Pay Men to Train in College, Conant Suggestion To U.S.

As a solution of the nation's shortage of trained man power, the country should adopt a new policy based on the selection of promising high school graduates to be sent to college at government expense for combined military and academic training, President Conant urged in his annual report to the Board of Overseers released Wednesday.

These "potential officers should be selected on their qualifications for leadership and irrespective of the financial status of their parents," President Conant said.

"They could be inducted into some form of military organization as privates, and be sent at Government expense to our colleges to be trained as officers in R.O.T.C. units.

"A general program in the first year of college would serve as the basis of a further selection; and intensified program in the following years of college could then be as short or long as the Army might decide."

On Special Furlough

President Conant suggested that "preferably, these men should not be under complete military supervision during their collegiate work, but rather on a special furlough arrangement with sufficient pay to cover their expense."

This was one of several specific suggestions in President Conant's report to help the universities mobilize young men for the war effort.

First of all, he said, a comprehensive survey of the country's needs for trained men and women for the war should be made at once, so that the colleges and universities will know exactly where a shortage exists and prepare accordingly.

He then suggested that every student entering college might take the regular physical examination for the armed for ces, and those clearly debarred from active service be trained in the special fields where they are needed.

Larger R.O.T.C. Units

In addition, R.O.T.C. groups should be set up at colleges now lacking them and existing units should be expanded, he said, in order that colleges can be used more extensively for the training of officers, especially for boys under the age of 20.

"It is for war and not for peace that we must now lay our immediate educational plans," and these plans will have to await developments at Washington, President Conant said.

Roosevelt Statement Needed

"The comprehensive appraisal of the manpower resources and needs of the country now under way will lead in the near future, it is hoped, to a definite statement from the President of the United States.

"In those fields where shortage is authoritatively proclaimed, the colleges will clearly have a special task. It may be necessary by cooperative arrangement to allocate among many different institutions in the country the number of students to be trained in each of the various skills required,"

He predicted that the government will require certain types of students to remain in academic institutions to become specialists of a type which are as much needed for the war effort as are officers or soldiers.

Warning that unlimited volunteering will lead to the wastage of highly trained manpower, President Conant said, "Clearly men who have completed years of training in certain specialties such as medicine should be prohibited from entering combat service."

Would Limit Volunteering

Such services as the submarine and air forces must be recruited on a volunteer basis, but "the national government may at some later time prohibit students with certain talents from enlisting," President Conant said.

He proposed a new accelerated program for the training of doctors, permitting a student to be admitted to medical school after 12 months of college study.

After admission to medical school he would remain in college to complete his pre-med work, but "he would be an enrolled member of a recognized group of students who were refused admission to the combatant forces because they would eventually be needed elsewhere--in the medical corps of the Army or the Navy."

Emphasizing the moral problems facing individual students because of the war, President Conant said, "In this as in preceding wars, it seems that able bodied young men as yet untrained as specialists must largely determine their own futures.

"The decision is a difficult and trying one for a young men to make. But each individual must make it for himself, for he will have to live with himself and face the consequences of he decision for the remainder of his days.

"The question of whether or not he can be of greater service by volunteering for active duty, or by taking another path, can only be settled by each person for himself--settled on the basis of the best evidence he can command and in the light of his own convictions.

College Should Not Advise

"Until the government alters its present policy, the duty of the College at all its students, as I see it, is to give them the maximum of information and the minimum of advice."

Looking into the future of the country's colleges, President Conant predicted that they will pass through a period of greatly curtailed enrollment and extreme financial difficulty.

In this connection he stated that the cardinal principle of the university's budgetary policy must be the protection not primarily of its invested Capital nor its plant, but of the "first asset of a university," its faculty