element would be added to the intellectual, cultural and economic life of this community.

President Kennedy said last year in his message to Congress on Education:

We need many more graduate centers, and they should be better distributed geographically.

...

The distressed area of the future may well

be one which lacks centers of graduate education

The Nation's Capital should not be permitted to become such a distressed area through lack of adequate resources for graduate study and research.

2. The Recommendation

While the Committee believes that the early development of a new institution or a new program to provide for highlevel graduate and post-doctoral studies in the District is of the utmost importance both for the District and for the Nation, it makes no recommendation for the creation of a new center for this purpose at this time. With the announcement of the five-university consortium in graduate study, the local institutions have taken a first step toward strengthening this vital phase of their work. Their plans and future development are properly the responsibility of the leadership and governing boards of the institutions themselves. In the spirit of lending encouragement to these institutions, we do, however, express the hope that a major effort can be undertaken to achieve within the District the resources of faculty, facilities and endowment that will be needed to provide ultimately for graduate study and research of high distinction. Substantial progress toward this objective may be achieved through cooperative action among the universities, but it will also most certainly require major efforts on the part of the individual institutions as well. We suggest that the goal we envisage represents an opportunity of great significance for those major agencies that provide funds for the advancement of education in the United States, including individuals, corporations, foundations and the Federal Government itself.

On the basis of these considerations, the Committee recommends that within 3 to 5 years the President request another review of the status of graduate study and research

in the District for the purpose of making, if desirable, specific recommendations with respect to ways in which the Federal Government should lend its aid toward the achievement of the goals the Committee has outlined.

IV. THE ORGANIZATION AND RELATIONSHIPS OF DISTRICT EDUCATIONAL

INSTITUTIONS

The Committee has not undertaken to draft the authorizing legislation that will be required to implement its recommendations. There are, however, three matters with which such legislation will deal on which the Committee feels impelled to express an opinion.

A. Organization and Administration of the Two Proposed Institutions

The Committee strongly urges that each of the two institutions it has recommended-the community college and the college of arts and sciences-should have its own faculty, administrative staff and physical plant. While there would be advantages in locating the two institutions reasonably close to each other in order that certain facilities such as libraries could be utilized in common, the administrative union of the two facilities into a single institution would seriously compromise one or the other, or even both.

Throughout the United States, very few 4-year institutions offer as part of their overall program the terminal technical and general education programs characteristic of the community college. Technical education has its own rationale, its own curricular style and, most importantly, its own relationship with the field of occupational employment. The 4-year college or university should certainly teach effectively at all levels, but inevitably its attention will most often be on its advanced courses, the scholarly activities of its faculty, and the inculcation of scholarly attitudes in its students. The community college, on the other hand, can concentrate on undergraduate training in its vocational and technical programs and on the best possible programs of general education and basic preparation for later academic work. These quite different emphases are extremely difficult to maintain within a single institution.

Technical education, moreover, needs its own teaching staff, whose background, training, interests and attitudes are ordinarily different from those in the older academic disciplines. With these differences in orientation, the teaching staff of a comprehensive junior college is unlikely to work effectively or in harmony with the staff of the senior college. The curriculum for the electronic technician, for example, is not the same as that of the first 2 years for the electrical engineer, and the faculty in electrical engineering may neither understand nor take any interest in a program for technicians.

Moreover, the standards for admission to the community college must accommodate a far greater range of abilities among its applicants than those of the college of arts and sciences, and must be based on quite different criteria. The comprehensive community college should, as already noted, attract many students of high ability, but it should also admit anyone who may profit from its courses, and should actively encourage even the low achievers in high school to undertake further occupational training and as much general education as they can assimilate. The college of arts and sciences, on the other hand, should maintain substantially higher academic standards for admission. If combined into a single institution, however, the tendency would be overwhelming to regard the community college as simply a place for the less able students-and, in that way, to deny to it sources of strength that are essential to its success.

B. Creation of a Board of Higher Education

The Committee is also firmly convinced that the responsibility for the governance of the two institutions should be vested in a Board of Higher Education that is entirely separate from the Board of Education now responsible for the District's public schools.

In the first place, there is a vast difference between the administration of a going institution and the creation of a new one. The Committee is fully conscious of the multitude of problems, including the articulation of the programs of the two institutions, that will require the best effort of the best and most dedcated citizens who will serve on the Board of Higher Education during the formative years of the new institutions it has recommended. Imposing these problems

on a board already heavily committed to the grave responsibilities for the proper administration of a huge public school system would almost ensure that those problems would not and could not get the attention they will deserve and require.

More basically, however, general experience throughout the United States has again and again pointed up the advantages of separating completely the responsibility for the public schools from the responsibility for institutions of higher education. The structure and procedures of institutions at the two levels-and hence the role of the governing board in each case-are very different. In an institution of higher learning, the faculty has far greater responsibility and authority than does the teaching staff of an elementary school or a high school. The board of trustees of a college or university wisely leaves the establishment and maintenance of academic standards, the design of curricula and the methods of teaching in the hands of the faculty, with the president giving assistance and guidance. Responsibility for the finances of the institution, the appointment of its chief administrative officers, and such major decisions as the addition or (less frequently) the abandonment of special schools or academic divisions within the institution, are the main duties of such a board. But so long as the presiding officer of the faculty-the president-enjoys the confidence of his board and his faculty, he and his teaching colleagues accept great responsibility and enjoy relative autonomy.

This is not the modus operandi of a public school system, and most school boards familiar with the practices of the latter would find it not only strange but profoundly disquieting. The District Board of Education is not essentially different from most. No disparagement is intended in stating the belief of the Committee that, inevitably, a single board cannot easily or effectively accommodate to two such completely different systems of instituitional governance or accept the diverse roles that follow.

There will, of course, be problems that relate to both boards, and the need for liaison at both the policy and the operational levels is obvious. While there are many devices to facilitate the required cooperation between boards, only one condition is essential: a genuine willingness to work in concert. Where such a spirit exists, cooperation at the ad

ministrative staff level, which is generally the most necessary and effective level, is relatively easy, and occasional policy problems involving both boards can readily be dealt with by either informal discussion or by a request more formally made by a representative of one board to appear before the other.

The Committee is also of the opinion that a method of selecting the Board of Higher Education different from that used for the selection of the Board of Education would be desirable. This country has a strong tradition that the boards governing its public schools should be composed predominantly of laymen and should be genuinely representative of the community served by the school system. In practice, most school boards are elected, and while this procedure may create problems from time to time, it has led to an active and wholesome participation in school affairs by parents of schoolchildren and by many citizens who have a disinterested concern for the welfare of the community. The tradition itself has grown naturally because, at one time or another, the public schools affect virtually every citizen in every community. With this concern has also grown a considerable degree of understanding of the issues involved.

In the realm of higher education-even publicly supported higher education—no such tradition has as yet been created. It may also be said that the conditions of widespread concern and of understanding of the issues are less notably present regarding the procedures and results of higher education. Special care must be taken, therefore, to find persons of the highest degree of knowledgeability to preside over the affairs of all our institutions of higher learning, and particularly of the two new colleges recommended for the District.

The Committee suggests that the Board of Higher Education for the District of Columbia should be an appointive, rather than an elective, board. Its membership should not be smaller than 9 nor larger than 15. A majority of its members should be persons who have resided in the District for a minimum of 6 or 7 years. Terms of office should be for a period of 4 to 6 years and should be so arranged that the term of some members expires each year. The members should be selected essentially for the wisdom and skill they can contribute to guarding, guiding and strengthening the new institutions. They should also be broadly representa