Three-fourths of a Nation

Harvard's system of National Scholarships is completing its first year of normal activity after the four-year wartime break. Unlike many of the other bright features of the Harvard scene, this ambitious system of enlightened subsidy was revived without overall re-examination. A close analysis of what the scholarships mean to do in the critical days beyond the G.I. Bill might best set out from President Conant's statement of intent: "When you consider that probably three-quarters of the families of this country receive an annual income of $2500 or less, the inadequacies of small scholarships amounting to a quarter or a half of the total expense becomes manifest." If the National Scholarships are to continue to fill the role cut out for them by this picture of necessity, they must be measured against the yardstick of original purpose, especially in a period when the individual cost of education looms up as a national problem.

The policy of the Committee on Scholarships throughout the 12 year history of the "Nationals" has been to select outstanding graduates of secondary schools for these prizes, regardless of the financial capabilities of the scholar's family. Unquestionably the College has benefited greatly from this infusion of rich intellectual talent and leadership. At the same time it is vital to note that of these Scholars, some 20 percent were taken from families whose incomes were above $5000, and 40 percent from an income bracket over $4000. Since there is no questioning the Committee's sincerity in choosing the most promising candidates, and even less validity in a claim that the lower income groups are incapable of producing top academic timber, it remains that a great mass of men who could benefit most from the National Scholarships never apply for them. These men lie in the income groupings below the $4000 level, where a scholarship, in most cases, would mean the difference between college and no college, and not (as it is in higher income groups)--the difference between taking extra-curricular employment or not while at Harvard.

Although it is not altogether accurate to place the ceiling on need at the $4000 income level, it is safe to say that the utility of the scholarships diminishes above that point. With President Conant's statement of intention in mind, it becomes increasingly clear that intellectually and morally capable students of the underprivileged groups must be given greater opportunity to take their places at Harvard under the plans that were originally sketched out for this group. This means not the curtailment of the smaller and honorary national scholarships (the grants are scaled according to need) so much as a campaign to stimulate interest in the scholarships among the secondary schools in industrial and rural areas, so as to open the field to the widest possible competition.

In those states in the Middle West where the scholarship plan is operative, the idea of education at Harvard has not taken on a more democratic hue. In the average mind, it is still limited to graduates of the suburban high schools who can afford the price. The simple expedient of sending representatives of the college to all secondary schools in an area, and not solely to those of the usual array of collected prep and suburban schools, would be the shot in the arm necessary to spread the notion of Harvard scholarships to a greater cross-section. A closer cultivation of educational advisers in the same industrial-rural area schools might dispel much of the gloom that these indifferently-informed sources pass on concerning the cost of a Harvard education and the possibilities for scholarship aid. Lastly, expansion of the Harvard book prizes and other Alumni awards might measurably close the gap that separates the less affluent high schools, and their graduates, from intimate participation in scholarship programs.

Although Harvard has achieved a highly desirable cosmopolitan makeup in the geographical sense, it still is bound down with a narrow economic clientele that must be expanded if any kind of balance is to be achieved in the undergraduate body. Organized with just this purpose in mind, the National Scholarships must be coupled with new efforts aimed at placing the young men of America's 20 million ill-taught families within examination-range of a Harvard education. This is the greatest share of the responsibility which lies deep in the socially-sensitive philosophy of the National Scholarship plan.