The Right to Fulfillment

When he first proposed a tuition charge for students at the University of California, Governor Ronald Reagan quipped last week, "I could not have branded myself as any more anti-intellectual than if I had said, 'Me Tarzan. You Jane.' " At Kansas State University, where he was this year's Alfred M. Landon lecturer, Reagan (B.A. Eureka College, 1932) went on to spell out--in greater detail than ever before--his views on the purposes and problems of higher education.

One such problem is academic freedom. Reagan insisted that in this area all those with an interest in public universities--teachers, students, taxpayers, administrators and elected officials have legitimate and sometimes conflicting claims that "must be reconciled within a framework of mutual understanding and compromise." He deplored equally the ignorant taxpayer who sneers at "newfangled" courses and the student who would blithely eliminate all the required courses and grades, making "education a kind of four-year smorgasbord." Reagan also warned against educators who deny that there are any absolutes, "who see no black and white of right or wrong but just shades of grey in a world where discipline of any kind is an intolerable interference." This same kind of teacher, Reagan added, frequently "interprets his academic freedom as the right to indoctrinate students with his view of things. Woe to the student who challenges his interpretation of history or who questions the economic theory given as proven formula."

The purpose of the university, argued Reagan, is "to ensure perpetuation of a social structure--a nation, if you will." By this he meant not preservation of the status quo but a concern "for the individual and his right to fulfillment." In an age in which "acceptance is given more and more to the concept of lifting men by mass movements and collective action," said Reagan, the universities above all should remember the "road from the swamp to the stars is studded with the names of individuals who achieved fulfillment and lifted mankind another rung.

"Never in history," he said, "has there been such a need for men and women of wisdom and courage--wisdom to absorb the knowledge of the past and plan its application to the present and future, and courage to make the hard decisions." Thus a university cannot be a mere "vending machine, dispensing facts and figures." Its goal must be "the production of wisdom."

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