Education: Dwindling Line

After months of digging, the nonprofit Population Reference Bureau of Washington, D.C. had collected enough vital statistics to restate a well-known but still disturbing fact: U.S. college graduates are not doing their share to raise the standard of the U.S. population. Old grads should have an average of slightly more than two children each to replace themselves. Yet, when the bureau studied the class of 1924 (a typical class which has had 25 years to beget and rear children), it found that Harvardmen had only 1.74 children, Wellesleyites 1.45, Vassar girls, 1.49. College alumnae in general averaged only 1.26. Gloomed the bureau: "Does an A.B. mean 'Abolish Babies'?"

The bureau found that Western coeducational schools did better. Highest rate was that of Utah's Mormon Church institution, Brigham Young University, with 3.47 children p.m.g. (per male graduate).