II
THE YEARS BEFORE WORLD WAR II

Partly because of this diversity of antecedents, but partly also because the openness of the American society demanded it, the growth of higher education in the United States was almost totally unplanned. One could argue that the Morrill Act was an exercise of educational planning but, while the law stipulated that the money realized from the land grants was to be used for colleges that would offer instruction in the three areas specified, there was no provision of what precisely was to be taught and on what level or scale. Time and again policy makers would seek to encourage the education of young people for trades and occupations where they were needed, only to be disappointed in the lack of response. Health care specialists may deplore the tendency of prospective physicians to move into specialties that are more interesting (and more lucrative) than family medicine in rural areas. Community colleges have been provided with extensive facilities to help future farmers utilize modern technology to advantage, but most of these colleges discovered that the majority of their students preferred learning tracks that would allow them to transfer to a four-year college and pursue the likely benefits of a broader range of vocational choices.
Just as the American college student will find ways to satisfy academic requirements in the manner he or she prefers, so the American college and university teacher also expects to be able to discharge his or her responsibilities on the basis of individual choice. The more prestigious, the more prosperous the institution, the more autonomy the members of the faculty aspire to. The “holy trinity of academe”—teaching, research and service—takes on very different manifestations in a research-oriented university than it does in a struggling small, two-year college. In a university with a faculty of twelve to eighteen hundred members—not an unusual number for a typical state university—there will be persons who disdain “service” with a vengeance: nobody is going to make them attend committee meetings or keep fixed office hours; there will be teachers who attract students because they are superb performers in the classrooms but who will barely exert themselves to do any research for publication. The higher up you get in the academic pecking order, the more research is the touchtone, the golden calf—and the reward system duly accounts for it.
It is part of the American saga that the colonists and the early generations under the Republic rejected the mother country’s use of education as social barriers. The Morrill Act stands as a symbol of the new nation’s commitment to education as both the goal and the means of an open society. Selective admission was the hallmark of conservatism—and commanded only limited support among the broad range of institutions (and practitioners) of higher education in the United States. Mostly, the doors were wide open—in both directions: foreign students were welcomed on the American campus, and American students encouraged if they sought to further their horizons by study abroad. But well into the middle of the twentieth century it was a matter of individual initiatives, not institutional commitment.

Some Americans spent a year studying abroad because it was a family tradition or because it was perceived as an indication of social status. Thus young Franklin D. Murphy, KU class of 1936, son of a prominent Kansas City, Missouri, physician, went to Germany to study—as his father had done more than thirty years earlier. The initiative was young Franklin’s—though it may have been planted by his father. Franklin went to Germany under the auspices of the Institute of International Education (IIE) which required the sponsorship of a university.

Chancellor Ernest H. Lindley’s correspondence with IIE makes it clear that, however much he may have been in favor of the student exchanges arranged by IIE, KU did not have any money to spare for that purpose, not even the $200 that IIE expected the home institution to provide for the support of the program. Franklin Murphy’s expenses were totally covered by his family. He would savor the experience for the rest of his life.

Across the country, the strongest appeal for a young person to go abroad came from recruiters for the missionary societies. Thus Katherine Hansen, KU Class of 1905, daughter of a Danish immigrant who settled and became prosperous on the open spaces of northwest Kansas, went to Japan—and spent a lifetime there as a musical educator. The university was only marginally involved in the choice that Kate (and her lifelong friend Lydia Lindsay) made to go abroad. Both young women were attracted into mission work by the activities on the Lawrence campus of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions. This organization, with campus chapters and societies throughout the country, called upon young people to “win the world for Christianity.” Local Protestant churches and campus officers of the Young Men’s (YMCA) and Young Women’s (YWCA) Christian Associations supported its efforts. Kate Hansen kept a diary that allows the reader to trace her gradual commitment to the life of a missionary teacher abroad—-there is no mention in these pages of any involvement of the university (or any of her teachers). Nor, for that matter, is there any mention of money: missionaries where expected to find support where they could, starting with their home church and its denomination.

But in Kansas, as in some other states in the Midwest and the Rocky Mountain region, the beginnings of higher education were feeble. Often years would pass before the undergraduate college had more students than the “preparatory department,” a division needed because most students admitted lacked the educational background for college-level work. But, once started, these institutions of higher learning soon aimed to develop the characteristics of a true university–or at least a good resemblance of one.
To a considerable degree, this was due to the faculty who had joined these new institutions. Quite appropriately, we find their names inscribed to this day on campus buildings, for it was indeed they who laid the foundations. Whether as presidents, chancellors, deans, department heads or full-time teachers and scholars, they contributed the initiative and the drive to provide knowledge (“universal” knowledge) to the students who, in ever-larger numbers, came to find it on Mount Oread.

At the University of Kansas, as at other comparable institutions, the early faculty came from the east coast, mainly from the established colleges in New England. Several of them had implemented their college or graduate schools years with a year or two at a university in Europe. Their image of a university was thus not confined to their home state or their home institution; it encompassed a wider world of knowledge and an understanding that knowledge was not bounded by state lines or national borders. The best of them became role models who in turn encouraged their best and brightest students to go on, not just to graduate schools but also to exploit the opportunity of study abroad. A professor in Kansas might urge a student he considered capable of it to study in Berlin, Heidelberg, London or Paris. The initiative of one teacher might produce a small parade of students heading toward Germany, England or France–just as one outstanding scholar might cause several generations of students to follow his example in scholarly pursuits.
In the University of Kansas’s first century its involvement in international programs is a tale of individual initiatives–as is equally true of other American universities. Indeed, one of the challenges facing such institutions—as this narrative will show—is that of stabilizing what had been wrought by individuals into a continuing factor of institutional life.

For private colleges the first step was often sanction (but no financial commitment) for arrangements engineered by an individual faculty member, often with a personal friend or acquaintance at an institution in Europe. Since some of the colleges exacted substantial payment and residence charges, the cost to the individual student of such a period of study abroad was sometimes even less than the charges for a corresponding period of study on the home campus.

The faculty member serving as director as director of such a program was often quite autonomous. In some instances he established residence at the foreign study location and made only occasional home visits. The home institution was often quite content with this arrangement—it reaped the benefits without investing much of its own resources, be they human or fiscal. As a consultant to several colleges and universities with programs abroad, I learned early on that nothing was more difficult than to get an answer from a college president to this question, “What happens to this program when Professor X retires or dies or leaves for another college?” Public colleges and universities, catering as they were to a less affluent student clientele, could not adopt this pattern. The University of Kansas did not develop a program of this kind.
But, in spite of the state’s landlocked position in the center of the country, the University of Kansas maintained an interest in the international dimensions of higher education. The records show that a foreign student (neither name nor country of origin appears on the record) was admitted in 1881. In the late 1880’s, the faculty authorized the enrollment of a young Japanese (his name does not appear) who was in Lawrence as guest of a faculty member’s family. There is no indication, however, that either person actually enrolled at KU.

But it is amply recorded that in 1896–- when KU awarded its first Ph.D.—the recipient was a student from a foreign country, a mathematician from Switzerland.

It is worth noting that, whether the student involved was one from Kansas going abroad or a citizen or resident of another country coming to Lawrence, it is always the chancellor who was involved–-just as he was in all faculty personnel matters. It would be some time before there was a need for specific offices dealing with the various aspects of international study. World War II became the turning point.

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