Rep. Green Outlines Bill To Aid Smaller Colleges

A leading Congressional exponent of Federal aid to education last night stressed the need for a better coordinated governmental policy towards higher learning, and outlined a new program to help smaller colleges and universities maintain academic excellence in the face of mounting costs and increasing specialization.

Delivering the 1963 Burton Lecture, Rep. Edith Green (D-Ore.), reported that she is introducing a bill today which would provide Federal money for the establishment of fifteen cooperative educational centers throughout the country.

These centers would provide surrounding educational institutions with expensive specialized facilities such as laboratories, research libraries, and programs in the cultures and languages of underdeveloped countries, which each school by itself would not, be able to afford. She expressed the hope that such centers would raise the quality of education in participating institutions by enabling outstanding scholars to devote their total available teaching time to the specialized field of their choice.

"The question," Rep. Green declared, "is not: 'Should there be Federal aid'--that was decided over one hundred years ago--... but 'what kinds of Federal aid?'"

Diffusion of educational programs among a multitude of agencies and committees has made any coherent effort to answer this latter question virtually impossible. Only a small proportion of Federal educational programs are administered by the two agencies--the Office of Education and the National Science Foundation--whose official purpose is to promote learning.

The other programs fall to agencies--including the Department of Agriculture, the Defense Department, and the Housing and Home Finance Agency--which "have a special mission.... Since this must be their overriding concern, very little consideration is given to educational needs as a whole and to the impact the particular program might have."

Paradoxically, these "specialized" programs--often enormous in scope--have escaped the emotion-charged objections which so far have blocked comprehensive Federal legislation. The Defense Department, Rep. Green noted, operates a correspondence course with 116,000 students; it runs all but two of the Federal degree-granting institutions; it maintains "the largest and almost the only" Federal system of elementary and secondary schools.

Yet, the Congresswoman observed, "the arguments used against general education programs are never used against education by the Pentagon: 'Segregation-Integration,' 'church-state issue,' 'Federal control', 'this is just the beginning,' 'it's letting the camel get its nose into the tent', 'we can't afford it-taxes are too high'--such arguments are never heard. The money is appropriated with little question."

Congresswoman Green made a number of predictions about the 88th Congress. Among them:

* The ceiling on NDEA loans will be raised considerably.

* The fellowship program will be expanded.

* Chances for general Federal aid to higher education are fairly good, but "it all depends on what higher educators do. Of all lobbies, the education lobby is the most ineffective."