For the Skilled & Select

Were enough young Americans being properly trained for the overseas careers in business and government that would be open after World War II? The prominent citizens who met, one day in 1943, to mull that question over decided the answer was no. So the notables--including onetime Ambassador Joseph Grew, Harvard Professor William Yandell Elliott, the Commerce Department's Will Clayton and Congressman Christian Herter of Massachusetts--agreed to start a graduate school of their own. That was the beginning of the Foreign Service Educational Foundation and its School of Advanced International Studies.

With money raised from private companies interested in foreign trade, the foundation bought a roomy mansion on Washington's Florida Avenue, set up a $200,000-a-year endowment fund, hired a faculty of five (bottom salary: $8,000). In the fall of 1944, the school received its first 25 students.

Since then, under the presidency of Christian Herter himself, the school has sent some 300 college graduates on to advanced degrees and to careers as diplomats or businessmen all over the world. Each applicant (there are about 500 a year) must pass through a rigid set of tests and interviews. "We must see how he handles himself on his feet and on his fanny," says Dean Philip Thayer.

Once accepted, the student embarks on a program tailored to his needs. He can take courses in the most common diplomatic languages, in international trade and finance, in commercial, maritime, and consular law. He may also study such exotic subjects as Hindustani and Icelandic, or Tanganyikan religions.

"Our objective," says President Herter, "is to put into the international blood stream a group of skilled and select men." The job has not always been easy. President Herter and his overseers (among them: Air Secretary Thomas K. Finletter, U.N. Delegate Warren Austin) soon realized that without the facilities and backing of a big university, they would never be able to do all they hoped to do, or to get all the financial support needed to keep going.

To insure its future, announced President Herter last week, the school was becoming a division of Johns Hopkins University. It would remain in Washington, keep its own staff, be independent of Hopkins' Walter Hines Page School of International Relations, which is directed by Owen Lattimore. But with the university behind it, President Herter could be pretty sure that his school would be turning out skilled and select men for a long time to come.

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