Address By Commissioner Of Education Earl McGrath, Before the Association of Land-Grant Colleges and Universities, On the Outside - Looking In
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OCR Page 1 of 11ON THE OUTSIDE - LOOKING IN*
I want to speak of the appalling wastage of human resources
involved in our present failure to make it possible for thousands
of youth who have college abilities actually to pursue their
education up to the limits of their capacity.
The present situation makes this a subject of more than
passing interest. In the past four years few college and univer-
sity administrators have been permitted the luxury of extensive
thoughts about the great numbers of potential college students
who never enroll. Thay have been too busy taking care of the
flood of veteran enrollments. The Veterans Administration
reports that it has approved applications for education and
training benefits for 9,238,995 veterans of World War II. Two
thirds of these (6,783,196) have entered on training and only
131,522 have exhausted their entitlement under Public Law 346,
the "G. I. Bill." As of April 30, 1949, 1,027,420 veterans were
taking training in institutions of higher learning; and through
June 30, 1949, the Veterans Administration had paid out for the
education of veterans at the college and university level a total
of $3,814,000,000. Roughly two-thirds of this amount was spent
for subsistence, and one-third for tuition, equipment, and supplies.
It is hardly necessary to dwall on thase facts before an audience
which includes men and women from colleges enrolling about one-
fourth of the students of the Nation. Your oun campuses, with
their Quonset quarters and improvised facilities, speak more
eloquently than any words. You have a background of intimate
experience out of which you could testify to the fact that the
colleges and universities have been full for the last three or
four years.
Now no one dares to estimate how soon the veterans' enroll-
ment will taper off to sero. Two and a half million veterans hold
certificates for education and training which they have not yet
used at all. Many are saving their entitlements until the later
years of undergraduate work or for their graduate years when their
need for financial help will be greater. But this much we know:
Address by Earl James McGrath, U. S. Commissioner of Education,
Federal Security Agency, Washington, D. C., before the Association
of Land-Grant Colleges and Universities, Kansas City, Missouri,
October 27, 1949
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Reproduced in part in School Life - January 1950 issue.
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