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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 3

272  Harvard Educational Review

step, then, to the awareness that these same proprotions applied about equally, among other minorities to such groups as Puerto Ricans, American Indians, and Mexican-Americans. Still later recognition came that the lag also applied equally to all culturally and economicaly deprived groups, regardless of ethnic or minority status.
   It is difficult to say which of the two motivation forces was dominant or when, how, and even if they converged. It may not even be important. The fact is that inexorably more and more educational and governmental leaders have come to believe in either or both of these two concepts: first, that by far the largest potential for salvaging new or submerged talent lay in the almost limitless number of the culturally an economically deprived victims of educational lag; and second, that a very large number of Americans were not getting a fair educational break.2

II

NSSFNS was established in 1948 with the rather simple goal of increasing opportunities for Negroes for higher education in interracial colleges. It came into being to remedy a failure in the social structure. This particular failure, the founders felt, was that Negroes, who constitute 10 per cent of our population, were less than 1 per cent of our interracial college population. Before the establishment of NSSFNS , a study3 showed that attitudes, at least in Northern colleges, overwhelmingly favored more qualified Negro candidates. This study clearly showed that however great a factor bias might be in other educational or geographical areas, bias was not keeping Negroes out of Northern colleges. In addition, the founders of NSSFNS had the notion that opportunity is only equal when it is offered to all persons without distinction, at the same time, in the same place, and on the same terms. Opportunity offered in segregation, whether in the North or the South, is never equal opportunity. Quite aside from the moral iniquity, segregation in education is always a failure. Schools and colleges, held apart from the nation's cultural confluence, fall inevitably into  a downward spiral of educational regression. This was the rationale for the phrase "in interracial colleges" which completes the statement of the primary purpose of NSSFNS. 
   The first treatment to remedy the social failure was simple, direct, and symptomatic. We established a college advisory service to reach as many high school seniors as possible and to tell them individually about specific opportunities for admission and financial aid at colleges which met their qualifications, needs, and aspirations. There is strong evidence of the partial success of this treatment in the 7000 students who in 12 years have been helped to 

*Richard L. Plaut, Blueprint for Talent Searching (New York: National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students, 1957).
*Felice N. Schwartz, Unpublished Study (New York: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1947).

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272 Harvard Educational Review step, then, to the awareness that these same proprotions applied about equally, among other minorities to such groups as Puerto Ricans, American Indians, and Mexican-Americans. Still later recognition came that the lag also applied equally to all culturally and economicaly deprived groups, regardless of ethnic or minority status. It is difficult to say which of the two motivation forces was dominant or when, how, and even if they converged. It may not even be important. The fact is that inexorably more and more educational and governmental leaders have come to believe in either or both of these two concepts: first, that by far the largest potential for salvaging new or submerged talent lay in the almost limitless number of the culturally an economically deprived victims of educational lag; and second, that a very large number of Americans were not getting a fair educational break.2 II NSSFNS was established in 1948 with the rather simple goal of increasing opportunities for Negroes for higher education in interracial colleges. It came into being to remedy a failure in the social structure. This particular failure, the founders felt, was that Negroes, who constitute 10 per cent of our population, were less than 1 per cent of our interracial college population. Before the establishment of NSSFNS , a study3 showed that attitudes, at least in Northern colleges, overwhelmingly favored more qualified Negro candidates. This study clearly showed that however great a factor bias might be in other educational or geographical areas, bias was not keeping Negroes out of Northern colleges. In addition, the founders of NSSFNS had the notion that opportunity is only equal when it is offered to all persons without distinction, at the same time, in the same place, and on the same terms. Opportunity offered in segregation, whether in the North or the South, is never equal opportunity. Quite aside from the moral iniquity, segregation in education is always a failure. Schools and colleges, held apart from the nation's cultural confluence, fall inevitably into a downward spiral of educational regression. This was the rationale for the phrase "in interracial colleges" which completes the statement of the primary purpose of NSSFNS. The first treatment to remedy the social failure was simple, direct, and symptomatic. We established a college advisory service to reach as many high school seniors as possible and to tell them individually about specific opportunities for admission and financial aid at colleges which met their qualifications, needs, and aspirations. There is strong evidence of the partial success of this treatment in the 7000 students who in 12 years have been helped to *Richard L. Plaut, Blueprint for Talent Searching (New York: National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students, 1957). *Felice N. Schwartz, Unpublished Study (New York: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1947).