University of Virginia Library

University Outlines
Transition Program

In response to requests from the press for a summary of the specific
$665,000 program for 60 disadvantaged students that the University
has been seeking to fund, the following excerpts from the proposal
prepared by the University in 1967 were provided yesterday by the
University's information services.

"The program is conceived as a pilot study to determine whether
careful recruitment plus special tutoring during the post-high-school
summer and the first year of college can launch disadvantaged students
towards gaining a B.A. with average or better-than-average grades within
the normal four years.

"The type of student sought is one who despite his cultural and
educational disadvantages shows motivation, character, and spark,
though not necessarily in academic directions.

"Thirty such students, Negro and White, are to be admitted each
year for two years. At the end of this period an evaluation will be made
and a decision reached whether to admit new students into the
program. In any case, each of the first two admitted classes will receive
support for the full four years.

"Thus, the pilot study will last five years, and will help determine
the best pattern of support for disadvantaged students."

"To support the program of evaluating two entering classes, a period
of five years will be covered and a budget of approximately $665,838
will be required."

"The program is designed to demonstrate that potential talent and
leadership which is now lost to society because of educational,
economic, and cultural deprivation can be developed and realized by
intensive remedial training in the post-high-school summer and the first
year of college.

"The University, along with other institutions of higher learning,
shares an obligation to redeem this lost talent for society and for the
deprived individual himself. It seeks to inaugurate an experimental
program which will educate temporarily inadmissible students who
might otherwise fail to go to college at all, or be destined to receive
training that would inadequately realize their potential for service and
self-fulfillment.

"On the basis of others' experience we believe that the program
should be thoroughly integrated between White and Negro, never less
than 25 per cent in either direction."

To help support this program, the University seeks special federal
assistance. E.O.G. and Work-Study funds alone are inadequate. The
scholarship funds now available to students at the University are limited
and are entirely distributed with even-handed justice by a faculty
Committee on Scholarships. Disadvantaged students would not at first
be eligible for such scholarship funds because their objective academic
credentials would be, by definition, sub-standard. Consequently, the
University must look elsewhere for support, particularly during the
students' first years."