We have often wondered why there is no state college in southwest Kansas, since there is one in every other quadrant of the state.
Of course, the locations of our state universities (hardly anyone goes to a “college” anymore) were not according to any plan. Their genesis depended as much on local support and effort as anything.
The story begins in 1863 when the Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science formed in Manhattan as the nation’s first land-grant college. The University of Kansas came along three years later, and the state was set to grow two great universities. Both would be served by the state’s first rail line and near the population centers of the state’s northeast.
Next added were the three former teachers’ colleges in Emporia, Pittsburg and Hays, which would grow to the status of state universities. As their names implied, all three focused at first on the need for teachers trained for public schools.
Lastly, in the 20th century, the state Board of Regents acquired the two municipal universities, Washburn in Topeka and Wichita State, when those cities could not afford to keep them. They sought state aid, but eventually were taken over.
None would exist, though, without the local backers who pushed to found and grow them, and their locations depended more on effort and chance than anything. Hays people, for instance, wanted a college, then persuaded the federal government to donate the reservation of abandoned Fort Hays and the Legislature to lend support.
In those early days, few towns in western Kansas could have supported a four-year college, and to this day, Fort Hays takes its role as the university of northwest Kansas seriously, though the campus is only about 50 miles or so northwest of the very center of the state.
We suppose Fort Hays would claim the southwest as part of its territory as well, but it can be a long ways out there. It’s about a three-hour drive from Hays to Liberal (and nearly as far from Hays to St. Francis). A state college in Garden City or Dodge would not only serve the southwest, but be closer to much of the far northwest.
It would require great effort to push for either a new university or a branch of an existing college, however. The Legislature hasn’t been funding new colleges lately, and they are not inexpensive.
The entire west is well served by two-year institutions, two in the northwest in Colby Community College and Northwest Kansas Technical College of Goodland. The southwest has three, in Garden City, Dodge City and Liberal (Seward County), four if you count Pratt, which is east of Hays and just barely in the west.
Dodge City had a four-year college through much of the last century in St. Mary of the Plains, which closed in 1992, for lack of an endowment to see it through tough times. The entire population of the west might not justify a four-year institution at all, but it can be a long ways to an education from here.
Few in eastern Kansas realize how remote we really are, as highlighted by our governor, who asked people here if we had gone to our nearby Walgreens for our Covid shots. That’s only a two-to-three-hour drive for many of us.
All this is merely idle speculation, since the effort required would be great and the obstacles many. But there are times to dream great dreams. The country is growing, and we will grow again someday.
Until then, we will have to continue depending on the institutions we have.
