Conant Suggests GI Bill Revision

Other educators than Presidents Conant of Harvard and Hutchins of Chicago were less pessimistic and critical in regarding the GI Bill of Rights. President Daniel L. Marsh, speaking at Boston University commencement exercises on Saturday, called the Bill "one of the finest and most constructive pieces of social legislation ever enacted by any government." He observed, further, that "the GI Bill offers opportunity to practically everyone in the armed service except the dishonorably discharged veteran." "How incomparably better it will be for veterans to turn to college pending the finding of jobs than to walk the streets or go into literal hobo jungles," he said.

President Raymond Walters of the University of Cincinnati had earlier predicted that dwindling registration would make, 1945-46 one of the financially shakiest years in educational history, with the virtual vanishing of military units which have held up the treasurer's report at many war-emptied colleges. The colleges' chief hope of solvency, said Walters, was the tuition of veterans staked to free schooling by the GI Bill of Rights.

The Armed Forces Committee on Post-War Educational Opportunities for Service Personnel warned that the GI Bill might prove "extraordinarily costly--both in human and financial terms" if veterans were allowed to prepare for unsuitable or overcrowded vocations.

More optimistic, President Robert G. Sproul, of the University of California, said, "The prospects for higher education at the University of California were never brighter. . . . Nor do we expect to be demoralized by the veterans or to demoralize them."

Bennington College's President Lewis Webster Jones echoed, "In 1945-46 higher education will face the greatest crisis and greatest opportunity in the nation's history. . . . All indications are that the returning veterans will be most eager to . . . work hard on a serious adult curriculum."

The University of Wisconsin's President Clarence A. Dykstra thought the GI Bill of Rights would be soundly interpreted: "It will be no kindness . . . to let (any man) do substandard work for any considerable time, or to encourage men to try college work in order to get an education stipend from Uncle Sam.