A University Activity Program
IT IS a common remark among educators that if larger staffs and greater resources were available, programs of individualization and "pupil activity" might be introduced which would give a new vitality and effectiveness to education. There can surely be no question about the seriousness of these needs; but it seems to the writer a strange anomaly and an example of incomplete educational thinking that a larger part of the solution of these practical problems has not been found in the programs advocated. At Ohio State University there have been certain developments in educational psychology which seem relevant to this issue. The first is in graduate training. In planning a policy concerning programs for the doctorate in educational psychology some twelve years ago when supervision of graduate work became a major part of the writer's duties, two facts seemed exceedingly important: that most individuals receiving the doctorate go into college or university teaching, and that there was great need for research regarding college and university problems. What, then, would be more natural and useful than a series of doctoral dissertations bearing on problems of collegiate instruction in educational psychology and on student personnel. This plan was begun in 1924. It has resulted in a series of twelve doctoral dissertations dealing with problems of higher education. These dissertations, the writer believes, have made some contribution to the literature on higher education. Certain of them have been of much help in efforts to improve the work in the department. They have given these graduate students a professional and research attitude toward problems of college teaching which should make them more useful as faculty members in the institutions to which they have later gone.' The professionalizing of graduate work for prospective college teachers, however, has gone much further. A long-time and fundamentally important policy of the Department of Psychology at Ohio State University, developed by Dean Arps as head of the Department, is this: that the elementary instruction is given by a carefully selected corps of candidates for the doctorate under systematic supervision by certain permanent