$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

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.

A. The Community (or Junior) College

1. The Need

In an age of technology that constantly requires more specialized skills, our society is demanding, and will continue to demand, an increasing number of workers with skills beyond those obtainable in high school, although not necessarily those that can be obtained only through a 4-year college education. A recent study by the National Science Foundation, for example, forecasts that while the civilian economy will need many more engineers than were thought 5 years ago to be necessary, we also face an acute shortage in the ranks of the skilled craftsmen and technicians. Thus a high school diploma has now become less a terminal point and more a preparation and opportunity for further study and training.

By the same token, the economy will provide fewer and fewer opportunities for young people who approach the world of work with limited educational achievements. We are building massive problems for the future-in welfare, unemployment, poverty and crime-unless we provide a maximum of opportunity for the youth of today to achieve the highest level of education of which they are capable. The United States Commissioner of Education has recently remarked in an address to the American Association of School Administrators: "Unemployment grows whenever educational levels are low,. income rises whenever educational achievement is high, cation are always linked."

poverty and lack of edu

The District must offer educational opportunity where none now exists. Among those deprived of opportunity are young people whose academic aptitude cannot be demonstrated by conventional measures, largely because of their cultural, economic and educational handicaps. These persons seem, indeed, to be without hope of satisfactory employment because of the inadequacy of their educational attainments. For example, the young men and women who are in the two lower "tracks" in the public schools and who finish high school with academic deficiencies, even when these are remediable, are now inadmissible to any college or university in the District. Most of the children of the more than 30,000 families in the District

with incomes of less than $3,000 are within this group. Also among this group, however, are many average and even above-average young people who lack any adequate opportunity to realize their potential.

The need for maximum educational opportunity—and for the incentive which that opportunity will provide for those who now lack any hope of competing in the world of workis recognized as a national problem. The Committee agrees with the recent statement by Edwin P. Neilan, then President of the United States Chamber of Commerce, in the October 1963 Junior College Journal:

In coming years, we must develop a much larger middle-class group of technical, supervisory, subprofessional people who do not need and perhaps would have difficulty acquiring a college degree . . .

The major challenge that we face is the further evolution and improvement of a voluntary system of education, generated primarily by the efforts of the people themselves, working through their own leaders in communities and institutions.

The community college provides a new dimension and is an essential instrument in the accomplishment of this purpose.

The needs of the District of Columbia in this respect are in no sense unique. In a paper prepared for the U.S. Employment Service in October 1963, "Training for Occupational Skills in the Washington Metropolitan Area," Laure M. Sharp of the Bureau of Social Science Research, Inc., states:

It is becoming increasingly clear that the preferred training for semiprofessional, technical, submanagerial and office occupations is a general high school education followed by 1 or 2 years of posthigh school training. Accumulating evidence suggests that this pattern has become widely accepted in urban areas. Employers prefer to have 19- or 20-year-old beginners, rather than younger workers. Thus, the junior college or community college is becoming increasingly popular as a "transitional" institution, both for transfer to a 4-year institution and for labor market entrance. There is a lack of