Education: Specters

U.S. Commissioner of Education Earl J. McGrath sighted “a specter in academic halls” that had nothing to do with Halloween. It was the specter “of another entire student body for every college and university.” According to McGrath’s figures, about 78% of the nation’s fifth-grade students who are mentally qualified for college never get there. The result is that millions of U.S. citizens “go through life functioning below the level of their potential.” His proposal: an annual $300 million federal aid program for college scholarships.

U.S. educators would doubtless hear more of Commissioner McGrath’s proposal, as well as more about its forerunner, the recommendation of the President’s Commission on Higher Education calling for doubled college enrollments by 1960 (TIME, Dec. 29, 1947). But last week Harvard Economist Seymour E. Harris interrupted with a question. If the U.S. was determined to send so many Americans to college, could it also provide the sort of jobs college graduates have come to expect? In a book called The Market for College Graduates (Harvard University Press; $4), Economist Harris answered his own question.

Harris estimated that if the President’s commission has its way, the U.S. would have 15 million living college graduates by 1970. If the same percentage of graduates aim for the professions as in the past (about 65%), there would have to be, to accommodate them, two or three times as many openings as exist in these prize fields now. Professor Harris, who believes as devoutly in an expanding U.S. economy as his associate, Economist Sumner Slichter (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), wonders whether it can expand that much that soon.

Furthermore, said Harris, college graduates could expect their salary advantage (over non-college men & women) to dip even more than it has. In 1940, the college man earned about 32% more than the American average; by 1948 he was making only 10% more. “The time may come,” warned Harris, “when, on an average, the college-trained worker will earn less than the non-college worker.”