A Faculty Approaches Planning

M ANY associations of individuals-business and professional groups, religious bodies and educational institutions, state governments and city councils, labor and agriculture, government and industry-are trying to forecast the action appropriate to the development and maintenance of social conditions which will foster security and peace in our time and in time to come. Some of these groups are ready now with specific proposals; others are engaged in the preliminary steps upon which their forthcoming proposals will be based; none has found, or is finding, the task to be an easy one. The faculty members and administrative officers of colleges and universities are fully familiar with these problems. Participants in higher education are under no illusion about the future. They may not know in detail what it will be like, but they do know that it is not to be a mere repetition of some prized moment in the past. Moreover, they are not sure that control of the future of education is to be in their hands. Some, because the complexity of the problem baffles them, may even secretly wish that decisions would be made for them by the Government. Others, however, and these are surely the majority, are entirely willing to accept full responsibility for the conclusions they reach, but they find themselves face to face with questions, the answers to which are not readily discovered. No one has that vision of the future which reduces planning to an act of adjustment to known conditions, but enough is known, so far as education is concerned, to warrant planning, even though the result may be not a set plan so much as a readiness to move, depending upon the specific economic, political, and social conditions of the postwar world. These conclusions are drawn, in large measure, from the experience of two committees at Ohio State University that have undertaken to outline a pattern for the future development of education in that university. One of the committees, the University Postwar Committee, appointed by President Bevis upon the request of the University Faculty Council,. has had among its responsibilities that of formulating specific proposals for the readjustment of curricular offerings and administrative practices to meet the needs of the students who will attend Ohio State University after

Mathematics education · Political science · Sociology · Higher Education Governance and Development · Higher Education Research Studies · Psychology