Committee Kills Power Of State Over College

The Committee on Education of the Massachusetts General Court has rejected the bill which would have given the state the power to withdraw the charter of any educational institution whose "curriculum, faculty, and facilities" did not meet with the state's approval.

Informed sources at the State House revealed yesterday that "there is no possibility that the bill will now be passed by either the House or the Senate."

At hearings conducted this week, the committee also reported "disfavorable" the bill which would have authorized the state, through the Board of Collegiate Authority, to deny an institution the right to grant degrees if, again, the standards of its courses of instruction, and faculty were disapproved by the state.

According to Rep. William M. Bulger, who introduced one of the proposed acts, "The ideas advanced by the CRIMSON were the crux of the reasons for the defeat of the two bills" He referred to an editorial which appeared in the CRIMSON Monday condemning the bills on the grounds that they were not only "abridgments of academic freedom but violations of the Constitution as well."

Defeat Own Legislation

Rep. Bulger and Rep. William M. Doherty '50, who introduced the other bill, were apparently instrumental in the defeat of their own legislation. They disclosed that they were sympathetic to the objections that had been raised and Doherty told the committee that "these bills are not the ideal vehicles" for alleviating the problem of "diploma mills" in Massachusetts.

"We have no desire to interfere with intellectual freedom," Doherty said yesterday, "but the problems remain still unsolved."

As to exactly what could be done to settle the "diploma mill" problem in Massachusetts, neither Doherty nor Bulger were completely certain. "I don't know where we will go from here," one said, "but we are in hopes that some investigation can be made into the practices of fraudulent institutions which are masquerading as schools."