Objectives of the Graduate School

IT IS the fashion today attribute the shortcomings of college teaching (and there are many) the emphasis on research which the teachers have received in the American graduate school where they were trained, and the tendency of colleges and universities promote not the best teachers but the most prolific producers of learned articles. Critics of college teaching have taken up the cudgels for the students and are demanding a new type of training and a reform of the criteria of promotion for the college teacher. There are proposals that prospective teachers and research workers should be separated and given different training in the graduate schools. Certain institutions have already put these proposals into effect, but most universities, while opposing such a division of training, are examining their doctoral programs and are trying find better methods of preparing students for the profession of college teaching. For the benefit of men and women already in college teaching, the Fund for the Advancement of Teaching, established by the Ford Foundation, has this year instituted a program of fellowships for college teachers who wish to improve their competence as undergraduate instructors. The Committee of Award shows special interest in programs of study in fields related the teacher's major interest, in the investigation of aims, content, and methods of college instruction, and in relations between school and college work. The Committee would also be disposed support internship under appropriate supervision in promising programs of undergraduate education. The announcement indicates that there is some question of the value of research for the teacher. The program, it is stated, is not designed to support research investigation at the post-doctoral level as such, although the Committee will consider such plans if they appear be the best possible preparation for the teaching capacities of the individual concerned. Criticisms of the present Ph.D. program and of research as preparation for teaching have had wide currency since the appearance three years ago of the report of President Truman's Commission on Higher Education. The distinguished group of commissioners was unanimous in its indictment of the preparation of our college teachers. The attacks on graduate training have been sharpened recently by one member of the Commission who as United States Commissioner of Education has a special claim be heard-the Honorable Earl J. McGrath. At the conference on the preparation of college teachers held in Chicago in December, 1949, he insisted on the divergent

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