Ernest Wilkinson was the president of BYU in the mid-twentieth century and did much to build it into the modern university we know today. In a recent interview on the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk, Gary Bergera spoke about insights into Wilkinson’s efforts to create an entire network of Church education institutions as an LDS Junior College Program, including his strident efforts to move Ricks College (now BYU-I) from Rexburg to Idaho Falls.

Why Did Ernest Wilkinson Try to Build an LDS Junior College Program?

Building an LDS Junior College system

Wilkinson put a lot of effort into expanding and improving BYU. He felt strongly, as Bergera observed, that youth should be “taught the truth untainted by godless secularism” by attending Church, rather than state, universities. At the same time, “Wilkinson liked the idea of BYU as a smaller institution; he worried that if BYU got too big, it would lose the tight-knit social community” that he felt students benefited from. To support both of these goals, Wilkinson advocated for creating an entire network of junior colleges in areas with significant Latter-day Saint populations, allowing students to learn at Church universities close to home while reducing the burden of hosting freshmen and sophomores on BYU-Provo.

An early prong of this effort was to manipulate the state of Utah into giving the Church back Weber College, along with the smaller institutions of Snow College and Dixie College. The Church had sold off these institutions in the 1920s due to concerns about being able to fund education programs at so many locations, but “at Wilkinson’s urging, Utah’s governor agreed to ask the state legislature to return Snow, Weber, and Dixie to the Church.” The legislature approved the handoff, but the general population of Utah was not thrilled by the idea, and “a referendum forced a popular vote on the issue. … After a heated campaign, Utahns defeated the transfer bill.”

While this was a setback, Wilkinson was able to arrange for the purchase and acquisition of nine tracts of land for feeder colleges, spread across the Western United States and even one in central Mexico.

 

Transferring Ricks College to Idaho Falls

One particularly notable effort by Wilkinson was to transfer Ricks College to Idaho Falls. “Wilkinson believed that Idaho Falls’s future was much brighter than Rexburg’s.” There were several reasons for this:

He contended that, among other reasons to transfer Ricks:

1. The number of LDS Church members in Idaho Falls will be five times greater than in Rexburg by the year 2000
2. Idaho Falls will develop “into a stronghold of LDS cultural agencies which would enrich and fortify the college’s program and purposes”
3. “Transportation facilities” will continue to be “greater at Idaho Falls than at Rexburg”
4. “Many public relations advantages” will be “achieved in the new location”
5. “Favorable factors [will] offset the expense of building a new plant and campus [in Idaho Falls]” (see Educating Zion, pp. 36-38).

Idaho Falls also had an LDS temple; Rexburg did not.

As a result, Wilkinson fought hard for this change, gaining official approval repeatedly, only to be overruled by David O. McKay.

The reasons that McKay overruled the proposal to move Ricks had a lot to do with the reaction of people in Rexburg. “Rexburg was furious; residents felt betrayed,” and they fought hard for the college to remain in their town from about 1957 to 1960. During this time, “President McKay and Church authorities changed their minds four or five times about the move … but it appears that the relentless pushback from Rexburg was the determining factor.” In November 1960, McKay “informed [Wilkinson] that he had never been satisfied with the decision made by the Board of Education to move Ricks College to Idaho Falls and that he thought that decision should be reversed and Ricks College left at Rexburg,” putting an end to the conflict and siding in favor of Rexburg, much to Wilkinson’s disappointment.

 

An End to Junior College Plans

In addition to losing the battle of Ricks College, Wilkinson would eventually lose the battle to create a large network of church-run junior colleges. As Bergera summarized:

As the Church confronted increased spending needs worldwide, however, a growing number of general authorities became concerned about financing Wilkinson’s plans at the expense of other areas of growth and need. Boyd K. Packer, especially, following his appointment in 1961 as an assistant to the Twelve, focused on Wilkinson’s spending as it impacted the church’s seminary and Institute program.

With David O. McKay’s health declining, opposing voices like Packer and Harold B. Lee came to the fore, and “The junior college program was increasingly branded as too expensive and as diverting scarce monies away from seminaries and Institutes.” As a result, “The Church eventually decided to confine its focus on higher education to BYU, followed by Ricks, the Church College of Hawaii, and the Institutes. By the mid-1970s, most of the junior college properties had been sold.”

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For more on Ernest Wilkinson and the LDS Junior College Program, head on over and read the full interview with Gary Bergera.

While you’re there, check out the new J. Golden Kimball Quotes page!