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EXPANSION OF OFFICE OF EDUCATION

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Doctor, you are most generous and most kind. I deeply appreciate those words.

Let me ask you this, Doctor: The passage of legislation will entail additional duties and responsibilities, and I might even say burdens, upon the Office of Education, will it not?

Mr. DERTHICK. Yes, sir. Our legislation does make provisions for the increased responsibilities that would be imposed upon the Office of Education.

The CHAIRMAN. You would have to expand your staff, would you not?

Mr. DERTHICK. Yes. There would be some expansion of staff.

The CHAIRMAN. Some expansion particularly in what you might term in the senior grades?

Mr. DERTHICK. Yes, sir.

It will take expansion of the staff all away along the line, and certainly in the senior grades.

ASSEMBLYING BEST MINDS

We have called for about 10 additional positions of senior grade because we feel that, for example, in this problem of science, we need to be able to assemble some of the best minds in the country, experienced people who will command respect and carry prestige everywhere and give leadership on this program.

We have anticipated that need.

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, your need there is similar to the need that you have been talking about in connection with the teacher. Mr. DERTHICK. That is true.

The CHAIRMAN. A person who can command the respect, who has the ability to do this job.

Doctor Perkins, do you want to say something?

Mr. PERKINS. Your own great familiarity with the Institutes of Health comes to my mind. For as I consider the needs of the Department in an overall way I often think of the very similar needs for supergrade people in the Office of Education as we have long since had them or at least for the past few years in the National Institutes of Health.

That too is a highly scientific professional field.

The CHAIRMAN. Where you need to have the best that we may have the best in leadership.

Mr. PERKINS. Exactly right.

CONFLICTING DUTIES OF SENATORS

The CHAIRMAN. Doctor, you have certainly brought us a very fine, most helpful presentation here this morning. I regret that other members of the committee could not have been with me. I want to emphasize, however, that it was due to no lack of their interest in the subject that we are considering or in having the benefit of your views. We unfortunately find ourselves here very often where members are due at least at 2 and sometimes 3 committees. Not even our mathe

maticians, as brilliant as they are, have been able to figure out how a single unit can be in more than one place at a given time.

Mr. DERTHICK. Mr. Chairman, I was going to say you might not be able to be in two places at the same time, but your heart is always in the right place.

I want to say some other members of the committee were kind and thoughtful to send us word of their regret in their being absent and the reason for not being here.

The CHAIRMAN. They are deeply interested, but we have on this committee a number of members who are also, for instance, on the Foreign Relations Committee. We have four members who are also on the McClellan committee.

They are also on many other important committees.

I can assure you that your testimony will be most helpful to them, and will be most helpful to this entire committee in its consideration of this legislation.

I am sure that if you should happen to be sitting in the gallery of the Senate when this legislation is under consideration you will find that members of this committee and other Members of the Senate will be adverting many times and using you as a witness in many instances in the consideration of that legislation.

I want you to know that we are most grateful to you for this most helpful, informative and enlightening statement that you made this morning.

I thank you and I thank all of you gentlemen who have been here this morning.

We are grateful to you.

Mr. DERTHICK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will now stand in recess.

(Thereupon, at 12: 15 p. m., the committee recessed, subject to call of the Chair.)

22201-58 -26

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1958

UNITED STATES SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE,

Washington, D. C.

The committee met at 10:40 a. m., pursuant to call, in the Old Supreme Court Chamber of the Capitol, Senator Lister Hill (chairman) presiding.

Present: Senators Hill (presiding), Yarborough, and Allott.

Committee staff members present: Stewart E. McClure, chief clerk; Roy E. James, assistant chief clerk; John S. Forsythe, general counsel; William G. Reidy and Michael J. Bernstein, professional staff members.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will kindly come to order.

We are very happy this morning to have with us representatives of the American Council on Education.

I understand he is not going to testify, but among a number of these representatives is a long-time friend, a very distinguished Alabamian, editor and author, that very fine, estimable gentleman from my State, Mr. Charles Dobbins.

Mr. Dobbins, we are most happy to have you here.

We will be delighted to hear from Dayton D. McKean, of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado.

Senator ALLOTT. I would like to say that Dr. McKean is an old schoolmate and classmate of mine, and I have known him and known of his work for many years. I am very happy to welcome him here. The CHAIRMAN. We are delighted to have you here. Would you proceed, sir, in your own way?

STATEMENT OF DAYTON D. McKEAN, DEAN, GRADUATE SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, SPEAKING FOR THE AMERICAN COUNCIL ON EDUCATION

My name is Dayton D. McKean. I am dean of the Graduate School and professor of political science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. This year I am also chairman of the Midwest Conference on Graduate Study and Research, which is an association with a current membership of exactly 100 graduate schools. Today I am here as a representative of the committee on relationships of higher education to the Federal Government of the American Council on Education. The council's membership includes 140 educational organizations and 1,005 institutions, among them nearly all the accredited colleges, universities, and junior colleges in the United States. The basic problem facing higher education in the next decade has

been evident for some time, but has been somewhat obscured by recent events which have focused public attention on science, engineering, and skill in foreign languages.

FEDERAL ACTION TO STRENGTHEN HIGHER EDUCATION

Consequently the council has recently published A Proposed Program of Federal Action To Strengthen Higher Education in the Service of the Nation. Copies have been mailed to all members of this committee, but additional copies are here if desired. The first effort of the statement was to redefine the crucial problem, and that was done in the following words of the President's Committee on Education Beyond the High School:

Our colleges and universities are expected by the American public to perform something close to a miracle in the next 10 to 15 years. They are called upon to provide education of a continually improving quality to a far larger number of students at least 6 million by 1970 compared to 3 million now. Our institutions of higher learning, despite their remarkable achievements in the past, are in no shape today to meet the challege. Their resources are already strained; their quality standards are even now in jeopardy; and their projected plans fall far short of the indicated need.

INCREASING SUPPLY OF COLLEGE TEACHERS

The council then goes on to suggest several important areas in which it believes the Federal Government can and should give assistance. The proposal that I shall present has the purpose of increasing the supply of qualified college teachers. I have worked with the council in an attempt to prepare a workable plan of Federal graduate fellowships.

There is no doubt of the need for fellowship help. There will certainly be a rising tide of college students, but no one knows of any rising tide of teachers to instruct them. When the wave of students bursts upon the colleges in the early 1960's, almost all of the teachers who will then be available must come from the people who are now in the graduate schools. The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education has estimated that by 1965 the 11 Western States will alone need 10,000 additional college teachers.

The national shortage will run to 270,000 in 12 years. No one knows where they will be found, but any fellowship program that will help any students stay in the graduate schools or will speed their progress by letting them study instead of working part time at tending bar or scrubbing floors will provide the Nation with that many more trained people that much sooner.

10,000 GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS ANNUALLY

When we have about 280,000 students in the graduate schools in the United States, a program of 1,000 or 1,500 graduate fellowships a year is not going to make any big splash in the ocean of need. A Federal program that began with 10,000 fellowships would be more realistic. Fifteen hundred fellowships a year will not "assure the intellectual preeminence of the United States," in the hopeful words of the preamble of S. 3187. Nevertheless, many thousands of graduate students need any help they can get.

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