tive of the District and its highest interests. They should be removable only for cause.

The appointive power, the Committee believes, should be in the Board of Commissioners. The Committee suggests, however, that serious consideration be given to a procedure under which the Board of Commissioners would appoint a Nominating Committee of outstanding District residents. The Nominating Committee (whose members would themselves be ineligible for nomination) would then submit a panel of nominees for Board vacancies, with at least three names for each vacancy. The Board of Commissioners would then make its appointments exclusively from that panel.

The Committee is well aware that no system of making appointments can be fully protected from the possibility of abuse. The procedure it has suggested is no exception, but it does put real responsibility upon the highest officials of the District, while giving an important advisory function to other representative leaders of the community.

C. Prompt Planning and Preliminary Organization

Finally, the Committee recommends that the Board of Commissioners provide as soon as possible for preliminary planning and site selection and for estimates of the expenditures that will be needed in establishing and operating the two institutions. This planning should of course explore the possibilities for both interim and permanent locations and establish as definitely as possible the amounts of Federal aid that may become available to the District for the two proposed institutions under such recent laws as titles I, II and III of the Higher Education Act of 1963 and Public Law 88-210.

The Committee believes that it is of great importance that the Board of Higher Education be appointed at the earliest possible time so that it may undertake promptly the general supervision of the organization of the two colleges. This undertaking will require that the Board immediately appoint the two presidents and, with their advice, the directors of the two Divisions of Institutional Research and Evaluation. They, in turn, will be able to start the all-important process of recruiting faculties and planning programs.

STATEMENT OF SENATOR GALE MCGEE ON S. 293

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to be able to submit this statement to the committee on a matter which I think is of utmost importance to the future of education in the Nation's Capital.

As a sponsor of S. 293, introduced by the senior Senator from Oregon, Mr. Morse, and as one who has spent almost 25 years in the educational field, I want to strongly state my belief that the money we spend to improve education is by far the best investment we could possibly make for the future of this city and of the Nation.

I am sure the committee has at hand the studies made by people who have investigated the existing facilities and I shall not attempt to duplicate these reports but merely state my conviction that it is patently obvious that the District of Columbia has not the facilities for higher education to meet the needs of the young people of the city.

It is true, Mr. Chairman, that there are a number of colleges and universities in and about Washington, but these, except for two instances, are private institutions which necessarily have high tuition fees beyond the scope of a great many of the District's young people. The crux of the problem is that we are not now providing higher educational facilities for the people who need them the most, the children from low-income families. It is this reservoir of potential that, if wasted, can result in not only personal tragedy but in community decline. I have always believed that the Capital City of the world's strongest and richest democracy should reflect in every way the advantages that the democratic way of life can bring to its citizens. Yet, because of its unique "stepchild of the Congress" relationship, we find the District in many ways, including education, to be lagging sadly behind the national average. I believe that this bill represents a badly needed step in the direction of improving the educa tional opportunities for District young people, and I hope that it will receive rapid and favorable consideration by this committee and the Congress.

Senator MORSE. We are very honored to have Senator Smith with us this morning.

We are delighted to have you and we want you to know, and I want this audience to know, the great help you have been to this committee and to the Subcommittee on Education of the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee as we have worked together trying to help solve the educational crises in this country.

It is a great honor for me to present you this morning.

STATEMENT OF HON. MARGARET CHASE SMITH, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MAINE

Senator SMITH. Thank you. I remember most pleasantly my earlier days in the Senate when I, too, was a member of the District of Columbia Committee. Perhaps that was one reason why I have been more interested in District of Columbia problems than I would otherwise have been.

During the past few years, facilities for higher education have been greatly augmented everywhere in the United States. The encouragement and financial support given by the Congress and by State and local governments have made possible this desirable educational development. Practically all existing public colleges and universities have been strengthened and enlarged.

Numerous publicly supported teachers colleges have become State liberal arts colleges or universities. Funds in unprecedented amounts have been appropriated for capital expenditures and for the higher operating costs occasioned by larger enrollments.

Regrettably, it is only in the District of Columbia that there have been no programs for expanding and strengthening public higher edu

cation. Many well-qualified graduates of District of Columbia secondary schools continue to be denied the opportunity for further study because they cannot afford to pay the tuition fees necessarily charged by private colleges and universities.

Washington's only publicly supported and operated higher institution is the District of Columbia Teachers College, but it can accommodate only about 1,000 students and admits only those young men and women who plan to become teachers.

Because of this limitation, there are, annually, hundreds of qualified graduates of District high schools who find no opportunity to prepare for careers other than teaching.

Secondary school graduates who need a year or two of post-highschool training to prepare themselves for the many jobs in business, industry, or Government, are similarly handicapped. There is no public 2-year community college in the District of Columbia.

I sincerely believe that the young people of the District of Columbia, who are qualified by character and ability for post-high-school education, merit opportunities for higher education comparable to those now available to young Americans in all our States and in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

The implementation of recommendations submitted to the President by a distinguished committee appointed to study the needs of public higher education in the District of Columbia, would provide a modest beginning toward the achievement of that goal. And this I understand is the purpose of S. 293, which authorizes the establishment of a Board of Higher Education "to plan, establish, organize and operate a public community college and a public college of arts and sciences in the District of Columbia."

I hope the bill will receive favorable consideration.
Senator MORSE. Thank you very much.

I want to say, Senator Smith, this committee does not do anything without the support of the Senate, and one of the reasons we have the support of the Senate is because of your interest in young people and their educational training.

Thank you very much.

Our next witness will be Hon. Peter C. Muirhead, Associate Commissioner of U.S. Education and Director of the Bureau of Higher Education, accompanied by Dr. Francis S. Chase, Chairman of the President's Committee on Public Higher Education.

I want to say on behalf of the whole committee that it appreciates very much the leadership that you have given to the cause that we start hearings on this morning, and I particularly want to thank you for the material that you have made available to this committee. To you, Dr. Chase, I think the entire community is greatly indebted for the very objective work and the careful research that you have devoted yourself to in presenting for the benefit of this committee, what I think will be some of the basic facts that we are going to need in order to come to an intelligent and enlightened decision on these bills.

As was true in past legislation that I have sponsored, so it is true of this legislation, I am perfectly willing to consider any reasonable amendments to it that the facts may show are necessary. However, I do want to make clear at the outset of the hearing that I believe that this is the year that we need to pass legislation that will start

providing young men and women in this community higher educational opportunities.

We are all familiar with the work that is being done at the community college level throughout the Nation. Within 10 years I think there is no doubt about the fact there will be more young men and women in this country going to community colleges than going to the so-called standard universities and colleges. Unless we provide community college training, we are going to condemn tens of thousands of young men and women across this Nation to unemployment. Unless we train them for employment in the new age of automation, they are just not going to be able to get jobs. They are not going to be hired for jobs for which they are not trained.

I have worked a good many years in the District of Columbia. I want to say that I am not going to blind myself to the obvious fact that there are thousands of young men and women in this city that could do satisfactory college work at a community level; that could do work satisfactorily in training them for employment in an automated age if we lived up to our responsibilities of citizen statesmanship.

As far as I am concerned it gets down to that major premise. I do not think any of us are morally justified in denying to any young man or woman in this city an opportunity to go to college if they want to go to college and have the ability to do satisfactory college work.

I am not at all interested-may I say most respectfully-I am not at all interested in supporting a higher education program in this country that is going to be limited to the so-called superior student. Most people know, that are familiar with my work as chairman of the Subcommittee on Education, that I hold to the point of view that the C student-the average student-the satisfactory student-is the most important student we have in American education for the reason there are so many of them. They are the backbone of our educational system. They are also the backbone of our citizenry.

So I am not at all concerned, may I say, in advance, with the attitude of the board of regents or the college administrator that wants to suggest that we try to meet this crisis by raising the level of entrance to colleges.

In my judgment in the field of education that is immoral. That is sacrificing human values and when you sacrifice human values you engage in immorality. I want the students in universities and colleges to have every possible support we can obtain for them, and I fight for them, but I am not going to support private colleges and universities at the administration level that do not recognize that we have a problem of supporting these community colleges across this land that are going to bring a type of educational service to the so-called average student so sorely needed. I do not mean to imply by that that only average students go to this college, because a good number of our superior students go there too.

But what I want to plead for again today is what caused us to have the breakthrough in 1963. How well I remember that breakthrough when there was such disunity in the educational world in this country. The then Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Mr. Ribicoff and I were assigned by President Kennedy the responsibility, back in 1962, to try to reunite the educational forces in this country into a program so that they supported all segments of the Kennedy educational omnibus bill.

With that unity we started the breakthrough, and I want to say to educators in this room this morning that you still have the obligation to remain united and to give support to the educational program that President Johnson envisions at all levels of education, from kindergarten through graduate school. You cannot do it if you permit your ranks to be split and give support to an argument that some are making in the name of economy; of simply raising the standards of our socalled standard universities and let those that cannot meet the standards go without the educational training to which they are morally entitled, and to which we, as a population, cannot afford to sacrifice economically.

This is the last comment I will make before I call on the next witness. To understand my position on education you must understand this; that when I ask for a bill that seeks expenditures for the type of college that I am seeking in the District of Columbia, I am not really asking for anything but an investment, an investment in human beings, and an investment in the economy of our Nation.

When you talk to me about legislation such as this you better be ready to talk to me with a lead pencil in your hand because what I am asking for is really a loan to the young people of this country for the future economic benefit of the Nation.

I shall put the exact figures in the hearing record later, but I want to close the explanation of my position as chairman of this subcommittee by pointing out for this record that when I am asking for a development in the type of 4-year college that I am urging for the District of Columbia, I am really asking the taxpayers to loan money to the young people of this country so they can repay into the local, State and Federal treasuries in this country, many times the cost of our investment in terms of the additional tax dollars they will be able to pay that they would not be able to pay if they did not have the college educations. It is as simple as that.

The figures are in the neighborhood of average lifetime earnings of college graduates of around $470,000 to $800,000; of a high school graduate in the neighborhood of $260,000 to $270,000; of a high school dropout in the neighborhood of $110,000 to $125,000; of the grade school graduate in the neighborhood of $90,000 to $100,000. And of course the grade school and high school dropout-if they have any income at all, if we do not support most of them in penal institutions, or on welfare or in mental hospitals or with other public fundssomewhere in the neighborhood of $70,000 to $80,000.

That is the money involved. That is why this is a sound investment. I like to think about it as a loan to the young people of this country so they can have an economic opportunity and through that opportunity repay into the Treasury of the United States many times the cost of their higher education through the benefits a bill such as this would provide.

As the people in the room know, I have for years cosponsored the Yarborough GI bill which Congress recently passed. Over the years, it was vigorously opposed by the Department of Defense, and opposed by the administration. But something happened this year and Congress passed it.

This GI bill, like the first GI bill, will never cost the American taxpayers a cent. In fact, even in this room, if I asked for a show of