On the side of a deferments plan is a strong group of the country's educators, including Presidents Leonard Carmichael of Tufts, former chairman of the National Security Resources Board, and Charles Cole of Amherst. It has also been learned that President Detlev W. Bronk of Johns Hopkins, advisor to several important government agencies, also will take issue with President Conant and will favor something like the Trytten plan over U.M.S.

Carmichael Explains

Carmichael points up the problem of getting educated men, and trained experts--doctors or radar men--into the Services. "Our strength as a nation is based on a diversity of skills," he says. "We need men in the army who are trained and can improvise and invent . . ." He thinks, along with Cole and Bronk, that U.M.S. would not be a success in keeping Services standards high.

For instance, he explains, if a man is drafted for two years and then returns to school, he is not likely to go back to the army voluntarily after he has received specialized training. Thus, Carmichael fears, the Army would have to draft doctors and technicians twice--once before and once after training--under U.M.S.

"After all," Carmichael states, "if we are merely interested in getting men into the forces, we may become begged down in infantry, thinking." And when it comes to infantry, Russia will always be ahead of us. We must depend on our skill."

But the most important objection to the Conant plan is that it will seriously hurt small colleges, which might have to go out of business during the first two years of U.M.S. No college official actually uses this argument, since it sounds particularistic, especially if a small college, or a poor one, is involved. President Conant feels that the present situation demands putting the national good before the good of colleges.

Yet as Dean Bender has pointed out, adoption of U.M.S. would mean at first a two year break in enrollment for all colleges. For many this would mean absolute ruin, though Harvard, with its comparatively large endowment, could probably get by. But the entire educational structure of the nation could be changed in that time.

Reject Universal Service

In rejecting Universal Military Service--induction of all college students--the Committee said: "Full scale induction of college students would virtually stop the production of superior scientific, professional and specialized personnel for a period of at least two years.

"This proposal," the Hershey Committee stated, "would lead to a serious hiatus . . . in specialized personnel, and thus constitutes such a great danger to the national security that the Committees cannot subscribe to a policy of no defermentsr fo college students."

President Conant, President Wriston of Brown, and others, however, have said they think that some sort of program would just have to be worked out to aid colleges under U.M.S. Wriston says that he considers U.M.S. as only in the theory stage--"the details will have to come later."

Another Objection

They strongly dislike the Trytten or any deferments plan for several reasons. They feel that the test system would produce an "intellectual elite" in the colleges, and thus is undemocratic. And, of course, the test itself is not so much one of intelligence as it is of education and background. Thus, some groups would definitely be discriminated against--Negroes, low income groups, people in backward rural areas.

Another objection is that the Trytten plan would lead to a grade race at colleges as students strived to stay in the required segment of their class. In pointing up holes in all the programs, Provost Buck, who backs Conant on U.M.S., refers to this result. As he explains, much of what Harvard stands for might go by the boards in a rat race.

Bender also points out that Harvard might suffer if the Trytten plan went into force, since students might be more likely to go to a school where the competition is less tough, and thus assure themselves of higher standing and deferment.