Gerald W. Smith Memoir - Brookens Library

Gerald W. Mth 232is no relevance to facts or regard to it. So that was an interestingitem.I might also say that it was an interesting topic, which leads me now toone that I am going to add to my notes. In talking about tuition chargeper capita and levels of cost, I am reminded that the act also stipulatedthe level of state apportionment for the junior colleges as it came outwhich was for the first year $11.50 per semester hour credit, for . . .QThat was across the board.A. Yes. This was the state apportionment: $11.50 for all colleges, theexisting colleges and the new ones. It stipulated then that after the firstyear that was to be $11.50 for the new colleges and $9.50 for the existingcolleges. Now, the master plan stipulated approximately 50 percent of thecost of operating the colleges should come fmm state revenue and yet wecame up with only $11.50 per semester hour credit and there is a matterthat ought to be spoken to with regard to that. In attempting to arriveat a figure to write into the specific act, it was very difficult to determinewhat the average semester-how costs for operating Illinois juniorcolleges really were. And this grew out of the circumstances of the day.Black Hawk College was the only institition operating as a separate orautonornus institution. I had been doing so for three years. Each ofthe other colleges was a part of a school district and their accountbgsystems were far from uniform. They were almost, each of them, indiwfdual.So these were the circumstances as we tried to compute the average percapita cost. A few of the existing colleges that were operating in connectionwith townships or community high schools were operating with accountingsystems that revealed very clearly the cost of operating the 13th and14th years. There was a specific accounting procedure that took in all theelements, so for two or three of them there were very excellent data. Insome of the cornunity colleges the accounting procedures covered pades 9through 14 with no buleak-out at'all for any of the 6 years that were inthat institution and it was very difficult to arrive at my specific ffgwesfor the jwLfor college operation of it. And then there were a few omu unitycolleges didn't cost very mch. And so they were saying, for example, thatwe would be heating the building, we would be light% the building, wewould be providing mintenance on the building, we would have custodialservices, we would do a11 those thin@$ whether the high school or tqe communitycollege was here or not. And so their accounting really in Tactassigned a disproportionate share of the cost of the high school opq~ationand displayed a very small cost to the operation of the junior college.Q. You believe what you want to belleve.4IA. Yes. I'm not willing to stick neck out here and identify th se institutionslaut I could do so, I could give examples if you wanted to,but in all fairness to these people, I'm not going to. Well, as yo seethis made a very difficult thing. So the interesting thing is that althoughwe lmew that the $11.50 was a low figure for state financing on the basisof 50 percent of the opeating costs, in terms of documentation we didn'thave any thing better to give. I'm talking about the Association of CbmmunityOolleges, I'm talking about the research of the Board of Higher