Report Card

> When student tuition-loan programs began expanding during the 1960s, they seemed a sensible solution to the problem of soaring education costs. The loans, backed by state and federal authorities but issued by private institutions at 7% interest, came due within a year after the student left school and were repayable within ten years. Now, to the dismay of financial authorities, the delinquency rate is soaring (as high as 9 1/2% in the case of one major bank, compared with a standard adult rate of only 2%). The reasons most commonly cited: jobs are hard to find, and some students are simply loath to work or to pay debts. To track down delinquents, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare has assigned 58 new sleuths, but some culprits may be hard to find. When the Bank of America prodded one ex-student about laggardly payments, all it got in reply was a photo of him huddled naked in some northern cave.

> Given a little time to think about it, any reasonably perceptive social philosopher might have predicted that the average Princeton man, ten years out of college, would earn more than $20,000, prefer Marlboros (if he smokes), German cars and Jack Daniel's, live in a colonial home decorated in contemporary style, wear his hair longer than he used to, and choose Richard Nixon over any Democrat.* He might even guess that 41% of Princeton's class of 1962 have tried drugs, or that 24% have tried extramarital sex--all deductions confirmed in a ten-years-later booklet just issued by the class. Who would imagine, though, that the average member of the class of 1962 is able to attend only 0.5 Tiger football games a year?

> Pleasant surprises are nice, particularly if they apply to national disaster areas such as reading ability, and a "pleasant surprise" was just what Dr. J. Stanley Ahmann of the National Assessment of Educational Progress reported after he glanced over the results of his group's federally financed $15 million effort to test how well U.S. youngsters can read. There was some doubt, however, that the test was really testing. Consider, for example, this question for nine-year-olds: "Complete the sentence with the words that make the most sense: The boy wanted (a) a new ball (b) under dinner (c) rode his bike (d) to the circus (e) stopped raining (f) I don't know." Some 17 % missed it. Sniffed Dr. William Furlong of the National Reading Center: "The questions may tell us more about the testers' expectations than the kids' ability to read."

* And prefer TIME to any other magazine (45%).

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