Earlier this year, when I wrote you about TIME'S new book on the U.S. college graduate, They Went To College, I said I would report back later on some of its more provocative findings. This week I would like to pay special attention to the male graduate, drawing mostly from the section of the book called "Portrait of the Old Grad (Masculine Division)."

When Co-Authors Ernest Havemann and Mrs. Patricia Salter West examined the information furnished by more than 9,000 graduates, they found firm support for some widespread beliefs (e.g., "the cities -- and especially the big cities -- have a pronounced attraction for college graduates"), but also learned that the facts tended to puncture some equally well-established myths -- such as the fiction that wealthier college graduates tend to have fewer children.

"After 30," says the book, "the point at which the graduates really get going in the matter of having children, the increases in size of family by income are remarkably steady . . . The high-income group . . . did by far the best at fatherhood, without much regard for the size of the cities in which they lived."

The book also shows that the male college graduate is more likely to get married than the non-college man, and is more likely to stay married. Since TIME'S similar study in 1940, which found that 71% of the male graduates had married (five points below the national percentage), the proportion of married male graduates has jumped to 85%, or four points above the figure for all U.S. men. Moreover, for every 100 men graduates who had ever been married, 96 were still married and living with their wives, compared to 89 out of 100 for all U.S. men. The authors also devised a kind of rating for domesticity, in which a maximum of seven points could be scored: three points for those who were still married and living with their first wives; one point per child, up to a maximum of three; one point for home ownership. Almost a fourth of the men over 40 had the full seven points. More than another fourth (29%) six points, missing the top score because they rent their homes, have only two children, or have been divorced in the past.

If you are debating whether or not to send a son to college, you may want to take a look at the "Portrait of the Old Grad'' from a job-and-salary standpoint. Just about five out of six male graduates hold down top positions in their communities--in the professions, or as owners, managers or executives. Median earnings of the male graduates at the time of the study were $4,689 a year, more than double that for all men in the U.S. "Our college graduates earn more money almost from the first year on the job than the average man makes at the peak of his earning power," the book says. "In the population at large, the peak period comes in a man's late 30s and early 40s . . . Our graduates get wealthier as they get older, while the average man begins declining after 45. Among our graduates the very oldest group, the 50-and-overs, have the best incomes. In the general population, the 50-and-overs are losing ground fast to younger men."

College graduates in general, and particularly the men, demonstrated a remarkable tendency to move away from their old communities and states. Of all graduates, 44% had moved to new states. Among those moving from one section of the country to another, graduates from the East were most restless, with 30% settling down in other sections, while alumni from the West had the greatest staying powers, only 13% moving away. Leaving the South were 24%, and the Midwest, 26%.

Later on I want to tell you how some of these statistics apply to the women graduates included in the study.

Cordially yours,

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