Document

Mackenzie, David. “Problems of the Public Junior College.” U.S. Bureau of Education, Bulletin, no. 19, Washington, D.C., 1922: 29-37

Discussion

Now largely forgotten, David Mackenzie was a major figure during the early years of the junior college movement. Mackenzie was the first dean of Detroit Junior College which, under his leadership, quickly grew to be the nation’s largest two-year college, enrolling approximately 1,000 students (at a time when the typical private 4-year college enrolled fewer than 400 students). Mackenzie also played a central role in the founding and early development of the AAJC. Not only did he attend the 1920 St. Louis conference at which the association was organized, but he also severed as the association’s second chair of the AAJC’s board in 1922.

Mackenzie was a man of strong opinion, and not one to mince words. In 1920, Detroit was the largest American city without a proximate public college or university and Mackenzie felt strongly that every city owed its youth access to higher education. Moreover, he differed from the likes of Zook and Koos, for whom the junior college was primarily a means to expand access to higher education at the lowest possible cost. Mackenzie was essentially a traditionalist, for whom the junior college, with its small classes and close student-faculty relationships, was a means of recapturing the student-centered college education of the Old Time College. The rapidly developing American university, with its large classes taught by junior faculty and doctoral candidates, its extensive, and morally suspect, extracurriculum, its policy of strict “elimination” (intended to keep the number of upper classmen to a minimum), and it devotion to scholarship over teaching, clearly threatened, in Mackenzie’s view, a higher education that balanced learning and moral development. Freshmen and sophomores were, for Mackenzie, adolescents, not adults. They were impressionable, easily tempted, and in need of the guidance only a mature, full-time faculty could provide.

What is interesting is that many of today’s community colleges continue to use many of Mackenzie’s arguments to favorably distinguish their education from that of a university. Yet one must wonder if these arguments still hold true. It is not simply that community colleges have grown into institutions of several – often many – thousands of students, its faculty and staff are increasingly expected to hold the Ph.D., and few community college faculty have experience teaching in the public high school. More seriously, the majority of faculty in many community colleges are adjunct, part-timers with no obligation to provide students with that personal guidance that can only come outside the classroom.

It is also likely that this speech contains the first reference to the term, “community college.” As envisioned by Mackenzie, the community college would have been primarily an urban and academic institution, as distinguished from rural or vocationally-oriented junior colleges. Much like the urban community colleges that were founded in the 1960s, Mackenzie’s community colleges were to be accessible institutions, specifically meant for the aspiring, talented, but economically disadvantaged youth of larger cities. Interestingly, and reflective of the spirit of the time, one of the functions of his community college would have been to combat what he characterized as the widespread “radicalism” of urban youth.  Through the “liberalizing” influence of a well-grounded college education, Mackenzie argued, the community college could overcome any potential threat of this radicalism to America’s democratic institutions.

While Mackenzie here gives no hint of his intentions, it is now apparent that he and other civic leaders in Detroit were already planning to transform their junior college (along with the normal and medical school that was also under the control of the Detroit public schools) into an urban university. By 1924, just seven years after receiving legislative authority to organize a junior college, it then won the right to re-organize as a senior college with the right to grant the baccalaureate and, along with the medical college and normal school, was separated from the public school district and reorganized as the state-funded Wayne State University operating under its own board of trustees. While local boosterism no doubt was a factor in this restructuring of higher education in Detroit, an even more important factor was simple equity. Residents of Detroit were well aware of the inequity of being required to pay the cost of Michigan’s two state universities, through general state taxation, but then being also compelled to bear the entire cost of institutions of higher education operated by the Detroit public school board that clearly served the needs of all Michigan residents. The legislative act creating Wayne State University effectively redressed this inequity, although it would not be until the founding of Wayne County Community College in 1968 that the residents of Detroit regained access to an open admissions, low-cost two-year college.

Source:

[29] PROBLEMS OF THE PUBLIC JUNIOR COLLEGE.

By DAVID MACKENZIE, Dean of the Detroit Junior College, Detroit, Mich.

The interesting story of the genesis and growth of the Kansas City junior co1lege, as given by a previous speaker, aught be taken in all its fundamentals as the history of the Detroit junior college. We began in 1915 with 33 students, and last year we had an enrollment of about 700 day students, which with the enrollment of the summer and evening sessions gives us a total enrollment of 1,000 students.

Like many other high schools the Detroit Central High School had for many years been offering postgraduate work. In some cases these were in advance of the standard secondary school courses; in other cases, they were merely the more advanced courses in the regular curriculum. For this additional work advanced credit was sometimes given our students on entering college; but, as there was no general agreement on this point, and as the practicability of doing advanced work grew apparent, we decided to organize a one-year junior college, and to offer such beginning collegiate courses as our existing instruction force and equipment seemed to justify. As previously stated, we began with an enrollment of 33 students, but the immediate rapid growth in membership indicated a real need, for which ampler provision had to be made. In order to forestall any attempt to hinder our plans for development, in 1917 we decided to seek legislative authorization for the establishment of a junior college. Opposition to the establishment of public high schools in Michigan had to be fought in the courts in the early days, and we feared that any attempt to organize a junior college would arouse similar opposition, unless sanctioned by legislative enactment. The Michigan act authorizes any school district in the State, having a population of more than 30,000 people, to organize a junior college department of the district school system, in which may be offered courses which shall not embrace more than two years of collegiate work.

During the first two years we made no request for any appropriation, finding the high-school budget sufficient for our modest needs. The first year after our official recognition we asked for and received an appropriation of $30,000 and this last year the junior college was allowed for instruction and supplies $60,000. As the college is a part of the public-school system of the city, there is no tuition for residents; the only other fees, chargeable to all alike, are the usual laboratory and athletic fees. Obviously this small revenue would be insufficient either to organize or maintain an institution of our size, if unattached to, and not closely connected with, a well-established high school. We were fortunate in having a high school well equipped in a material way and equally well provided with unusually capable instructors; and so we were able to avail ourselves of existing laboratories and shops, as well as of a library and a faculty, that were equal to junior college requirements. While it would be possible to discriminate more closely than has been done by us between high school and college as to the actual cost of instruction and maintenance, it would be most difficult even for the cost and efficiency experts in our present day educational system’s to apportion the exact amount to be charged to each of the two units. The establishment of a college unit in the same building with a high school, although it may entail on each some unfavorable consequences, is obviously an exceedingly economic arrangement, especially during the inception and infancy of the institution. In our larger high schools the administrative and instructional forces, the library and laboratory facilities, the classroom and other accommodations of the building will satisfy the initial requirements of [30] a junior college and, at nominal expense a junior college may be developed from any good and sufficiently large high school.

The popularity and undeniable success of the junior college movement are based upon a sound pedagogical principle; viz, the attempt to unify into one complete whole the entire educational process of the adolescent. This idea has confirmation in the old established public schools and the newer secondary schools of England as well as in the corresponding schools on the Continent. For convenience these are usually divided into a lower school for the younger adolescents and a higher school for the older adolescent group. In our country this idea seems to be crystallizing in the organization of junior high schools for the former and in the combination of the senior high school and the junior college for the latter. The ideal would be reallzed, it seems to me, if the four lower grades, i. e., the seventh to the tenth, inclusive, were included in the junior high school, while the four higher grades were likewise grouped in a senior high school or college. But in practice the ideal is rarely achieved and during the years of experimentation various systems of grouping may welt be tried. In Detroit we are well satisfied with our experiment of housing together the four regular high-school grades with the junior-college grades.

In this connection a word of warning is pertinent, however. While there is no profound difference between upper high-school grades and lower college classes either in the content of the curriculum, the method of instruction, or the mental attitude of the student, each year represents an advance over the preceding; consequently, in planning for a junior college there will be insufficient and inadequate provision, both on the instructional and on the material side, if based on the erroneous idea that the junior college is merely an expansion of the existing high school to accommodate the increased enrollment. These teachers must have a wider knowledge and larger preparation than has the average high-school teacher; the instruction must measure up to the greater capabilities of older students; and the library and the laboratories must provide facilities adequate to the special needs of the several departments. It seems to me that some of the official estimates in regard to certain of these items are misleading, unless they are to be regarded as initial expenditures only. In illustration of this point I may state that, although our high-school laboratories were as well equipped as those in the average small college, and sufficed for the needs of the junior college during the first year of its existence, they speedily required enlargement and increase in equipment. On our physics laboratories we have been spending $1,000 a year and in chemistry and biology several times this amount. These are fundamental requirements that may not he overlooked in the organization and development of any junior college worthy of the name.

As the college grows and larger appropriations are required, a never-failing argument exists in showing the actual saving effected by enabling students to secure the first two years of their college training at home. Thus assuming that each student who is attending college out of the city is spending $750 a year on his education, a student body of 200 would withdraw from the city for educational purposes 200 times $750 or $150,000 a year. Contrasting this item of expense with any appropriation that is likely to be required by the college will not be without convincing results.

The foremost problem in all of my educational experience has not been to secure money; it is to find real teachers. We all realize that in every educational institution the teacher is of more importance than all else combined, And I am convinced that the success of our college is to be attributed mainly to the type of teacher we have fortunately attracted to it. Our policy has [31] been to obtain teachers who are superior to the instructors generally assigned to underclassmen in the universities. In the universities there are, as we all know,  two types of professors, one devoted mainly to teaching, the other to research and authorship. As research brings both renown to the institution and distinction to the individual, it naturally is the goal sought by the ambitious young instructor, and any gift of teaching that he might possess not only remains uncultivated, but is even looked upon as a hindrance in the pursuit of professional reputation and advancement. Underclassmen in the larger colleges rarely meet a great teacher; too often he is only an indifferent drillmaster or at best only an instructor in the literal signification of the word. In the selection of teachers the first qualification is interest in the subject to be taught. I place interest before scholarship, because where there is genuine interest, there is bound to be adequate scholarship. And yet while we do not overrate degrees. we are not indifferent to their value. The Ph. D. is not an open sesame to appointment in our institution, for I have seen too many Ph. D.’s who have their title but nothing else to qualify them for teaching. On the other hand, if one has not done as a minimum of graduate work what is equivalent to the requirement for the master’s degree, he is not acceptable to us.

Interest in the student is our second qualification. Too many college instructors seem devoid of any human interest, owing possibly to the great size of their classes. Our small classes, on the contrary, make possible the cultivation of a personal relationship, suggestive of the big brother idea, of intimacy and helpfulness which reduces scholastic and moral failure to a minimum. And this suggests our third qualification which differentiates a real teacher from the mere drillmaster and instructor, viz, the power to evaluate and interpret life to youth. We all believe that the primal purpose of higher education is to show students the oft-repeated distinction between living and making a living, and how the several fields of knowledge are of value to them in the degree in which these contribute to an understanding of life and a solution of its problems. Underclassmen are at a most susceptible age and are in need of wise guidance from teachers of the widest experience. Here therefore, is the most flagrant error of the large universities. Ambitious to expand and increase in the size of their student bodies, many of them are enrolling a much larger number of students than they have proper instruction facilities for. The consequence is that incoming freshmen are assigned tutors who in age, experience, and knowledge are superior to them by only the smallest of margins. Why should these colleges undertake a problem which they manifestly are unprepared to solve? Finally, as to teaching experience, it has been our practice to give preference to men and women who, although not entirely without normal school or college experience, have had wide and extended opportunities in secondary school work.

While the four-year colleges and the universities undeniably enjoy advantages in the way of social, academic, and professional prestige and opportunity, which make a strong appeal to young teachers of either sex, the junior college is not without compensating conditions. In the matter of salary the city college can afford to be fairly generous. Our present schedule has a minimum of $1,900 and a maximum of $4,000, with a probability of the latter becoming $4,500. The average salary at the present time is about $2,700. We make no distinction in this respect between men and women; and while the majority of the department heads who receive the maximum salary are men, our policy is not to reserve these positions for the men. From the organization of the college the head of the French department has been a woman. [32]

But it is not on better salaries alone that the junior college has to rely in making an appeal for earnest teachers. At a recent conference, called by a nearby university for the discussion of some of the problems confronting the junior college, surprise was expressed by one of the professors that a junior college was able to offer any inducement, outside of a better salary, that would attract even young instructors from the university. I have observed two such factors. All of our teacchers [sic] who have been connected with large colleges, and this observation is confirmed by visitors from such institutions, are impressed with the fact that our student body is unusually serious and earnest The probable explanation is that the great majority of our students are in modest circumstances, are making sacrifices in order to secure their education and therefore prize the opportunity more fully than do the wealthier students, who, having been sent to college at the expense of well-to-do parents, are more interested in the social side of college life than in scholastic attainment. The second factor is the independence and the freedom from petty department control that our teachers enjoy. The junior college is untrammeled by traditions and precedents; academic rank and seniority have as yet gained no footing; everything is a matter for experimentation and trial. A teacher with enthusiasm, originality, and initiative has an unusual opportunity of working out his ideas and impressing his ideals upon the unprejudiced and open-minded student body.

The incorporation of the junior college as a unit in the public-school system implies the abolition of all entrance requirements other than graduation from a high school. But while a high-school diploma is a general prerequisite for admission to college, it is not an absolute requirement; an exception is made in the case of adults and others who possess sufficient general culture and intelligence to enable them to pursue a given subject, or even several subjects, with profit. These members we classify, as do colleges generally, as special students. A diploma alone without certification will not secure admission to colleges that admit on certification in lieu of examination. This fact puts us at some disadvantage as to scholarship; for, naturally, those graduates of high schools who desire to go to college but are refused certification on the ground of inferior scholarship or inability to meet the college entrance requirements, enroll with us. We have, therefore, each year a varying quota of students who, according to the accepted standards, are unprepared to do creditable college work. Furthermore, we have students sent to us who, in the judgment of the parents and teachers, are too immature to be deprived of the restraining influence of the home, and too inexperienced to be subjected to the distractions and unaccustomed environment of the large colleges. During our first years we regarded this as a severe handicap, but it stimulated us to greater effort; and, as our reputation grew, we have attracted each year a larger number of the abler, fully prepared graduates from the different high schools in the city and the adjoining districts. Fortunately for us, too, even from the beginning we enrolled a goodly number of bright and clever students, who for financial reasons were prevented from going elsewhere to college.

As all who are graduated from high school are not of college caliber, and as frequently even the dullest in a class are eager to go to college, it might be inferred that the absence of entrance restrictions would force us to adopt the wholesale dismissal practice so prevalent in large institutions that admit several times as many freshmen as they can properly instruct. Such, however, is not the cane; withdrawals at our request are rare occurrences. When a student’s preparation is wholly inadequate in a given subject, as sometimes happens in English, or mathematics, he is transferred to a high-school course in composition, or algebra, which is an easy matter where school and college are in the [33] building. On the other hand, in subjects such as chemistry, physics, and higher algebra, in which there are always students without any high-school preparation, sections are formed for a rapid survey of essential principles and facts. Then, there is the student who is not quick, not retentive in memory, and not keenly discriminating in his logical processes; a type familiar to every teacher throughout the whole educational system. He is, however, eager for know1edge, earnest in his efforts, determined, and persistent. By what right, I should like to ask, does the college instructor stigmatize such a youth as intellectually incapable, regard him as an academic intruder, and ruthlessly deny him the privilege of higher education? In the case of such a student the time element is the difficulty; the remedy is to lighten his load. If he is unable to carry the normal program of 15 semester hours, he may achieve real success with a smaller number. There is, it seems to me, a serious ethical question involved here and the public is justified in criticising the policy of many colleges

in this matter. No one will deny the right of an educational institution to protect itself against the influx of the incompetent, and to determine by reasonable methods the qualifications of entrants; but after granting admission to such students as comply with their requirements, they are morally obligated to make every effort to give them the education for which they have come and for which they are paying.

In our junior college we have experienced a real embarrassment from excessive absences on the part of students. When a student is living at home, he is frequently called upon for assistance by parents who do not realize the importance in college work of regular attendance. The student himself sometimes is not altogether blameless in this matter. As the education is obtained without expense to him individually, he is not restrained by the thought of any financial loss from absences. He frequently yields to the temptation of the abnormal wage that he can obtain in any of the industrial plants for an occasional day of his unskilled labor. This evil we endeavor to combat by every sort of appeal as well as by penalties. We have been experimenting lately with the plan in effect in many colleges of requiring all absentees to appear before a faculty attendance committee. This seems to give promise of success. A kindred evil which has to be watched vigilantly, but which is to be expected in an industrial city like Detroit, especially when so many students are partially or wholly self-supporting, is the inclination to assume too many hours of outside employment.

In discipline and supervision, we have endeavored, to develop a policy that, lies between the freedom prevailing in the four-year college and the restraint and contro1 characteristic of the high school. We wish to give the fullest possible recognition to the growing powers of youth and its desire for freedom and self-expression. While we make use of our easy accessibility to parents, which on the whole gives us a very great advantage over colleges in general, we believe profoundly in self-determination. The primal problem in education is to help the student find himself and make him independent of the teacher and the school. With our disciplinary policy the student body is in hearty accord and this past year a student council has been organized entirely through student initiative. Its aim is to foster a proper college spirit and to develop and direct all forms of extra-curriculum activities. The measure of success in these matters may be inferred from the fact that the study rooms and corridors assigned to junior college students are entirely without faculty supervision; that the institution thus far has been entirely free from disorganizing class rushes and hazing episodes; and that two groups, varying as widely in age and in development as do high school pupils and college students, should work together under one roof in amity and harmony.

[34] It was said yesterday that the term “ junior “ as applied to high school and college was unfortunate, because of the implication in the minds of all adolescents of inferiority. From time to time I meet students who object to going to a junior college; they declare that they wish to go to a real college or to none. Discussion of this point shows that their objection is based upon the fact that the junior college is not sufficiently detached front the high school and upon the belief that in such an institution there is necessarily an absence of college life and college atmosphere. The latter statement is, of course, in a measure true, and is a serious defect. Upper classes, tutorial and professorial instructors, classic structures and stadiums, fraternity and sorority houses, organizations and activities, academic traditions and customs, intimate associations and friendships, all of which make up that entity we call college life, count for so much in the higher education of youth. While resident students even in a city university are deprived of some of the delights of the social side of college life, in a public junior college they are necessarily denied many more of them. To meet this deficiency we have introduced such activities as have social and educational value, as far as conditions permit. We have met with fair success in the different college sports. We issue a student publication each week that compares favorably with other college publications. We have glee clubs and debating, dramatic, and literary societies. Through dances, mixers, rallies, assemblies, and other functions to which parents are invited, we furnish a wholesome social life that centers around educational interests. Many of us, I know, are apt to grow pessimistic over the excessive enthusiasm and energy that the student body displays in such activities as compared with studies. For many, I admit, these are futile and demoralizing, The most that can be said of these activities is that they provide a harmless form of recreation and entertainment for perhaps the larger number of students. But for the active participants they are more truly educative than much of the formal instruction of the classroom. The interest and effort they awaken, the energy and labor they require for realization, the practical training and experience they furnish because of their close relation to the work of the world, are all valuable factors in the educational process. In fact, I sometimes wonder whether a twentieth century Froebel may not appear, who will discard the formal studies and methods now in use and substitute therefor activities for which adolescents have such an instinctive and perennial interest.

On the purely scholastic side we have found many problems to solve. Some 10 years ago there appeared in the Atlantic Monthly a notable article by Brooks Adams, a brother of the author of the “Education of Henry Adams,” himself also a lecturer at Harvard, in which he affirms that among college students, as well as in society generally, there is a rapidly growing tendency to refuse to make any effort at independent thinking. Most of us, I believe, will agree that the evil has increased during the decade since the article was written. Of course, a condition so catastrophic is not to be attributed wholly to defective methods in our schools, but the feature of education that contributes to this result in the greatest degree, according to my observation, is our failure to discriminate between real knowledge and mere book knowledge, “Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers.” The rush so characteristic of modern life naturally permeates our whole educational system. Such an influx into the mind of diverse and unrelated facts as goes on year after year in the process we call education, does not give time for assimilation and organization. The child influenced by his natural instincts resists our efforts and the youth who has reached college age frankly declares he is surfeited and is seeking an education merely for its vocational and social advantages and not for the joys [35] of the intellectual life. So while we occasionally succeed in awakening interests and appreciations that are purely intellectual and cultural, we have to content ourselves in providing the multitude with the loaves and fishes in the form of predental, premedical, preengineering, and other preprofessional courses.

From the purely academic viewpoint we have no reason to complain. Our State university favored our proposal to establish a junior college and sponsored our request for recognition before the North Central Association of Secondary Schools and Colleges. In the grading of students we were most exacting from the first; the result was that our students on transferring to other institutions not only found that their preparation was adequate, but that they could secure higher scholastic grades with less study than when with us. Universities and college authorities generally accept our credits at their face value and seem most kindly disposed toward the junior college movement. An exception has to be made, however, of the department at Albany and of the colleges of New England.

Our efforts thus far have been restricted to the building up of the standardized two-year junior college, in which the customary foundational courses are offered, leading later to the different baccalaureate degrees. But the future possibilities of the junior college are much greater. First of all, the junior college will, I believe, represent in its curriculum all that will hereafter be required in the way of a general or cultural education, and will be empowered to confer a baccalaureate degree indicative of this fact. The senior college, as it now exists, the graduate school, and the professional schools will constitute the future universities, and provide specialized and professional training. As for the junior college itself, it is likely, I believe, in addition to the existing type, to develop two other more or less distinct types, namely the vocational colleges and the community college. In industrial, commercial, and agricultural centers, junior colleges, as has been indicated in our discussions, may easily and naturally develop along lines that meet local needs. It seems to me that there is no more danger that the applications of science to industry, commerce, and agriculture shall sink to an elementary level in the junior college than they have in the past in a four-year college.

But I must hurry on to the community type of junior college. In every city there is a class of fairly intelligent and truly aspiring men and women, who, although unable to meet the typical college-entrance requirements, can with profit to themselves and society pursue many collegiate courses. This is shown by the popularity of university extension work both in this country and in England. Municipalities owe the privilege of higher education equally to all of its citizens who desire it. Furthermore the perpetuation of democracy demands a higher degree of intelligence in its citizenry than now exists. The percentage of college-trained men and women throughout the country to-day is too low to maintain intelligent governing bodies. Destructive radicalism is spreading simply because there is not intelligence sufficient to combat it. Even in our small college we can already see the liberalizing and stabilizing effects of higher education. We have a comparatively large number of youths of decided radical tendencies, who have become tolerant and moderate through the study of world history and political science, and the opportunity afforded for a free discussion of social and civic problems. And perhaps many of the radicals in the world, who are advocating violence and revolution, require only the illuminating and revealing light of history and science to be convinced of their error.

In spite of Adams’s statement to the contrary, there are still some adults who think and who aspire to clearer and wider thinking. It Is from these [36] that the public junior college will get its clientele. As soon as possible, we plan to offer evening courses of such variety and character as will attract every man and woman desirous of improving his or her general intelligence, vocational status, or value as a citizen. In the cultural and recreational list will be found courses in foreign languages and literatures, drama and play production, philosophy and ethics, hygiene and sanitation. Upon the vocational side we shall begin with attempts to interest young men in the scientific aspects of banking, exchange, foreign exports, etc. In order to create leaders of public opinion and efficient governmental employees, we shall offer popular courses in political science and economics and also provide practical cooperation with all governmental bureaus and welfare agencies throughout the city.

In some such ways will our junior colleges become real channels of education, make abundant returns to the communities for their cost and so justify us who find in them the hope of democracy.

President HUMPHREYS. Is it necessary to have a high-school diploma to enter the Detroit Junior,College?

Dean MACKENZIE. No. Those who take the standardized courses for University credit do; but adults who are taking some of the cultural courses do not.

A MEMBER. Do you have teachers who work in both units—the high school and the college?

Dean MACKENZIE. Yes.

A MEMBER. What do you do with the boy who has completed 15 units of high-school work at the end of his third year?

Dean MACKENZIE. Usually we permit him to take a combined course in school and college. He is given his high-school diploma at the end of the first semester.

A MEMBER. How do you meet the objection that some colleges raise to enrolling high-school pupils in college classes?

Dean MACKENZIE. We regard such students as virtual graduates. At any rate, they have completed the usual prescribed 15 units for admission to college, and are therefore in the same class as students who enter college on examination in lieu of a diploma or recommendation.

A MEMBER. Do you admit high-school pupils with fewer than 15 units to college classes?

Dean MACKENZIE. Very rarely. We may possibly have had five or six during the past year. We do this only in courses that are regarded as of either high-school or college grade, such as solid geometry or trigonometry; or advanced course in modem languages in which the enrollment is usually small. The high-school pupils must be stronger than the average because of the heavier load they carry. The speed of college classes is supposedly twice that of the high school classes.

President HILL. I feel that the break does not come in the normal place when we separate high-school pupils of the upper classes from sophomores in the college, but sometimes we have to do things not exactly as we would like. I feel the junior college should have the two years it has now and the two years below that; then the troubles would be removed, but we are in a situation where we have to do our best with certain mechanical restrictions.

If we were to reorganize the educational system, as the gentleman from Detroit suggests, I realize that not only in the classroom but also in the dormitories for the eleventh and twelfth years, the difficulties would disappear, but we are likely to have some mechanical difficulties in this period of adjustment.

With regard to the restrictions on high-school students doing college work, I think that it is one of the important things to adhere to just now; a new [37] institution must sometimes lean over backward. I had a recent experience when a question arose from one of the teachers’ colleges in regard to stenography and typewriting as college subjects. I can not get it through my head that it is thinking work; any pupil can learn to use a typewriter.

A little while ago I said that the vocational junior college naturally dropped out of line in its relations with the university; that is not to say that I do not believe in vocational work of junior college grade, but I do say that those who go into strictly vocational work will find that what is done at that stage does not fit in with the technical professional work done in the junior, senior, and graduate years of the university and that they do not belong anywhere in particular, but will have to do just the best they can.

Contributor: RP Last Updated: January 15, 2002