Hopes & Fears

As the New Year came on, U.S. college and university presidents braced themselves for some of the most critical months and years of campus history.

Campus Insolvency? University of Cincinnati's President Raymond Walters, in his current 25th annual report as volunteer census taker and trend-spotter for the nation's colleges,* predicted that dwindling registration will make 1945-46 one of the financially shakiest years in campus memory. His forecast:

P: Armed forces student training units, until now the financial mainstay of many war-emptied colleges, will virtually vanish.

P: Girls' enrollments, already at an alltime high, will rise only a smidgen more.

P: The draft will continue to take its share of 18-year-old males.

The colleges' "chief hope" of solvency, according to President Walters: tuition fees of veterans staked to free schooling by the G.I. Bill of Rights.

"Educational Hobos?" A recent Army survey indicated that approximately 650,000 servicemen expect to go to college after they are discharged. But even this bonanza may not be an unmixed blessing. University of Chicago's tart President Robert Maynard Hutchins voiced his fears in a Collier's article last fortnight. Excerpts :

P: "Educational institutions, as the big-time football racket shows, cannot resist money."

P: "The G.I. Bill of Rights gives [the colleges and universities] a chance to get more money than they have ever dreamed of. ... They will not want to keep out unqualified veterans; they will not want to expel those who fail."

P: Veterans unable to get jobs and offered a chance to live at Government expense simply by going to school will become "educational hobos."

The Hutchins recommendations: 1) institute nationwide examinations to screen out veterans who cannot really succeed in or profit by college; 2) stimulate the colleges' discrimination and alertness by making them foot half the bill for each of their veteran students.

The Armed Forces Committee on Post-War Educational Opportunities for Service Personnel warned last week that the G.I. Bill may prove "extraordinarily costly--both in human and financial terms" if veterans are allowed to prepare for unsuitable or overcrowded vocations.

But despite such problems, U.S. educators were not disheartened. Some opinions voiced last week:

P: University of California's President Robert G. Sproul: "The prospects for higher education at the University of California were never brighter. . . . Nor do we expect to be demoralized by the veterans or to demoralize them."

P: Bennington College's President Lewis Webster Jones: "In 1945-46 higher education will face the greatest crisis and greatest opportunity in the nation's history. . . . All indications are that the returning veterans will be most eager to ... work hard on a serious adult curriculum."

P: University of Wisconsin's President Clarence A. Dykstra: "We have 263 returned veterans. These may run to 1,000 the coming year. ... It will be no kindness ... to let [any man] do substandard work for any considerable time, or to encourage men to try college work in order to get an education stipend from Uncle Sam."

*"Statistics of Attendance in American Universities and Colleges, 1944," School and Society, Dec. 23rd.

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