the only security that freemen desire."^ Undoubtedly aware of the Republic's financial difficulties, Lamar called on the Texas Congress to make "a suitable appropriation of lands to the purpose of general education" which, he judged, could be made "without inconvenience, to the Government, or the people."5 Since land was by far the most plentiful material resource available to the Republic, Lamar also reasoned that a "liberal endowment" could be made for the establishment of a university without the expenditure of painfully scarce funds. Lamar sent his message to the Republic's legislative body in December-1838. In just over a month, the Texas Congress responded to Lamar's eloquent plea for ^Charles Adams Gulick, Jr., ed., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, vol. 2 (Austin: A.C. Baldwin & Sons, Printers, 1922), p. 348. 5ibid., p. 349. L The Texas Republic existed for almost ten years— March 1836 to December 1845.