hand, the District has exceptional human and cultural advantages. Among its unique resources that invite study at many levels, including the very highest, are the functioning of the Congress, the courts and the White House, and the workings of the several departments and agencies of Government. It has great repositories of information, such as the National Archives, the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, and it is at the heart of an intricate process of collecting and analyzing information on problems related to all aspects of human knowledge. Other resources include the embassies and consulates of foreign nations, the offices of many national and international organizations and agencies, and a continuous stream of visitors-some to convey information, some to influence decisions, some to seek information. A fuller utilization of these resources for higher education and research would generate new knowledge and better-trained personnel for the functioning of Government and other organizations contributing to the national welfare.

On the other hand, the provisions for higher education in the District compare unfavorably in several respects with those of other major cities in this country and with virtually all major European capitals. There are no general public institutions of higher education (Howard University, with its independent board of trustees, is classified as a privately controlled university); the only institution offering low-cost higher education to District citizens is D.C. Teachers College, which offers only the B.S. degree and specializes only in teacher training. Most other major American cities boast one or more public junior colleges or other public institutions of higher education. All other American cities of the size and importance of the District—and virtually every European capital-have more extensive programs of graduate, professional and post-doctoral study and research than are available in the Capital of the United States. All our major cities have provisions for the education of teachers greatly superior to those found here. And all of them also have a wider range of opportunities for post-high school education, both vocational and general.

The District has an impressive array of privately controlled post-high school educational institutions. Its resources in this respect are exceeded in scope and diversity by only a few

cities in the Nation. For valid reasons, however, none of the five universities in the District addresses itself primarily to District residents. None of them is in a position to extend any tuition advantages to residents of the District, and each feels itself to have a national, rather than a local mission. Howard University, while it accepts a larger number and a higher proportion of Washington residents than any of the other four District universities, continues, like its sister institutions, to feel its basic mission to be national—and more recently international. It has never followed a policy of racial discrimination (indeed, its first graduates were three white women), but it retains a strong sense of national responsibility for offering exceptional educational opportunities to members of the race in whose interest it was founded.

There is impressive evidence, moreover, that the scale of tuition and fees required for attendance at the District universities makes all of them except Howard unavailable to large numbers of high school graduates, particularly from the public schools. Each of the five universities is open to students of any race, yet it is Howard, with its lower student costs, that attracts almost two-thirds of all District high school graduates who attend local universities. During the 4-year period from 1960 through 1963 it admitted 1,166 (63 percent) of the 1,837 students who entered the District universities from the District's senior public high schools.

The evidence that economic factors discourage District high school graduates from seeking higher education is also apparent in a comparison of the percentage of graduates of the several District public high schools who enter college upon graduation. It is significant that this percentage varies directly with the median family income of the families in the area which the school serves. The one public high school serving an area where the median family income is above $10,000 had, during the 4-year period under study, 73.7 percent of its graduates attending college after graduation. The three schools serving areas where the median family income was between $7,000 and $10,000 were next highest (45.4, 53.0 and 45.0 percent, respectively). The three schools serving areas where the family median income was between $5,000 and $7,000 were still lower (27.0, 21.1 and 37 percent). The four schools serving areas where family incomes were below

$5,000 had the lowest percentages one school excepted (20.6, 18.9, 16.6 and 26.9). It is likewise significant that of this last group of four public high schools, 95 percent of the graduates who did attend a local university upon graduation enrolled at Howard. When the median income of the families in the area served by the school was in the middle range ($5,000 to $10,000), more than six times as large a percentage of these graduates-between 30 and 35 percent-attended other local universities.

C. The Basic Educational Need of the District

The most urgent educational need in the District of Columbia is hope. The public school system is overwhelmingly college-oriented, yet there is no low-cost general college to which its graduates can go. Like every American city today, Washington has its share of families-more than a sixth of the population—who live in poverty and who generally suffer the attendant evils of cultural deprivation and the stifling environment of the slums. Yet, unlike more and more American cities, Washington is without a single publicly supported institution for education at any level beyond the high school-excepting only a teacher-training institution— to help these thousands of persons overcome their handicaps and realize their full potential.

In consequence, a substantial portion of Washington's school population and young adults is now denied largely because of the meagerness of their own cultural and financial background-all sense of participation in the society for which they are unprepared, and hence largely unneeded and unwanted. Without hope, these persons are in imminent danger of becoming permanently alienated from the dominant culture and values of their community.

For thousands of these children and adolescents, school has no meaning in terms of opportunity. It is more in the nature of a sentence passed upon them to be served until age 16. For they have become convinced, largely through the experience of parents, of older brothers and sisters and of others known to them in their community, that they can look forward to no real part in today's society, let alone to any share in that society's affluence. Thus too many of them drop out

of school as soon as they are able and try, usually without marked success, to compete for a living. Without skills, they are too often unusable by-and hence useless to-the community.

The problem is not simply the familiar syndrome of poverty, cultural deprivation and crushing environment; it is also the absence, as things now stand, of any weapon with which the sufferers may combat these evils. Publicly supported institutions that hold out a credible promise to them, unlike the private colleges and universities from which their own condition excludes them, constitute an effective weapon for this purpose, as evidence from many cities that provide such institutions suggests. Knowledge that these institutions are available will often help to provide motivation when children first enter school. And with motivation, school can become a very different experience. No longer a dreary succession of meaningless lessons and of senseless disciplinary rules, it represents the chance for self-betterment. Usually when these "uneducable" groups have been offered an opportunity their members can translate into terms of immediate meaning for them, many in the group promptly begin to display capacities of which they formerly gave no evidence. Such an opportunity is what the Committee believes must be supplied in the District of Columbia.

III. THE COMMITTEE'S RECOMMENDATIONS

The absence in the District of opportunities for virtually every sort of post-high school education for those unable to pay the necessarily high costs of attending privately controlled institutions left the Committee in no doubt about its answer to the basic question before it: "Should the District of Columbia have publicly supported institutions of higher learning beyond the secondary school level?" The clear and simple answer is "Yes." Almost equally clear-if somewhat less simple is the answer to the subsequent question: "What type or types of institutions should be established?"

To reach its answer to this question the Committee considered the possible need for publicly supported institutions of

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various sorts at every level beyond the high school: the trade school; the vocational school; the technical institute; the comprehensive junior (or community) college; the 4- or 5year college of liberal arts and sciences; such specialized undergraduate schools or courses of study as engineering and business administration; the multipurpose university; the professional school; the graduate school; and the high-level center for graduate and post-doctoral study and research. After reviewing all the possibilities, it submits the following recommendations:

1. The immediate creation of a comprehensive community (or junior) college, publicly supported, that will put within reach of all high-school graduates opportunities for technical and vocational training and for general education leading both to greater personal and civic effectiveness and to further study in a 4-year college or university for those who qualify and seek it.

2. The immediate creation of a college of liberal arts and sciences, also publicly supported, authorized to confer both the baccalaureate and the master's degrees, with a special concern with teacher education (a function it should assume from the D.C. Teachers College) and prepared to offer specialized courses of study as need and feasibility are established.

3. The prompt establishment of a system of noncompetitive scholarships, publicly supported, enabling qualified District students who wish, after 2 years' work in the community college, to pursue special courses of study not offered at the outset by the proposed public college of liberal arts and sciences at an institution where such curricula are available.

4. The early development in the District of a center or centers for high-level graduate and post-doctoral studies, with a Presidential review undertaken within 3 to 5 years to make specific recommendations, if desirable, with respect to ways in which the Federal Government might be helpful in the attainment of this goal.

The basis for and details of these recommendations are contained in what follows.