desire to pursue further education should be helped to do so, regardless of economic resources and regardless of past academic achievement. If the meritocracy is ebbing and egalitarianism is on the rise, who will go to college?

The description is not quite accurate, but it is generally conceded that we have, in this country, a system of universal secondary education wherein young people who are physically and mentally able to attend high school do so. In reality only about 80 percent of the young people graduate from high school. If we assumed that universal higher education existed when it became as common as high school graduation is today-i.e., when 80 percent of the high school graduates continued their education-then we might construct a hypothetical egalitarian form of Table 1, wherein every SES-ability cell had an 80 percent postsecondary education attendance probability. Eighty percent of those in the top quarter on both SES and ability would continue their education, and 80 percent of those in the bottom quarter on both indices. would also continue in some form of post-secondary education. Table 2 shows the reservoir of potential New Students to higher education. It is obtained by subtracting the percentages in each cell of Table 1 (the reality) from 80 (practical egalitarianism).

TABLE 2. The hypothetical reservoir of potential students for the attainment of egalitarian postsecondary education

1.

Source: 80 percent minus the percentage in each cell of the 1967 ETS growth study data presented in table

Quite clearly, most of the New Students would come from rows 1 and 2-the lower half of the class academically. There would be almost no additional males from the upper half of the class, but there would be a fairly large number of women who stand in the top half of the class academically-almost all of them from the lower half of the socioeconomic scale.

Who will go to college? New Students to higher education will be students whose performance at academic tasks in the past has been below average. Low academic ability, as that ability is traditionally nurtured and measured in the schools will be their distinguishing characteristics. We need to turn our attention to the complicated problems of designing educational programs that will educate those who have been relatively untouched by instructional programs of the past. Institutions of higher education are not now prepared to teach New

Students. Nothing in our experience of designing educational programs has prepared us to think about whether the present meritocratic goals-i.e., high academic achievement-are compatible with egalitarian access. Do we plan to admit everyone, but graduate only those who meet meritocratic standards? Perhaps the place to start conceptualizing the enormous task before us is with achieving a better understanding of the characteristics of New Students.

A research description of the abilities, attitudes and interests of New Students, with emphasis upon suggestions for the design of appropriate educational programs for New Students is underway with the support of Educational Testing Service, the College Entrance Examination Board and the Center for Research and Development in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley. A very brief capsule profile of some characteristics of New Students is presented here. For purposes of this description as well as those of the comprehensive study, New Students are defined as those scoring in the lowest third of samples of high school seniors on traditional tests of academic aptitude.

Most New Students are Caucasians whose fathers work at bluecollar jobs. A substantial number, however, are members of minority ethnic groups. The great majority of fathers have never attended college and the expectation of college is new to the family. Those who constitute the New Student pool of high school graduates have not been especially successful at their studies in high school. Whereas traditional college students (upper third) have made A's and B's in high school, New Students tended to make mostly C's. Traditional students are attracted primarily to 4-year colleges and universities, whereas New Students plan to enter public community colleges or vocational schools.

Fundamentally these New Students to higher education are swept into college by the rising educational aspirations of the citizenry. For the majority, the motivation for college does not arise from the anticipation of the joy of learning the things they will be learning in college, but from the recognition that education is the way to a better job and a better life than that of their parents.

Most educators and legislators have become sensitized to the failure of schools in minority ethnic neighborhoods to provide adequate academic foundations upon which young people can build college educations. But in a recent study sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation, Peter Binzen (Carnegie Quarterly, 1970) found that Kensington, a blue-collar community that is 99.7 percent white, has some of the same problems.

Kensington is a community in crisis. . . . In many ways it looks, thinks, and acts like so many of the Negro ghettos festering in American cities. Its educational, political, social, and economic problems are almost as great as those found in the black slums. It, too, has failed to solve these problems, and failure has made it sullen, surly, and suspicious [p. 2]. . . .

People forget that, in the metropolitan areas, twice as many white as nonwhite families live in "official" poverty, and of course many White towners don't quite qualify for that governmental distinction. They are poor but not poor enough to get help. Usually

earning from $5,000 to $10,000 a year, the Whitetown husband and father works hard as a truck-driver or turret lathe operator or policeman or longshoreman or white-collar clerk-perhaps at more than one of these jobs-to buy and hold on to his fourteenfoot-wide house and new color television set. [p. 1]. . . . Some of the immediate implications for federal programs that result from this influx of New Students are apparent from a knowledge of SES and ability characteristics alone. Among these are the following:

1. The majority of young men now entering public community colleges will require some form of "remedial" help before they can meet the traditional standards of college. Seventy-two percent of the men entering public community college in the fall of 1970 made below-average grades in high school (ACE, 1970).

2. Female New Students are coming from the lower socioeconomic classes, but generally speaking women attending community colleges made average grades in high school. Their greater need is financial assistance. Women entering public community colleges are more worried than men about financing their education (CGP, 1970). Because part-time jobs and loans are more difficult for college women than for men, these young women will be placing increasingly heavy demands on the financial resources of colleges.

3. It is the opinion of this author that highest financial priority should now go toward developing effective educational programs for New Students. The access programs of the last decade have been, by and large, very successful. If after placing postsecondary educational opportunity within reach of these young people, we offer nothing more than further frustration and further opportunity for failure in educational programs that are inappropriate for the students and the times of the 1970's, then equality of educational opportunity is a hollow victory.

REFERENCES

American Council on Education. National norms for entering freshmen—fall, 1970. Research Report of the Office of Research, Vol. 5 No. 6. Washington: ACE Binzen, Peter. Whitetown, U.SA. New York: Random House, 1970.

Carnegie Quarterly. "The World of Whitetown: Neglected Blue-Collar Communities." Fall, 1970, 18 (4), 1–3.

Comparative Guidance and Placement Program. Program summary statistics. 1969-70. Prepared for the College Entrance Examination Board. Princeton: Educational Testing Service, 1970.

Cross, K. Patricia. Equality of educational opportunity. Position paper prepared for the Education Task Force of the White House Conference on Youth, April, 1971.

Froomkin, Joseph. Aspirations, enrollments, and resources. Prepared for U.S. Office of Education. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1970.

Hilton, Thomas. Growth Study data. Princeton: Educational Testing Service. unpublished.

Hollinshead, Byron. Who should go to college. New York: Columbia University Press, 1952.

Schoenfeldt. Lyle. "Education after high school." Sociology of education, 1968, 41 (4), 350-369.

BENEFITS OF A COLLEGE DEGREE

By RODNEY T. HARNETT

We are rapidly approaching compulsory higher education in America. Not in the legal sense, of course, but in the sense that various economic and social forces are funneling so many more secondary school graduates into some form of post secondary school education that for one not to attend college is becoming increasingly difficult. In 1960, about half of America's high school graduates went on to college; in 1970-just ten years later this figure had jumped to 62 percent and within another decade will be at least 70 percent.1

There are numerous reasons for such an increase, but none is more compelling than the long-established relationship that has existed in this country between level of educational attainment and earning power. The mean income differential between those holding a college degree and those who have not gone to college is considerable. According to data gathered in the 1960 census, for example, an engineer of 45, holding a college degree, had an annual mean income of approximately $11,000, whereas engineers of the same age without a degree had an annual mean income of approximately $8,300. For salesmen and sales clerks, the differential was even greater, with college graduates earning an average of $11,000 as opposed to $7,500 for salesmen without a college degree. Though these data are ten years old and the salary levels of both groups would be considerably higher today, the general nature of the salary differentials by educational attainment is probably essentially the same in 1971.

The sizable income differentials between those who hold a college degree and those who have not gone to college will come as a surprise to no one. Education has long been an accepted avenue to "the better life" in the United States, and while educators are anxious to point out that monetary values cannot be placed on education and that numerous non-monetary benefits are also important consequences, the fact remains that substantial and consistent financial benefits have. been associated with educational attainment.

It is tempting to conclude on the basis of such data that going to college (or, more specifically, getting through college) is almost certain to result in a larger annual income for the individual. It is this very reasoning, in fact, that has prompted many young high school graduates, who otherwise might be disinclined to pursue more years of study, to attend college. Data from the American Council on Education's annual surveys of entering college freshmen (see Table 1)

1 A Fact Book on Higher Education, American Council on Education, 1970, p. 70.7. For details regarding income differentials by various fields over a period of years and estimated lifetime earnings by sex, race, selected occupations and years of school completed, see Income Distribution in the United States, Herman P. Miller, U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1968.

make it clear that many entering college freshmen do perceive the attainment of a college degree primarily in terms of an increase in financial potential. At all institutions of higher education combined, approximately 67 percent of the 1970 entering freshmen agreed that the chief benefit of a college education is that it increases one's earning power. Nearly 78 percent of the students entering a junior college in 1970 held this same view. On an actuarial basis, this opinion is supported by the evidence discussed earlier: college graduates, on the whole, do earn more. But at least two factors place severe restrictions on the generalizability of these data to individuals, and raise serious questions about the appropriateness or wisdom of the income differential argument as a primary reason to attend college.

TABLE 1.- Percentage of entering college freshmen agreeing or strongly agreeing that the chief benefit of a college education is that it increases one's earning power

Source: National Norms for Entering College Freshmen, 1967, 1968, 1969, and 1970 issues, American Council on Education.

Educational Attainment Versus Other Factors

3

First of all, it would be a serious mistake to overlook the importance that other personal characteristics play in determining job success. As Levin and his colleagues suggest, "In all likelihood, attributing the gross improvement in an individual's potential lifetime opportunity to higher educational attainment probably understates the effects of the other traits of persons who receive more schooling." Intelligence, motivation, ability to "get along with others," these traits and others are also important ingredients of occupational success, and are also related to academic attainment. A great deal of research has attempted to determine what percentage of the income differential between college graduates and those who have not attended college is due to higher educational attainment alone, and what percentage seems to be attributable to some of these many personal factors.

As Levin et al. point out, nearly all the studies on the subject do show evidence of a significant effect of educational attainment that cannot be accounted for by differences in these other personal characteristics. But just how much is due to schooling and how much to other factors is still not clear. One investigator, for example, estimted that 60 percent of the income differentials that appear when men of similar age are classified by years of education actually is the result of education and 40 percent the result of other factors. Numerous subsequent in

3 Levin, Henry M., Guthrie, J. W., Kleindorfer, G. B., and Stout. R. T.. "School Achiete ment and Post-School Success: A Review," Review of Educational Research, 41, 1 (Fetruary, 1971), p. 2.

Denison, E., The Sources of Economic Growth in the United States and the Alternatives Before Us, New York: Committee for Economic Development, 1962.