Organization, Administration, and Financing of Post-High-School Education

Abstract

ONE study of higher education ranks in importance far above all others done within the past three years. It is the survey made by the Commission on Financing Higher Education which published 11 volumes during the period 1951 to 1953. This study, altho devoted primarily to the organization and financing of higher education, also included discussions of who should go to college and what the educational program should be. This is the second nationwide study of higher education that has been made since World War II. The first one, by the President's Commission on Higher Education (65), was reviewed by Brownell (16) in 1949. The two commissions made rather similar findings about the dynamic growth of the institutions of higher education and about the seriousness of the problems relating to facilities, staff, and finances. They both used the Army General Classification Test results in making their inventories of the available talent among American youth. They differed sharply, however, in some of their conclusions and recommendations. For example, the Commission on Financing Higher Education concluded that the primary concern of the colleges should be with the youth who were in the highest 25 percent in intellectual ability, whereas the President's Commission favored admitting from the top 49 percent and offering four-year programs to the highest 32 percent. The difference between the 75th percentile and the 68th percentile is only five points on the AGCT scale, but here on the distribution curve the numbers affected are large. This difference in the selection of students to be served led the Commission on Financing Higher Education to be much more conservative in its estimates for the needs of finances and facilities than was the President's Commission. For example, the former group felt that private philanthropy has a better chance to serve these more limited needs than was thought possible by the President's Commission; it believed that students could pay higher tuitions, especially if more ample scholarship funds were provided; that private colleges could carry a substantial share of the increasing load; and that federal subsidies would be not only unnecessary but highly undesirable because of the need to maintain the freedom of the institutions.