The South, the State University and the Regional Promise

6 ference in shaping a future that will realize persistent visions of economic well-being and harmonious relations with man and nature,” they are sharing in a nation-wide crisis, characterized by a disintegration of consensus about the purpose and even validity of higher education. For the region, at this point, to embrace again the notion, all too prevalent in its past, that higher education is un- necessary, will almost certainly insure that the last quarter of the 20th century will witness the re-enactment of the regional tendency to "burn its promises on the uncontrolled flame of its hopes." We in the South have tried to achieve progress without change, and have found that formula unworkable. We have learned, reluctantly perhaps, to accept change, but it is not altogether clear whether we have learned, throughout the process of rearranging priorities, to maintain a sense of proportion, which for state universities means, as a minimum, recognizing that “education for doing” is complete only to the extent that it is accompanied by “education for being.” Obviously, too, if we are to endow the phrase, “except in the South” with a new and positive meaning, past experience compels us to be acutely aware of our propensity for using the promise of the future to obscure present problems, for subordinating values to technique, and for dissipating our energies on wrong issues and irrelevant arguments. Nor can we allow rhetoric to become a substitute for reality, which has, more than once, prompted the South to “ballyhoo itself into backwardness.” Perhaps, most important, especially for state universities, is the necessity to avoid confusing form with substance, and quantity with quality. The issue confronting the South is not merely growth, but the quality of growth. Our aim is to produce, not just another New South, but one that is qualitatively superior. If state universities are to assume a role of leadership in the pursuit of this goal, those of us within the academic community must, of course, reaffirm our commitment to excellence, but the role of those outside is no less important, for the level of quality which a state university is able to achieve is profoundly affected by the attitudes of the public which supports it and is served by it. No other institution is a more reliable gauge of a people’s pride and aspiration, of what they believe themselves capable of achieving and of bequeathing to future generations. By almost any standard of measurement the South and its state universities have undergone a dramatic transformation within the last quarter of a century. As a result, the unflattering epithets traditionally used to describe the region as the alien, even grotesque