Table III. Number of junior-year students majoring in science or mathematics in the fall of 1957, 1958, and 1959; and percent changes 1957-58 and 1957-59:

aggregate United States

2 Includes sciences, mathematics, and all other fields.

Source: Press release dated September 30, 1960, prepared by the Office of Education of the U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Table IV. Scientists and engineers, by occupational group, January 1958 and
January 1959, and percent change

Other scientists

7,800

6,600

-14.7

NOTE. Totals and percents have been calculated on the basis of unrounded figures and therefore may not correspond exactly with those indicated by the rounded figures shown. Source: Scientific and Technical Personnel in American Industry: Report on a 1959 Survey, National Science Foundation, NSF 60-62, p. 9.

[From School and Society, Feb. 27, 1960]

FORTY YEARS OF U.S. COLLEGIATE ENROLLMENTS: 1919-20 TO 1959-60

(By Raymond Walters, president emeritus, University of Cincinnati) This historical sketch summarizes 40 years of student enrollments in accredited American universities and 4-year colleges from 1919-20 to 1959-60, as reported annually in School and Society by the present writer. It covers a period notable for scientific, economic, and cultural developments in which higher education has had a basic part. Today the public manifests recognition of its indebtedness to universities and colleges in the widespread concern it is showing about the resources of these institutions to meet the needs of the Nation in the decades ahead.

U.S. collegiate enrollment figures have been big, but they possess more than bigness. Truly interpreted, these statistics hold human meaning and qualitative significance. They stand for individuals, for the aspiring young men and women who studied and matured during an era that saw two world wars, the greatest of all economic depressions, and a few relatively peaceful years. The students of that era now include experts in science, engineering, industry, business, medicine, law, and other professional and cultural fields; leaders in public life; and many who are serving the Nation as plain good citizens.

THE PRESENT SCHOOL AND SOCIETY SERIES

The founder and long-time editor of Science (1894-1944) and of School and Society (1915–39), the distinguished psychologist, Dr. J. McKeen Cattell, requested the present writer1 in 1919 to take over university enrollment studies which for several years had been published in these journals. The original reports were limited to 30 large universities selected by Dr. Cattell, neither the 30 largest nor necessarily the leading institutions but representative. The present writer, in this report for 1921-22, enlarged the scope to include universities and 4-year colleges on the approved list of the Association of American Universities, later on an American Council on Education list, and, in recent years, on a list of the National Committee of Regional Accrediting Agencies. Numbers in teaching staffs also have been presented.

The purpose and spirit of the School and Society series were set forth by the present chronicler in April 1922, in a paper (read before the American Association of Collegiate Registrars at St. Louis) which opened with the epigram of Sir Walter Bagehot, "There are lies, damned lies-and statistics."

"The aim of our statistics (and the one criterion of success) clearly should be the determining and reporting of facts with such accuracy and skillful grouping as will make them a true and significant revelation of conditions. Statistics on collegiate enrollments should be viewed with an eye that sees economic relationships and human values, that sees business fluctuations and the father in office, factory, or farm and the mother at home to whom the student is distinctly not a number in a column."

It was with human individuality in mind as well as to indicate institutional problems of teaching loads and classroom use that an important differentiation was introduced in 1920-21. Institutions were asked to report registrations under definitions as follows:

"The full-time regular student is one who has completed a 4-year high school course and is devoting his main time and attention during the collegiate year to study in a curriculum leading to a degree.

"The part-time student is a student whose main time and attention are given to some other employment and who takes courses of full college and university standard in late afternoon, evening, and Saturday classes."

These definitions were endorsed in 1922 by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars.

1A teacher of English and registrar, Lehigh University, 1911-21; a teacher of English and dean, Swarthmore College, 1921-32; and president, University of Cincinnati, 1932-55. 2 Grand total attendances in junior colleges, as tabulated by the American Association of Junior Colleges, sometimes have been quoted, usually those for the preceding year.

The criterion of 12 hours or more a week of class attendance for undergraduates later became the standard of the Veterans' Administration for World War II veterans receiving full benefits, with 14 hours for Korea veterans. The National Collegiate Athletic Association stipulates 12 hours for student eligibility to compete in intercollegiate athletic contests.

In 1932-33, the School and Society series initiated a classification of institutions of higher education and tabulated enrollments according to types as follows: universities and large institutions of complex organization, with separate tables for those under public control and those under private control; independent colleges of arts and sciences; and other independent institutions-technological schools and teachers colleges. Educators and others commented upon the usefulness to them of these two clarifying devices: differentiation between full-time students and part-time students and classification of institutions by types.

Both School and Society devices-classification of institutions and student definition-were adopted by the U.S. Office of Education and were used in its 1952-54 biennial survey. However, recent circulars of institutional enrollments by States published annually by the Office of Education have not recorded fulltime and part-time students but have merged both in the term "degree-credit" students. This term is likely to confuse the public, which tends to think of college in terms of young men and women devoting themselves to college as their chief occupation. It is a foggy generalization to assert, as was done recently, that "more than 3 million students crowd our colleges and universities" without qualifying that a considerable proportion of them (about one-fourth) are not crowding classrooms in the usual day schedules, but file into classrooms that otherwise would be empty in the late afternoons, evenings, and Saturday mornings. At the large urban universities, the bulk of their part-time students are mature persons holding daytime jobs. The universities are proud of these part-time students taking credit courses and they enumerate such men and women in their own honorable category.

ANALYSIS OF ENROLLMENTS OVER FOUR DECADES

Returns for the academic year 1959-60 showed peak collegiate enrollments throughout the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii. The increases, decade by decade since 1919-20, are indicated in table I for full-time and grand total attendances.

TABLE 1.-Students enrollments by decades, 1919–20 to 1959-60

The 1959-60 totals of 367,084 full-time students in 30 "representative universities" " formed an increase of 160 percent over their own enrollments of 141,099 in 1919-20. The table I figures of 387,812 for 1949-50 reflect the large number of VA students still enrolled in these 30 institutions.

The 1959-60 totals of 1,973,948 full-time students in 995 approved universities and colleges (representing over 1,000 separate campuses) were more than four times the full-time totals of 433,193 in 1929-30. Since the latter totals were reported by 224 approved universities and colleges 30 years earlier, to figure a specific percentage gain would not be valid.

The 1959-60 grand-total enrollments of 3,402,297 full-time and part-time students in 1,952 institutions reporting to the U.S. Office of Education were over five times as large as the grand-total enrollments of 597,880 reported by 1,041 institutions in 1919-20.

Added in 1957-58 were classifications under accredited independent institutions: fine arts, applied arts and music, and theological seminaries and schools for lay workers.

The 30 "representative universities," to which the earliest School and Society studies were limited, included California, Chicago, Cincinnati, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa State, Johns Hopkins, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Northwestern, Ohio State, University of Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Princeton, Stanford, Syracuse, Texas, Tulane, University of Washington, Virginia, Washington University, Western Reserve, Wisconsin, and Yale.

ANALYSIS BY TYPES OF INSTITUTION

The proportions in which, through four decades, full-time students enrolled at the main types of approved institutions are revealed in table 2.

TABLE 2.-Full-time students by type of institutions

1919-20

1929-30

1939-40

1949-50

1959-60

Number Per- Number Per- Number Per- Number Per- Number Per

For 1959-60, a total of 1,002,262 full-time students were reported by 134 universities and large institutions of complex organization, forming 51 percent of 1,965,892 full-time students in 969 institutions. Of these 686,520 students, or 35 percent, were enrolled in 73 public universities, and 315,742 students, or 16 percent, were enrolled in 61 private universities.

For 1949-50, there were 515,630 full-time students, or 33 percent of all such students, enrolled at 57 public universities, and there were 327,735 students, or 21 percent in 51 private universities.

For 1939-40, there were 275,685 full-time students, or 32 percent, enrolled at 56 public universities, and 184,766, or 21 percent, attending 51 private universities. For 1929-30, there were 212,879 full-time students, or 49 percent, enrolled in 53 public universities, and 121,713, or 28 percent, in 36 private universities.

For 1919-20, when only “30 representative universities" were reported, there were 77,646 students in 15 public universities, or 55 percent of the total; and there were 63,453 students in 15 private universities, or 45 percent of the total of these 30 universities.

The preceding analysis for universities and large institutions of complex organization can be applied readily by the interested reader to independent colleges of arts and sciences, to independent technological schools or institutes, and to independent teachers colleges. The percentages listed in table 2 tell the story. It is a story of large institutions growing larger, but not at the expense of anybody else's growth. The tide of youth already has risen so that there are few "small colleges" in the historic use of that term.

CHOICES OF STUDY FIELDS, 1950-51 TO 1959-60

In tracing trends as to fields of study, the most significant gage is that of the choices made by freshmen, assisted by their parents and other advisers. These choices are more realistically brought out if recorded year by year rather than every 10th year. Accordingly, table 3 presents figures not for four decades but annually for the significant decade, 1950-51 to 1959-60. They cover fulltime freshmen, men and women, entering five undergraduate fields: arts and sciences, engineering, commerce (or business administration), agriculture, and teacher training.