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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 4

Negro College Enrollment  273

enroll in some 350 fully accredited, four-year, interracial colleges with nearly $2500,000 in scholarship awards. That it was also at least partially unsuccessful is clear, because places for five times as many might have been found, had that number been qualified and available.
   The basic program of high school-college articulation, however, revealed in rapid succession a Pandora's box full of unsuspected and increasingly complex problems, each requiring a new, different, and not always so simple kind of symptomatic treatment. In retrospect, some of these problems now seem obvious, but at the time, if they were suspected, no one revealed the discoveries he saw in his clouded crystal ball. Here are some of the problems in something like their order of discovery, along with the NSSFNS treatment of them.
   Problem: most colleges could not offer sufficient financial aid to meet the full financial needs of the student with little or no money from home. 
   Treatment: NSSFNS started a Supplementary Scholarship Fund to bridge the gap, up to $400 per student per year, between the sum of institutional aid, students' earnings, family contribution, on the one hand, and the full cost of a college year, on the other. (It should be noted that this gap is widening.) Through this Fund, about 900 students have been able to take advantage of insufficient college aid opportunities they would have otherwise had to forego.
   Problem: Even some of the most able students from the then legally segregated southern high schools and de facto segregated northern schools were not able to qualify from their home high schools at colleges which might challenge their potential ability.
   Treatment: NSSFNS established a limited program of counseling and referral to private preparatory schools. With some forty schools co0operating in this program, about 250 students have had optimal secondary preparation and, almost without exception, gone on to first-rate colleges.
   Problem: The incidence of students going on to interracial colleges from segregated southern schools was not significantly increasing under the NSSFNS basic program. We could not reach enough school counselors or students. No one knew the extent of potential talent in the South nor how to reach it. 
   Treatment: The NSSFNS Southern Project, the first systematic talent search ever carried on in the United States, began with the help of a grant from the Fund for the Advancement of Education. In the two years of the Southern Project, 1953-5:

1. More students (523) were helped to move from segregated high schools to non-segregated colleges than in any previous ten year period. But, of the top 10 per cent of the seniors tested in the eighty leading Negro high schools of the South, about half failed

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Negro College Enrollment 273 enroll in some 350 fully accredited, four-year, interracial colleges with nearly $2500,000 in scholarship awards. That it was also at least partially unsuccessful is clear, because places for five times as many might have been found, had that number been qualified and available. The basic program of high school-college articulation, however, revealed in rapid succession a Pandora's box full of unsuspected and increasingly complex problems, each requiring a new, different, and not always so simple kind of symptomatic treatment. In retrospect, some of these problems now seem obvious, but at the time, if they were suspected, no one revealed the discoveries he saw in his clouded crystal ball. Here are some of the problems in something like their order of discovery, along with the NSSFNS treatment of them. Problem: most colleges could not offer sufficient financial aid to meet the full financial needs of the student with little or no money from home. Treatment: NSSFNS started a Supplementary Scholarship Fund to bridge the gap, up to $400 per student per year, between the sum of institutional aid, students' earnings, family contribution, on the one hand, and the full cost of a college year, on the other. (It should be noted that this gap is widening.) Through this Fund, about 900 students have been able to take advantage of insufficient college aid opportunities they would have otherwise had to forego. Problem: Even some of the most able students from the then legally segregated southern high schools and de facto segregated northern schools were not able to qualify from their home high schools at colleges which might challenge their potential ability. Treatment: NSSFNS established a limited program of counseling and referral to private preparatory schools. With some forty schools co0operating in this program, about 250 students have had optimal secondary preparation and, almost without exception, gone on to first-rate colleges. Problem: The incidence of students going on to interracial colleges from segregated southern schools was not significantly increasing under the NSSFNS basic program. We could not reach enough school counselors or students. No one knew the extent of potential talent in the South nor how to reach it. Treatment: The NSSFNS Southern Project, the first systematic talent search ever carried on in the United States, began with the help of a grant from the Fund for the Advancement of Education. In the two years of the Southern Project, 1953-5: 1. More students (523) were helped to move from segregated high schools to non-segregated colleges than in any previous ten year period. But, of the top 10 per cent of the seniors tested in the eighty leading Negro high schools of the South, about half failed