Cooperative Effort Needed

Dear Editor:

I teach at Lamar University, an ordinary state college in a small city. I am concerned about the future of education in Texas, a state that has a severe budget problem. I received no raise last year and don’t expect one this year or next or ever. In Texas, state legislators express considerable concern about higher education, provided no money is involved. In practice they cut the amount of funds appropriated with a chainsaw and smile. The consequence is diminished programs, diminished library purchases, and diminished quality of education. I can only hope that the legislature won’t actually cut salaries.

I am also concerned about declining en­rollments in advanced courses in history and in the liberal arts in general. Students do not seem to find these disciplines useful for their future in some high paying profession— computer programming or electrical engi­neering or business administration, perhaps. Fortunately for teachers in Texas, the law requires students to take two semesters of American  history  and  of  political science. Otherwise historians would have practically disappeared at state colleges.

I am also concerned about the future of a profession and especially of younger teach­ers (men, women, whites, blacks) in a nation where college enrollments have stabilized for the foreseeable future. When we recently advertised a rare opening in history at La­mar, we received ample replies, many from super qualified candidates who in the past would not have dreamed of settling for a job at a minor school.

Now what can the leaders of the AHA do to help—that’s a difficult question. So far they have done nothing much, except to express concern. There has been talk of a popular magazine, but that’s not the answer. Indeed it would probably be a financial disas­ter. I believe that there is little hope for stimulating enough popular interest in his­torical study to much increase college enroll­ment.

As an ordinary, middle-aged white man, I feel forgotten by the leaders of this profes­sion with their brief election platitudes of concern for large problems of policy or ex­pressions of high-minded bunk. Mere liveli­hood and survival don’t seem to be particu­larly vital to them.

The only good I receive from the Associa­tion is the Review and Perspectives. Oh, I forgot, I do get a program for an annual meeting that I cannot afford to attend be­cause it is always held in some distant city at some expensive hotel.

Obviously I have more bitterness than an­swers. But I would like the officers of the most prestigious historical association in the United States to consider, at least, the eco­nomic problems of people like me and colleges like Lamar. I would hope that they might develop some sort of cooperative ef­fort with other professional associations to promote political lobbying or even, dare I say it, collective action. The only way that college teachers can exert influence is through creat­ing instruments of power. We all know that administrators and politicians pay little attention to us because we are individualists and weak and invisible.           ·

What should that cooperative effort try to produce? I would hope more money for public colleges and libraries and salaries and for programs that seem to be of little value to cost-minded, parochial administrators and politicians.