ECONOMIZED EDUCATION

The Carnegie Foundation's twenty-seventh annual report yesterday vigorously urged the state colleges and schools to enforce drastic economics to meet the demands of the times. In no uncertain terms it advocated widespread retrenchments all along the line. These recommendations, however, beg the question of the advisability of governmental economics in a depression, particularly when at the expense of education.

It is common among those who favor this "balance-the-budget" theory to point out that just as businesses and families pare down expenditures to the bone and beyond, so ought governments to adopt a similar course. And the heads of federal, state, and city departments have generally bowed to this show of logic. But this is an outworn and economically unsound argument. The time for the government to retrench and take stock is not in a depression, but in times of prosperity. In a period when there is considerably little money passing about, when individuals and private businesses are postponing their buying and economizing in every way, it is exceedingly foolish for the State to withdraw its funds from circulation by reductions and restrictions. Its credit is the best in the world; it would have no difficulty in raising the money to keep the shop running at a normal, sound rate of expenses.

In the case of education a policy of crippling the facilities, equipment, and faculties of colleges and universities is clearly insane. Education, for the State, is an investment and a service which should be the last thing to get the axe. It is quite true, as the Report charges, that these institutions have been guilty of reckless expansion. But most of that has already been wiped out by previous programs of contraction in the early years of the depression. Little remains but to lop off expenditures and salaries.

Two courses lie open to the government in this matter. Either it can continue its false economies and seriously disable the present system of education, prolonging the deflation period; or it can borrow enough to maintain the colleges and universities on a sensible basis, putting fewer men into the breadlines and more money into circulation, where it belongs.