Congress Debates Financing For Wider Grants to Colleges

The House of Representatives appeared on the verge of adopting legislation at press time last night authorizing for the first time the provision of Federal funds to all American colleges and universities without prior conditions as to how the money is to be used.

All previous Federal funding has either been earmarked for specific programs, such as construction or research, or has gone to aid to individual students.

Although it is impossible to determine at this time the amount of funding to be made available to Harvard or any other individual university. Hale Champion, vice president for Financial Affairs, termed the bill "a breakthrough."

The bill had originally included a provision forbidding sex discrimination in the admissions policies of coeducational schools. The provision was thrown out last night by a vote of 194 to 189.

The provision, sponsored by Rep. Edith Green (D-Ore.), would have withheld Federal funds from any coeducational school employing sex quotas in undergraduate admissions. Schools whose enrollment consisted of 90 per cent or more of students of one sex would have been allowed to remain segregated.

The bill does, however, prohibit sex discrimination in any program receiving Federal funding and in graduate school admissions.