EDUCATIONAL AND OTHER READJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE FOR POST-KOREAN VETERANS WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15, 1959 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON VETERANS' AFFAIRS OF THE COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10: 20 a.m., in room 3110, New Senate Office Building, Hon. Ralph W. Yarborough, chairman of the subcommittee, presiding. Present: Senator Yarborough (presiding). Committee staff member present: Frederick R. Blackwell, counsel of the subcommittee. Senator YARBOROUGH. The subcommittee will come to order. The Subcommittee on Veterans' Affairs will now resume hearings on bills providing educational and other readjustment benefits for post-Korean veterans. The post-Korean readjustment assistance bills under consideration are: S. 1138, to provide educational and other readjustment assistance benefits for the post-Korean veterans, and S. 270 and S. 930, to provide educational assistance for postKorean veterans. Also under consideration is S. 1050, a bill to extend the provisions of the War Orphans Educational Assistance Act to the children of post-Korean servicemen who sustained service-connected deaths. An example is the men who lost their lives in the plane shot down over Soviet Armenia; those men's children would have been provided war orphans educational assistance had that happened during the Korean conflict. That type of assistance is not available to war orphans of post-Korean servicemen. S. 1050 is a separate bill, but testimony on it is being taken concurrently with the testimony on the other post-Korean bills. Today's hearings will be devoted entirely to receiving testimony from the American Vocational Association and those representing it or connected with it. The first witness today is Mr. Kenneth C. Carl, director of vocational education of the Williamsport Technical Institute, Williamsport, Pa. Mr. Carl, will you proceed? STATEMENT OF KENNETH C. CARL, DIRECTOR OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION, WILLIAMSPORT TECHNICAL INSTITUTE, WILLIAMSPORT, PA. Mr. CARL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Kenneth C. Carl. I am director of the Williamsport Technical Institute, which is a division of the Williamsport School District, Williamsport, Pa. I am a member of the American Vocational Association and represent them here. In speaking before you today to advocate the extension of the veterans' training program, I come as an educator concerned primarily with the vocational and technical training of veterans at less than college level, that is at the vocational-technical school level. The institute has developed from a small vocational department, established in 1920, of the Williamsport High School into a separate school which still handles the vocational high school students and in addition today has a full-time enrollment of 941 adults. Since 1920, when we had a small program of training for the veterans of World War I, we have trained (and in many cases retrained) thousands of men and women for business and industry in which critical shortages of skilled personnel existed. During the thirties we participated in educational training programs with the WPA, NYA, and CCC in training and retraining of the unemployed. Relief clients were sent to us from many areas in Pennsylvania for this training and we found that even in the depression there were jobs in the midst of high unemployment, and we still believe this to be true. Many of our courses came into being during World War II when we worked around the clock training for the Army Signal Corps, the Navy, and the war industries that were desperately short of semiskilled, skilled, and technical personnel in the mechanical and electronic fields. All through these years we have been very much interested in the training and retraining of the physically handicapped adults. Here we are probably the largest facility for such training in the United States. Many States regularly send their handicapped and blind students to us for this training when they are unable to find suitable training facilities in their own States. Senator YARBOROUGH. Mr. Carl, pardon my interruption. I wanted to ask you a question there because this is a most interesting statement. Mr. CARL. Thank you. Senator YARBOROUGH. Particularly the fact that Williamsport High School developed this technical institute as far back as 1920 for the vocational and technical training of veterans. Now, have you collected any statistics? Do you know to what extent that was done over the Nation? It was pretty rare, was it not, in 1920 to train veterans of World War I? Mr. CARL. That is right. We went out and rented some buildings and set up an auto shop, carpentry, patternmaking and electric shops and retrained these veterans of World War I, sir. Senator YARBOROUGH. That was done by the Williamsport School District? Mr. CARL. Public school district; yes, sir. Senator YARBOROUGH. I think it was pioneering in new educational ventures, so far as I know, in America for the training of veterans of World War I. Do you know of any other place in the country where this was done I mean by a school district? Mr. CARL. I do not. But I imagine there would be a few others going back to World War I. Senator YARBOROUGH. Might be? Mr. CARL. I believe so. Senator YARBOROUGH. This institute that you talk about is now a division of Williamsport High School? Mr. CARL. Public school. Actually I have 550 high school students and then I have 941 adults in addition to that. I take care of both groups at the same time. Senator YARBOROUGH. They are in different schools? Mr. CARL. No, sir. In some classes they are even mixed. In toolmaking, for instance, the high school students and adults would be attending the same laboratory classes. Senator YARBOROUGH. Mr. Carl, it seems to me that you have developed to a pretty high degree what Dr. Conant has described as the uniqueness of the American high school over any educational system in the world-this uniqueness in having one division in high school for technical and vocational education and another for classical education. Mr. CARL. This is a comprehensive high school and then we go beyond the high school for 2 years. Senator YARBOROUGH. You go beyond? Mr. CARL. Yes, sir. Senator YARBOROUGH. Do you do that in this technical institute? Mr. CARL. Yes, sir. The technical institute is primarily for the adult. Senator YARBOROUGH. I see. It includes both high school training and 2 years beyond the conventional high school; is that correct? Mr. CARL. That is right. But we do not admit adults to the high school program as such. Senator YARBOROUGH. But some adults in the technical institute are in the high school classes? Mr. CARL. Only in the shop work and not in the academic courses. Senator YARBOROUGH. Thank you. Proceed with your statement. Mr. CARL. Thank you. We enrolled disabled veterans of World War II before Congress passed the GI Bill in 1946. Naturally when this bill was passed we saw quite an influx of veteran students, both disabled and nondisabled. We presently are offering courses in the following fields: Aviation mechanics, automotive, diesel, heavy construction equipment, carpentry and building construction, wood and metal patternmaking, electrical construction, industrial electronics, radio and television, welding, sheetmetal, machine shop, toolmaking, plumbing, masonry, business, distributive education, agriculture, architectural drafting, mechanical drafting, structural drafting, tool and die design, office appliance repair, industrial power sewing, sign painting, neon sign fabrication, letterpress printing, and offset lithography. I missed one, technical illustration. Some of these courses are on a craftsman basis and others are technical. We, of course, would like to add many more which are badly needed but since we are not a college there are no State or Federal funds available to help a local school district in such expansion. I apologize but I just had to get this in. Much of 40408-59--6 our equipment has been secured from government surplus for which we will be eternally grateful. Senator YARBOROUGH. Now, under the National Defense Education Act of 1958 would you not be eligible on a junior college basis for scientific equipment? Mr. CARL. We are not a junior college. We would be eligible as a public-school district and we could probably get some equipment. We are investigating that at the moment. There are no State funds in the State of Pennsylvania available to match the fund appropriated under the National Defense Education Act. If we can meet the qualifications which the department of public instruction in Harrisburg has set up for an area technical school we then could qualify by paying one-half of the amount ourselves. Senator YARBOROUGH. Is not this extra 2 years of training very similar to the area technical school that has been developed to a high degree in Kentucky and Connecticut? Mr. CARL. That is right. We are an area technical school according to the definition of area technical schools. Senator YARBOROUGH. That is what you call an area technical school. Thank you. Go ahead, Mr. Carl. Mr. CARL. We maintain close relationships with business and industry. We always have, because we are not merely training our students, we are training them for existing jobs; we are not merely giving courses, we are giving courses designed for the needs of today's industries and they are continually being modified as the requirements of industry change. While our adult courses are on a post-high-school level, they do not lead to a college degree, nor do they carry any college transfer credit at the present time. They do, however, lead to jobs. Our present adult full-time (30 hours per week) enrollment is as follows: Since the beginning of the World War II GI bill we have enrolled 6,530 veterans of all types. Of this number 1,113 have had serviceconnected disabilities, including the totally blind. We are proud of the veteran students we have had and now have enrolled. Most of them have proven to be excellent students. While we have not kept accurate records of the placement of all of our veterans, I can say that since January 1, 1957, we have graduated 541 veterans and all but 6 have been placed or secured jobs on their own, in the occupation for which they were trained or in an occupation related to their training. We are working on the placement of the six who have not yet secured employment. To the best of our knowledge every disabled veteran whom we have rained in our school has been placed in a position in the occupation |