8 Year Home
  8 Year Web Project
 Introduction
I Study Launched
II Schools Choose
III Curriculum-Needs
IV-Schools-Study-Pupils
V In College?
  VI We Learned
   Lead-to-college
Roads-con't-II
Roads-con't-III
Roads-con't-IV
Roads-con't-V
Own-Experience
Experience-con't-II
Experience-con't-III
Experience-con't-VI
Experience-con't-V
Experience-con't-VI
Experience-con't-VII
 Footnotes
Appendix
 Index
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It should be emphasized here that it is already possible for colleges to establish adequate admission requirements that do not prescribe the content or organization of the secondary school curriculum. Prescription of subjects, units, and requirements of entrance examinations based upon predetermined subject matter have undoubtedly fixed the pattern of secondary education for the great majority of young
people in the United States. Without intending to do so, the colleges have handicapped schools in their attempts at fundamental reconstruction. To move ahead schools must have encouragement from colleges. To give that encouragement colleges must abandon their present admissions policy.
No one questions the right of colleges to set up requirements for admission of students. Quite properly colleges desire only those students who are equipped to do the work the college expects. They may justly require evidence of the candidate's fitness. It is the school's responsibility to provide that evidence. But all colleges and universities, whether tax-supported. or privately endowed, are public institutions and, therefore, they have a public responsibility. Accordingly, no college can be justified in setting up requirements for admission which have been shown to be unnecessary in preparing students to do college work.
For the Thirty Schools many colleges waived the customary entrance examinations, and all colleges granted freedom from subject and unit prescriptions. The schools, however, gave colleges abundant significant evidence of the student's readiness for college work. Upon the basis of this evidence colleges selected candidates from the participating schools. The findings of the Commission's follow-up study show that the colleges were able to select students intelligently on the basis of the information provided by, the Thirty Schools. These students did their college work at least as well as others of equal ability, failed no more frequently, stayed in college and graduated in equal numbers, and won distinction more often.
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