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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 9

278  Harvard Educational Review

   3. School personnel (administrative and teaching and guidance) need, as part of their academic as well as in-service training, to acquire the recognition that every child, until proven otherwise, may have intellectual potential wholly unrelated to his background; that ability, not the accident of birth, must determine who shall have the chance to go on to higher education and how far he can go. 
   4. The development of testing instruments, to identify with validity potential ability in children from outside the predominant culture, is essential. 
   5. Segregation, whether by law or in fact, based on race or socioeconomic status is educationally unworkable. Some compensation will have to be found for the neighborhood school or the neighborhood school will have to go. The principle will also eventually apply to the Negro college. The day will come when each one will have to receive sufficient support to enable it to integrate its student body or disappear from the educational scene. 
   6. College counseling in high school must include the special knowledge and considerations involved in successfully guiding to college the student with little or no money and less than superior credentials. This means among other things a much broader spectrum of knowledge about colleges and their individual idiosyncracies, as well as about both college and non-college sources of financial aid.
   7. The ability to pay can no longer be a critical factor in determining who shall go to college. We have reached the stage where it no longer is a critical factor for most candidates of superior developed ability. There is almost enough financial aid in one form or another for him, if he really needs it and knows where to look for it. There should be equal provision for the promising student whose achievement at 12th grade has been only average or a little better because of cultural and economic handicaps. Furthermore better communications media must be developed to tell these students of promise that aid is available and where to look for it.

All of these needs seem to add up to one of two solutions: either a utopia, which we may never achieve but should always strive for; or an organization, enjoying both public and private support, of the size, strength, and prestige of, for example, the National Science Foundation. The task of this organization could well be expressed by enlarging the statement of the NSSFNS purpose and program:

   1. To increase opportunities for integrated higher education for students from all deprived groups.
    2. To award financial aid to promising students from deprived backgrounds, who have been admitted by colleges but cannot compete successfully in the normal national and college scholarship competition.

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278 Harvard Educational Review 3. School personnel (administrative and teaching and guidance) need, as part of their academic as well as in-service training, to acquire the recognition that every child, until proven otherwise, may have intellectual potential wholly unrelated to his background; that ability, not the accident of birth, must determine who shall have the chance to go on to higher education and how far he can go. 4. The development of testing instruments, to identify with validity potential ability in children from outside the predominant culture, is essential. 5. Segregation, whether by law or in fact, based on race or socioeconomic status is educationally unworkable. Some compensation will have to be found for the neighborhood school or the neighborhood school will have to go. The principle will also eventually apply to the Negro college. The day will come when each one will have to receive sufficient support to enable it to integrate its student body or disappear from the educational scene. 6. College counseling in high school must include the special knowledge and considerations involved in successfully guiding to college the student with little or no money and less than superior credentials. This means among other things a much broader spectrum of knowledge about colleges and their individual idiosyncracies, as well as about both college and non-college sources of financial aid. 7. The ability to pay can no longer be a critical factor in determining who shall go to college. We have reached the stage where it no longer is a critical factor for most candidates of superior developed ability. There is almost enough financial aid in one form or another for him, if he really needs it and knows where to look for it. There should be equal provision for the promising student whose achievement at 12th grade has been only average or a little better because of cultural and economic handicaps. Furthermore better communications media must be developed to tell these students of promise that aid is available and where to look for it. All of these needs seem to add up to one of two solutions: either a utopia, which we may never achieve but should always strive for; or an organization, enjoying both public and private support, of the size, strength, and prestige of, for example, the National Science Foundation. The task of this organization could well be expressed by enlarging the statement of the NSSFNS purpose and program: 1. To increase opportunities for integrated higher education for students from all deprived groups. 2. To award financial aid to promising students from deprived backgrounds, who have been admitted by colleges but cannot compete successfully in the normal national and college scholarship competition.