to all the graduates of the college to try to determine some of these things. But from talking to people coming back to the college, I am quite confident that the overwhelming majority of the people are interested in keeping the Naval Reserve commission, particularly now because it gives them a draft deferment.

I talked last Saturday to four men of the class of 1965, three of them are still going to sea, and they estimated for me that probably 40 percent of the deck people in their class are still sailing.

One man has become a master of a ship after four and a half years. They estimated that the figure for engineers is probably 20 to 25 percent. I would point out that these figures are comparable to what the Navy gets out of the Naval ROTC people. After 4 to 5 years they keep 20 to 25 percent. I think this is their expectation.

Mr. HATHAWAY. Do you see any necessity for the provisions of the Keith bill which would require borrowers to stay at sea for a certain length of time?

Admiral O'DONNELL. No, sir. I don't. I think that is going to take care of itself. I think that it does not contemplate the situation when sailing is slack, which has happened. When I have talked to graduates of our school, I have learned that there were periods in the fifties when there were very few ships, and very few jobs. They went into the Navy or did other things.

I think every one of these men could be a good seagoing officer for maybe as long as 15 years with perhaps a little retreading, whether he was on the beach or sailing, and if you had a national emergency and total mobilization where you had something like the War Manpower Commission of World War II, when the Commission said, "You have to go," these boys would be very essential to the country.

Mr. HATHAWAY. That is all. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DOWNING. Mr. Keith.

Mr. KEITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Did you make any comments either in your prepared testimony or in verbal comments following with regard to the increase from $600 to $1,000?

Admiral O'DONNELL. Well, of course, the Hathaway bill sets a minimum.

Mr. KEITH. I am talking about $600 to $1,000 student aid.

Admiral O'DONNELL. What I have done is support this minimum of $600 which is in the Hathaway bill. If this was $1,000, I would be that much happier because, as I said in my prepared address, there is not a college in the country that isn't getting a great deal of Federal aid and whether paid indirectly or directly to the student, it is going to save him money, you see.

Mr. KEITH. It is going to save you money. Are you talking about you, the Academy?

Admiral O'DONNELL. No; I am talking about the particular student. If the Federal Government is not putting in this money somebody is going to have to pay these faculty salaries and so on.

Mr. KEITH. What is the student cost now as you look at it? Admiral O'DONNELL. We have a nominal cost, barebones cost, to the student for 4 years of around $7,300.

Mr. KEITH. How much does the student pay?

Admiral O'DONNELL. All of it. No; $7,300 minus his subsidy.

Mr. KEITH. Minus $2,400?

Admiral O'DONNELL. Well, it is not $2,400 for us because when two of our classes are on leave for half the summer, we don't give subsidy for that period. I would say because of the fact that the man is not there for a full year in his first year I would guess that the average subsidies for 4 years would be on the order of $2,000.

Mr. KEITH. I just want to be sure that this gets in the record. You are not, as of now at least, in favor of a repayment obligation? Admiral O'DONNELL. No, sir.

Mr. KEITH. But you are in favor of the increase in the subsidy from $600 to $1,000?

Admiral O'DONNELL. Yes, sir.

Mr. KEITH. Now, with reference to the statistics that you gave on retention at sea, you mentioned the 1965 graduating class and gave some statistics on them. I think you said that about 20 percent of the graduates of one category are still sailing. You are nodding your head?

Admiral O'DONNELL. That is right.

Mr. KEITH. The record will not show that you nodded your head.
Admiral O'DONNELL. Yes, sir; 20 percent.

Mr. KEITH. And about 45 percent I guess of the other class?
Admiral O'DONNELL. Of the deck people, about 40 percent.
Mr. KEITH. This is 4 years after they are out.

Admiral O'DONNELL. Four and a half years.

Mr. KEITH. Certainly it didn't go from 100 percent to 20 percent in the year 1969. What would it have been if you made this check in 1967?

Admiral O'DONNELL. Virtually all would have been sailing in 1967. As you know, sir, the Navy checks up on these men for 3 years to learn whether or not they are sailing on their licenses. If they are not sailing on their licenses, the Navy takes away their Naval Reserve commission or prods them into sailing, and, if they lost their license, they lose their Naval Reserve commission and become draft eligible. Mr. KEITH. As you know, this draft thing is a changing thing. Admiral O'DONNELL. Yes.

Mr. KEITH. The current trend is to take them at the age of 19.
Admiral O'DONNELL. Yes.

Mr. KEITH. And there are other standards that are used. So that after they have successfully gotten 6 years past the age of 19 by going to your academy for 3 years and then going to sea for a couple of years or not even going to sea but just getting married and settling down, their obligation to the Navy is minimal at most; is that right? Admiral O'DONNELL. No, sir. It is not minimal. They have a Naval Reserve commission and are subject to call at any time.

Mr. KEITH. If they don't keep it up, then you say that the Reserve commission is taken away from them.

Admiral O'DONNELL. Yes.

Mr. KEITH. So that they are no longer in the Naval Reserve?

Admiral O'DONNELL. That is correct.

Mr. KEITH. And they are not eligible for the draft because they are 23 years of age. They may be eligible, but they are not desirable under the current philosophy.

Admiral O'DONNELL. I see. I am not sufficiently familiar with the draft changes. The point is that I know that that among the men that we talk to there is enormous concern for maintaining the Reserve commission over this period.

Mr. KEITH. I understand. That is over the 3-year period?
Admiral O'DONNELL. Over the 3-year period; yes.

Mr. KEITH. But that is more or less diminished by reason of the change in their personal situation that they may be married which is a further incentive to going on the beach, or the pronouncement of policy by the President and the Pentagon to the effect that, "We think the 19year-olds are best."

So that if they are not eager to go to sea, even in the Navy or the other, by losing their Naval Reserve commission they are not eligible for callup even in the Navy. So that I think it works both ways.

You are not a graduate of Kings Point?

Admiral O'DONNELL. No, sir.

Mr. KEITH. You are a graduate of the Naval Academy?
Admiral O'DONNELL. Yes; the Naval Academy.

Mr. KEITH. Don't you think it is a good thing to require somebody who has had 4 years of training at the Naval Academy to be required to serve?

Admiral O'DONNELL. Yes; I do. I don't think these things are comparable, Mr. Keith. In one case the man gets an absolute free ride and gets paid on the side.

In the other case at our school between the State and the man he is paying $9 for education for every dollar that the Federal Government puts in.

Mr. KEITH. The man is?

Admiral O'DONNELL. The man is and his parents and the State of New York, and the figures I showed of what, over 11 years, the State of New York has spent.

Mr. KEITH. The State of New York's share shouldn't be lumped in with his share. What is he paying? Because the State of New York is paying theirs on the thought that he will go to sea. You mentioned a figure of $7,400.

Admiral O'DONNELL. That is the total barebones figure. You could take away from that roughly $2,000 in subsidy. We figured, as I pointed out here in my prepared address, that the out-of-pocket expenses for the average boy, not the richest and not the poorest boy, is probably $2,000 a school-year out of pocket.

Mr. KEITH. Per school year?

Admiral O'DONNELL. Yes, sir.

Mr. KEITH. This is quite at variance with the other State academies: is it not?

Admiral O'DONNELL. I don't know, sir.

Mr. KEITH. The figures submitted yesterday and the day before for the other academies were considerably less than that.

Admiral O'DONNELL. I see.

Mr. KEITH. I do think you have a special circumstance there that is a little different than at the other schools. At Massachusetts I don't believe that the student pays much more than a thousand dollars a year.

Admiral O'DONNELL. Well, of course, what I am including is also the fact that he supports two wardrobes. From my school he goes home every weekend, from Saturday until Monday morning.

Mr. KEITH. At your school does he have summers off?

Admiral O'DONNELL. No, sir.

Mr. KEITH. None of them do. What is the longest period that he could go to work?

Admiral O'DONNELL. The longest period he could go to work is a deck student in his upcoming sophomore year or his upcoming junior year could go to work for 6 weeks, and the engineer has no period off

at all.

Mr. KEITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DOWNING. Mr. Murphy?

Mr. MURPHY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Admiral, it is certainly a pleasure to welcome a fellow New Yorker, particularly one with a New England accent, here to the committee this morning. I am sorry that I wasn't here earlier but the other committee of which I am a member passed out the Airport Development Act, a $2.5 billion act, and the longest bill we have heard in the committee. Otherwise, I would have been here to welcome you at the

outset.

The New York school is part of the State university system?
Admiral O'DONNELL. Yes, sir.

Mr. MURPHY. We found that of the other maritime academies the Texas Maritime Academy is part of Texas A. & M. University which I think is a great advantage to the school in not only support but broad-based faculty assistance to the schools themselves.

Yesterday the administration announced a maritime program, and it is probably a little too short a period of time for anybody to say with any authority what impact that maritime program will have on the manpower needs of the industry 5 years from now, 10 years from now, or 20 years from now.

We have under existing law the ability for any State to have a maritime academy. Do you think any limitation should be placed on the number of maritime academies that are federally supported for the United States?

Admiral O'DONNELL. Well, I think this has to be related to need, and it is my own feeling that there is a need in this country for the provision of manpower resources and materiel resources for a merchant marine that would support a total conventional war which means a merchant marine comparable in capacity to the merchant marine of World War II.

Certainly a vital element of such a provision would be to have a great many people in the society who were merchant marine oriented and merchant marine educated.

I think this would have to be examined by someone more carefully, but as I said in my paper the Vietnamese war involves only 600,000 troops and yet this emptied the barrel when it came to merchant marine.

manpower.

Mr. MURPHY. Of course, that basic sealift was done with 20-year-old ships that do not approach the ability of, let's say, the 1970 or 1980 or 1990 ships.

Admiral O'DONNELL. I quite agree.

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Mr. MURPHY. I think that before we could really answer the question of whether we are going to have a proliferation of maritime academies or whether there should be a limitation on the number of maritime academies in the country as well as the output of the existing academies, we should have an understanding as to what the needs will be.

Admiral O'DONNELL. That is correct, sir.

Mr. MURPHY. And not just to maintain a peacetime American-flag ship fleet, but also a contingency number for, let's say, a strategic need for a limited operation such as Vietnam or Korea or maybe a total operation.

We do have Michigan at the present time strongly looking to the establishment of an academy with the basic reason being the lake having some special need and there are not qualified personnel to handle lake trade at the present time.

I would think we should have that study and some recommendations so that we do know what course to chart in the future.

Admiral, does your academy have any postgraduate courses or offer any assistance to graduates who have to go for updating of their licenses? In other words, the Coast Guard requires certain tests and capability prior to the time a person gets his second or first or master's license, or the same for the engineering part of the profession.

Admiral O'DONNELL. In the first instance the work, the curriculum at the State Maritime College of New York prepares a man, gives him the basic material, to carry him essentially through his master's license, with experience of course, but we do not offer the functional upgrading courses, say, from the second mate sitting for his first mate's license, and so on.

Mr. MURPHY. We found in testimony the last 3 days that the Academies' mission almost ceases at the time the individual graduates and then as the requirement comes for schooling even if it is only shortcourse schooling or cram-course schooling for the further updating of licenses, none of the academies offer any type of postgraduate course or assistance and that the graduates have had to go to the unions who perform this function or to private individuals who perform this function.

Admiral O'DONNELL. As I pointed out, Mr. Murphy, we are offering noncredit continuing education courses down at the Seamen's Church Institute, in such areas as navigation and naval architecture, ship stability and maritime law, which would be helpful to people sitting for their licenses, particularly for their master's licenses with respect to ship stability.

But we have no formal program just for upgrading the licenses. Mr. MURPHY. Admiral, do you have any flow from your Academy into the State university system so that your basic faculty doesn't Church Institute in such areas as navigation and naval architecexperience has been at Fort Schuyler, but there is an ability to move through the university system so that you get a flow in ideas, in new ideas, innovations?

Admiral O'DONNELL. There are limited provisions for this within the State University of New York. We have thought about it in certain cases and had people that might have been suitable, but in practice we haven't been able to make it work.

Mr. MURPHY. We find the same thing to exist at Kings Point, the