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Council for Excellence. "In some fashion," said Rickover, "we must devise a way to introduce uniform standards into American education. It would be best to set up a private agency, a Council of Scholars, financed by our colleges and universities as a joint undertaking—or perhaps by Foundations. This council would set a national standard for the high school diploma, as well as for the scholastic competence of teachers. High schools accepting this standard would receive official accreditation, somewhat on the order of the accreditation given medical schools and hospitals. Teachers would receive a special certificate if they complete the requisite course of studies.
"For the first time, parents would have a real yardstick to measure their schools. If the local school continued to teach such pleasant subjects as 'Life Adjustment' and 'How to know when you are really in love,' instead of French and physics, its diploma would be, for all the world to see, inferior. Taxpayers will begin to wonder whether they are getting their money's worth . . . when their children find admission to college difficult because theirs is an inferior diploma."