A Three-Year Master's Degree
DUCATION has acquired a new dimension since 1945. It is no longer important merely because in a democracy the electorate needs to be literate and reasonably well informed; it is now considered essential to economic and industrial progress as well as to national defense. Since Sputnik shattered our illusions of unquestioned superiority in science and technology, Americans have been more urgently concerned about the quality of education than ever before. We no longer reckon the strength of a nation in terms of its infantry, air force, or navy, but rather by the number and quality of its scientists, laboratories, and research achievements, and the educational systems which support them. Not only the average citizen, but leaders in business, industry, and government, now less frequently exhibit either indifference to education or only a casual interest in it; more often, they show a deep and vital concern in what goes on in our schools, colleges, and universities. A British educator recently sized up the situation in a striking manner. He said that the Western nations "require generations of highly educated men and women to cope with the complexity of their own civilization, to insure the preservation of a free society and to meet the challenge of the new barbarism." He went still further by declaring that while "manpower and willpower are integral . . . brain power is crucial to survival."' These comments highlight the necessity of providing qualified teachers for colleges and universities, for teachers are the one essential ingredient of an efficient and effective system of education. It is no longer possible to fill all faculty vacancies with Ph.D.'s. The present output is scarcely more than 20 per cent of current needs, and the demand will increase substantially every year for the next ten to fifteen years. The vacancies are not merely in the sciences but in all fields. When the colleges and universities sought to fill vacancies in their English staffs in I953-54, 29 per cent of those selected held the doctorate; in I958-59, they could fill only 13.7 per cent of their vacancies with Ph.D's. In foreign languages, the corresponding figures were 36.3 per cent and 27 per cent; in mathe-