FOREWORD

WOLLEGES and universities are anxious to give veterans

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the best possible educational opportunity. The Division of Higher Education of the U. S. Office of Education stands ready to cooperate with the colleges and universities in their planning. This bulletin by Dr. Ernest V. Hollis is a part of that cooperation.

There is no way of forecasting with assurance the number of veterans who will want education, nor the kind of program they will want. One body of facts will afford some guide, however, and educational planners should have access to those facts. They are found in the distribution of men in the armed forces by ages and by levels of education.

The Adjutant General of the Army made available the facts about age and education level for the officers and enlisted men of the Army. The U. S. Office of Education wishes, therefore, to express its appreciation to The Adjutant General, and to the following offices which did laborious work in providing the data: The Assistant Chief of Staff, G-1; the Research Staff of the Information and Education Division Headquarters, Army Service Forces; and the Machine Record Division, Adjutant General's Office.

Certain other facts have been included which help to interpret these distributions by age and education level. It is hoped that State and institutional planning groups will find this bulletin helpful in meeting a most important and difficult educational problem.

FRED J. KELLY, Chief Division of Higher Education

DATA FOR STATE-WIDE PLANNING

OF VETERANS' EDUCATION

Part I

ANALYSIS, BY STATE, OF THE AGE AND SCHOOLING OF ARMY PERSONNEL

THIS BULLETIN provides information basic to a determination of

the size, nature, and incidence of school and college enrollment that may be expected from individuals who have served in the armed forces Juring World War II.1 It does not undertake the more comprehensive ask of estimating the total potential post-war educational enrollment. This would require studies of the educational status and intentions of oung war workers, visiting foreign students, and age groups too young > have been in either the armed services or the labor forces.

The study is limited to an analysis of two of the more important bases or estimating the number of servicemen likely to return to school and nd college—namely, age and previous schooling. Because the provision i education in the United States is primarily a State responsibility, the nformation is distributed by States. In the 17 States and the District Columbia where legally separate schools for Negroes and whites are aintained, the data are tabulated separately for the two races. To acilitate comparisons, the States are grouped by census regions, each f which is preceded by a summation table showing the relative perentage standing of the States in a region. In order to supply rough orms and a basis for comparisons, these and other relevant data are Also consolidated for the Nation as a whole.

It is generally estimated that between 14 and 15 million persons will have served in the armed forces before the war ends. Since this bulletin rovides information on more than 72 million Army officers and enlisted en, those who are planning programs in a State may get a rough total gure for men in each category of education by doubling numbers shown the State tables.

From the beginning it should be emphasized that the data indicate nly the proportions of the military population eligible to return to a given vel of education or training. Actually nothing like the numbers shown

These data may also be useful to employment offices in the 48 States in matching men and jobs, it such applications of the data are not within the scope of this bulletin.

as potentials will resume formal schooling. From a 1944 poll of the education intentions of 20,000 officers and enlisted men in several major theaters of the war (for details see part II), the Army Service Forces estimate that of the white enlisted men likely to return to full-time schooling more than 90 percent were under 25 years of age, 93 percent were unmarried, 90 percent were at least high-school graduates. Those planning to resume schooling part time were on the average older, more likely to be married, and less likely to be a high-school graduate. Even more powerful in determining actual enrollments are the as yet imponderable social factors with which this bulletin does not deal. Among them are the length of the war against Germany and against Japan, the nature and rate of military demobilization, and especially-the number and distribution of suitable post-war employment opportunities.

Source and Nature of the Data

All information on age and previous education of Army personnel was supplied by the Adjutant General's Office of the War Department. It furnished data as of June 30, 1944, on the previous education of more than 7 million enlisted men and nearly three-quarters of a million officers. For its own purposes the Adjutant General's Office had developed an approximate 2 percent scientifically selected random sample of enlisted men in the Army. It distributed this sample by years of schooling and birth date, thus providing a device for making an estimated distribution by age groups of the men in each of the six categories of education shown in the State tables.

The writer is responsible for compiling the data supplied by the Adjutant General's Office into the tables which appear in this bulletin and for "blowing-up" the approximate 2 percent sample to represent age distributions of men in a given category of education. Except for graduate study in which opportunities are limited in some States, the 2 percent random sample suffered no appreciable distortion by being broken down into major geographical, educational, and age categories. There are of course distortions in individual age-education categories. Because of eliminations from the sample for one reason or another the actual working sample, with a few exceptions, ranged from 11⁄2 to 2 percent of the total number of men in each category of education, but it held up as well in sparsely populated Nevada as in populous California or New York.

Information on the 1944 education and migration intentions of 20,000 soldiers, summarized in part II, was made available through the Information and Education Division Headquarters of the Army Service Forces. Sources of published data from the National Selective Service System and other agencies are indicated through table titles or footnotes.

Distribution showing the formal education of Army personnel by States is of interest to two groups of people-those who want to compare soldier education by States, and those who are responsible for planning educational opportunities in a given State for returning servicemen. The latter group, for whom this bulletin was prepared primarily, undoubtedly know that better school opportunities for young men and women now in the Army are most likely to come through improvements open to all youths. In post-war civilian life young veterans who return to school will differ from other similar age groups largely in having funds provided for their education-not in their educational needs. It follows, then, that in planning post-war educational opportunities for veterans, State leaders face anew most of the perennial unsolved problems of pre-war days.

Allowing for two or three exceptions, there is no over-all authority in the States which is responsible for planning a whole educational program for veterans or other youth. In forming the Constitution the States reserved the control of education to themselves, but in actual practice most schools and colleges developed as separate private and public local units which had only a nominal relation to the State government. The degree of State coordination and control has increased rapidly since World War I, but most States still have five fairly autonomous groups responsible for education. The chief State school officer and the State board of education are responsible for tax-supported elementary and secondary schools, but in one-third of the States vocational education of less-than-college grade is under a different board; non-profit private and parochial schools exist in all States and serve as much as 20 percent of the elementary and secondary school pupils in some of them; some tax-supported colleges have individual boards, others have from one to three boards in a State to coordinate their programs; the private and church-related colleges usually are given direction by the State only through charters and through licensing graduates to follow certain professions; and each State has a number of more or less unregulated proprietary business and vocational schools that have thrived through erving occupational needs not met by the nonprofit types of institutions. This situation makes the State-wide planning of a whole program for Veterans more difficult than it would be if the prevailing State direction and control were as well coordinated as that, for example, of New York. When these differences in organization and administration of eduation are considered in relation to the economic, political, and cultural ariations of the States, it becomes evident that each must plan and rovide facilities under conditions that are peculiar to it. It follows hat while they may have wider use, suggestions for planning should e made in terms of State situations.

Nature and Dimension of Veterans' Education in a State

Those who are interested in understanding the situation in the States will find useful a comparative study of the education of Army personnel in New Mexico and Utah. Selective Service rejections for the two States (see table 92) indicate over-all educational differences greater than are warranted by their difference in ability to support education and greater than the differences in the education of their Army enlisted men. New Mexico rejected 40 percent of its military-age men-9 percent of them for educational deficiency-as compared to 26 percent rejections in Utah, where only 1.1 percent was rejected for educational deficiency.

The vastly different social composition of the population and equally different educational history of the two States account largely for New Mexico's having 34 percent of its enlisted men at the eighth grade or below, as compared with 9.4 percent in Utah. The Mexican-Indian elements in the New Mexico soldier population also account in part for only 24 percent having completed high school, as compared with 42 percent in Utah. The favorable elementary and secondary school situation in Utah combined with the existence of a comparatively well developed group of junior colleges was perhaps the determining factor in the State's superior showing in the 1- to 3-year category of college. work. In other words, educational facilities in Utah carry the mass of its youth through junior college, but it will be noted that Utah does not equal bi-cultural New Mexico in the proportion of enlisted men who have completed 4 years of college work. The same phenomenon is even more pronounced in the 17 States that maintain separate schools and colleges for Negroes and whites.

New Jersey and Mississippi illustrate planning education for veterans under very different circumstances. Each falls within a group of 10 States which are contrasted in part II, as part of the background likely to be helpful in interpreting the State tables, but a more detailed comparison of the two States reveals other differences important to those who must plan a program of education for veterans and young war workers. Mississippi has six times the area of New Jersey, four times as many counties, but only one-half the population. New Jersey is 82 percent urban, highly industrial, and is adjacent to New York City, facts that often take the center of gravity of planning outside the State to the jurisdiction in which the individual expects to be licensed to follow his trade or profession. Mississippi, on the other hand, is 80 percent rural, commercially a one-crop farming State with a high rate of tenancy, and is surrounded by similarly situated States. The population in New Jersey is 24 percent foreign-born, 5 percent Negroes, and 4 percent of those above 10 years of age are illiterate. The corresponding situation in Mississippi is 0.4 percent foreign-born, 49 percent Negro,