Education: Something Has to Give

As the roughest race to college in U.S. history comes to an end, one weary dean of admissions voiced the sentiments of most of his colleagues: "We just can't go on using the same old methods. Something has to give." The truth of the statement was never more clear than in a major report issued last week by President Frank Bowles of the College Entrance Examination Board. Geared to a day when few Americans went to college, the present system has met the rising tide with "a series of improvisations," says Bowles, and is "in a condition of working obsolescence."

Numbers Game. The basic difficulty is that every college still considers itself a unique institution in fierce academic competition with all the others. The result is to encourage a flood of multiple applications from youngsters who cannot be sure which campus considers them suitable. Though high school guidance is improving, the pressure is rising so fast that even . the most fastidious counselor must steer youngsters to more and more colleges, hoping to get them in somewhere. In turn, colleges grow less sure of which students will accept them: many a small college begins the annual mating season with a deluge of applications, and winds up short of freshmen.

To bring an end to this numbers game, Bowles sees hope in a "two-stage" system in which high school students are accepted provisionally in the eleventh grade, confirmed as freshmen if they do well in the twelfth grade. He concedes one objection: it might only begin the multiple-application problem one year earlier. Yet the idea resembles the "early-decision" plan successfully but sparingly used by many select women's colleges. They pick superior eleventh-graders who aim at one particular college from the start; this year 25% of Wellesley's freshmen entered under the plan.

Bowles urges the colleges to consider even more radical reforms. He feels that colleges must swallow their pride and "unite in self-denying agreements"—or see the admissions system really break down. Among his ideas: ¶A single "clearing center" to process all applicants and find the right college for the right student from the beginning. Two such centers are already in operation, but they help only those students rejected by colleges of their choice. ¶ A series of cooperative committees formed by big colleges with similar goals and standards, to pick eleventh-graders. This might cut multiple applications from twelfth-graders by as much as one-third, encourage more students to apply to good small colleges as their first choice. ¶ A "matching plan" in which colleges would accept students in staggered waves. A central agency would keep track of those not accepted in the first-choice wave. A second and third wave would follow, until all were placed in orderly fashion.