Thoughts on the Truman Report

T HE Report of President's Commission on Higher Education stands as an epochal endeavor in history of American education. It proclaims perennial and precious American dream that race, creed, sex, and national origin shall not stunt personal growth or stand off social progress; and it proffers to President and to people of country a pattern of action to convert dream into operational reality. In common with most documents proposing important social plans, Report interweaves several strands of thought that may be separately identified and inspected. Seven of these seem to me to be paramount: social vision, social demand for upper-level workers and supply of human ability to meet demand, a program for financing recommended expansion of higher education, a plan of governing, that is, of controlling, colleges and universities financed, an educational philosophy, a proposed structuring and intermeshing of educational institutions, and a prospectus of procedures for staffing higher education. Probably few who read Report will disagree with social vision of Commission, and those who do will almost certainly not say so. It voices social conscience of humanitarian seers of all ages, and, in words of Tennyson, it expresses one of the mighty hopes that make us men. In theory almost everyone deplores discriminations based on biological and social differences, but in practice attitudes deeply etched in emotion and solidly built into our institutions stand in path of rapid extension of equality of educational opportunity. Yet beyond doubt these attitudes change for better, and one of many illustrations is statistic quoted ten days ago by

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