to profit from higher education should be excluded because of inability to pay tuition or other charges, or because of remedial deficiencies in prior education." Lack of a college to which these low-income students can aspire frequently causes a loss of motivation and lack of interest in high school work.

In line with this thinking we also endorse the proposal for a 2-year community college in addition to the degree-giving institution. The pattern of post-highschool training for semiprofessional, technical, and office occupations has been accepted by most cities as evidenced by the widespread establishments of community 2-year colleges. Our city, even more than industrial cities, cannot absorb any increase in unskilled labor. This community college could serve our city not only in this capacity, but, as in California, as a school where students of marginal scholarship, or late bloomers, could be given an opportunity to improve their qualifications to enter the 4-year college.

Under the Higher Education Facilities Act of 1963 the Federal Government has provided aid to higher education. We have already forgone $289,620 under this act by having no institution to receive funds. We ask that this situation be corrected by the passage of this legislation.

Senator MORSE. Our next witness will be Mrs. Daniel Schreiber, vice president of public affairs, District of Columbia Section of the National Council of Jewish Women.

We are glad to have you here again, Mrs. Schreiber.

STATEMENT OF MRS. DANIEL SCHREIBER, VICE PRESIDENT OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SECTION, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN

Mrs. SCHREIBER. Thank you, Senator Morse.

We are a section of a national organization founded in 1898, with a membership of more than 123,000 women in some 329 communities throughout the United States.

Our program combines volunteer services with study and action on important local, national, and international issues. One of our areas of emphasis, for many years, has been that of education.

There has been a near unanimous recognition of the need for higher education for the general welfare of the United States, to make available to the United States the talents of all, including those submerged by poverty and immobilized by hopelessness. This has been recognized and stated by the late President Kennedy, President Johnson, Secretary of Labor William Wirtz, and the U.S. Congress, as expressed by the Higher Education Facilities Act of 1963, Public Law 88-204 which, incidentally, my organization supported.

In 16 cities comparable to the District (population over 250,000 and with more than 20 percent nonwhite), each has recognized this need. (Report to the President, June 1964, Public Higher Education in the District of Columbia.)

Our beautiful Capital City should be a leader in the field of education, not a laggard. Although the District has exceptional human and cultural advantages, its provisions for publicly supported higher education compares unfavorably with other major cities in this country and to all European capitals.

For the past 412 years, we have been involved in a remedial education project in Cardozo High School. We have been supplying both money and volunteers. We have been working toward raising the aspirations of the students and helping them change their self-image from one of despair to success: To see themselves as functioning, responsible, educated citizens; educated according to their potential; to

place before them an attainable goal, job-training in a community college or for those better qualified, a liberal arts training in a 4-year college. But the student experiences frustration and rejection. You have gotten some idea of that from these students who have just testified.

Although the District of Columbia public school system is college oriented, there is no low cost general college to which its students

can go.

Education has a twofold purpose: To help the individual develop his abilities and to satisfy the educational manpower needs of our country. The bright, poor student in the high school, the decent child who doesn't want to be a financial drain on the limited resources of his family, knowing that they cannot afford the private college available in the District, tends to slow down, get lower marks, and, as you intimated this morning, drop out.

The knowledge that a publicly supported college is available and attainable will help provide motivation and make school a different experience. It will also make realistic the goals we are encouraging him to strive for.

It is true that there are several very fine post-high-school institutions in the District, but, in addition to the ever-increasing number of applicants, they are not District oriented or able to give tuition advantages to the District students.

We are in favor of—

A. Public community college (2-year) comprehensive both transfer and terminal curriculums.

B. Public college of arts and sciences (4 years) including but not limited to a teachers' college which would absorb the present District of Columbia Teachers College.

C. A Board of Higher Education separate from the present Board of Education and responsible for the planning, organizing, and administration of the public colleges.

We feel that any differences between the bills under discussion can be resolved.

I thank you, Mr. Morse.

We hope that this committee will recommend measures that can be enacted into law as soon as possible.

Senator MORSE. This is a very fine statement. Thank you very, very much.

Mrs. SCHREIBER. You might be interested, Senator Morse, this is not in my testimony, but this is something that we have found in relation to our experiences with Cardozo High School.

So many of these boys and girls who are college material-I don't mean the one, two, or three that stand in the top of their class which the counsellor can go to the colleges and say, "Here we have a special student"-I mean that other group which if they came from a middleclass environment would go on to college.

We have found that some of the difficulty is they do not have the money for the college applications. Each application is $10 or $15. At most, they have to limit themselves to one or two, so they usually take the colleges in the District, either District of Columbia district colleges or Howard.

We have set up a fund in the National Council of Jewish Women to take care of this so that any child who the council feels is college material for any number of colleges would not be held back because they do not have the applications.

Senator MORSE. That is a fine program.

Mrs. SCHREIBER. I am telling you this because I think maybe somewhere, someplace, you might be able to work something in on this type of thing.

Senator MORSE. It is very important. I hope the counsel will make a note of it.

Thank you.

Mrs. SCHREIBER. Thank you.

Senator MORSE. Our next witness is Mr. Frederick B. Lee, president of the United Planning Organization.

We are glad to have you here this afternoon.

Mr. LEE. Mr. Chairman, with your permission, I would like to have Mr. Donald Rugh, education coordinator, to sit with me. Senator MORSE. Mr. Rugh, we are glad to have you, too.

STATEMENT OF FREDERICK B. LEE, PRESIDENT, UNITED PLANNING ORGANIZATION; ACCOMPANIED BY DR. DONALD RUGH, EDUCATION COORDINATOR, UNITED PLANNING ORGANIZATION

Mr. LEE. Mr. Chairman, I will summarize the statement.

Senator MORSE. The full statement will be inserted in the hearing record after Mr. Lee's summary.

Mr. LEE. Mr. Chairman, United Planning Organization is the coordinating agency for the antipoverty and antijuvenile delinquency efforts in the District of Columbia.

One of the basic tenets of the war on poverty is the belief that if people are given the tools with which to improve their lives and shown the way to use these tools, we will have begun to win the battle.

The United Planning Organization gives top priority to education in its programing to attack poverty in the Washington metropolitan area. The proposed legislation before us today which would establish a public community college and a public college of arts and sciences is an important part of the opportunity structure which must be built if we are to overcome the problems of poverty which pervade the Nation's Capital.

It is important to remember in discussing the need for higher public education in the District that approximately 90 percent of the enrollment in the public schools of the District of Columbia is Negro. A large percentage of these young people come from economically deprived homes and must struggle against the barrier of racial discrimination and of a limited opportunity in the labor market. This puts two strikes against them. It is a wonder that so many succeed.

It is our belief that school dropouts and the unemployed, or underemployed, produce the social dynamite that could blow up at any time. Conversely, we believe that these same young people with tools of as much education as they are capable of achieving will lead to better jobs, more settled home life and a better society. It is for this reason we wish to support any bill that would provide a public college in the District of Columbia.

It is significant to note that in 1962, when 1,412 students of the District entered 4-year colleges, the 7 high schools serving the poverty areas sent only 33 percent of their graduating classes to college, whereas 4 high schools in a more affluent portion of the District sent 64 percent of theirs. It is clear that this imbalance of percentages is a reflection of an imbalance of opportunity.

The eagerness of both students and parents from the lowest income bracket for a higher education has been revealed in the Upward Bound, or precollege program, in the District. This program, which we recently funded at Howard University with moneys from the Office of Economic Opportunity, is designed to introduce senior high school students from deprived backgrounds to a college experience.

As of February 18, this year, more than 500 applications had been received at Howard for their spring precollege program. The applicants were screened to meet the poverty-line criterion. Parents of young people who were rejected because they were a few dollars over the line have been exerting great pressure to have their sons and daughters in the program.

One hundred and twenty-seven students out of 165 enrolled in the precollege program at Howard University last summer are now in college. These students were selected for the program on the basis of meeting the poverty criterion and for noted potential rather than past performance. There surely is sufficient evidence of a desire on the part of the poor for a higher education if it is available at a reasonable

cost.

We also believe that there are good employment opportunities for those with the right education. From a report of the U.S. Department of Labor of 1963, we learn that the openings for Negroes are expanding and improving in the District. I quote:

As a result of the changes which have already occurred and have absorbed previously existing reservoirs of unused skills among Negroes, and as a result of changes now taking place, it seems evident that young Negroes now entering high school or college and planning to enter the labor market in 3 or 4 years need not limit their aspirations because of past discriminatory practices. They may plan for a skilled job market in the area of about the same breadth and depth as may the young white students.

In discussions with school counselors and directors of the Neighborhood Youth Corps, it appears that a 2-year community college would meet a real need at the present time both as a terminal point in formal education for many, and as a steppingstone for others into a regular college program.

It is also believed that such a college should have some vocational departments to attract those who wish to gain vocational skills but are not interested in mere book learning.

Senator MORSE. I want to interrupt you a moment to stress that the point has been made, but one phase or facet of the community college program in most places is the vocational education division of the college. I have visited many of them and the whole trend is to see to it that the community college provides work training programs in the various crafts and skills so that the student graduating from the community college really has been fitted or job trained to take up his place in the community in one of the skilled trades, or as a technician, or as a dental aid or as various types of technicians have now been needed in a good many of our medical programs in the country connected with

health institutes and the like, to say nothing about the technicians that are needed to help the professionals in the profession of engineering and electronics.

Many people are missing this point, the relationship of the community college training program to professional training. I am glad you mentioned it.

Mr. LEE. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I think it is very important.

I heard much of the testimony here and I have not heard it stressed, but I do think that looking at it from our point of view in the war on poverty, this is an extremely important part of the curriculum available to students in the college.

Senator MORSE. I went to a community college in Coos Bay, Oreg., within the last 6 weeks. That is down in one of the heaviest lumbering areas of the State. I went through the vocational training part of the college and I was surprised but very pleased to see the cooperation that the college is receiving from the lumber interests of the State, including not only management but labor, in the development of a training program in preparing for the development of skilled technicians. in modern lumbering and the skills in the training of the most modern type of new equipment in the lumber industry.

Of course, it was just remarkable what is taking place in that industry, as has taken place, for example, in road-building engineering, when we think of the great difference in the skills required for roadbuilding today compared with when you and I were young men.

This is the type of vocational training that community colleges can serve, depending upon the economic needs of the general area in which they are located, and they vary from State to State.

Mr. LEE. Yes, sir.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, I wish to quote from the February NEA Journal a few words from Mr. Carl T. Rowan, an outstanding citizen of Washington, D.C. He wrote:

*** it has become economically evident that higher education is the most fundamental investment, and that the only appropriate economic approach to it is not the question: Isn't the expense too much? But rather the salutary doubt: Is the investment really enough?

We subscribed to this statement and believe that public higher education will enable young people of good native intelligence to acquire technical and professional skills that will break the cycle of poverty by correcting the imbalance of opportunity in the District of Columbia. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Senator MORSE. Thank you.

(The statement follows:)

STATEMENT OF FREDERICK B. LEE, PRESIDENT AND CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, UNITED PLANNING ORGANIZATION

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, the United Planning Organization is the coordinating agency for antipoverty and antijuvenile delinquency efforts in the District of Columbia.

One of the basic tenets of the war on poverty is a belief that if people are given the tools with which to improve their lives and shown the way to use these tools, we will have begun to win the battle. The United Planning Organization gives top priority to education in its programing to attack poverty in the Washington metropolitan area. The proposed legislation before you today which would establish a public community college and a public college of arts and sciences is an important part of the opportunity structure which must

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