"Annihilating the Hillbilly"
by Jim Branscome
page 5

Forced by accrediting agencies, visiting boards, and hundreds of other pressures to maintain a facade of "academic excellence" and " a sound liberal arts educational," usually with Christ thrown in somewhere, the church-supported schools spend littler time thinking about the community below their own mountainside.  Their emphasis on admitting Appalachian students is so small, their tuition so high, ad pressure so intense from church supporters outside the regions to admit their sons ad daughters, that most these colleges have an inordinately high percentage of students from states like New Jersey.  Certainly to these college, "Christian" education has nothing to do with serving the victims of Caesar's educational system.

The "open door" policies of state universities are often, in actuality, "revolving doors" for the Appalachian student.  Once the student is admitted and the fees collected either from him or the state, the more aggressive and well-trained student from another section of the state or nation, and the freshman composition teacher, can be expected to send the Appalachian student scurrying home.  In January 1968 the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges summed up the record of their members in the region with:  "To maintain quality they raised student charges substantially, turned away qualified students, limited enrollments, and refused urgently needed public services."

The regional universities and colleges place little emphasis on promoting a regional consciousness on the part of their students.  In fact, there is not at present a single Appalachian studies program in the region which could begin to rival the offerings in Far Eastern studies or astronomy.  One, Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond (which in reality is in "Blue Grass," not "eastern," Kentucky) prides itself on its training and research  in law enforcement and police work.  All this continues and intensifies a channeling process begun by the elementary teacher to send the Appalachian student --ashamed of his background and ill-equipped to meet the needs of his region--into middle-class society outside the needs of his region. The sixteen-year process of credentializing that the student has been subjected to, becomes finally a ticket to the world of Dick and Jane Support-Your-Local-Police and the affluence of America built at Appalachia's expense.  So, a region which needs more than 200,000 college graduates--a minimum of 5,000 physicians, many more thousands of nurses, teachers, businessmen, government leaders, ad infinitum--finds no help in another of America's institutions.

The young Appalachian left behind by the higher educational system is destined to be the object of a number of complicated channeling devices.  Certainly the male youth, if he can pass the examinations, is eligible for one of the more obvious youth channeling programs in the country, the draft, and, too, the volunteer army.  Selective Service does not maintain records on Appalachians as a group, but he number in the service is estimated to be higher than their percentage in the population because the armed forces represent the only opportunity available to many young mountain men to be assimilated into mainline America.

 For example:  recent Department of Defense figures report that West Virginia led the nation in per capita Vietnam deaths.

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