SEARCHING FOR SUPERLATIVES AT SMU

The new president of Southern Methodist University, L. Donald Shields, isn’t an unreasonable man. He just wants to make SMU “one of America’s 25 finest private universities. ” After that,, he’s shooting for the top 15.

Skeptics might wonder whether he shouldn’t settle for making SMU one of the best in the Southwest. Although the university’s business, law and theater schools have fine reputations, and the anthropology department has acquired major research grants, its undergraduates have a stronger reputation for partying than for hitting the books. SMU’s last major headlines involved the failure of 60 percent of its 1981 freshman class to pass a basic grammar test after six weeks of instruction.

A recent New York Times survey of higher education confirmed the frustrations of SMU’s serious students with the country club, status-symbol mentality of the student body.

Barron ’s Profiles of Ameri-can Colleges, which rates undergraduate institutions by the severity of admission requirements, places 196 private and public schools ahead of SMU. SMU freshmen would have to improve their SAT scores by an average of 200 points to meet the standards of Rice University, which is ranked as one of the 33 most competitive colleges in the country.

The Gourman Report did not find a single undergraduate program at SMU worth ranking in its 1980 edition, although Rice, the University of Texas at Austin, Baylor and Texas A&M all had ranked programs.

SMU’s annual spending on libraries is outstripped by $3 to $4 million at places like Vanderbilt, Northwestern and Duke-universities that Shields says SMU will rival. An entry-level librarian at SMU earns only $13, 000, compared to the $16, 000 offered by the Dallas public system.

Money is clearly part of the solution, and SMU will need a lot of it. With the addition of a $25 million gift from Robert Dedman, significant gains can be made.

Dedman’s money has been used to create Dedman College, a two-year, unified undergraduate liberal arts curriculum that should send students back to the usually uncrowded libraries. But SMU must compete for a decreasing number of good students in a time of rising tuition costs. SMU’s new provost, Hans Hillerbrand, is studying plans to attract more academically able students, but someone is going to have to pay those students’ ways.

If Shields has any doubts about his vision, he conceals them with the enthusiasm of a Chamber of Commerce spokesman: He recently fired the public relations director for not being “pro-active. “