'43 in '42

The greatest upheaval in U.S. collegiate history was upon the campuses of the nation. A preview of the general pattern of change could be seen at Yale.

There the class of '43--600 men whose education was speeded up last February--was graduated six months ahead of schedule without caps & gowns, parades, ivy-planting (except in a pot) or other ceremony. Within a few weeks nearly all will be in active military service. At the same time, Yale announced that it had leased half its dormitories and a third of its classrooms to the Army Air Forces. After the Christmas recess, some 2,600 officers and men will crowd undergraduates out of many of the university's neo-Gothic houses. The Army will be packed double in the rooms of evacuated students, most of whom will squeeze in with classmates.

But the undergraduates may not be crowded long, since all Yale students in the Army's Enlisted Reserve--some 1,400 or 58% of the total enrollment--will be called into service within a month. Many of the Reserve members signed up with the impression that they would be allowed to graduate before being called to active service. Knowing this, the Navy and Marine Corps are still reluctant to call up their enlisted reserves, but they will probably do so soon. When all reserves are called, Yale--like most other men's colleges--will be emptied of 85% of its undergraduates.

Into the empty seats will march 500 young (17-22) uniformed Army privates for eight months of study. Some will be former Yale undergraduates, but many will be high-school graduates intended by the Army for a bit more learning before they are assigned to officers' training schools or advanced technological studies. Similar batches of 500 privates will be sent to some 300 other depopulated colleges, leaving 1,400 unfavored colleges nigh deserted and nigh bankrupt--unless the Government rescues them with new training programs (see col. 3).

These radical changes were foreseen last month (TIME, Nov. 23), but their full scope was not revealed by the Army and Navy until last week.* All told, some 250,000 young soldiers will get a year of college education "on a broad democratic basis without regard to financial resources." Cost to the Government will be a half billion dollars--the greatest scholarship fund ever established, equivalent to the total yearly cost of college teaching.

Thus, for the first time ever, almost all higher education for men in the U.S. will be free--to those whom the Army and Navy pick. Many educators hope this precedent will lead to a similar peacetime educational subsidy, provided it does not involve Government control of colleges.

Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson admitted last week that the wartime changes would put a great crimp in the liberal education of men. Yale's President Charles Seymour spoke for most U.S. college presidents when he stressed Yale's determination to carry on as a traditional university:

"Even though we defeat the Germans and the Japanese we may nevertheless in the process lose many of the values in the traditional heritage for which we are fighting. . . . The danger comes from within our country. In the process of [postwar] reconstruction the outstanding criteria of values will be materialistic and utilitarian. If the Universities allow themselves to be overwhelmed by such a philosophy, if they and their alumni cannot meet the surge of unthinking public opinion, we shall enter a period and regime of intellectual mediocrity and spiritual stagnation which for the hopes of a civilized people would be hardly preferable to a new Dark Ages. . . .

"However glaring the failures of our colleges and universities in the past, they have given protection to the things of the mind and the spirit and they have refused to bow the knee to a materialistic culture. That position they must not surrender."

* The Army also turned to the 50,000 U.S. high schools last week as potential training grounds for the thousands of specialists it needs. Outlined were five long, hard "official pre-induction" courses in electricity, radio, shop work, machines and automotive mechanics for high-school boys and older night students. The 90-hour course in electricity, for example, would prepare students for 151 specialized Army jobs such as telegrapher, field lineman, bombsight mechanic, searchlight operator, etc.

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