In June 1941 a group of American colleges amounted a plan to give students a college education in three years so that students could be graduated before the draft age of twenty-one. The presidents of these schools, which included the Ivy League, felt that this initiative was needed since so many of the students would be called away or drafted before finishing their requirements for graduation. Since there were few deferments for men, administrators realized that few of the veterans would want to return to school because of their age after serving in the war. Ironically, many did under the GI Bill. In November 1942 the National Education Association suggested that bright young men might skip from junior high into college, thus earning both high-school diplomas and college credits simultaneously. The suggestion was modified one month later by Edmund Ezra Day, the president of Cornell...