Cutthroat

Collegiate rivalry for star athletes is a long-standing custom. But today competition between colleges for just plain students is so sharp that many institutions entice even nonathletic high school graduates with pictures of girls in bathing suits, offers of tuition rebates. One Indiana college went so far as to kidnap three freshmen from another institution, make them a better offer. The freshmen accepted.

Last week the No. 1 scandal in U. S. colleges was weightedly denounced. Walter Albert Jessup, president of the Carnegie Foundation, made this collegiate blackbirding the leading theme of his annual report. Dr. Jessup was astonished to discover that "drum majors and tuba players now find themselves possessed of special talents with a marketable value in the college field," that a college representative arriving at a high school learned he was the 83rd scout who had visited it that year. "In bidding for favor," scolded Dr. Jessup, "we are streamlining the job--our current models glitter with gadgets that smack of the factory and the salesman. . . . Cut rates, rebates, extravagant claims, unfairness in competition have brought to business its own punishment. Just as surely 'cutting corners' will ruin a college."

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