Education: Drummer

John W. Taylor describes his father as "a positively incurable optimist, who went into one business venture after another, convinced that this time he'd make a million. He never did. Instead, he fell dead in a hotel lobby with his drummer's case in his hand." By last week, when John Taylor was inaugurated as president of the University of Louisville, students and professors had come to realize that he had his father's indomitable optimism. In nine months in office (before being officially inaugurated) drawling, 41-year-old John Taylor has drummed up more trade, money and headlines for the university than any president before him.

Though the university is municipally supported, Taylor has constantly drubbed the state legislature for money, always threatening to come back for more. He set a 15-citizen committee to work selling advance tickets for next year's football season, has suggested that Southern colleges establish a professional football league to increase their revenues (TIME, Sept. 22). Last week, he launched a new $300,000 fund-raising campaign—which is only the beginning: eventually he wants $17 million. Donors could see what they would be getting; Taylor has built models of future classrooms, complete with air conditioning and posture-aid chairs.

As president of the university, Taylor also heads its 13 schools and colleges, including Louisville Municipal College for Negroes (Kentucky has a segregation law). He spends his time whisking from one campus to another ("If you think anything is wrong," he tells his 13 freshman classes, "tell me personally").

No critic of the President's Commission (see above), Taylor never complains about swollen enrollments. He wants as many students as he can get: "If they want to come, tell them to get in touch with us— telephone, write, or send a telegram." For adult students he can't accommodate, he has set up four "neighborhood colleges" in Louisville public libraries. He has plans for putting college courses on records to be broadcast, has visions of 30,000 students taking a single course all at one time. "Colleges which persist in lecturing to small groups," says he, "are in the Dark Ages. A general college education of at least two years must become an American birthright."