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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 5

274  Harvard Educational Review

even to approach qualification for admission to northern colleges. Of the remaining qualifiers, almost 2/3 preferred to attend, if any, predominantly Negro colleges in their region. 
   2. Effective but expensive methods of reaching the students, their parents, and their counselors were explored and improved. 
   3. The Negro talent potential in the South was estimated.
   4. A follow-up study was made of the progress and adjustment of Southern Project students in college. The study showed that college achievement of culturally and economically deprived  Southern Negro students more often exceeded the predictions for them than not. It also showed that the lower the social economic status of the student, the more often achievement exceeded prediction.

The results of this study have significantly changed the attitudes of many college admission and financial aid officers towards the qualifications of minority group and disadvantaged candidates. This may be one of the two greatest impacts the NSSFNS program has made on American educational patterns.4
   Problem: College counseling for students with no money and only average credentials in today's increasingly competitive college mart, involves a quite different body of information, set of principles, and span of time than counseling for middle-class groups. For example, admission and financial aid are inseparable; one does not count without the other, Few high school guidance counselors, already overtaxed as they are, have both accepted these facts of college counseling and are also equipped to handle them. 
   Treatment: A combination of counselor education of counselor eductaition and do-it-yourself, has made some slight progress. There has been more apathy, and even resistance, than progress in this particular problem area.
   Thus far, in tracing the development of thinking, first within NSSFNS and later in widening groups, we have only concerned ourselves with the short term approach to increasing the quantity and quality of Negro enrollment in college--not only the short-term approach but also the superficial one , i.e., reaching the student when he is already a college candidate in the 12th grade.

III

A great deal had been learned during the Southern Project and the follow-up study. More importantly, we learned that the educational lag had no racial basis but happened because of cultural and economic deprivation, operating equally among all ethnic and racial groups. Nevertheless there is a considerable overlap between deprived groups and minority groups, especially Negroes. The trend towards two-class cities (the rich and poor, 

*Richard L. Plaut, editor, Southern Project Report (New York: National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students, 1995).

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274 Harvard Educational Review even to approach qualification for admission to northern colleges. Of the remaining qualifiers, almost 2/3 preferred to attend, if any, predominantly Negro colleges in their region. 2. Effective but expensive methods of reaching the students, their parents, and their counselors were explored and improved. 3. The Negro talent potential in the South was estimated. 4. A follow-up study was made of the progress and adjustment of Southern Project students in college. The study showed that college achievement of culturally and economically deprived Southern Negro students more often exceeded the predictions for them than not. It also showed that the lower the social economic status of the student, the more often achievement exceeded prediction. The results of this study have significantly changed the attitudes of many college admission and financial aid officers towards the qualifications of minority group and disadvantaged candidates. This may be one of the two greatest impacts the NSSFNS program has made on American educational patterns.4 Problem: College counseling for students with no money and only average credentials in today's increasingly competitive college mart, involves a quite different body of information, set of principles, and span of time than counseling for middle-class groups. For example, admission and financial aid are inseparable; one does not count without the other, Few high school guidance counselors, already overtaxed as they are, have both accepted these facts of college counseling and are also equipped to handle them. Treatment: A combination of counselor education of counselor eductaition and do-it-yourself, has made some slight progress. There has been more apathy, and even resistance, than progress in this particular problem area. Thus far, in tracing the development of thinking, first within NSSFNS and later in widening groups, we have only concerned ourselves with the short term approach to increasing the quantity and quality of Negro enrollment in college--not only the short-term approach but also the superficial one , i.e., reaching the student when he is already a college candidate in the 12th grade. III A great deal had been learned during the Southern Project and the follow-up study. More importantly, we learned that the educational lag had no racial basis but happened because of cultural and economic deprivation, operating equally among all ethnic and racial groups. Nevertheless there is a considerable overlap between deprived groups and minority groups, especially Negroes. The trend towards two-class cities (the rich and poor, *Richard L. Plaut, editor, Southern Project Report (New York: National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students, 1995).