At one time in our history the Federal Government made expenditures to conserve our great natural resources. In supporting a Federal scholarship program the association is suggesting that what is needed today is a program to conserve our intellectual resources, to salvage for higher education and professional careers those individuals whose talents are not being sufficiently developed for lack of money.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, another reason for supporting federally financed scholarships at this time lies in the scientific and technological developments which the Soviet Union has so spectacularly made. Ever since the day when the first sputnik began tracing its awesome orbit across the sky, we have had a tangible reminder that our survival depends on encouraging the scientific talents in our population.

However, insofar as scholarships are concerned, the weight of informed opinion is in favor of a program that would not be restricted to science fields alone, that would not recruit high school graduates for specific, specialized professions, but that would provide financial aid to deserving students of ability without stipulating in what fields they must study. In the words of the Steelman report, "What we require as a nation is to extend educational opportunities to all able young people, leaving it to them to determine the field of study they desire to pursue * * In free competition the physical and biological sciences will get their share." As the Educational Policies Commission has pointed out, "survival in this age may be staked on science, but the building of peace calls for knowledge, insights, and abilities of many kinds."

This is not to minimize the fundamental importance of science education today. Scientific literacy is essential for the future businessman, the future lawyer, the future statesman, the future housewife and mother. As a people we must become more scientifically literate. But at the college level, particularly when one-half of all undergraduates change their vocational objectives, a scholarship program should support general ability, not just ability in the sciences.

In supporting legislation for a Federal scholarship plan, the Association for Higher Education wishes to endorse the following guiding principles which ex. perts in the field have identified as sound scholarship practice:

1. The objective of a Federal scholarship program should be to offer the opportunity of a college education to qualified students who would otherwise be denied it for lack of financial resources.

2. Students should be selected on the basis of ability and achievement with stipends graduated according to need.

3. The student should have complete freedom to choose his own program of studies within the requirements set by the individual institution.

4. Stipends, up to a maximum amount set generally for the program, should be sufficient to enable the student to attend an eligible college.

5. There should be no discrimination because of race, creed, color, or sex. Mr. Chairman, several bills have been referred to your committee, some of which conform more closely to these guiding principles than others. The Association for Higher Education is confident that the committee will devise legislation that embodies the best features of the bills before it and which at the same time is consistent with the principles for sound scholarship practice. I would be happy to answer questions about specific features of a Federal scholarship plan if the committee so desires.

Thank you for the opportunity of presenting these matters to you.

NEED AS A CRITERION FOR A NATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP POLICY

By Rexford G. Moon, Jr., director, College Scholarship Service Before 1900, the essential role of the scholarship was to help people of modest means to attend college. From 1900 to 1945, the scholarship increasingly was the instrument whereby the colleges assured themselves of size and quality of student body. Sometimes need was considered and other times it was not. There was a sort of hypocrisy connected with the scholarship-need relationship toward the end of this period that did more than anything else to produce the strong prize orientation of the public toward scholarships. From 1945 to 1950, very few scholarships were given because the Government had extended educational opportunity to as many people as (or more people than) the colleges could hope to hold.

In 1950 or thereabouts, a new era was ushered in. Colleges had expanded, charges had doubled since 1940 ("the last normal year"), the dollar had inflated, and scholarship money-even where it had been accumulating for 5 to 8 years, hardly being touched-was to say the least inadequate. The cost of higher education generally had reached a point where a student couldn't-even if he wanted to "work his way through college." Any kind of financial aid program in any college would require more money than income from endowed funds could provide. Higher education, which had always been available to even the most impecunious student if he was sufficiently motivated to work for it, was no longer attainable. The only way colleges could continue to be a leading force in the democracy was to divert from general income-away from faculty salaries-money for scholarships. Since money in the colleges was then and is even more now in short supply and since a very sizable proportion of the population can meet only partially the rising costs of higher education, the fairest system of allocation of funds was and is to give help to those who need it, in relation to that need. Some, of course, look upon this approach with a questioning eye, intimating that even in its most colorless form it smacks of "welfare stateishness."

To me, giving scholarships according to need is one of the most democratic things we do in this country. A democracy depends upon the maintenance of a high level of educational training for a maximum number of people. A democracy with a free economy, almost by definition, must maintain different educational philosophies, programs of study, and types of institutional support. Some institutions, therefore, are bound to be more expensive than others; but to assure the perpetuation of heterogeneity-which, to me, is the essence of democracy-our citizens must have this opportunity for a diversity of experience. The colleges must not be reserved for the rich but must be open to all. Further, the expensive colleges must be attainable by the poor, just as the inexpensive ones are readily accessible to the rich. In every field of endeavor in a democracy, the maximum rewards-material and psychological-go to the most able; and the rewards for scholastic excellence are an opportunity to further one's education and freedom of choice of the institution one will attend, not money. Sometimes, however, the opportunity and the choice cannot be realized because the money is not available. At this point it is appropriate for society-colleges, the Government, industry-to step in and provide the money as needed.

In my judgment, the role which the Government is contemplating in the scholarship field is a compensatory one. Higher education has not been within the grasp (financially or psychologically) of as many people as our society needs to maintain democratic traditions and services. The financial inability of the colleges to maintain this tradition and the unwillingess of industry, private philanthropy, or the States to do very much makes it necessary for the people as a whole to correct the situation. The people's goal should be to meet society's need for educated people by extending opportunity for higher education to able students who cannot pay for their college education, not to those who are already more than able to do so. Our current crisis is not a function of undereducation of everybody but rather undereducation of a few.

A scholarship program has apparently been chosen as the compensating machinery, and I think this is the right choice. The few problems that a scholarship program may create can be solved without much difficulty, and a scholarship program has three major advantages over possible alternatives: It will create a more insistent attitude toward college-going by our able people, it will reemphasize the role of the public secondary school in the preparation of students for college as well as for life, and it will identify the most able people for college attendance without regard to their race, creed, color, or the geographical distribution they might lend to an entering class. Once these people are identified (presumably by nonfinancial measures such as aptitude tests), the basic purpose of any scholarship program is realized. The purpose is not to honor or reward the students with money, but to see to it that the student gets to college without impossible hardship to his family. This is the point where financial need becomes important.

Unless some arbitrary standard, to eliminate families above a certain, modest income, is built into a national selection program, the family incomes of the students identified will range far and wide. Scholastic ability knows no financial boundaries; an intellectually homogenous group is sure to be financially heterogeneous. It would be unwise to restrict the range on an income basis. The principal reason for this is that students' interests are largely developed by their earlier surroundings. To overlook (in an attempt to bring the most able

into higher education) certain youngsters because their parents achieved more than a modest income would—if it didn't affect the high scholastic quality of the group certainly cut down the group's representativeness in regard to educational interests and national needs.

There are now two national scholarship programs, privately supported, that produce applicant groups representative of the talented high-school graduates in this country and presumably therefore representative of any group which might be picked by a Federal scholarship program. Each of these programs uses selection methods which are very similar to those that might be used in a publicly supported program. Both select their winners and then examine financial circumstances very carefully, subscribing to the idea that to be picked for one of their scholarships is obviously an honor but that the amount of money associated with the scholarship is related solely to the financial need of the winner. The statistics of financial circumstances of the winners in these programs indicate what might be expected in a publicly supported program. Since the National Merit Scholarship Corp. is the larger of the two and publishes considerable information about its winners, I'll refer to it in this regard.

Merit's last annual report indicates that, after letting their winners have a completely free choice of college-including rather liberal allowances for travel to the college from the student's hometown, allowances for clothes, recreation. etc.-the average winner had financial need of $648. Of the 827 winners, 306, or 37 percent, had, according to accepted standards of need assessment, no financial need; and another 262, or 32 percent, had financial need of $900 or less. Breaking this 32 percent into 4 groups, 5 percent needed less than $300; 7 percent needed $301 to $500; 9 percent needed $501 to $700, and 10 percent needed $701 to $900. (Although some people consider these standards of need assessment stringent, they are generally thought of as quite liberal and there is a growing body of evidence to support this view.)

The moral of this story is simply this: If a national program were established, with a fixed stipend of $1,000 (as has been suggested) and the number of scholarships awarded reached 40,000 a year (as has also been suggested), Merit's experience would indicate that roughly 16,000 of the winners could have gone to the college of their choice without any financial assistance. If each of these winners was awarded $1,000 a year for 4 years, a total of $64 million would be spent in this period to effect an end that would have been effected anyway. Giving $1,000 a year for 4 years to the 32 percent who need $900 or less would use up at least another $16 million in excess of winners' computed need. Any program that adds $80 million to the educational economy by giving it to people who don't need it is only going to create a tuition inflation that will accentuate the problem the program was created to solve.

Assuming that a national, publicly supported scholarship program is created to maximize educational opportunities for those to whom this opportunity has been denied, it seems inappropriate to extend the opportunity in as even a fashion as a large, fixed stipend would. Educators believe that responsibility for support a child in college belongs primarily to the family and that beyond this other sources contribute to make possible higher education at some college or beyond even that-at a particular college. Ideally, the national program would take over where the parents leave off-neither before the parents begin nor at the point of differentiating among colleges. If large, fixed stipends were given, tuitions would rise, and a degree of mobility in education would be reached that would have a very serious effect on the present admission system, putting tremendous pressures for admission on those colleges whose facilities are already overtaxed.

As far as motivating goes, I think most parents would agree that if they had some assurance that even their modest efforts at support would be sup plemented to a reasonable degree, they would be encouraged to encourage their children to consider a college education. As things now stand, parents don't have this encouragement, for most financial aid in this country is given by the colleges and is directed toward moving the student (with some home support) into a particular college: this is an expensive proposition and it uses available funds up very rapidly. Parents in very modest circumstances hesitate to encourage their children because if the aid necessary to place the child in one particular college does not materialize. there is disappointment. A national, publicly supported program should encourage financial support for education from the family unit, for this is where college-going plans are laid and where encouragement (both psychological and financial) for college must originate if all of the talented youngsters in this country are going to have a chance at college.

One writer (Richard G. King, in the Spring 1957 College Board Review) has suggested that the ideal national program would restrict its support-in the form of a fixed stipend--to students whose family income was below a particular point, and he suggested $4,000 as this figure. This certainly dramatizes the problem but restricts the problem to too narrow a range. The psychological problems which deter college attendance are not centered just in the low-income ranges; they are more acute there, but they run (with decreasing force) across the low and middle-income ranges. Once a range of income has entered the picture (and even below $4,000 there is a range of incomes), you can no longer maintain a fixed stipend unless the resulting inequities are of little concern.

Certainly to have maximum effect a national program must produce honor as well as financial assistance, and there is always a great danger of personal embarrassment to individuals when a confidential criterion such as family finances is used to establish public recognition. Thus, restricting national scholars to certain points on the income scale would have undesired consequences. Also, this would place the incentive in the wrong place; the incentive in educational endeavors should be scholastic excellence only, not this in combination with poverty.

If one accepts the appropriateness of awarding national scholarships on the basis of need, there remains the decision of what criteria should be used in establishing and compensating for need. "Absolute" need is the amount of money that a family needs or must have in order to send a child to a particular college. It is the difference between what they are able to pay and the actual costs of attending a particular college. With the advent of the College Scholarship Service, determination of this need has become a very orderly, objective matter. Particularly in low-income situations, however, there is an additional concept of need, a negative concept of immediate losses which will not be compensated for by future gains made possible through education. Even if the student attends a completely free college, his parents still must spend at least as much money to support him as they did when he was in high school. Low-income families have not counted on this. In addition, having the child in college rather than in remunerative employment deprives the low-income family of a potential source of new income. Thus a child's attending any college-even a free one-presents financial problems which are particularly serious for lowincome families. This is an evasive concept, but it is important since it justifies giving rather substantial sums to low-income families even if the child is to attend a free or very low cost college. The problem becomes less serious as you progress up the income scale because attitudes change with the change in financial circumstances.

In my judgment, the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of recognizing this negative concept of need. Operationally this means providing financial support in large amounts to low-income families and in progressively smaller amounts as income increases. Administratively, it is difficult, time consuming, and expensive to relate family circumstances to college costs, i. e., to establish "absolute" need. Since both family circumstances and college costs have a tendency to change frequently and unpredictably, the administration of a large program that holds this relationship "sacred" would pose many problems. Relating need to college costs is a problem in the interrelationship of one student and a particular college. A national program need not concern itself with this problem, but only with providing the national scholarship holder with sufficient funds to, first, attract financial and psychological support from the parents and, second, to make attendance at a reasonable variety of colleges possible, with the necessity of some work or borrowing by the student to supplement these two main sources.

The uniqueness of the CSS computation procedure lies in the fact that it is concerned primarily with determining the amount of financial support a family may reasonably be expected to provide toward a child's education. This is a system used by colleges, each of which is primarily interested in relating the financial strength of one family to its own costs. The CSS procedure would not seem, then, to be of direct benefit to a national program which views_the particular college-student relationship more objectively. The CSS procedure does, however, make two contributions: It can serve as a criterion against which the effectiveness and appropriateness of other systems can be judged, and it can be used as the basis for a new system for new programs.

The use of the CSS system is widespread; 175 colleges use it extensively, two State scholarship programs-California and Illinois-use it, as do National

Merit, GM, and other large corporate sponsors. Where it is used to determine "absolute" need, there is--in spite of the feelings of some to the contrary— ample evidence to support the conclusion that if it errs, it is in the family's favor.

The little table I have incorporated here shows how the CSS system could be used as the basis for an "opportunity system" of some kind. Referring to chart I (on page 72 of the Computation Manual I sent you last week) you can see how easy it would be (once we had specified a minimum level of total support necessary to assure opportunity) to arrive at a grading of stipends to fit individual circumstances. For example, if it was considered that a national scholarship needs or should have a total of $1,500 (including what he could provide through his own efforts and receive from his family) in order to be assured of an "adequate opportunity," and if we impose a maximum stipend of $1,000, we would have a stipend arrangement as follows:

THE STUDY OF RUSSIAN IN AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOLS

By Helen B. Yakobson, George Washington University, regional representative of the Committee for Promoting the Study of Russian in High Schools

Science

WHY DO WE NEED TO STUDY RUSSIAN?

1. It is no longer possible to ignore the study of a language spoken by approximately 200 million people of various nationalities in the Soviet Union. One also has to bear in mind that Russian is a second language taught in all the schools starting at the elementary school level in all the countries comprising the Soviet orbit, from East Germany down to China.

The political leadership of Europe has been replaced by the Anglo-American and Soviet. Our world is divided today into two political hemispheres, each presenting a challenge to the other. Russian is the language of the most terrifying enemy of the free world.

To people who felt before that if anyone had anything worthwhile to say he would say it in English comes now the painful realization that Soviet Russia is getting ahead of us in the field of science and thus threatens our national security. Recent events have radically changed the attitude of the American educators and the American public in general and have abruptly revealed our educational inadequacies.

Miss Melvina Lindsay states in her column in the Washington Post-Times Herald "that the break through the space barrier by the Soviet satellites is quickening our technical efforts, but we are doing little to break through the language barrier which handicaps our defense strategy, science, trade, and diplomacy. Scientific advance in this country has been slowed by lack of linguists able to translate and make abstracts of the great volume of scientific publications and reports which come from foreign countries, especially those in the Soviet zone. Yet English is the second language in Russian schools, and great numbers of expert linguists are being trained to work in the English-speaking world."

The New York Times of November 25, 1957, reported that about 20,000 Soviet scientific reports and journals are received by the Government every year. Of these, only a fraction is translated or summarized. Government scientific officials figure that, of the 1,200 Soviet scientific journals published every year, 200 are of major importance to American scientists. Of these 200 journals, only