The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-01-26

eide which college will get how much are beginning to wonder who originated the idea this academic life was calm and cloistered.
 A large part of the confusion over this ruckus comes from a lack of understanding on just how big this whole education for war pro- gram really is. When the Army and Navy announced the latest chapter of their plan in mid December, mention was made that they would use the facilities of 200 to 300 cole leges and universities. From that the idea got around that this was the whole program and fear was expressed that all the others might have to tear down their ivy and nail up their doors for the duration. It can be stated authoritatively there is no cause for such alarm.
 True, colleges and universities have taken a terrible beating in this war. Income from endowmentS is down, expenses are up. Private phil anthropy can't make up the differ ences. Enrollments are down IA per cent from last year, so tuition Is down. Eight thousand teachers have gone to war and a lot of those left have had to take cuts in pay and work longer hours. ITS A BIG PROGRAM
 But this whole education for war plan is so much bigger than the one 200-300 college program men, toned above that an entirely un- official guess might be that half or more than half of the 1,700 institu- tions of higher learning, normally enrolling 750,000 men and 600,00O women or a total of 1850, 900 stu dents will be tied in. one way or an- other. Take all the service school programs now definitely set for men and women in uniform:
 Special technical training courses for enlisted men will have enroll ments of about 10000.
 Pre- -Of1cer and oflcer training courses will enroll 5000 more.
 Army Air Force pre-flight train ing in colleges near adequate air- ports will get another 10000.
 Training for all WAACS and WAVES may be moved into colleges, meaning that perhaps 5000 women will be going through their special courses at a given time.
 A plan that is not yet definitely approved calls for putting half a million illiterates through a special eight-weeks course in addition to the Ar1ny's 13-weeks basic training. If adopted, this program will call for classes totaling 10000 or so.
 IT'S REALLY
 A BOTTLENECK
 Add up all these courses and you get a total of 495, 900 students to be educated for war at a given time. Here you run into curious bottle neck. It is now doubtful if there are as many as 495, ,000 beds in college dormitories and fraternity houses in the whole United States. The fact is that between 800,000 and a million of the college students live at home or in private rooms or small room. ing houses. The services are insist. ing that all their students live under Army or Navy discipline. at- tend classes in uniform, study under supervision, eat regular meals, get up and go to bed on time and actu- ally work, not loaf, which is simply good sense. After all, the students will be paid $50 a month for it, and get board and room free.
 But when you come to fitting that qualification to the application of "Freshwater U." for a part of this war education. if the campus and its environs don't have adequate dorm- itory and boarding facilities, poor old Freshwater may be out of luck, for there are not time, money nor materials to build even temporary dormitories.
 There's another bottleneck - lack of laboratories for science courses and, sad to relate, lack of com- petent professors. The service will have to check up and approve both before signing a contract with any college. It will cost Army and Navy about $750 to keep a student in cole lege a year. Multiply that by the 4s5. 900 students and you get an ap- prcximate cost of this program, over $37l million, but that should help most of the institutions stay open.