John:
I was rhetorically exaggerating my case, of course, which should have
been clear by my writing "_it seems like_ every University had one or
two courses or requirements specifically designed to weed out potential
draftees", But it is a point of fact that quotas on class size and
reduction of that size from year-to-year were set at political and
administrative levels, and that purely academic criteria were not used
to arrive at these quotas. There is a huge public record of discussion
about this (I'm familiar with some of that which took place, well before
my time, at the University of California and Cal State Sytems). I
think, however, that you would agreed that in the huge expansion of
Higher Education which took place in the the post-war era, Universities
and the Military clearly worked to mutual benefit: inflating the
freshman class both created opportunities for students who might not
otherwise see a University campus (as did the GI Bill for veterans) and
was a growth opportunity for the Universityes, and the addition of both
education and maturity to the draft pool was beneficial to the military.
But the main point of this thread was the decline in language
requirements, and my point was that pressure from students wishing to
avoid the draft had less to do with this than the fact that academic
faculties (particularly in Science and Engineering) had ceased
requiring languages on their own, as that study was no longer essential
to research or scholarship in their fields.
Daniel Wolf
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
