Who Will Run the Colleges?

Congress lowering of the draft age to 18 cleared the college air. College officials, who had decided that any policy, however tough, was better than no policy, applauded. If the youth draft did not settle the wartime fate of the 1,700 U.S. colleges (enrollment: about 1,120,000), it set the stage for a settlement. Cleared up was the question: who would go to college--only men in uniform and the physically unfit. A battle over a big remaining question began behind closed doors in Washington: Who would run the colleges, the Army & Navy or civilians?

The Army & Navy wanted to take over the colleges lock, stock & barrel.* They proposed to pick the students and prescribe their courses, eliminate everything from the curriculum but technical and essential professional studies.

College officials were just as determined to keep control. The leaders of the American Council on Education had agreed on a plan: Let military authorities and the colleges jointly pick from the nation's ablest high-school graduates the members of an Enlisted Training Corps, limited by military quotas. Each enlistee, put into uniform and provided with base pay and a living allowance, would choose his own college, there get four semesters (about a year and a half) of basic officer training under R.O.T.C. or college teachers. After that, picked men would stay in college for advanced professional or technical training, the rest would go directly into the armed forces.

Author of this plan was Harvard's President James Bryant Conant. President Conant and a fellow member of the three-man committee that had cleared up the rubber mess, M.I.T.'s President Karl Compton, joined in warning the nation that it could no longer delay clearing up its college manpower mess. Taking issue with Army men who had declared that all students were destined for the armed forces, they pointed to the urgent need for experts in war industry. Said President Compton: "My own experience with the scientific program of the Government and the technical problems of the services and of industry convinces me that cutting off the continued supply of technically competent men would be a national calamity."

While men's colleges faced a great decision, women's colleges also began to realize last week that they had come to a fork in the road. Urging a national service act for women, the American Council on Education's President George Zook said: "It is clear that women students cannot expect to pursue college as usual while their brothers and male friends are rushed off. . . . Courses for women are going to be shortened and they are going to be directed toward preparation for specific types of war service. . . . These war jobs are going to appear to college women to be hard and distasteful. Stronger words could be used for what many of the men are going through."

* College presidents heard disquieting reports that the Army & Navy planned to use fewer than 500 of the 1,700 colleges; the rest might have to give up for the duration.

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