A History of Education in Kentucky

Chapter 8. Higher Education

Chapter 8 Higher Education Most Americans heard about the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in the afternoon of Sunday, December 7, 1941, while listening to the radio. That’s how future governor Louie B. Nunn found out, while he was a student at Bowling Green Business College. Eastern senior ROTC student Ken Perry was lying in bed recovering from a broken leg suffered in the Morehead football game when he heard the broadcast. “My first reaction was, they can’t be that stupid,” he recalled. “I think everybody’s reaction was the same. We all thought we’d end up in Europe.” Across America the next day, most college students and faculty gathered in auditoriums, dormitories, and student unions to listen to President Roosevelt’s message to Congress, in which he excoriated the Japanese Empire for the “day which will live in infamy.” As at the time of the Great Depression, Americans were caught up in events over which they appeared to have no control. Life was changed quickly by this war, and Kentucky higher education soon adjusted to the exigencies of wartime.1 Kentucky college students were already leaving for the military, government posts, or civilian jobs long before Pearl Harbor and the formal declaration of war. Higher prices for wartime goods eventually brought rationing and price controls, but faculties, administrators, and staff faced the privations of war like everyone else. “Victory Gardens” appeared in faculty members’ backyards and on college campuses.2 With an increase in draft notices, an upwelling of volunteers, and more rapid deployment of ROTC students, male enrollment in Kentucky higher education rapidly plummeted. Most colleges in the state quickly shifted from a semester system to a quarter system. The men entering the armed forces could finish the shorter quarter courses more easily than the longer semester coursework. Morehead enrollment dropped to a low of nine males at one 335 336 A History of Education in Kentucky time; total enrollment was only 166 in the fall of 1944, and that included 50 students placed in student teaching. At all of the regional schools of education , teacher education numbers dropped. Because fewer new teachers were being trained, more emergency staff were hired in the public schools, further dampening educational achievement in Kentucky. By the summer of 1943, the undergraduate enrollment at the municipally controlled University of Louisville faced “virtual extinction,” according to the Courier-Journal; dental school enrollment dropped from the normal 62 to only 14 students.3 The University of Kentucky did not suffer as rapid a male depopulation as the other schools. Appointed only six months before Pearl Harbor, President Herman L. Donovan still waged an uphill battle to win over the faculty after his inauguration on May 6, 1942. The professional schools, including engineering, prospered, and the Lexington school added several new departments and augmented others during the war. The College of Agriculture and Home Economics was already intent on increasing and preserving food for the war effort. Nevertheless, Donovan took a strong stand for the liberal arts. “Technical education may be essential to winning the war,” he said. “But it is liberal education that will win the peace.”4 A “win-the-war spirit” permeated the nation’s campuses. As a result of World War II, Kentucky colleges and universities took a world view more than ever before, placing greater emphasis on foreign languages, geography, and foreign policy courses. Many colleges, particularly the smaller ones, either halted or severely curtailed their athletic programs. Except for the University of Kentucky, all Kentucky schools gave up football during the war years, and Transylvania never revived the sport afterward. After the 1943–1944 basketball season, except at UK, most sports were completely suspended at both private and public institutions, since most of the athletes entered the armed forces. With the cancellation of basketball, Eastern lost the services of promising six-foot-nine freshman Arnie “Shorty” Risen, who went on to fame at Ohio State University and in the National Basketball Association. Maroon coach Rome Rankin at first helped out with the armed forces physical training being conducted at Eastern and then spent a year as an assistant to Adolph Rupp at the University of Kentucky. The Navy V-12 program at the University of Louisville actually improved intercollegiate basketball tremendously, making it a “major” sport; the 1943–1944 team of new coach Peck Hickman had a successful year with only one civilian on the temporarily renamed “Sea Cardinals” team.5 With the exception of Kentucky...