Lots of Little Ones

Any boy or girl who doesn't go to college will soon be considered unAmerican.

That day isn't here yet--but the plans are being laid for it. When the day comes, colleges will have to be a lot bigger, or there will have to be a lot more colleges. Last week California and New York, the two states with the biggest educational migraines, chose the lesser evil. The trick is, they agreed, to make little ones out of big ones.

California's college enrollment is expected to hit 227,087 by 1965. The legislature named a three-man commission, headed by Dr. George D. Strayer of Columbia's Teachers College, to decide where to put them all. Last week, the Strayer report urged California to start three new four-year colleges, eight new junior colleges (present total: 55), expand courses at two of the eight University of California campuses, but set a limit of 20,000 students apiece on the two big ones (Berkeley and Los Angeles). President Robert Gordon Sproul, the big man on all eight campuses, had his way on one important point. The commission told the little colleges to leave advanced and professional education to big Cal.

New York, which is full of big private schools like Columbia and N.Y.U. but has no state university, picked a 30-man commission to decide whether it needed one. Last week the commission (chairman: Owen D. Young) recommended that New York instead set up a chain of community colleges, able to handle 30,000 four-year students and 80,000 two-year students by 1960. One advantage in scattering colleges : more students will be able to go to college cheaply, by living at home.

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