NDEA Gives Harvard $250,000; Other Colleges Suffer Big Cuts

Harvard is receiving $250,000 in National Defense Education loan funds for 1963-64, the same as last year, despite widespread cuts in NDEA allocations which have hit other colleges.

Under a formula which ties the percentage of NDEA funds that a state can receive to its proportion of the national college population, loan requests in four New England states were slashed 40 to 50 per cent this month. No cuts were suffered by institutions in Massachusetts and Connecticut, however, since those states have relatively large numbers of students.

Legislation to raise NDEA's annual authorisation from the current $90 million to $125 million has already passed the House and was cleared by the Senate Labor Committee last week If passed, the bill would restore much of the cuts announced this month, and would make possible expanded grants to universities already receiving the maximum allocation.

The cuts drew a loud protest at Brown, which had its request reduced to $147,000 from $167,000. Lloyd W. Cornell, director of Financial Aid, said the university was "sorely disappointed" by the reduction and complained that "word of the cut was delayed till early September," throwing the university's whole loan program into disarray.

But Eino Johnson, regional director of the U.S. Office of Education's division of College and University Assistance, said last night that the Office could not notify colleges earlier because the NDEA appropriation had not been passed by Congress. He said institutions were warned as early as last May that they could not count on enough funds being available to meet their requests.

Harvard's allocation of $250,000--of which approximately $70,000 is going to the College--actually represents a substantial cut from its initial request of "nearly $1 million," according to Fred L. Glimp '50, dean of Admissions and Financial Aids. Since $250,000 is the maximum permitted under current legislation, however, the University did not protest the reduction.

Although the NDEA contribution remains the same, the total College loan program will increase by $50,000, to $650,000 this year, Glimp said. The increase represents a rise in "free" funds of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences which are earmarked for loans.

Glimp said the increase was necessary because student requests for loans have been rising sharply in recent years and "last year to stay within our target of $600,000 we had to be realy tough."