November 17, 1969
Page 34480
OPPORTUNITY IN EDUCATION FOR THE DISADVANTAGED STUDENT
HON. JAMES H. SCHEUER OF NEW YORK IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Monday, November 17, 1969
Mr. SCHEUER. Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to place into the RECORD "Opportunity in Education for the Disadvantaged Student," a speech delivered by Senator EDMUND MUSKIE. I believe with Senator MUSKIE that a great untapped resource of talent lies in the group labeled "the disadvantaged." The Nation urgently needs their talents and insights.
The speech follows:
OPPORTUNITY IN EDUCATION FOR THE DISADVANTAGED STUDENT
(Remarks by Senator EDMUND S. MUSKIE to the National Association of College Admissions Counselors, October 9, 1969)
Some years ago, on the day of my first inauguration as Governor of the State of Maine, a friend asked my father if that was not the proudest day of his life. "No." he answered, "the proudest day of my life was the day my son graduated from Bates College." My father was an immigrant from Poland, who came to this country to find a better life for himself and his children. To him, the key to the promise of America was a college education.
His hopes and his perception of how his hopes could become fact were like the hopes and perceptions of millions of American parents, before and since. His son was one of those lucky ones to whom the way was opened, even in the midst of the depression. I am indebted to teachers who trained and encouraged me, to those who helped me find the money to pay my way, and to that gatekeeper who let me in.
In part, my appearance here is an expression of gratitude for the chance one of your number gave me many years ago. In part, I have come because I think you have a sensitive and critical role in a society suffering from divisions and doubts.
There are parallels between the world today and the world I knew as a poor young man. knocking on the college gates when our economy was staggering. But there are also substantial differences.
The numbers of young people who want to go to college are far greater. The pressures for college degrees are more intense. And the differences between the affluent and the poor and disadvantaged are more exaggerated.
We can all see and feel those pressures and differences. We know that a failure to relieve the pressures and reduce the differences between the haves and the have-nots can destroy our society.
There is not much time left for us to correct the conditions which threaten us, and, unless we use that time wisely, history may write our epitaph: "Here lies a once-great nation which, in the midst of its affluence, forgot that poverty and the indifference to it are twin cancers which destroy the mighty with the weak."
To whom may one more appropriately turn to remedy some of the contradictions than to the gatekeepers of our nation's colleges and universities? You help determine the life chances of millions of young people, and through them you help shape our society.
Our dilemma stems not from our failure to see the need for expanded educational opportunities.
We have, through several actions, recognized, in the late President Kennedy's phrase, that education is "the keystone in the arch of freedom."
In elementary and secondary education, in particular, our nation has virtually created a new doctrine: that equal educational opportunity can come about only from treating the poor unequally. We have created special opportunities and compensatory services under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Teacher Corps, Head Start, and similar programs.
Through these and other national commitments we have begun to focus attention -- both preventive and remedial -- on the nation's forgotten national human resources.
In higher education, we have expanded available student spaces beyond the wildest speculations of those only one or two generations behind us. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that America is moving toward the principle that post-secondary education should be an individual right for all and no longer a privilege of the few.
Our manpower requirements, the desires of parents and the expectations of youth have combined to force increases in financial support for education far beyond expenditures in any other area of public service. In the Congress, a remarkable series of laws passed over the last decade lead me to conclude that debate over whether some form of universal post-secondary educational opportunity is desirable or necessary has been substantially completed. The question was drowned in a flood of rising demands for the enlargement of existing institutions and the creation of many hundreds of new ones.
Forty-two percent of our 18-21 year olds are now enrolled in post-secondary schools. A 50 percent enrollment by the mid-1970's is probable and an 80 percent enrollment is not unthinkable before the end of the century.
Despite the miraculous growth in the size and number of educational institutions, however, American higher education remains largely the preserve of the white and the affluent. With all of our recent concern about the eradication of poverty and discrimination, with all of the commitments voiced by educational leaders, and with all of the public and private programs designed to help the disadvantaged, we have not begun to deliver on our promises.
One recent study of enrollments at the University of California found that students from families of incomes above $25,000 are four times as likely to be eligible for admission as are students from families of incomes under $4,000. Among those who are eligible for admission to that great university system, twice as many young people from high-income families attend as do those from low-income families.
Recent studies of the American Council on Education also tell us that the proportion of blacks among entering college freshmen has changed only slightly since 1988. Their representation in college is only about six percent of total enrollments, or one-half of their proportion of the nation's college-age population. When we look at the distribution of black students -- not to mention MexicanAmericans, Puerto Ricans, American Indians, and other neglected minorities – we find that nearly one-half of all black freshmen attend Negro colleges, while more than half of all of the institutions in the United States have black enrollments of only one or two percent. At a time when gateways to advancement frequently require the possession of a college degree, only four percent of our black fellow Americans have it. If our national goal is to build one society, one nation, we can't do it on the basis of today's performance.
I am convinced that your profession has the power to open the doors of opportunity to the fifth of our population living in poverty, the fifth who will either make us whole or drag us all to moral bankruptcy.
I have been impressed by the research of Dr. Alexander Astin of the American Council on Education, which was recently reported at the Council's 52nd annual meeting.
I think some of the conclusions of his studies need your most careful consideration. They have serious and far-reaching implications for your admissions policies.
First, Dr. Astin concludes that low representation of blacks and other minority groups among entering college freshmen is attributable, in large part, to admission policies which depend primarily on high school grades and tests of academic ability. These grades and tests, in other words, place a premium on those who have already enjoyed the benefits of social and educational advantage. They say practically nothing about one's ability to grow and to perform at acceptable, if not always brilliant, academic levels.
Moreover, even as predicators of academic success, high school grades and tests are subject to very considerable error. And, as in the case with much of our education system, the customer pays the cost of the system's failures. In this instance the cost is lifetimes warped by lost opportunities.
The most remarkable finding in Dr. Astin's research is the fact that the dropout rate of black students attending white colleges is lower than would be predicted from their high school grades and scores on academic tests. Once admitted, so-called "high-risk" students tend to "make it."
They may not be at the top of their classes but they compare favorably with average white students who meet the traditional standards and expectations of the higher education establishment.
Dr. Astin's research concludes that even the highly selective colleges of America can afford to admit much larger numbers of disadvantaged students without substantially increasing their dropout rates or lowering their academic standards. Minority students from disadvantaged backgrounds may tend to achieve at a slightly lower level than their white classmates, but there is ample evidence that many of them actually learn more, change more, grow more in the college process, than their more privileged white colleagues. This should not surprise us if we consider their motivation for achievement.
Astin points out that college admissions policy, as currently practiced, is designed to "pick winners" rather than to identify students who have the most potential for growth and change.
Selective admissions, based on conventional tests, are in fact misdirecting the great resources of our institutions of higher learning from those who could profit most from them to those who are in a position to cash in on the advantages of affluence.
If by higher education we mean the development of capacity to realize potential, rather than simply nurturing those who have been prepared for the demands of the institutions, the Astin studies show that there can be enormous payoff in expanding college enrollments from among the disadvantaged.
To put the stark problem again: even if present admissions criteria predicted future academic achievement -- and we know they are subject to considerable error -- they do not apparently predict the individual's capacity for growth or change. In addition, they perpetuate those racially- and ethnically-related social disparities which represent one of the biggest flaws in our society.
They do virtually nothing to close the growing rift of the two Americas -- one white and affluent, the other poor and colored.
Unless we turn our attention to fundamental change in college admissions criteria, we shall see little real improvement in educational opportunity for the bottom fifth of our population. We shall see a continuation of the situation in which the more selective schools compete among themselves for the limited pool of minority students who can pass the traditional admissions procedures. We need a massive nationwide effort to increase the size of the pool of minority students going on to post-secondary education.
This, in turn, can happen only when admissions officers look at the potential for individual growth, rather than at academic achievement records in the high schools and at conventional measures of apparent academic aptitude.
Not only Dr. Astin's studies, but the growing experience of many institutions tells us that so-called "high-risk" students can make the grade, even in our more selective institutions. But they won't make the grade unless our admissions policies reflect our urgent commitment to open the doors of opportunity to those who have never experienced it.
Government must do its part. So-called "high-risk" students need massive financial aid, special tutorial services, relevant workstudy experiences, and other assistance. All of these aids cost money. Recent Federal actions have begun to recognize these needs and these added costs. But few of us in Washington are content with what we have done. In the years ahead the national commitment to post-secondary education will have to be expanded many-fold through direct Federal assistance. Moreover, if the Congress should enact the welfare reforms and revenue sharing proposals recommended by the President, the States must be held accountable for ensuring that their new-found fiscal resources will be channeled into the needs of higher education and the needs of the disadvantaged.
I did not come here today to place responsibility for bridging the gap be black and white, rich and poor, upon your shoulders alone.
Those of us in public office will have to provide major resources to finance this massive effort.
But you can start this nationwide process by telling your community, your alumni, your governing boards and perhaps even your faculty and administrators, that there need not be a conflict between increasing college opportunities for the disadvantaged and the maintenance of sound academic standards. This, it seems to me, is one of the most heartening findings of current social science. It tells us that if we have the will we can make of education what every public opinion poll says that the people want it to be: a genuine gateway to opportunity for all, a basis for enlightened public interest, and an instrument for preparing leaders for a truly democratic society.