Panel Tells Colleges To Up Admissions Standards

The nation's colleges should impose tougher admissions standards, including requirements for more study of English, math, and science, according to a report released last month by a national commission appointed by the Education Department.

The report said colleges should raise the number of specific courses in English, math, and science required for admission, student performance in those areas, and requisites scores on the SATs and Achievement Tests. The Committee also urged that colleges make an extra effort to tell applicants what those changes are.

"We certainly feel very encouraged by the Commission's report," Director of Admissions William R. Fitzsimmons '57 said yesterday. "It's now very important for people to take advantage of the enthusiasm."

Implementation

But Rep. Paul Simon (D-III.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on post secondary Education, yesterday criticized the report for not specifying "who ought to this responsibility for implementing the thing."

While endorsing the aims and criticisms of the 34-page report, Simon said, "Those kind of reports that don't spell out how a program is to be implemented usually and up gathering dust. My fear is that it will."

However, Gerald Holton, Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and one of the NCEE's 18 members, said yesterday that policy recommendations were "outside our competence. We were in the position of doctors making a diagnosis, not of pharmacists and bankers recommending what should be done."

The report also argued that education has been battered for the last 20 years by a "rising tide of mediocrity." The commission called for high schools to require four years of English, three each of math, science and social studies and a half-year of computer science.

More Advanced

The NCEE's findings, which were submitted to President Reagan, also assailed the lack of focus in secondary-school curricula, the shortage of offering in more advanced math, foreign languages, and sciences, and called for salary incentrives to recruit more and better qualified science teachers.

The commission was established in August, 1981, by Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell. It included teachers and administrators from colleges and high schools around the country, including Yale president A. Bartlett Giamatti.