Bender Calls For Set of Principles Concerning 'Outside' Financial Aid

A prominent national magazine has asked Dean Bender to write an article based on his speech last Tuesday before the College Scholarship Service in New York. In this talk, the Dean Predicated that "the bulk of financial aid will shortly be controlled by non-academic authorities," such as foundations, corporations and communities, and that, most important, "the next generation will see the development of a massive governmental financial aid program."

As college enrollments and expenses rise and the need for aid funds increases, Bender predicted, colleges will tend to "swallow hard when funds with objectionable terms or procedural requirements come along, and accept." He said the problem is making financial aid officers into "greedy mendicants."

Calls Federal Aid "Imperative"

In the field of non-government aid, Bender found occasional "overtones of public relations, propaganda, self-aggrandizement or corporate recruiting." Although he called increased Federal aid a "social imperative for our kind of society," he warned of attempts to "limit freedom of inquiry and expression," offering the NDEA loyalty provision as an "ominous note."

In a long list of 'questionable practices" which have developed in aid programs not controlled by colleges, Bender included grants that attempt to influence what a college teaches or the point of view of a recipient about social, political, or religious issues; and fixed stipends. With little or no regard to need.

Many of these restrictions stem from a misunderstanding or lack of information about the needs of education, the Dean said. He called for a statement of principles drawn up--"eventually through some form of concerted action"--which would define the "broad purposes and basic policies of the ideal national financial aid program."