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education provided in the public schools, and particularly that offered in colleges and universities, has steadily improved it must be raised to new levels if we are to have the educated citizenry that is essential to maintain our position in a modern world. The problems of education which the pace of contemporary life places before us are grave indeed and their implications for the happiness and well-being of our people, and even for our survival as a nation, are such as to command our best efforts. The situation which confronts us requires immediate attention, for time does not wait, and to falter in meeting our responsibilities is to jeopardize our future.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The Special Committee of the Board of Trustees has agreed upon a number of recommendations designed to strengthen the University and foster larger service in the future. These recommendations are interrelated and each is dependent upon the others. Therefore, they are submitted as a program. That is, the force of each recommendation is conditioned upon acceptance of the others.

1. Definition of University Purpose

The Governor's Commission on Education Beyond the High School has recommended a new statutory definition of the purpose of the University. We concur in this proposal and recommend that it be enacted by the General Assembly. The proposed definition is as follows:

The University shall provide instruction in the liberal arts, fine arts, and sciences, and in the learned professions, including teaching, these being defined as those professions which rest upon advanced knowledge in the liberal arts and sciences; and shall be the primary state-supported agency for research in the liberal arts and sciences, pure and applied. The University shall provide instruction in the branches of learning relating to agriculture and the mechanic arts, and to other scientific and classical studies. The University shall be the only institution in the State system of higher education authorized to award the doctor's degree.

There are, to be sure, existing definitions, historic definitions asserting the aims of three separate North Carolina institutions which have become the University of North Carolina. The charters and successive statutes reveal the traditions of the state university, the land grant college, and the state normal school in their progressive development into one paramount state university.

By act of the General Assembly of 1931, the University of North Carolina, the North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering, and the North Carolina College for Women were "consolidated and merged" into the University of North Carolina. But a statutory definition of the new entity is lacking, and to that extent the realization of actual consolidation has been hampered by a persistent ambiguity of purpose. The time has come to have a clear and straight-forward statutory declaration of university purpose and one which reflects the essential unity of the university organization.

With the projected development of all state institutions of higher education by the Carlyle Commission, the needed broadening of programs within the University and the proposed establishment of new institutions, it has become necessary to have a basic guide for differentiating between the functions of the University and other state colleges. Thus the recommended definition would reiterate university responsibility along with the other colleges for undergraduate instruction in the liberal arts and the sciences. It would recognize that the University is the principal institution for education in the professions. The University would be the primary state institution for academic research and the only one authorized to award the doctor's degree.

The definition is the point of reference for other recommendations looking toward enlargement and improvement of university service. Its enactment into law by the General Assembly is regarded by this Committee as constituting a condition precedent to the actual implementation of other changes recommended in this report.