Address By Commissioner Of Education Earl McGrath at the Founders Day Celebration, Alfred University, New York, Higher Education and the Crisis of Our Times

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HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE CRISIS OF OUR TIMES* It is a real pleasure to take part in these ceremonies commemorating the founding of Alfred University. The anniversaries of institutions of higher education are inspiring occasions. One who reads the history of these institutions must be impressed with the close parallel between their own development and the growth of our Nation. From origins that were usually sigle, sometimes crude. and often precarious, they have struggled up through the 1. years continuously supplying our society with the type of intellectual and moral leadership that has made our land prosperous and great among the nations. Like our people, these institutions have adapted their lives to the rapidly changing circumstances of existence in a dynamic society. As I know it, this has been the history of Alfred University. Having its beginnings in a simple pioneer school in the beautiful but rugged country of Western New York, it has through the years grown in strength and in service to increasing numbers of American youth. Little could Jonathan Allen have realized more than a century ago as he walked through the trails in these foothills of the Alle- ghenies that out of the little select school of those days would grow the present Alfred University. It is an unusual institution. It combines within its program in nice proportions the theoretic and the practical, the academic and the vocational, the secular and the religious, in brief, things of the mind, the body, and the spirit. And unlike many other of its sister in- stitutions, its program is supported by funds from the public treasury, and from the private purse. Address by Earl James McGrath, U.S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security Agency, Nashington, D.C., for Founders Day Celebration, Alfred University, New York, November 10. 1949,