High Schools: Afterward, College for All

An oldtime newspaper editor once defined his job as telling the people what they think. Such focusing of half-formed opinion is the role of the Educational Policies Commission, an independent offshoot of the National Education Association. In 1938 the commission echoed the country by defining the goal of U.S. schools as "economic efficiency," in 1951 as "the pursuit of happiness," in 1961 as "the ability to think." To that rising curve of academic aspiration, the commission last week added a new goal: "Universal opportunity" for all Americans to go beyond high school—free of charge—for two more years of "intellectual growth."

As society grows more complex, said the 19-member commission* in a 36-page report, the challenge is to free every American mind to cope and choose wisely. "A man is free in the degree to which he has a rational grasp of himself and his surroundings. The main restrictions to freedom are prejudice and ignorance. It is in this sense that a person without some degree of intellectual sophistication, though he may be free to think, speak and act as he pleases, is not free." And such freedom is "beyond the maturity attained by most adolescents." They need at least two more years of mind-opening general education, rather than specific job skills that may soon become obsolete. Moreover, they should be given tuition-free access to "non-selective" public colleges, plus the "means for living away from home" if needed.

Mass education has grown fantastically in the U.S. since 1900, when only 6.4% of the country's 17-year-olds graduated from high school. Today, 65% of the eligible age group graduate; 58% of the graduates enter college. Although 40% of all collegians drop out, the net product of U.S. education dwarfs the efforts of every other country. The British, for example, have only begun to provide free secondary education on the U.S. scale of 20 years ago.

But the U.S. is hurrying on from this achievement, chiefly by means of two-year junior colleges. Already 703 of them (425 public) enroll 25% of all college freshmen; by 1970 they may enroll 75% and become the academic minimum that high schools are today. "The goal of universal education beyond the high school," says the commission, "is no more Utopian than the goal of full citizenship for all Americans, for the first is becoming prerequisite to the second."