In the next decade, the number of Americans aged 18 to 21 will rise 57%, and almost half of them will go to college. Expanding technology will also make higher education a socioeconomic necessity. (The term "college" may be so redefined that by 1990 every student with an I.Q. above 100 will complete a two-year course with the college label.) The prediction: by 1970 college enrollment will nearly double to 6.400,000 and it may go as high as 9,000,000.
Last summer 13 experts grappled with this prospect in a two-week symposium at Amherst College's Merrill Center for Economics in Southampton, N.Y. This month McGraw-Hill Book Co., sponsor of the meeting, published the results in a 304-page report (Financing Higher Education: 1960-70). Among the conclusions: 1) U.S. colleges will need 50% more teachers (450,000); 2) a full professor's salary must be doubled to an average $17,000. Key guesstimate: while U.S. higher education now spends $3.6 billion annually, by 1970 it will need at least $9.8 billion.
Cut Classes. Finding the needed $6.2 billion might well begin with revamping antiquated college management, which Ford Foundation Economist Philip H. Coombs calls "a relatively primitive art, even in institutions that offer a Ph.D. in accounting." Waste of facilities is all too common. Coombs cites one survey of more than 100 schools: "On the basis of a 44-hour week, the institutions used their available classrooms at only 46% of capacity . . . their laboratories at only 38% of capacity." If they go on this way, the schools will need more tuition dollars for expansion, leaving less for salaries.
Another "scandal," says Harvard Economist Seymour E. Harris, is proliferation of college courses. By his count, undergraduate courses at eleven top institutions have jumped from 12,000 to 39,000 in the past 55 years. Result: too many small classes. And a "high-quality" school that maintains an extra-low teacher-student ratio may be fooling itself: when it has more teachers than it can pay adequately, their performance suffers. By increasing the ratio, says the report, "most colleges can ease their financial problems very substantially without reducing the quality of their instruction."
Keep Begging. Economies can contribute much; so can corporate and individual giving, which may double by 1970 to an astonishing $1.9 billion annually. But "substantial help" from the Federal Government is also needed, suggests President Robert D. Calkins of The Brookings Institution. The present pattern of federal aid (nearly $2 billion a year, largely through research grants) is "chaotic and disorganized." Needed: a thorough study defining the Government's responsibilities to higher education.