institution attended by the student, should also be considered. Consideration should also be given to the occasional use of noncompetitive scholarships for District students working for their first professional degree or their doctorate. Some subsidies are available from various sources for work at this level, but funds to supplement present provisions for graduate fellowships when necessary would insure full opportunity for all qualified candidates. In formulating recommendations A, B and C above, the Committee has held to the conviction that residents of the District need, and should no longer be denied, the opportunity enjoyed by all other residents of the United States: that of obtaining post-high school education provided with public support. It has recognized, however, that this opportunity might be provided in several ways. In reaching its conclusion that the District should establish a new, publicly supported college of arts and sciences, it considered several alternatives. Two of them warrant brief statements. First, the Committee considered, and rejected, the possibility of providing (except temporarily) the opportunity for a college education by relying solely on individual scholarships or grants that would permit District high school graduates to attend institutions already in existence. Several considerations militate against this solution. To be effective in meeting the District's needs and placing the graduates of District high schools on a parity with high school graduates elsewhere in the United States, the scholarships would have to be available to all students accepted for admission in an accredited institution of higher educationsuch as those available to veterans under the GI bills. In no other way could scholarships or grants achieve what is needed-the maximum of incentive for high school students who can profit by a college or university education. As a practical matter, however, the likelihood of continuing appropriations over the years of sums large enough to accomplish this purpose seems remote. The political uncertainty inherent in such annual appropriations would make it extremely difficult for young people to make the plans that are increasingly required to gain admission to colleges and universities of good standing. The same uncertainty would greatly complicate the problems in admissions and general administra tion of the institutions on which District students in any substantial numbers would rely for their educational needs. Moreover, a system of scholarships or grants would do nothing to resolve the urgent problem of the inadequacy of D.C. Teachers College, unless, of course, the institution were to be abolished and its students, too, were subsidized for training elsewhere. The Committee has already expressed its belief that the abolition of that institution without putting another institution in its place is unthinkable. Furthermore, such a course would deprive the District of provisions for inservice training and continuing education for professional personnel, which should be important elements in the program of the proposed college of arts and sciences. The Committee has been conscious, throughout all its deliberations, that its recommendations for meeting the needs of the Nation's Capital should be broadly applicable to other American cities as they seek to solve their own educational problems. If the Nation were now facing an era of contracting college demand, a case might conceivably be made for avoiding the creation of new institutions. Instead, we are entering an era of demand that will require unparalleled expansion of college facilities. Under these circumstances, no great city can evade its responsibility to its young people by demanding that existing private institutions absorb a great and growing number of students who perforce must look to them for educational opportunity. The appropriate response must be in terms of bricks and mortar for new basic educational facilities publicly financed at appropriate local levels. The Committee's recommendation that existing facilities and resources of specialized courses of study be utilized, at least temporarily, through a supplementary system of publicly financed, noncompetitive scholarships does no violence to this principle; complete reliance on such a scholarship system would. Second, the Committee considered, in accordance with the terms of its assignment quoted at the beginning of this report, the possibility that Howard University might itself provide the services to be performed by the comprehensive community college or the college of arts and sciences, or both. The Committee, however, rejected this possibility. It does not believe that Howard can or should be obliged to focus its attention primarily on District needs. Unless it were to move in a direction quite different from that defined both by its long tradition and its current aspirations, it could not expect to absorb a greatly increased number of students from the District. The Committee respects and approves the current efforts of Howard to contribute to the education of foreign students, particularly from the countries of southeast Asia and Africa. The attempt to impose on Howard a quite different mission-that of a university for the District of Columbia-would seriously impair Howard's capacity to discharge effectively the vital responsibilities it now carries with distinction. It is particularly important, in the Committee's judgment, that Howard should not assume the role outlined for the community college. That college, for reasons discussed below, should be independent of any 4-year college or university. Here it need only be noted that the differences in purpose and function of the two institutions make them, as experience has shown, unsuitable for combining into a single organization. D. High-Level Graduate Study and Research 1. The Need It has often been pointed out that Washington has the unhappy distinction of being one of the very few major capitals in the Western World without a truly outstanding university. Many persons who have examined the educational resources of the District have emphasized the importance of developing in the National Capital a major new program of advanced study and research. Thus, for example, a paper prepared for the U.S. Employment Service for the District of Columbia under the auspices of the Bureau of Social Science Research, Inc., on "Training for Occupational Skills in the Washington Metropolitan Area," reaches the conclusion that "Obvious gaps in the existing educational facilities are most conspicuous at two levels: the graduate or professional school programs, and the junior college." The document continues: Limiting the discussion to the topic under consideration here skill needs of the Washington Metropolitan Area-leaves out what is perhaps the strongest argument for expansion of higher education in the Nation's Capital: the desirability of having close to the councils of Government a major ... Strong areas of graduate study and strong professional schools may be found among the five universities located in the District, but we believe that the leaders of these five institutions would readily agree that the sum total of these areas of excellence does not yet add up to a distinguished and comprehensive program for graduate, professional and postdoctoral studies. For example, graduate work and research in engineering, the physical sciences and the life sciences must be further strengthened. In addition, graduate work in education is far below the national level at a time when demands for specialized educational personnel are increasing in the District as well as nationally. The Committee is aware that the five local universities, in January 1964, announced a consortium in graduate education. This encouraging action can certainly contribute to the strengthening of the total resources of the District, but we believe that it is only one of several necessary steps. If an adequately comprehensive and truly distinguished program of graduate studies is to become available in the National Capital, large additional funds will be required. The Committee envisages an array of resources for graduate and advanced studies that would involve further strength and capacity in such professional graduate schools as engineering and in the arts and sciences. It would require the basic research that must always be intimately associated with graduate study. It would also provide opportunities for post-doctoral studies-studies that are rapidly growing in the leading universities of the country. It would provide opportunities for inservice graduate study on the part of those who work in the District and wish to augment their professional training. And finally, it would certainly provide for opportunities in continuing education for mature professional people in order to counter the intellectual obsolescence which occurs in this period of rapid advance in so many fields. Certainly it is anomalous that a paucity of graduate and professional schools should exist at the same time that the resources of the Federal Government in the Washington area remain relatively untapped by the educational community. Major Federal centers for research in the physical and life sciences are located either in the District itself or a short distance away. These include such installations as the National Institutes of Health, the National Bureau of Standards, the Naval Research Laboratory, the Smithsonian Institution, the Agricultural Research Center, and the Goddard Space Flight Center. In addition, there are included on the staffs of Federal agencies many of the Nation's foremost experts often with years of experience at institutions of higher learning-in economics, law, statistics, accounting, social science and other fields. As plans progress for consideration of public support for additional graduate and professional education programs, maximum effort should be made to foster a close working relationship with Government laboratories and personnel. The Committee has no doubt that such an arrangement would be of mutual benefit both to the programs and to the Federal Government. Not only does the District itself have need for vigorous programs of graduate study and research; so, too, does the Nation. There is widespread agreement that by 1970, the Nation should seek at least to double its output of doctorates in the sciences, engineering and mathematics, and there are many other disciplines in which comparable expansion is indicated if national requirements are to be met. To increase the overall output of doctoral degrees to any such extent requires not only an expansion of existing centers of strength but the creation of new ones. It would be of great advantage to the Nation as a whole if one of these new centers of strength could be in the Nation's Capital. To this national need and the argument in favor of having "close to the councils of Government a major center of higher learning with the intellectual and technical resources, the prestige and the stimulation it would provide" should be added the argument that the Nation's Capital itself greatly needs the industrial and research development that has been occurring in the United States wherever genuinely impressive resources in graduate study and research exist. Washington is still far from achieving its rightful place in this respect. In terms of the enrichment of employment opportunities for District and area residents, a new and significant 60-775 0-66- -5 |