Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

for Higher Education (SWICHE), tasked with creating a more permanent solution to the problem. SWICHE and SIU's board of trustees met and stated their agreement in goals in 1956, and, that same year, an Executive Committee from the Board of Education in Alton invited Alonzo Myers, Chairman of the Department of Higher Education for Higher Education at New York University, to perform a study of the need for higher education in the Metro-East.
Myers's 1957 report, The Extent and the Nature of Needs for Higher Education in Madison and St. Clair Counties, outlined the precise need: the 1950 census showed that students in the region in question were only half as likely as those in other regions of the country to finish a four-year college degree program (owing specifically to the lack of a nearby university and the financial difficulties of going to school away from home at other state universities). Businesses in the area were in need of college-trained employees, but were forced to hire outside of the area, especially …