Education: Something Has to Give

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Free Enterprise. Will colleges even consider such "self-denying" schemes? The trend is all to cooperation on academic matters. The Big Ten have recently linked their graduate schools, while Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke and the University of Massachusetts have embarked on a faculty-sharing program. But when it comes to admissions, free enterprise rules the campus roost. The so-called Ivy League colleges (no two of them alike) all hotly pursue the same top scholars, can barely agree on a joint date to send out acceptances. They are quite hesitant about Bowles's proposals.

Many schools object to a wave system of applications because no school likes to admit publicly—though it knows privately—that it is a second-choice college. Besides, says Caltech's Dean of Admissions Winchester Jones, the system is "unfair to the candidate" because col leges would spurn second-choosers. Even less attractive is the idea of cooperative admissions committees. "Ridiculous and impossible," says Amherst's Dean Eugene S. Wilson. "Can you imagine Casey Stengel letting Bill Veeck pick his players?"

Painful Future. The biggest complaint about Bowles's proposals is the fear that centralization will kill all personal relations between colleges and prospective students. "There's too much IBM in admissions already," says the University of Chicago's Charles O'Connell. For just this reason, Yale's Dean of Admissions Arthur Howe Jr. last week informed his staff that Yale should set up six small admissions boards across the country to get an earlier and better look at candidates.

The great admissions game will grow rougher with each succeeding year. But few admissions officials are anxious to change their ways. Says Amherst's Dean Wilson: "An answer that colleges will buy has got to come. But we'll have to suffer a little more before everyone is so pained that they'll all be forced to a solution."