Women's Colleges Will Increase to Follow Birth Rate

Wellesley will do its part in handling the anticipated increase in college applicants by increasing enrollment ten to 20 percent, college officials announced yesterday. The increase, however, will not be readily apparent to lovers of and on the Wellesley campus, for it will be a gradual one and will to a great extent be in the number of commuting and transfer students.

In setting the ten-20 percent figure, a Wellesley faculty committee specifically rejected expanding the college in direct ratio to the predicted rise in the college-age population, which is expected to double by 1970. Doubling the size of the college, the committee declared, would destroy the present atmosphere of a "relatively small resident college."

Mount Holyoke Expands

Meanwhile, Roswell G. Ham, president of Mount Holyoke College, announced plans for a dormitory expansion that would accommodate 80 more students in the 1956-57 academic year. Mount Holyoke's current enrollment is about 1200, so the increase will amount to slightly less than seven percent.

The College has reached no definite decision on the question of expansion, and President Pusey has said that growth may continue without any such policy as it has in the past. He pointed out last week in New Haven that the nation's colleges must face and meet the problem of an increasing college age population.