If you have ever spent much time arguing the merits and demerits of a college education, you should be interested to know that a considerable amount of fresh ammunition for such discussions will be available to you presently from a major survey TIME is making of U.S. college graduates--from gaffers of the class of '84 to sprigs just out last year.

In fact, if you are an American college graduate and your last name begins with the letters "Fa" (Farley, Farmer, etc.), you have probably already received the questionnaire we sent you. For, in order to do the survey accurately we asked the presidents of the 1,200-odd U.S. colleges and universities to let us have the names and addresses of their "Fa" graduates (this sample proved to be representative in TIME'S earlier study of college graduates).

TIME made a similar study of college graduates in 1940 with the research tools then available. It was a good try, but it did little more than touch on some of the basic socio-economic characteristics of college graduates. This time we are trying to find out their characteristics by the kind of people they are: whether they are liberal or conservative in thought, whether they are participating actively in community leadership or have reneged on this aspect of their obligation to society, etc.

We are also trying to find out such things as the relationship of a graduate's success or satisfaction in life with the kind of education he had (liberal arts v. technical); with the grades he got; with whether he worked his way through, had a scholarship, or just went as a matter of course; with the number and kind of his extracurricular collegiate activities, etc.

From our standpoint, this full-length portrait of the American college graduate should tell us many of the things we want to know about an individual group which constitutes a specific and very large part of TIME'S readership. It seemed to us, however, that these were precisely the things that any thoughtful educator would most want to know about his graduates. Therefore, in asking for the names of their graduates we also asked America's college and university presidents to tell us what lines of inquiry would be of the greatest interest and use to them.

Altogether, 400 of them contributed suggestions, many of which were incorporated into the survey. Some typical contributions :

"What we want most to know about college graduates is how much of their education has 'taken.' "

"To what extent are college graduates happily and realistically oriented to the world in which they live?"

"Are they interested in the moral and spirit ual uplift of our country? Are their lives indicating this interest?"

At present, thanks to the enthusiastic cooperation of these educators, the survey is well along. The questionnaire, which was carefully developed by a committee of leading U.S. sociologists and educators, has been sent to 15,700 "Fa" graduates and, to date, 9,500 of them have replied-- a return of better than 60%. We are tabulating the answers and expect to publish the results next spring.

Although this is the first public announcement of TIME'S survey, we know of three Ph.D. theses that have been planned on the material we have gathered. The American Association of University Women which is making a large-scale study of its membership is awaiting the findings of our survey-- as are Harvard, Syracuse, Columbia and other universities with similar projects. We hope, therefore, that TIME'S study will become an important and useful part of America's educational literature.

Next week I will report on the questionnaire itself.

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