Speech #880269465

He has open access to hotels. resorts. clubs. and other public facilities. But in higher educationthe key to advancement in Soviet societythe situation is not so favorable. Soviet officials do not publicly acknowledge or discuss quota systems in university admission practices. But they exist. A study of Soviet education by Nicholas DeWitt. a specialist formerly at the Harvard Russian Research Center. finds that quotas operate on the principle of "equivalent balance." This means "the representation of any national or ethnic grouping in overall higher education enrollment should be as the relation of the size of that group to total U.S.S.R. population. Those nationalities whose higher educational development ought to be fostered get preferential admission quotas. while those who are overrepresented are curtailed accordingly." " On the basis of elaborate computations drawn from Soviet data. DeWitt shows that the quota system operates "to the particularly severe disadvantage of the Jewish population." Between 1935 and 1958. his computations reveal. "the index of representation rose for most nationalities. but fell for Georgians and all national minorities. with a very drastic decline for the Jews." DeWitt concludes: "The setting of admission quotas undoubtedly penalized the Jewish population. with its significant urban concentration and higher level of educational attainment. more heavily than other minor nationality groups with more diversified occupational and ruralurban distribution." Soviet Minister of Higher and Secondary Education V. P. Yelyutin denied that the Soviet Union discriminates or maintains quota systems against Jews in education." Yelyutin insisted that Jews. constituting 2 percent of the Soviet population. were 10 percent of the enrollment in Soviet universities. This was disputed by Dr. Solomon Schwarz. a prominent scholar and author of "The Jews in the Soviet Union." who cited official Soviet data to prove "the number of Jews among the students of all Soviet institutions of higher education could reach only little more than 4 percent." 5 A 1961 Soviet statistical handbook on higher education not only corroborates this but suggests that even Dr.