THE PRESS

New England's traditional center of aristocratic culture has espoused an educational policy "so democratic as to be revolutionary."

As the May issue of Harper's reports in "The Future of Higher Education," by President James Bryant Conant, Harvard College has adopted a new scholarship device, occasioned by its recognition of the "Jeffersonian" element in American education. That great statesman proposed "to cull from every condition of our people the natural aristocracy of talent and virtue" towards an "intellectual aristocracy" serving the Republic. This, as President Conant rightly contends, was democratic to the point of being revolutionary. . . .

Harvard has innovated a plan looking to a greater assurance of higher educational opportunity for scholarship students. The plan is founded on the simple premise that the "stipend be adjusted to the financial needs of the individual." To this end a "sliding scale" based on past experience and a few pertinent economic facts has been adopted.

It would be to the advantage of every institution of higher learning to emulate this policy, and certainly it would help to realize that "selection of a group of promising students from all economic levels for higher education in the universities" which is "essential for the continued vitality of a democracy."--Daily Trojan (U.S.C.)