today, the man with a degree is taking over every central and significant
activity in our society as the cradle of our national leadership. The
college is increasingly weighty and powerful. Never in the history of
America have so many people spent so much money in search of talent. That
is tom Edens, Junior and alumnus of Arizona State, who has been studying
the great hunt for educated talent that is now going on. How does this
problem affect you? What does it mean for our college and university
campuses? How is it related to our effort to avoid another depression?
We'll hear more from Tom Edens in just a moment.
Hello?
Hello
there, This is Jim Cressman welcoming you to the Arizona statesman. Listen
, as we invite you to establish or renew your friendship with Arizona
state at Tempe.
Heh,
we're enjoying the greatest prosperity in our history And I noticed that
time magazine says this week, our net take home pay has risen 20% in the
last 10 years. We've never had it so good. And yet I think that most of us
are wondering how long the boom can continue. And here's a man who can
help answer that question. He's Tom Edens, junior and alumnus of Arizona
State and a phoenix businessman tom do you think we can avoid another
depression? Yes, Jim, I think we can, but there is a mighty big if
connected with that answer. And it involves the great search for educated
talent to keep our economy expanding and prosperous. The head of a great
industry recently said, referring to the desperate search of people our
talent and training. The college graduates are being pursued, flattered
and fought over. We don't screen them. They screen us well, I can see that
our colleges and universities have a mighty big responsibility. Yes. And
as alumnus, I am concerned about the big job these institutions have to do.
Not only do they have to provide the answer to the great talent search of
industry, but they have to do it in the face of growing enrollments, which
will double in the United States in the next 10 or 12 years and triple
here in Arizona actually, jim our colleges have the answer to continued
prosperity. You mean that they will actually determine whether or not we
can break the boom and bust pattern of our history. Yes, I do. They hold
the key. Well, I certainly want to get your reasons for feeling that way.
And first I'd like to find out just a little bit more about you tom And
so I'm going to turn to a man who can speak objectively. Our alumni
president, Haskell Henshaw of Tempe, can tell us about your qualifications
for answering our questions. Jim Tom Edens is qualified to talk about
higher education in Arizona first of all, because he holds degrees from
both Arizona state Tempe and the University of Arizona, he served in the
phoenix elementary school district at the administrative level for many
years and he has just been elected to the board of trustees for the
California Western University in san Diego. A methodist sponsored
institution. Tom is a representative of the equitable life assurance
society society in phoenix. He is a past president of the phoenix Kiwanis
club and is extremely active in civic affairs last May. Tom made it talk
to the human Kiwanis club and he called it brainpower for survival. This
address was so timely and calling attention to the tremendous need for
growth and development of higher education in Arizona, the alumni
association had it printed in a booklet and has distributed to the leading
citizens in our state. Well, is it possible for radio listeners to have a
copy of this booklet? Yes. Just dropped a card or letter to the alumni
office at Arizona state and Champion asked for it. The title is Arizona's
part in brain power for survival. But if you just put brainpower in your
card, it will be sent to you. Well, thank you very much at school and now
I want to turn back to tom now that we know he's qualified to give us our
answers. Tom. You just told us that you think the college and university
will play a big part in deciding whether our prosperity continues in
America or whether we have another depression. And can you tell us why
this is true? Yes, very simple gym. We have had 12 years of post-World war
two prosperity. It's 18 years since the last major depression. But every
body is uneasy and keeps looking over his shoulder at the boom and bust
pattern of history and wondering how long will this boom last. Some of our
leading experts believe that the remedy for this pattern of re occurring
depression lies in the discovery and development of new products and new
equipment. Rather than producing more and more of the same old things. And
for this discovery of new things, there is a terrific demand right now for
scientists and engineers. Well, do you have any figures on this? Yes, jim.
The current issues of both the saturday review of literature and harper's
magazines are devoted almost entirely to this great search for educated
talent and the tremendous need to find it. The figures are revealing.
Nearly 1/3 of the employees of the General Electric Company are working on
products not manufactured by the company. In 1939,
The Corning Glass Company received 3/4 of its income in 1955 from products
it has developed since 1940 For business as a whole. Perhaps as much as
1/5 of our current production is a products which are essentially Postwar
creations. Research and development have created whole new industries such
as air conditioning. The experts believe that depressions come when our
capacity for production exceeds the demand for products and that the
answer is to produce new products and create new demands to raise our
standards of living. This is exactly what our industry has been doing
since World War Two, and it is the reason we have never had such great
prosperity. Well, then, that explains why the man with the degree, as you
call him, is being sought after as never before. That's right. Since the
turn of the century, the population has nearly doubled.