Francis M. Keppel '38, Dean of the faculty of Education, said yesterday that he "wholeheartedly agreed" with the Educational Policies Commission's recommendation for federal grants of $500,000,000 a year for needy students.

The recommendation was made in a report presented by Howard E. Wilson, former university professor, and chairman of the Commission at the recent opening of the eighty-second annual convention of the American Association of School Administrators in Atlantic City, N.J. Wilson branded "the waste of the nation's gifted youth as the number one problem in education today."

Keppel will preside over an alumni dinner tonight at the convention. The featured speaker will be the Under Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Herold C. Hunt, also Eliot Professor of Education on leave.

According to the study of Wilson's commission, 200,000 high school students did not enter college last year; half of these were unable to do so because of financial needs.

"Wilson has some pretty fair points," Keppel said, "and there has never been any question that education's chief problem is the huge number of capable high school students who are unable to attend college because of financial needs."

The Educational Commission's survey also recommended that the retirement age be raised to 70 to keep qualified, talented people on jobs beyond the time that they now retire.