Give Us the Blueprints

All American colleges have pledged their resources to the winning of the war, but the college front, like the rest of America, is still characterized by a crippling lack of direction. The editorials reprinted below are evidence of the lack of nationwide cohesion. More penetrating is the recent resolution of the American Council on Education which begins: "We deplore the continuing lack of any adequate coordinated plan for the most effective utilization of higher education toward the winning of the war."

The services have called upon the colleges to supply a continuous stream of officer material, and the campuses of America have become a maze of recruiting offices. Each service, vying with every other to fill blue-sky quotas, is dangling free deferment before the students' eager eyes. Little attempt is being made to fit the supply of college men to the specific needs of the various armed forces, and Selective Service Headquarters finds itself on the spot as the Army and Navy Reserve plans cut the heart from its quota. Many students, skeptical amidst the wealth of opportunity, are still "waiting to be shown."

Meanwhile from the fields and factories comes grumbling. With 80 per cent of its officer material drawn from the ranks of the college trained, the Army is developing a class structure in which only the well-to-do can lead, and a mass of potential manpower, 84 per cent of selected, are being assigned to the ranks for lack of an education they cannot afford. Congress' five million dollar appropriation is only a token of the all-preserving federal subsidy needed for victory.

Other problems must be faced. Only the colleges possess the facilities necessary to train the mass of experts needed on all fronts, but after six months there are still no national directives. Few people know which jobs are most vital and who can be spared for them. No attempt is being made to release potential combat power by supplying a stream of the physically unfit for civilian tasks. The possibility of preparing women to take over in the nation's offices and laboratories has scarcely been investigated. Individual colleges have spurred on ahead of the rest, but what is needed is not a "Yale plan" or a "Harvard plan" but a national plan with federal directives aimed at the fullest utilization of the human and material resources of the American colleges.

The Council on Education's report continues: "We urge the establishment of such a plan at the earliest possible moment." In a series of editorials to follow the Crimson will consider the problems raised. Only one thing is certain: American colleges have a job to do; without the blueprints they, and the war, may be lost.