The high proportion of Jewish high school graduates who take a “blind man’s bluff” approach to picking a college is adding to the spiraling transfer problem on American campuses, B’nai B’rith Vocational Service reported today.
Some 12,000 Jewish students are among the nearly 200,000 college undergraduates who will be applying for transfer by the end of this academic year, Dr. Maurice Jacobs, chairman of the B’nai B’rith counseling program, told the annual meeting of its national commission. The number of Jewish transfers approximates the six percent ratio of Jewish students in the college population.
The problem is not unique with Jewish students, Dr. Jacobs said, “but conforms to the increasing tendency among all high school graduates for grab-bag enrolling in schools unsuited to their backgrounds, talents or future prospects, because they are fearful of being shut out by crowded universities.” But since 65 percent of Jewish college age youth enter higher education, as against 22 percent of non-Jewish youth, “it is becoming a particularly noticeable problem in the American Jewish youth community,” he said.
Field reports from B’nai B’rith’s career counseling centers in 19 major cities show an “unusually high” ratio of college transfer cases among the 40,000 persons serviced through group and individual guidance programs the past year, Dr. Jacobs said. In the process of changing schools, many transfer students forfeit course credits. Case studies by B’nai B’rith Vocational counselors disclose many students enrol in college they have never before seen, located in areas they known nothing about.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
