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State University of Iowa Human Rights Committee first annual report and correspondence, 1963

Increasing the Quantity and Quality of Negro Enrollment in College Page 2

Negro college enrollment  271

Included the fact that expansion, for example, would probably not keep pace with student demand. Large numbers of students, fresh from high school,would not as a whole do as well academically as the veterans. Out of this pattern, selective admission became a reality in the prestige colleges, at the same time-although it was not nearly as well recognized-that the less well-known institutions were still beating the bushes for students.
   Thus far the problems had largely centered around the numbers wanting to go on to college; there had been little concern about who should go. This latter concern, when it did come, emerged from the rather sudden discovery that there were acute shortage of adequately trained manpower in a number of such critical fields as teaching, medicine, nursing, social work and, later, engineering and the sciences. Many people realized that shortages in these fields would grow,with new shortages appearing in other occupations. Then the discovery of Soviet advances really blew up the issue. Who should go to college rapidly became a matter of national significance largely because of concern about current and anticipated manpower shortages.
   In the beginning most educational spokesmen said that the best hope for salvaging new talent lay in the "half of the top quarter in scholastic ability who were not going on to college." These words appear between quotation marks because they soon became, and still are an educational cliché. For several years almost no one talked of anywhere else to look for new talent. Eventually it was realized that this group represented only about 100,000 students, that the percentage of those who went on to college was rising each year, and that the hard core of the unmotivated among them, who weren't going on to college, did not intend to, even if all obstacles including money were removed. 1
   Concurrently another force, at first apparently entirely unrelated, was operating: the rebirth of the old concept of equality of educational opportunity. It focused on the great struggle of Negro Americans, lead by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NACCP), to achieve it, along with equal opportunities to vote, to live where they wished, and to work at the highest levels consistent with their qualifications. The climax of the struggle was the historic Supreme Court decision of 1954, followed by the continuing fight to implement that decision. 
   In the latter part of the past decade, the parallel lines of the two forces began to converge, at least in the thinking of an increasing number of educators and government leaders. iIt probably began with the realization that a far larger proportion of Negroes than the rest of the population did not go on to college; in fact one-tenth of the nation supplied one-twentieth of the nation's college population. Of that one-twentieth, eighty per cent were outside the mainstream of American education, in segregated colleges. It was not a big

1 Dael Wolfle,"guidance and Educational Strategy", Personnel and Guidance Journal, September, 1958,pp. 17-25.

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Negro college enrollment 271 Included the fact that expansion, for example, would probably not keep pace with student demand. Large numbers of students, fresh from high school,would not as a whole do as well academically as the veterans. Out of this pattern, selective admission became a reality in the prestige colleges, at the same time-although it was not nearly as well recognized-that the less well-known institutions were still beating the bushes for students. Thus far the problems had largely centered around the numbers wanting to go on to college; there had been little concern about who should go. This latter concern, when it did come, emerged from the rather sudden discovery that there were acute shortage of adequately trained manpower in a number of such critical fields as teaching, medicine, nursing, social work and, later, engineering and the sciences. Many people realized that shortages in these fields would grow,with new shortages appearing in other occupations. Then the discovery of Soviet advances really blew up the issue. Who should go to college rapidly became a matter of national significance largely because of concern about current and anticipated manpower shortages. In the beginning most educational spokesmen said that the best hope for salvaging new talent lay in the "half of the top quarter in scholastic ability who were not going on to college." These words appear between quotation marks because they soon became, and still are an educational cliché. For several years almost no one talked of anywhere else to look for new talent. Eventually it was realized that this group represented only about 100,000 students, that the percentage of those who went on to college was rising each year, and that the hard core of the unmotivated among them, who weren't going on to college, did not intend to, even if all obstacles including money were removed. 1 Concurrently another force, at first apparently entirely unrelated, was operating: the rebirth of the old concept of equality of educational opportunity. It focused on the great struggle of Negro Americans, lead by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NACCP), to achieve it, along with equal opportunities to vote, to live where they wished, and to work at the highest levels consistent with their qualifications. The climax of the struggle was the historic Supreme Court decision of 1954, followed by the continuing fight to implement that decision. In the latter part of the past decade, the parallel lines of the two forces began to converge, at least in the thinking of an increasing number of educators and government leaders. iIt probably began with the realization that a far larger proportion of Negroes than the rest of the population did not go on to college; in fact one-tenth of the nation supplied one-twentieth of the nation's college population. Of that one-twentieth, eighty per cent were outside the mainstream of American education, in segregated colleges. It was not a big 1 Dael Wolfle,"guidance and Educational Strategy", Personnel and Guidance Journal, September, 1958,pp. 17-25.