Enough Hrope?

"Hup, hoop, hreep, hrope!" bellow the R.O.T.C. drill sergeants, and to many U.S. college students the whole idea of uniforms, parades and dull "military science" classes appears more than ever to be preparation for a doughboy war in an age when more academic learning would serve the nation better. The Navy's 53-campus "Holloway" volunteer plan, offering complete scholarships, produces a steady supply of bright young officers, but Air Force R.O.T.C. at 187 schools harvests only 4% of trainees as commissioned officers, and the Army's 247-campus program is notoriously archaic. Among college administrators, who consider it much too costly, compulsory R.O.T.C. is now so widely resented that last year alone a dozen campuses dropped it.*

Facing up to this ferment, the Pentagon is about to ask Congress to approve sharp revisions in R.O.T.C. The Air Force wants to cut four-year A.F.R.O.T.C. to two, beginning in a student's junior year, with weekly class time reduced from five hours to three. Sweetening its bid with scholarships, the Air Force hopes to wind up with far more career officers, yet spend a lot less money. Also saving money in the new budget, the Army has cut out high school R.O.T.C., which enrolled 60,000 students and cost $5,000,000.

The Army is less anxious for change at college level: R.O.T.C. annually supplies about 90% of its new second lieutenants (17,500 needed this year). The Army goes along with the Air Force two-year plan, but in its own way. It will probably cut weekly classes to four hours rather than three, and not offer scholarships unless recruits fail to appear. How Congress will react to all this is anyone's guess. But no one doubts that a cheaper, more efficient R.O.T.C. must be devised.

* The 1862 Morrill Act, which established land-grant colleges, required them to teach military tactics. Whether or not R.O.T.C. is made compulsory is up to each school; 20 have chosen to make it elective. In Illinois, Kansas, Maine and West Virginia, state laws require it.

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