1946 - Education

Education

Colleges and universities throughout the world struggle to cope with swollen enrollments after years that have seen many go bankrupt or come close. U.S. college enrollments double and even quadruple, reaching an all-time high of more than 2 million as returning veterans crowd classrooms with help from the G.I. Bill of Rights (see 1944). It opens the doors of schools that were once only for rich men's sons and daughters to young people who could never have afforded college educations without financial help; by next year the government will be paying the tuitions of nearly 50 percent of college students, and these students will be more motivated to excel than earlier generations of students, even though many will be living in Quonset huts, trailers, and other makeshift housing while they raise families.

Fulbright awards for an international exchange of students and professors are initiated August 1 as President Truman signs into law a bill introduced by Sen. J. William Fulbright, who was a Rhodes scholar in 1925 (see 1902). More than 250,000 Fulbright fellowships will be awarded in the next 55 years, a master of Oxford's Pembroke College will tell Fulbright he is "responsible for the largest and most significant movement of scholars across the face of the earth since the fall of Constantinople in 1453," and Fulbright alumni will include heads of state by the dozen.

Mensa has its beginnings in the High I.Q. Club founded at Oxford October 1 by medical researcher and post-graduate law student Lancelot (Lionel) Ware, 31, with Australian-born barrister Roland Berrill, 49, who has been rejected by the university but has a private income and finances the project. Their objective is to compile a list of the 600 most intelligent people in Britain with view to making them more easily accessible if needed in an emergency; limiting membership to people who can prove they have I.Q.s in the top 1 percent of the population (an error in computing standard deviations on tests will soon change that to the top 2 percent), they rename the society Mens (Latin for mind), find that this is the title of a racy men's magazine, opt for Mensa (Latin for table), and only later will learn that this is Mexican slang for idiot. The society will encourage research in the area of human intelligence for the benefit of mankind, questions will arise as to the value of I.Q. testing and Mensa will have trouble justifying any real purpose for its existence, but it will grow by the end of the century to have about 100,000 members with groups in 60 countries worldwide.