On a brisk morning in April, 1965, about 20 Hillsdale College students gathered on the steps of Central Hall with posters reading “Yes, Liberal Education,” and “Where Have All Our Teachers Gone?”
They were picketing against the college’s low professor salaries. But they were also picketing for the very soul of Hillsdale College as it was founded in 1844 and as it exists today. They fought against the strong arm of technology, to keep Hillsdale from jettisoning its liberal arts roots and descending to a mere trade school.
It all began when the college ran short on cash in the 1950s. A host of donors cut significant checks to the college, but only for specific areas of development. Herbert and Grace Dow, for example, offered $1 million for a new Leadership Development Center complete with a two-story conference and dining room that seated 200 people. It was surrounded by a soundproof, one-way viewing gallery.
Dean of Students Mickael Kolivosky called it a “laboratory in human relations,” according to Arlan K. Gilbert’s history of the college entitled “The Permanent Things.”
Even the college’s new slogan, “Preparation for Leadership Through Learning and Experience,” smacked of focus groups and productivity rather than liberal education.
Zealous, young liberal arts professors and some students began to voice their fears that all this “development” would lead the school to abandon its founding liberal arts principles to become a more lucrative business and technical school.
Michael Moore, a professor of history beloved by students upon his arrival to the college in 1963, championed this cause. He delivered a convocation speech in 1964 expressing these concerns.
“We are members of a College which by its very nature says it wants to utilize scholarship toward certain goals that would not interest, say, a specialized technical institute,” he said. “Liberal education is for those who would ‘shun the slavery of ignorance for the freedom conferred by knowledge.’”
Moore tread carefully. Though he did not directly criticize the college, his topic and word choice swept a spark on campus into a full-fledged forest fire.
The college did not renew Moore’s contract for the following year. Students were outraged.
In their outrage, they began to investigate deeper and realized that Hillsdale’s professors had some of the lowest salaries in the nation. An April 1965 issue of The Collegian reports the administration admitted, after student inquiry, that the salary scale for professors was significantly below the national average due to financial difficulties.
This brought to light another alarming development: many faculty members could not live with these low salaries and were forced to leave the college after a year or two. From the 1964-1965 school year to the 1965-1966 school year, 14 out of 63 faculty members left and were replaced. That is a turnover of 22% of the total faculty.
Students responded with compassion not only for their professors, but for the life of their institution. They worried that Hillsdale would not attract high quality, liberally-trained faculty members with such low salaries. Multiple student responses are preserved in the April 22, 1965 issue of The Collegian.
Some students claimed that accepting federal aid was the only solution.
“The administration frankly admits that our chronic lack of financial resources stems from the college’s long-standing refusal to accept any form of federal aid,” one editorial reads. “The reason given for this rejection is that we would lose our independence of action were we to accept governmental assistance. In the America of today, a small college existing solely on contributions from private sources simply cannot hope to compete with rival institutions in acquiring the best facilities and best teaching talent available.” 62 students signed the letter.
Others were moved to a noble altruism, and proposed a philanthropic solution.
“I think that there is a way by which we, the students, can substantially raise the salaries of the teaching faculty, whether the administration agrees with us or not. We could accomplish this by having the Federation pass on a fee. This fee would go into a fund that would be handed out to the teaching faculty at the end of each semester,” student Edgar B. Roesch Jr. wrote.
Roesch went on to propose a fee of $20 per semester from each of 850 students. That would add up to $300,000 a year, which would be dispersed to professors. Roesch emphasized that the student body must respond immediately.
“The administration is now looking for replacements for the professors who are leaving,” Roesch wrote. “If these people learn that the student body here at Hillsdale is willing and able to correct a situation in which it feels that the administration has been derelict in its duty, then this may very well mean the difference between the administration hiring an excellent professor rather than one that is simply average.”
The whole thing came to a crux when the picketers gathered at the steps of Central Hall that Tuesday morning in late April. An April 27 article in the Hillsdale Daily News noted that while some held signs like “Yes, Academic Freedom” and “Why Have All Our Teachers Gone?”, they were hardly unanimous. Some students were motivated by their stomachs rather than their minds. One held a sign that read “We Want 99.9 Percent Pure Peanut Butter.”
The administration decided to hold a mass meeting that same afternoon to diffuse rumors and outrage. However, their responses were vague and contradictory. President J. Donald Phillips said that Moore left it up to “the prerogative of the administration to make the decision” about his contract in a Q&A printed in the April 22 issue of The Collegian. At the assembly, though, Phillips said “the error with respect to the return of a particular professor was an honest one. Since early in the year he has indicated a desire to return, and all that remained was an ironing out of terms,” according to the April 27 Hillsdale Daily News article that covered the meeting.
During the meeting, Moore passed out mimeographs of a statement:
“The reason given for the non-renewal of my contract was the alleged difference between my own philosophy and that of the College … At no time was there any intimation or open statement to me of any other reason for letting me go… I am not aware that I have been teaching anything but history since I came here, according to my own professional training and liberal arts background.”
It is worth noting that Phillip said in the Collegian Q&A that the decision was not a matter of differing philosophies.
Moore did not return the following year. We may never know conclusively what happened. Perhaps it was because he held a different philosophy. Perhaps it was because he spoke out against the college’s transformation. Perhaps it was for some more nefarious, unknown reason.
It took the college several years to right its economic and academic footing following the turbulence of the 1964-65 school year. The college updated its tenure policy and raised faculty pay by 8% in October 1965. But these attempts still left Hillsdale’s faculty salary “low” compared to an average salary at 822 comparable liberal arts colleges, according to Gilbert. The turnover problem persisted, forcing the college to hire 17 new professors in 1967.
However, Hillsdale managed to finish with a balanced budget at the end of the 1966-67 school year. According to Gilbert, Phillips also began taking steps to regain Hillsdale’s academic rigour.
On April 27, 1967, the editor of The Collegian wrote that “Happydale” was gone forever and Hillsdale’s reputation for being a “country club” campus of partying and drinking began to subside.
Though it did temporarily resemble a “country club” business school more than a liberal arts college, that Hillsdale resurfaced from those tremulous adolescent years with its honor and liberal arts core intact is a testament to its transcendent, founding values.