Schooling Equality

[From the Des Moines Register.]

The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine has started, or renewed, a discussion on the proposition that colleges should charge tuition on a basis of full cost and regardless of the means of an applicant "as he would be charged for a railroad ticket."

One end which the Dartmouth publication has in mind is "confining education to those who want it badly enough to pay for it," thus making it serious business rather than a gay adventure. But of course the line of serious purpose does not coincide with the line of ability to pay.

This aside, a paramount question is how much realism we shall insist upon when we speak of this as a country where there is equality of opportunity. We did away with inherited political power, but there seems little likelihood that we shall do away with inherited economic power, at least in any early future. As an illustration, the Wall Street Journal spoke some months ago of absentee landlordism as one of the bad features of the New England textile mills situation—inherited properties affecting thousands of lives controlled by the mere fact of inheritance.

How much of equality of opportunity is there as between the average son of a textile mills owner and an average son of a textile mills employe? With this discrepancy in mind, what can be more important in making for equality of opportunity than availability of education ?

Carried to its logical conclusion, the Dartmouth proposal would do away with public schools and leave elementary education to be bought by those with capacity to pay. Who seriously would want that change, would believe it in the national interest? College education is becoming as wide-spread as elementary schooling once was, and immense gain is represented in that. The point is that education is one of the basic things for social advancement and not merely for the sake of individuals, but for the sake of the body politic it should be as freely available as it is possible to make it.