Free The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard J. Herrnstein, Charles A. Murray Page A

of SAT scores for the entire population of high school seniors (not just those who ordinarily take the SAT), using a special study that the College Board conducted in the fall of 1960. The figure points to the general phenomenon already noted for Harvard: By 1961, a largegap separated the student bodies of the elite schools from those of the public universities. Within the elite schools, another and significant level of stratification had also developed.
    Cognitive stratification in colleges by 1961

     
    Source:
Seibel 1962; College Entrance Examination Board 1961.
     
    As the story about Harvard indicated, the period of this stratification seems to have been quite concentrated, beginning in the early 1950s. 16 It remains to explain why. What led the nation’s most able college age youth (and their parents) to begin deciding so abruptly that State U. was no longer good enough and that they should strike out for New Haven or Palo Alto instead?
    If the word
democracy
springs to your tongue, note that democracy—at least in the economic sense—had little to do with it. The Harvard freshman class of 1960 comprised fewer children from low-income families, not more, than the freshman class in 1952. 17 And no wonder. Harvard in 1950 had been cheap by today’s standards. In 1950, total costs for a year at Harvard were only $8,800—in 1990 dollars, parents of today’s college students will be saddened to learn. By 1960, total costs there had risen to $12,200 in 1990 dollars, a hefty 40 percent increase. According to the guidelines of the times, the average family could, if itstretched, afford to spend 20 percent of its income to send a child to Harvard. 18 Seen in that light, the proportion of families who could afford Harvard
decreased
slightly during the 1950s. 19 Scholarship help increased but not fast enough to keep pace.
    Nor had Harvard suddenly decided to maximize the test scores of its entering class. In a small irony of history, the Harvard faculty had decided in 1960
not
to admit students purely on the basis of academic potential as measured by tests but to consider a broader range of human qualities. 20 Dean Bender explained why, voicing his fears that Harvard would “become such an intellectual hot-house that the unfortunate aspects of a self-conscious ‘intellectualism’ would become dominant and the precious, the brittle and the neurotic take over.” He asked a very good question indeed: “In other words, would being part of a super-elite in a high prestige institution be good for the healthy development of the ablest 18- to 22-year-olds, or would it tend to be a warping and narrowing experience?” 21 In any case, Harvard in 1960 continued, as it had in the past and would in the future, to give weight to such factors as the applicant’s legacy (was the father a Harvard alum?), his potential as a quarterback or stroke for the eight-man shell, and other nonacademic qualities. 22
    The baby boom had nothing to do with the change. The leading edge of the baby boomer tidal wave was just beginning to reach the campus by 1960. 23
    So what had happened? With the advantage of thirty additional years of hindsight, two trends stand out more clearly than they did in 1960.
    First, the 1950s were the years in which television came of age and long-distance travel became commonplace. Their effects on the attitudes toward college choices can only be estimated, but they were surely significant. For students coming East from the Midwest and West, the growth of air travel and the interstate highway system made travel to school faster for affluent families and cheaper for less affluent ones. Other effects may have reflected the decreased psychic distance of Boston from parents and prospective students living in Chicago or Salt Lake City, because of the ways in which the world had become electronically smaller.
    Second, the 1950s saw the early stages of an increased demand that results not from proportional changes in wealth but