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tasks which society demanded of them. Yet in the near future -- and already
in the present -- our social need is for the development of many skills
and talents for which economic stimuli do not play a major role. To instance
only a few such cases, the demand for teachers, government personnel at
all levels, highly trained social service workers, scientists and technical
research workers of all kinds is probably more pressing than the recruitment
of salesmen or average business executives. Clearly some improvement in
the financial rewards of these non-business professions is imperative, but
equally clearly this cannot be the full answer: business can always outbid
the non-profit organization for talent. Hence we face the serious problem
of how to orientate the development of talent in directions which go counter
to the economic current.

2. We are a society in which the economic environment is changing from one of austerity to one of comfort and security. In its crudest terms, the economic whip which has for so long driven society, has been replaced by a reliance on the economic carrot -- and the carrots themselves are of more and more uniform size. Thus even *within* the sphere of economic activity and economic incentive there is posed the question of whether our present system of rewards will serve to bring forth the kind of effort we need. Business executiveship, when fully exercised, is a demanding and arduous task. In a society in which comfort, leisure, and a fair share of the amenities are available for only modest effort it is by no means certain that the dedication and

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self-sacrifice needed to exert full executiveship will be forthcoming. Already
the plaint among many business men is the lack of aggressiveness, the
security-mindedness, the aversion to lea dership evidenced by the younger
business candidate. The popularity of such professions as personnel and
public relations -- which deal with the social side of business -- is symptomatic
in this regard. Hence the second question which our new environment raises
is whether it will affect the zest and vigor of economic enterprise itself.

These reflections, insofar as they are justified, lead us to the
conclusion that the changing nature of our society may considerably complicate
the structure of incentives and motivations needed to make it function well.
They indicate the need for a higher esteem -- as well as higher financial
rewards -- accorded to vital professions which cannot compete for talent
on economic grounds alone, and they raise the challenging question of how
we shall adduce "hard" work in a society of comfort and ease. There are
no simplistic answers to questions such as these. We raise the matters not
to dispose of them, but bring them to our attention as part of the background
against which we must consider the problem of talent. For as we turn now
to the measures we may take for the better and fuller utilization of human
resources -- and to their cultivation through the educational process -- it is
necessary to have in mind the new, disturbing and challenging nature of the
environment for human effort itself. What our very brief discussion of
incentives commends to our attention is an awareness that a new conception

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of what constitutes "success" may be the most important and far-reaching
social change which we will witness in the years ahead.

* * *

With this brief review of the physical characteristics of our population,
of the needs of society insofar as they can be foreseen and of its environment
pressures we have completed sketching in a setting of the problem. According-
ly, we now turn to the consideration of the means at our disposal, concentrating
in this regard on two primary questions: first, the better utilization of certain
overlocked and underutilized human resources, and second, the improvement
of our educational institutions.

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September 23, 1957

II

## The Means at Our Disposal

By what actions, public and private, can we contribute to the cultivation and better utilization of our human talent resources? A central portion of our answer concerns the educational process, for education is both a means of cultivating and of utilizing talent, and the concluding portion of this section of our report is accordingly devoted to a discussion of problems affecting the teacher, the public and private school, and the university. Before we take up the question of education however, there is another important matter which calls for our attention and with which we introduce our discussion: the improvement of our present practices of manpower utilization.

### Manpower Utilization

At first sight the manpower utilization question threatens to overwhelm us by its sheer magnitude: there is not a sector of the economy, not an important service of society which is not handicapped by a shortage of talent and which could not benefit from the recruitment of new talent and the better utilization of the talents it has attracted. Clearly we cannot investigate, bit by bit, the employment pattern of our society. Hence we propose to approach the problem in its broadest aspects by posing two questions which seem to us to lie at the heart of the matter. The questions are these:

1. How can we better use the basic labor force of the nation?

2. How can we significantly improve manpower practices for high-talent personnel?

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# 1. How Can We Better Use the Basic Labor Force of the Nation?

It has been pointed out that if we are to realize the full potential of our economy by 1965, we shall have to increase our total output by 40% with a labor force which will have increased by only 11%. These figures make unmistakably clear how dependent we are on increases in productivity for economic growth. In the future, as in the past, the bulk of that increased productivity will come from the use of more and better machinery and power to aid human effort. Yet an important contributing factor can be the improvement in the quality and quantity of human effort itself. This is particularly true since there now exist four large areas of manpower where we are seriously wasting our resources.

**The first of these is womanpower.** As a recent report of the National Manpower Council made clear, women are playing an increasingly important role in the American economy. One out of every three workers in our regular labor force is a woman. However this increasing participation of women in paid employment has not been paralleled by a corresponding increase in the level of work that women perform. Except for teachers and nurses there are no large numbers of women in professional or skilled fields -- despite the fact that women are employed in practically every sector of the economy.

Many adjustments must be made if more women are to be employed in positions where they can utilize their full potentialities. Among the important

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changes required would be better educational preparation for girls at the high school, college, and university levels; greater willingness on the part of employers to open their in-service training programs to women who give promise of remaining more or less regularly in the labor force; and special guidance and retraining opportunities for the large number of women who might wish to enter or return to work after their children start school.

The second opportunity for improving our labor force is the Negro. The Negro has benefitted greatly during the past decade and a half from broadened economic opportunities and, in turn, has been able to make a greater contribution to the economy by working in more productive jobs. But the margins for further gains are substantial. These gains will require a continuing exodus of Negroes from the poor farm lands of the South to the urban South, North, and West, where their opportunities for better jobs are much greater. The fact that such opportunities exist, and that there will undoubtedly be more of them in the years ahead, has major implications for the way in which young Negroes should prepare themselves for work; the Negro must acquire the education and training which alone will qualify him for better jobs. Even more important, the availability of rich human ability in the unused Negro labor force emphasizes from yet another point of view the supreme importance to the United States of an approach toward equity and tolerance in inter-racial relations. These are matters to which we will return in our consideration of educational opportunities.

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The third major opportunity lies in the development of depressed areas.

When President Eisenhower asked Congress for legislation to assist the depressed areas of the country, he stressed the need for action on grounds of equity: why should a child born in the backwoods of Tennessee be deprived of opportunities available to children whose parents are fortunate enough to be living in more prosperous regions? But there are additional reasons for Congress to act. The only chance for many young people now growing up in the depressed areas to earn a reasonable livelihood is by migrating to areas where employment opportunities are greater. But their willingness to migrate and their ability to integrate themselves into new communities depends importantly on their education and on the encouragement they receive with their occupational planning.

A clear gain will accrue, not only to the individual, but also to the economy from a relocation process which would enable more people to leave areas of underdevelopment for regions where jobs are plentiful.

The final area of wasted manpower is our older worker. During the depressed 1930s many employers established a compulsory age of retirement -- usually at 65. Retirement was viewed as one way of providing work for those most in need of a job. The generation since then has witnessed important changes: there have been large additions to the population aged 65 and over; most men and women in their sixties and seventies are in better physical and emotional health than formerly; and the age at which people start work,

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especially in certain professions, has been much advanced. (Witness the
medical specialist who does not begin to earn a proper living until eight
years out of medical school.) These developments date for the most part
from the recent past, a period in which a shortage of jobs has been trans-
formed into a shortage of well-trained persons -- a condition likely to prevail
throughout the decades ahead.

What adjustments are called for to insure that old practices, appro-
priate for their day, do not remain in force after the conditions which led
to their establishment no longer exist? Compulsory retirement has always
been enforced primarily in supervisory and management ranks. The typical
production worker drops out of the labor force when he is no longer able to
keep the pace and there is no easier job to which he can readily be trans-
ferred. Often he is still eager to contribute -- perhaps in a part-time job --
but employer indifference, social security regulations about earning income,
or simply lack of job-guidance make him unable to find work. He becomes
consigned to our homes for the obsolcent human in Florida or California
where he putters himself into boredom and dissatisfaction. In the executive
ranks, in civil service and in most non-profit organizations, formal regulations
rather than the individual's preference determine when a man retires.

To a certain extent this is unavoidable; no effective system of executive
development is possible without reasonable turnover at the top. In the absence

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of a fixed retirement age, those at the top are likely to regard themselves
as irreplaceable, even though many lose their vigor before 65 and become
more adept at coasting than working. No organization in a competitive en-
vironment can long survive a policy which leaves retirement solely to the
discretion of the individual. Chronological age, however, is an imperfect
criterion. What is needed is more knowledge of the aging process and ad-
ditional objective criteria which can be used to supplement chronological
age to determine when an individual should retire.

The more effective use of older persons requires the application of
courage and imagination. Were older men and women prepared to leave
their regular careers in order to join another kind of activity, the reluctance
to quit would not be so severe and the psychological shock not so great. A
number of companies have begun to pioneer in pre-retirement re-orientation
of older personnel with a view to easing their readjustment to a new but still
active life. The WhitneyFoundation has led the way in enabling distinguished
retired professors to continue active teaching for a year or two at smaller
institutions which could otherwise never have attracted them. Government
and non-profit organizations have also begun to make excellent use of persons
of high ability who have retired from industry or from academic life. Occasion-
ally a man who has earned full retirement benefits will move, in his late fifties
or early sixties, from an employer who enforces a fixed retirement age to

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another who is willing to keep him at work longer. Clearly this entire area
requires research, publicity, and perhaps not least, legislative encourage-
ment.

Note must also be taken of personal practices which militate against
the hiring of older persons. The age limit for new employees is frequently set
as low as 35 for secretarial work, 40 for management positions, and 45 for
skilled workers or operatives. These policies reflect inflexibilities in insur-
ance and pension schemes as well as prejudices which have no rational basis.
More efficient utilization of the nation's manpower resources requires that
major efforts be made to adjust the realities of the employment market to the
ever larger number of older workers. New York and Massachusetts have been
tackling the problem for some time, and the U.S. Department of Labor is now
pushing ahead with a major program. But much more needs to be done before
effective solutions are developed.

## 2. How Can We Improve Manpower Practices for High Talent Personnel?

High talent personnel are to be found in every sector of our society,
public and private alike. They are the "seed-corn" talent of industry and
government, education and social service. Yet it is clear that their services
are often not being used to maximal advantage -- sometimes because they are
not sufficiently appreciated, perhaps more frequently because their very
scarcity leads to their hoarding or misuse. A complete review of the utilization

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of high talent manpower is clearly beyond the scope of this paper, but a few
examples of current mispractices may serve to alert us to the kinds of prob-
lems involved:

* One need hardly point out the crucial value of research to business, government, and society in general. Yet productive research is being jeopardized by the fetish for something called "research" which is in fact nothing but intellectual makework. This misapplication of scarce talents has several forms. Many foundations have sponsored research projects of dubious value and exaggerated scope -- the latter consideration serving to aggravate the current vogue for "team" research. It is often far easier to receive a grant for a project involving a dozen men than for the potentially much more incisive work of a single scholar. The government research-supporting institutions, such as the Office of Naval Research, are equally at fault in the casual financing of projects which absorb first-rate talent for second rate ends. Universities, more interested in the funds attached to the projects than in the intrinsic value of the projects themselves, encourage the presentation of swollen research budgets. Business has become aware of the public-relations value of research and bids for highpower talents, only

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to use them for less than highpowered inquiries. This failure
to distinguish between projects of genuine importance and
showcase projects results in a squandering of intellectual
talent which we can ill afford.

* The use of skilled talents by our government is another area of often extreme malpractice. From a failure to adapt draft policies to the realities of scarce student talents, to a failure to utilize or coordinate scientific and scholarly aid in the military and diplomatic establishments, the spectacle presented is one of talent wastage -- and worse yet, an un-awareness of the wastage.

* Recruitment practices of large corporations leave much to be desired. Lavish offers at the campus level, usually based on the most cursory acquaintance with the applicant's potentials, are often followed by routine assignments to "learn the business." The tedium of a mediocre training course, with its emphasis on "starting at the bottom" is hardly the best use of bright young people whose abilities equip them to start near the top, as for example, in an assistant's capacity. The present system leads to unnecessary early dissatisfaction on the part of the most talented

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business trainees and to a failure to use their fresh abilities
before these have staled by too long an exposure to corporate
"procedure."

The fact that talent is misused by business, government, and academic
sectors alike suggests that the problem must be approached by a many-sided
attack. Some immediate courses for action which suggest themselves are these:

1. Greater sharing of intellectual talent among educational institutions. A number of smaller colleges have already evolved a cooperative use of high talents which no one of them alone could "afford" and have begun to dovetail academic offerings rather than to duplicate and re-duplicate one another's catalogues. Here is an excellent field for further exploration and application, perhaps under the aegis of a foundation grant for an inter-collegiate intellectual coordinating body.

2. Another opportunity for the better utilization of manpower would be to dovetail career opportunities in government and private economy. The increasing need for private executive personnel to be acquainted with the problems of government, and the no less important need for government personnel to have a first hand insight in the problems of business suggests the possibility of fruitful interchanges of personnel between the two. Tours of duty of several

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years duration in the government might be recognized by some corporations as a regular stage in a man's career development, and it should be possible to make this flow a two-way exchange.

3. The use of trial employment periods during the junior year va-
cation period offers an excellent chance for both corporation and
applicant to get to know one another on a more solid basis than a
half hour's interview in the spring of senior year. The fact that
the employment period will necessarily be limited should also force
the employer to offer more genuinely interesting and challenging
indoctrination courses or assignments for the potential employee.

4. The government use of expertise is a matter which calls for overall review and reconsideration. No simple recommendation can significantly improve a relationship which is presently formless, planless, haphazard, and inefficient. There is no doubt but that especially attention must be paid to the use -- and misuse -- of high talented personnel in the Defense and State Departments. It is possible that the coordinated use of talented manpower may require a centralized advisory office attached to the President's Executive Office.

5. Perhaps the most important single line of action is to improve and increase research into human resources and particularly into

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high talent resources. The fact is that at the moment we know
very little about such basic issues as why many young people
with high potential are not motivated to pursue a college educa-
tion; why about half of all who enter engineering schools fail to
graduate; why only a few of the high talented students are willing
to proceed with graduate studies; why some able people are at-
tracted to and remain in teaching or the armed services or other
areas of public service at relatively low salaries, and why others
move out of their chosen careers for minor differentials in earnings.
More effective utilization of the nation's human resources depends
on the explanation of our basic knowledge of such human behavior.
This is a challenge alike to universities, foundations, business
and government.

The Educational Problem

The fact that the utilization of manpower is so closely connected with
the creation and development of talent leads us naturally to the consideration
of the single most important talent -- shaping mechanism at our disposal; edu-
cation. The very fact that 40 million Americans -- nearly one out of every
four persons in the nation -- will be attending some sort of school this year
suggests the magnitude of both the problem and the opportunity which it offers
us. For despite this massive movement of the American people towards their

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educational institutions, the fact is that many of these Americans will be receiving an inadequate education. Only a year ago, the United States Office of Education estimated that the nation's schools were short 100,000 qualified teachers. Many elementary and high schools and colleges are already finding it impossible to hire well-qualified teachers in such basic subjects as English, languages, and social sciences. Some schools have even had to drop chemistry, physics and mathematics from their curricular since there were no teachers to teach them.

This inadequacy of education threatens to become still more severe in the years ahead. By 1969, high schools will be deluged with 50 - 70% more students than they now can barely accommodate; by 1975, our colleges and universities will face at least a doubling of the students who wish higher education.

At the same time that this unprecedented demand will materialize, our supply of teachers is apt to fall even further behind. The number of new school teachers needed in the coming decade is equal to about 50% of all the four year college graduates of every kind in that same period. Since only about 20% of college graduates enter school teaching, the severity of the shortage is apparent. At college levels, the teacher shortage is even more critical. The number of new college teachers needed to 1970 is roughly three times the total number of Ph.D. graduates likely to be turned out in the same period.

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These background statistics indicate the heroic nature of the measures which we will be forced to take if we are to maintain -- much less improve -- the quality of education in this nation. Nothing less than all-out attack against the problem from many vantage points will succeed in giving us the educational framework which is indispensable to the achievement of our full utilization of our human resources.

We see the main lines in this all-out attack to take the following form:

## 1. Teacher Recruitment

It is simply the unfortunate truth that the status of the teacher in America today is low. This fact plus the total inadequate economic remuneration of teachers has the unfortunate consequence of keeping away from the teaching profession *many of our more talented individuals*. Thus, one immediate course of action is to improve the quality of teacher recruitment by improving the actual facts of the teaching situation itself -- the training it involves, the salaries it earns, the nature of the task it undertakes.

The financial aspect of the problem, which is clearly the most important, is a matter to which we shall return at length. However it is worth stressing, in respect to the recruitment of teachers, that better pay -- although a necessary improvement -- may not be a sufficient one. The better training of teachers and their more skilled and dignified use are equally important means of attracting a larger flow of teacher applicants. An encouraging development

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in this regard has been the renewed interest of some liberal arts colleges
in turning out good school teachers, a mission which was once important
to them, but upon which many of them had turned their backs for many years.
Another development of significance in this respect has been the emergence
of a considerable number of "fifth year" teacher training programs leading
to a Masters Degree. These programs are designed to provide a roadway
into school teaching for liberal arts graduates who may lack standard
undergraduate professional courses.

The important point in these and other recent experiements is the
demonstration that there can and should be more than one route into school
teaching. It would be wise for state governments to foster the development
of all these routes by the judicious use of tax funds and teachers certifica-
tion regulations rather than to assume that the only way to expand the supply
of teachers is by the four year State Teacher Colleges.

2. Better Utilization of Teachers

Perhaps no profession has shared so little in the general rise of pro-
ductivity as that of the teacher. To a large degree, this is due to the fact
that teachers tend to be handled as interchangeable units in an educational
assembly line. The best teacher and the poorest in the same school build-
ing may teach the same grade and subject, use the same textbook, handle
the same number of students, get paid the same salaries and rise in salary

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at the same speed to the same ceiling. Indeed, the only way for many
teachers to get promoted beyond this educational lockstep is to stop teach-
ing and become administrators. Clearly, if the content of the teaching task
is to be made more attractive, this routinization of education will have to
be greatly changed.

One of the changes that suggests itself immediately is the elimination
of needless petty tasks which may occupy as much as one-third to one-half
of a teacher's time. The use of teacher aides may accomplish much in this
regard. Yet another means of increasing the productivity of the teacher is
the employment of such devices as television to bring effective teachers into
contact with larger numbers of students than they would otherwise face. Such
departures from customary practice as the teacher aide and television are not
merely stop gap measures to help us surmount the immediate teacher shortage
crisis. They are the beginnings of a long overdue revolution in the technology
of education without which it will not be possible in the years ahead to attract
enough top college people into education, to utilize them efficiently and to pay
them what they are worth.

3. Financial Support

Inseparably connected with the problem of the recruitment and better
utilization of teachers is the matter of how we shall finance the increased de-
mands on our educational apparatus.

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Certainly from an economic point of view the United States is in an excellent position today to provide financial support to education -- and in a very bad position to risk providing too little support. Yet in fact our outlays for education have failed to keep pace with our rising national income.

Against a Gross National Product of $391 billion in 1955, total educational expenditures in the United States ran just under $14 billion, or 3.6% of the GNP. This total breaks down as follows:

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>Billions</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Public Elementary and Secondary</td><td>$9.4</td></tr><tr><td>Private Elementary and Secondary</td><td>1.2</td></tr><tr><td>Public Higher Education</td><td>1.5</td></tr><tr><td>Private Higher Education</td><td>1.9</td></tr></tbody></table>

From the figures available it appears that at least since 1930 this relationship of educational expenditures to GNP has remained relatively constant at about 3.5%. This has meant, of course, a large increase in total dollars spent on education as national product has risen, but since enrollments have also risen, a smaller expenditure per pupil. Meantime the proportion of national productive effort devoted to other socially important programs, particularly defense, has risen considerably. For example, in 1940 the people of the United States spent $2.00 on education for every $1.00 spent on military

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services (not including costs of previous wars), but in 1955 we spent nearly
$3.00 on military services for every $1.00 on education.

Even allowing for considerably greater efficiency in the use of educa-
tional funds, it would not be unreasonable to assume that our schools and col-
leges will require 10 years from now at least *double* their present level of fi-
nancial support in order to handle a much larger number of students and to
improve quality. In other words, by 1965 the whole educational effort might
require something on the order of $28 to $30 billion. It may be conservatively
estimated that the Gross National Product by 1965 will be on the order of $525
to $550 billion, or from $135 to $165 billion above the 1955 level (measured
in 1955 prices). Thus, 10% of this increment -- somewhere between $13.5
and $16.5 billion -- would be sufficient to double the 1955 level of educational
outlay. This would mean, however, raising educational expenditures from 3.6%
of the Gross National Product in 1955 to something like 5.4% by 1965.

A significant rise of this sort in the proportion of Gross National
Product represented by education would involve a sharp departure from the
past pattern. Traditionally, school finances have been borne by local com-
munities but in recent years there has been an increasing shift of the burden
of school support to state governments -- from just under 17% in 1930 to over
41% in 1954. The reasons are many -- not the least compelling of which is
the fact that sole reliance on local financial capacities alone would result in
gross inequalities of educational opportunities.

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It now appears that an increasing number of communities and states are rapidly approaching the point of serious difficulty in appropriating further substantial sums for education. Some cities such as New York City have pushed real estate taxes to the point of maximum economic feasibility, have adopted sales taxes or similar revenue measures and now are even considering the possibility of local personal income taxes. State governments are becoming increasingly concerned about the effect which higher state taxes may have upon their competitive position with other states in attracting or holding industry. Certain states and communities where economic levels are well below average are clearly not in a position to expand greatly their support for education.

It is basically these considerations that have given rise to the current issue of Federal aid for education. From an *economic* point of view, (setting aside for the moment the corollary issue of "Federal control" over local schools), there is no question but what the Federal government is in a considerably more favorable position than either state or local governments, to divert a share of the annual increment of national income into education. Moreover, only the Federal government is in a position to reduce the wide educational inequalities among the children of different states.

The issue of whether Federal aid would involve heavy risk of Federal control of local education is, of course, a very important and complex one.

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Upon this question, unfortunately, most of the recent debate has shed more
heat than light. One relevant fact which seems not to be very widely known
or understood is that for more than a century, and on an increasing scale,
the Federal government has in fact engaged in the financial support of state
and local education in a variety of ways, particularly in higher education,
though also at the school level. Complaints of Federal intrusion upon local
autonomy under these previous programs appear to be exceedingly rare, though
this, of course, does not mean that the risk is not real. It does suggest, how-
ever, as does past experience with Federal aid programs in other fields, that
the risk of Federal control in the field of education varies greatly with the
particular form which the aid program takes.

There is much room for honest differences of opinion on Federal aid
to education. It might be useful however to concentrate our attention on
the directions in which Federal education grants should be turned, if they are
found necessary.

1. They should encourage state and local communities to make their own maximum effort to support education.

2. They should supplement these efforts rather than substitute for them.

3. They should be utilized to reduce the sharp inequalities of educational opportunity among children of different states.

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4. They should preserve and vitalize local leadership and local autono-
my of control over education, leaving each state free to employ the Federal funds
in accordance with its own priority needs.

In addition to this cautious use of Federal funds to supplement local
education, there are minimum contributions which the Federal government can
make in a different form. One such is the strengthening of the Office of Educa-
tion which is not presently equipped to give us all the needed factual data about
education. A more challenging departure would be the support of technological
research into improved educational methods. The establishment of a merit
scholarship program -- a domestic "Fulbright" plan -- for the encouragement
of scholarship in all fields, from talented young people in high school to
teachers in mid-career, would be another extremely useful step. And finally
a vigorous program of national publicity must alert our nation to the continuing
importance of the educational crisis.

## 4. Private Higher Education

One of the more important question marks in the future of education
is the role of private colleges and universities. Their share of total enrollments
have already declined to less than 50% of all higher education (and far below
this in many states), and if this trend is not offset, their share of total students
could readily fall to less than 20% within 15 years.

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One of the principal reasons for the relative decline in the private college is a lack of financial strength. Faced even now with the serious problem of balancing their budgets, they are not optimistic about giving large extra funds for expansion. Yet, these private colleges have in the past been the source of some of the most profound contributions to American life and their waning importance is a phenomenon upon which we can only look with profound misgivings.

One encouraging development in recent years has been the dramatic increase of contributions by business firms. While total gifts of this sort are still very small relative to total needs, the trend is sharply upward and represents the tapping of a new and potentially very important source of aid. A second as yet untried development would be the reform of the private college "pricing system." Today, tuition charges frequently represent only 50% or less of actual instructional costs, so that every student automatically receives a large "hidden scholarship" financed out of endowment income, current gifts, and low faculty salaries. Overt scholarships are then superimposed upon the "hidden scholarships" for those students who cannot even afford the "cut rate."

The private colleges might well consider an alternate pricing and scholarship policy under which tuition would be set at the *full* cost of instruction and each student would receive whatever amount of scholarship

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assistance he needed and would pay whatever proportion of the full tuition he
could afford. This would result in eliminating "hidden" scholarships entirely,
putting all student subsidies out in the open, and placing all student charges
on an ability-to-pay basis. No student would be kept out of the college for
financial reasons, none would receive a subsidy if he did not need it, and
not a dollar of alumni gifts or other income would be wasted on hidden sub-
sidies to students whose families could well afford the real cost of a good
college education. The result of such a change of policy in virtually all private
colleges would be to increase total revenues from students, with the increase
available for higher faculty salaries and for scholarship help to students who
really need the help.

Many college administrators agree with the logic of such a policy but
see difficulties in the way of making the transition from present practices to
such radically different ones. If a substantial number of leading colleges
were to announce their intention to move to the new plan in a series of sched-
uled steps, most of these difficulties might be avoided. In any event, the
fact remains that much of the financial plight of private colleges today is di-
rectly traceable to their pricing and salary policies. Unless and until these
policies are substantially revised, their plight is likely to continue.

The private colleges need also to examine some of their other very
costly practices, particularly those having to do with utilization of space and

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faculty. The physical plant of most private colleges is utilized only a fraction of the year and only a fraction of the week when college is in session. To achieve fuller utilization would involve considerable change in academic schedules -- such as classes in the afternoon and early evening as well as in the morning, laboratories sessions in the morning and evening as well as in the afternoon, and even the substitution of a four quarter or three semester plan in place of the two semester plan now followed by many. Such changes would make it possible for a great many private colleges to "process" 50 to 100% more students with little if any expansion of physical facilities, and without increasing the number of students on the campus at any one time.

One other important possibility which the well-established private colleges might profitably explore is that of "spawning" some new private colleges. It should be far easier today to create new private colleges of excellent quality than 75 or 100 years ago. The nation is far richer, more value is attached to higher education by far more people, and there is an enormous and growing surplus of applicants for high quality, independent colleges. If a new college could have the moral and academic support of well-established colleges, the problem of developing a good faculty and student clientele would be far less than the problems faced by new colleges in the past.

Hopefully such new colleges would not simply be carbon copies of the older ones. Their buildings could be far more functional and less expensive; their utilization of faculty and facilities could be more efficient; more

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responsibility and challenge could be given to students to learn for themselves.
Perhaps there would be no lectures -- the best ones could be piped in by
closed-circuit television from the parent institutions. Only a working library
would be needed because the more elaborate library collections of the older
colleges could be shared when special research called for access to rarer docu-
ments. The parent colleges could, for a period of years, supply the nucleus
of the faculty of the new institution, composed of some of their ablest and
most imaginative teachers who would be given the challenge of an opportunity
to escape the restrictions of old patterns and to create something new. The
"feed-back" effect upon the old colleges would undoubtedly be wholesome and
substantial.

These various possibilities of expanding the capacity, improving the
quality, and strengthening the financial position of private higher education
would appear to warrant prompt and thorough investigation and experimentation.
Unless changes such as these are devised and carried out, there is real danger
that the role and influence of higher private education will progressively de-
cline in the years ahead.

## 5. Fuller Use of Existing Talents

The cultivation of excellence cannot be increased only by concentrating
on the improvement of our educational facilities. We must also turn to the
consideration of the use -- and misuse -- of our present resources. Although

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dramatic progress has been made in providing formal education through high school to the overwhelming majority of young people, there still remain many inequalities in educational opportunity for which the nation is paying a high price in terms of the wastage of human ability.

These inequalities take many forms, have many causes, and do not all lend themselves to remedial action through the schools and colleges. Some of the most important educational influences upon a child lie outside the classroom, especially in the home and neighborhood, and the schools cannot hope to remedy all of the deficiencies or counteract all of the undesirable influences that exist in a young person's total environment. Great inequalities of educational opportunity also exist among the children of different communities and different states because of wide variations in the economic ability of these different areas to support education. During the first year of the Korean conflict, for example, the national failure rate on the Armed Forces Qualification Test was 19.2%, but the failure rate for Selective Service registrants from nine states where incomes and educational expenditures are relatively low ranged from 34 to 58%. This type of evidence underscores the fact that poor education in any one area of the nation becomes the serious concern of the whole nation. Evidence of the high mobility and population from one part of the country to another further underscores the same point.

The rapid growth of tax-supported higher educational institutions has greatly reduced the economic barriers that formerly prevented a majority of

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qualified young people from getting a college education, but important economic barriers still remain. It is estimated that each year 100,000 of the brightest high school students fail to continue their education into college, largely for economic reasons. Probably a far larger number who do continue are discouraged on economic grounds from selecting a college most appropriate to their abilities.

There is a subtler but equally serious form of inequality which results from the frequent failure of our schools and colleges to provide adequate programs for their ablest students. Our educational system has evolved into a chronological lock step under which all young people start off together at the age of 6 (or age 5 if there is a kindergarten) and march forward one grade per year, to emerge 12 years later with a high school diploma and possibly 4 years after that with a college degree. This chronological grouping of young people often results in the ablest students being exposed to educational programs whose content is too thin and whose pace is too slow to challenge and stretch their superior abilities. The result is to dampen or destroy their native curiosity and their enthusiasm for learning. Poor teaching, unchallenging programs, and rigid academic procedures can waste just as much potential talent as economic, racial, and other barriers to equal educational opportunity.

The many causes and forms of inequality of educational opportunity must obviously be attacked in a wide variety of ways. Those which stem from an underprivileged environment must be approached by social programs which

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extend far beyond the schools and which affect the child's whole family and neighborhood -- programs designed to achieve better housing, better employment opportunities, better community, cultural, and recreational resources and the like. But in such situations it is also essential to strengthen the schools and the link between the home and the school. A good example is the pilot program being operated by the New York City Board of Education to help Puerto Rican youngsters to overcome language and cultural barriers that heretofore have prevented their access to a good education in the public schools. There is need for much stronger efforts, especially in large cities, to improve the educational opportunities of youngsters living in underprivileged neighborhoods.

Similarly there is need for removing the economic barriers that now keep many of our ablest youngsters out of college, or out of the right college for their particular abilities and interests. The National Merit Scholarship Program, recently established by private foundations and business corporations, is addressed to this problem, but the scale of its effort is still far too small in relation to the need, and therefore makes doubly urgent a consideration of Federal aid for merit scholarships, perhaps through the existing National Merit Scholarship Program. The schools and colleges themselves need to do much more to make their procedures less rigid and to improve the educational opportunities of abler students. A number of experimental programs point the

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way toward various possible solutions of this problem. In the public schools of Portland, Oregon, for example, and in a growing number of other school systems, able students are given a chance to spend part of the day in courses of study well above their chronological grade level. Under the Advanced Placement Program, now sponsored by the College Entrance Examination Board, a rapidly expanding number of secondary schools, both public and private, are offering college-level courses to their best juniors and seniors. Many colleges are prepared to permit such students to "leapfrog" freshman college courses and get credit for them. Yet another approach is represented by the experimental Program for Early Admission to College, under which about 1,000 able students have entered 12 different colleges over the last five years before completing the last year or two of high school. An evaluation of the first two groups to graduate from college under this experiment shows that, on the whole they have far outperformed their classmates academically, while despite their lower age their record of social and emotional adjustment to college compared favorably to that of students generally. Much more needs to be done to extend such programs and to make our school and college programs richer and more flexible so as to accommodate the needs and abilities of able students.

One aspect of the problem of unused talents which merits special attention concerns the educational opportunities open to the Negro. Despite the overall progress which characterizes Negro education, there is a very real question as to whether the gap between Negroes and Whites has been

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greatly closed. It was recently reported, for example, that only 5% of
seniors in Negro state supported teacher training colleges, attained the
minimum achievement level of 95% of the seniors of White supported colleges
in the same states. It was also revealed that the achievement record of these
Negro seniors roughly approximated the achievement records of high school
juniors of middle class districts of certain New England cities. Such statis-
tical records are occasionally cited to support the contention that Negroes
are not capable of absorbing a full education. The fallaciousness of this
contention has been many times disproved, and the level of educational
achievement has repeatedly been found to mirror the opportunities presented
to the Negro.

The present disregard for the potential of the Negro has today become
a problem which critically affects all Americans. In depriving the Negro of
a full educational opportunity, we are depriving ourselves as a nation of
the use of some 10% of our human talents. Socially and economically, this
is too high a price to pay, morally it is indefensible. The end of segregation,
with all the difficult adjustments it imposes, is of course the first necessary
step in this direction, but it is only a first step. Until the Negro has been
offered an equal opportunity with the non-Negro to develop and use his
individual talents to the utmost, we shall have failed in a critical area to
achieve our moral and material goals.

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III

Toward the Cultivation of Excellence

With these suggestions for the improvement of our utilization and
cultivation of talent, the substantive content of our report is complete, and
we return to a larger perspective over the problem as a whole. Perhaps it
is well to reflect on the cautions and reservations with which we initially
introduced our discussion, and to recall the element of the unknown which
surrounds human behavior, the slowness of change of a voluntaristic society,
and the yet unpredictable effect of our social environment on incentives and
motivations themselves. These cautions and reservations remind us that
whereas much can be done to cultivate and utilize our human resources to
better advantage, the problem does not permit of glib disposition. If the tone
of this report is hopeful, it is not one of facile assurance.

Throughout our report two themes have consistently appeared. One
of them is our national moral value of equality. This is the American ideal
which has produced our public educational system, which has consistently
sought the elevation of talent wherever it appeared, and which has created a
society where status is achieved by accomplishment rather than by traditional
privilege. Behind many of our suggestions for the improvement of our insti-
tutions lies a moral commitment to the ideal of equal opportunity in life, and
the rightful equality of access of all talent to the environment of encouragement
and sustenance which it needs.

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But there is another theme which has also run through our discussion: the theme of excellence itself. By excellence we do not mean worldly success or financial eminence. Rather it is a moral quality of inner achievement. It is the mark which distinguishes the man who has fully engaged himself in a task of his own choice, compatible with his own ideals in life. It is the inner measure of life achievement, rather than its outer measurement.

Americans are not always consistent in their admiration for excellence. It is the quality we single out in a Lincoln, a Jefferson, a Lee; and from its cultivation and appreciation comes some of our internal strength, our sense of human dignity. But this is not the only strain of the American character. There are visible also tendencies not to admire excellence but to distrust it, and to erect in its stead the simpler goal of measurable achievement in fame, money, or some other external standard. This is the cult not of excellence, but of success.

Yet the real test of excellence is not that provided by the inevitable failings of human nature itself. The test rather, is whether the ideal of excellence is compatible with a society which also espouses the ideal of equality. For equality, which begins as a rallying cry for a common starting point in life can end as a slogan for a common destination in life. In a democratic society the race is opened to the swift but the rules of the race are often written by the slow. The result is frequently a lowering of goals until all can achieve them: a society in which, like Alice in Wonderland,

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"everyone has won and all shall have prizes." It is good that everyone in a democracy has a chance to win prizes -- provided that the quality of the prizes is not thereby cheapened. But if we come to seek not for an equality of chances but for an equality of results, we shall end by vitiating the very source of vitality of an open society itself.

This is precisely the danger which presently threatens us in our desire to achieve "equal excellence" in education. We have made of the receipt of a college degree an accolade of merit, not in terms of the benefits which it may confer on the college graduate, but as evidence of his promotion to the privileged status of a college alumnus. To be "educated" -- that is to say, to have received a college degree -- is the summum bonum of American career apprenticeship today. Meanwhile we are permitting two grave situations to develop. First, we are so seriously inundating our limited institutions of higher education that those who are equipped to benefit from higher study may be deprived of the atmosphere, the facilities and the individual attention they require. Second, by necessarily diluting the content of higher education, we are deluding the average person that by spending his four years on a campus he is thereby an educated man.

This is happening because we have tied the label of excellence to the formality of "higher education" and now insist that no one shall be so disprivileged as to leave the race without a diploma award. We are, in other words, using our drive toward equality to undermine our need for excellence --

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not because the two need necessarily conflict, but because we have come
to measure excellence in such a way that its egalitarian application must
lead to dilution and devaluation.

The answer to this dilemma does not consist in a calculated limitation
of education to the "superior." On the contrary the crux of the answer lies
in stripping the notion of superiority from the formalities of higher education.
What is needed is the realization that excellence is a quality, not a quantity
of life achievement, and that excellence has as many realizations, forms,
directions and needs as there are individuals themselves. So long as we
equate excellence with education and try to share it by squeezing people
into college, we subvert education, and what is more we misuse the ideal
of excellence itself.

College education is not the only road for a full and excellent life.
Travel, artistic or business apprenticeships, the cultivation of technical
skills, home education -- there are an endless number of ways in which a
person may equip himself for the life in which his abilities will permit him
to excel. Hence if there is an answer to the profound dilemma of an
excellence-seeking, equality-bound society it lies in the recognition that
excellences must differ; that any attempt to mold excellence into a single
form, to subject it to a common conditioning and to point it to a common goal
is the sure defeat of excellence and the equally sure victory of its enemy --
mediocrity. In the realization that differences of life-paths have nothing

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to do with the *worth* of any life path, and in the encouragement of the diversity, uniqueness and individuation which a truly egalitarian cultivation of excellence must produce lies the goal for a democratic society. Whether we shall succeed in winning this goal may determine, more importantly than any other single challenge, the tone of the American society of the future.