Less College for More People

The U.S. leads the world in mass education, but much of it is wasted on the young. Pressured to study more and more (22 years from first grade to a Ph.D.), many enjoy it less and less (60% of collegians quit before getting degrees). Not only does youth's prolonged segregation in school create boredom and rebellion, it also shuts out many adults who yearn for more college training.

Last week the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education* proposed drastic and important changes in the traditional lockstep pattern. At one level, the commission envisions a simplified system that would sharply reduce the "credential society's" 1,600 specialized degrees to 160. Full-time students could earn degrees faster. High schools would teach college-freshman courses, for example, thus creating three-year colleges. The often needless and narrow Ph.D. degree would be limited to a few researchers. The standard advanced degree would be a new doctor of arts, earned only four years after the B.A.

In the Bank. At another level, the commission takes the refreshing position that high school graduates should not feel compelled to go to college immediately--but that college should be open to them whenever they feel like going. According to the commission, restless youths should be encouraged to "stop out" after high school, work at jobs or community service, then enter college with greater desire and maturity.

All those completing sophomore studies should get another escape hatch from the academic grind--the A.A. (associate of arts) degree. As the commission sees it, this would equip the impatient for immediate jobs and also weed the campuses of those who now waste time in "aimless experimentation."

To give adults a lifetime crack at formal learning, the commission wants the Federal Government to guarantee two years of college for everyone--and to put it "in the bank" for withdrawal at any age. In addition to more two-year community colleges, which this obviously requires, the commission urges a big expansion in off-campus education --correspondence courses, TV lectures, home teaching cassettes. Eventually, some youngsters and adults (including housewives, the aged and the poor) could earn "external" degrees without attending college at all. Moreover, a new system of equivalency exams would give credit for skills acquired through reading and job experience.

Would all this cost billions? Far from it, says the commission. By 1980, such reforms could reduce college expenditures by 10% to 15%, or about $3 billion to $5 billion a year. The savings could be spent on a youth corps aimed at social service, plus increased scholarships for both youths and adults.

To raise even more money, the commission would extend the Social Security system. Contributions from workers and employers would create an "educational security" fund. After a certain number of years, anyone could cash in his credit and go back to school. "Society would gain," the commission notes, "if more students were also workers and more workers could also be students."

* Chaired by Clark Kerr, the 19-member commission includes Industrialists Norton Simon and Ralph M. Besse, Economist Carl Kaysen, Psychologist Kenneth Keniston, plus university presidents like Illinois' David D. Henry and Notre Dame's Theodore M. Hesburgh.

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