Monro Urges Recruiting Try

Large American colleges should join in doing "missionary work" among low-income families, Dean Monro urged yesterday. This work, he stated, would remove "psychological barriers" that keep students from low-income areas from applying to college.

A recent survey of 200 colleges showed that scholarship applicants come from families with an average income of $7,500, some 50 per cent higher than the national average family income. "Many low-income students do not apply due to the "high cost stigma," a myth which, Monro stated, must be overcome.

Monro is currently working with the College Scholarship Service to organize both public and private colleges "to counteract this stigma." This mutual effort would involve recruitment of students from low-income districts through visits by college admissions officers.

"We act as individual missionaries, but our needs require us to be group missionaries," the Dean commented. Rexford J. Moon, Jr., director of the College Scholarship Service, has pointed out that 150,000 capable students from low-income families never attend college.

"Milions of dollars in scholarship money now going to alleviate the pain of the upper middle class should go to high-ability students who are in real need," Monro noted. The average family income of scholarship applicants at Harvard is $6,900--and these family incomes are rising faster than the average national income.