The actual figures for the scholarships proposals (140,000 $200-100 grants) in fact, were derived explicitly from a federal study-Project Talent-which revealed the large cumber of qualified high school graduates who were not going to college because of financial reasons. Statistics beat out the logic of the present approach, as well. In 1960, while 78 percent of high school graduates from families with incomes of $12,000 or more went on to college, only 33 percent of those in the $3000-or-less range continued.
Another example of the ways in which legislation develops out of the universities is the Teachers Corps-one of the earliest exponents of which was John Kenneth Galbraith, Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics. Galbraith first proposed a National Teaching Corps of high-paid professionals in a speech in May, 1964.
The Teacher Corps
Galbraith followed this up with an article on the idea in Harper's and in conversations with Congressmen and White House officials. When Mrs. Johnson came up to Radcliffe to deliver the Commencement Address that spring, Galbraith talked to her about the proposal on the plane ride, and the First Lady endorsed it in her speech. From there on, says Galbraith, the idea of the Teachers Corps spread quickly. With support from Senators Gaylord Nelson (D. Wis.) and Edward M. Kennedy '54 (D-Mass.), the proposal soon found its way into legislation.
Though Galbraith asserts that "virtually all the ideas for creative legislation comes out of the university," both he and Monro stress the fact that the enactment of the ideas into programs was the achievment of the Johnson administration. Johnson espoused the NDEA loan program, grandfather to part of this legislation, while still in the Senate, and his continued support says Monro, "has really made the difference." Johnson's Congressional support and the thorough preparation of his beefed-up Office of Education under Francis Koppel '38 have turned ideas into appropriations.
Problem of Digestion
The danger of the Higher Education Act as Monro and Galbraith are it, is "the great problem of digestion": the possibility that so much uncoordinated legislation will "choke up" the administration of the programs. "The Act throws a lot of responsibility on the colleges right away," says Monro, but Monro, like most college administrators, isn't complaining. "This act is the greatest breakthrough in our history," he says, and its importance is in a large part that it doesn't apply only to Harvard, but to all of American higher education