The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (Public Law 346) and Public Law 16 provided assistance to ex-servicemen by educating and training them to readjust to civilian life. An increase of approximately 35,000 students was predicted for Alabama's colleges in the Fall Quarter, 1946, as a result of these laws. This large enrollment revealed a serious problem in Alabama's colleges. College faculties had decreased and facilities had deteriorated during the periods of 1941-1944 (Department of Education Annual Reports, 1942 and 1945), leaving the schools unable to handle the influx of postwar students. In June, 1946, Governor Chauncey Sparks (1943-1947) declared a state of emergency within Alabama's colleges. Sparks appointed an Emergency Committee on Higher Education to study the problem and distribute emergency funding among the colleges (Report of the Governor's Emergency Committee on Higher Education, December, 1946). This series consists of the administrative files of the committee. Information available in these records includes college budget allocations, housing and facility needs, estimated increase of students by sex and race, comparative data on faculty salaries of land-grant colleges in the southeast, information from individual colleges on funding needs, and allocations of emergency funds.
