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Show Wrong Bill Proposed i For years we've been hearing that one of these days (supposedly in the distant future) our colleges will be much too small to handle the burgeoning enrollments. en-rollments. As generally happens, the problems of the future have a way of making themselves problems of today. Or is it that no one bothers to think ahead? No longer off in the distant future, colleges are already feeling the squeeze of inadaquate facilities and the phenomenal increase in enrollments and applications. appli-cations. On the national level, more than 50 per cent i of high school graduates are now entering college, and the percentage is continually rising. In Utah, the percentage per-centage is the highest in the nation. U.S. News and World Report points out that applicants ap-plicants arc already exceeding the facilities necessary to educate them. High grades, good entrance scores an1 outstanding activities may no longer be enough to get into the good universities. Nor are the top schools - the only ones feeling the squeeze. Even state universities univer-sities are now limiting the number of out-of-state students and raising tuitions to give preference to in-state graduates. Far from getting better, this situation situa-tion is growing increasingly severe as the post-war baby boom is only now beginning to hit the colleges. Take for instance Amherst College which took only one-sixth of its applicants this year; among those rejected were 90 students that graduated at the top of their classes. It's strikingly simple: if a college has room for 10 and receives 200 applications from equally qualified scholars, selection will be purely arbitrary, nore or less akin to coin flipping. High school graduates who could have had their pick five or ten years ago are now being rejected. One result of this problem has been a growing emphasis in some states on junior colleges. Two-year college programs have been set up in a number of states to take the pressure off the four year universities, univer-sities, leaving them free to concentrate on the above-average above-average graduates while still providing an opportunity for the average students to get a higher education. They have also served as a filter for the larger schools, weeding out those who discover that a college : education is really not for them and those that can't ' make the grade. A bill now pending in Congress might help the ! financially unable to pursue their education if they ; have the mental ability. Sponsored by Sen. Vance Hartke of Indiana, Senate Bill 2490 presents a program pro-gram to provide loans, scholarships and student employment that will enable another million students vho are now financially unable to do so to go on to college. The act resembles the National Defense Education Edu-cation Act (NDEA) that now provides loans to college col-lege students at low interest rates but it also expands the NDEA by raising the loan limit allowed to each student. It seems that somebody here is getting the horse before the cart. Not to say that we're against a bill of his sort. We have in the past supported measures that provide educational opportunities for those qualified to attend college but are unable to finance it on their own. But what's the point of aiding a student in surmounting sur-mounting the financial barriers to college if he is faced with other barriers, such as the lack of adequate facilities just as great? Broadening the educational opportunities for all qualified graduates irrespective of their ability to finance it on their own is both needed and desirable. But along with this a program for expanding the facilities for education to meet the growing demand is also needed. State legislatures can no longer put this problem prob-lem into the distant future. Action is needed now just to keep pace with the problem today, to say nothing of the problems it presents for the future. Federal aid to state building programs in the form of loans and matching grants should also be expanded. It is unfortunate that problems must be acute before action is taken. But let's do something to substantiate substan-tiate our beliefs in a democracy founded on education before those beliefs are nothing more than meaningless meaning-less truisms. |