COLLEGE COUNSELOR NEEDS

We need counselors to work with students in the areas of career choices, educational objectives, and personal decisions. Research has shown that approximately two-thirds of all college students choose or change their vocational objectives while they are in college. Where in an earlier era the faculty member performed the task of advising, today he lacks the time and he often has too many students. The problem is highlighted in a recent publication of the Office of Education at the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. I quote:

The fact remains that attention to guidance in many institutions lags considerably behind attention to instructional programs, that many faculty members who are quite proficient in their subject areas have neither the training nor the inclination to undertake extensive guidance of students, and that the diversity of student characteristics demands more than perfunctory attention to the guidance function in programs purporting to offer flexibility in rate or depth of student learning.1

We still need the faculty adviser, but he needs people to whom he can refer the student with problems which require time.

Senator MORSE. I couldn't agree with you more on that.

I want to call Mr. Lee's attention where you make the recommendation for amendment to the bill to provide for this additional service. I would like to have an appropriate amendment drafted and printed at this point in the hearings record.

(The following amendment was drafted in accordance with the instructions of the chairman and has been sent to Dean Miriam Shelden for her comments. Further correspondence on this matter will be found in subcommittee files:)

AMENDMENT TO S. 580

On page 72, line 12, before the period insert a comma and the following: "or who are engaged in, or preparing to engage in, counseling and guidance work in a college or university".

Dr. SHELDEN. Thank you.

We need trained staff in all those areas of student services where people come in constant contact with students. Financial aids officers do more than dole out money. Student union and activity directors, because they work closely with students in planning extra class activities, become informal teachers and counselors. Admissions directors and orientation staff have the closest contacts with the incoming student as he makes the transition from high school to college. Foreign student advisors are person-to-person ambassadors implementing our foreign policy at home. The success or failure of a foreign student's stay at an American college or university can influence the attitude of that country toward the United States, for these foreign students, like ours, are the future leaders of their nations.

We need deans of men and women to organize and coordinate the program of student services within the college community, to be available to the student as he makes fundamental decisions and meets the day-by-day problems of the young adult-to meet what Gilbert

1 Cole, Charles C., Jr., and Lewis, Lanora G., "Flexibility in the Undergraduate Curricu lum." U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of Education Bulletin No. 10 in series "New Dimensions in Higher Education." Washington, D.C., U.S. Gor ernment Printing Office, 1962, p. 55.

1

Wrenn calls the "persisting needs of youth." Student personnel staff working with young women have a special responsibility to help them see the radically changing life patterns of women and the need for high ability women to contribute their brainpower and skills to the manpower resources of this Nation without sacrificing their traditional family responsibilities.

TRAINED PERSONNEL SHORTAGE

Student personnel administrators recognize the acute shortages of trained counselors who work with college students. Individual institutions do have programs to train men and women in this field but fewer than 50 universities prepare persons directly for personnel

services.

Each year in the placement bureaus of the professional groups the number of jobs in proportion to the number of candidates increases. When I asked a longtime member of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers where he obtained new staff he said, "We steal them either from another institution or from the high school counseling staff." This technique may solve the problem of one institution but is of no benefit to educational institutions as a whole.

Employers everywhere are searching for trained staff. When trained people are not available, the only alternative is to fill the jobs with untrained staff unfamiliar with present-day needs. Today when we face crises in manpower, confusion of national and personal goals and values, we cannot afford to settle for those who, untrained, will do only half a job. Unfortunately, the half job they do is not in terms of the quantity of students they serve, but in terms of the quality of assistance they give.

The professional personnel organizations are attempting to remedy the crises by updating the knowledge and information of their current membership. But current membership of the several organizations is not sufficient to carry the load of increased student enrollment. We simply need more workers. The professional meetings of our organizations are vast training laboratories for their members. Foreign student advisers, student union directors, deans—each group devotes major portions of its meetings to the training of new members and the upgrading of skills of its older members. Various groups have published career brochures trying to attract new people to the field. Yet the fact remains-without assistance, the shortages will get worse, and students will suffer. Therefore, we seek your help. Reflecting the concern of its membership, the National Association of Women Deans and Counselors in its recent national convention in Boston, Mass., on April 6, 1963, adopted the following resolution: Whereas NAWDC in 1961 and 1962 recommended in its resolutions that the provisions of the National Defense Education Act counseling and guidance training program be extended to include those students wishing to prepare for student personnel positions in junior colleges, colleges, and universities; and Whereas the National Education Improvement Act of 1963 (S. 580 and H.R. 3000) is now before the 88th Congress; and

Wrenn, C. Gilbert, "The Counselor in the Changing World," Washington, D.C., American Personnel and Guidance Association, 1962, p. 4.

Whereas these bills have been extended to include the training of guidance and counseling personnel at the elementary level, but are still limited in their provisions for student personnel training at the college level; and

Whereas it has been demonstrated that professionally trained persons can maximize the potentialities of students at the secondary level: Therefore, be it Resolved, That NAWDC-Again recommends to the Commissioner of Education and to the Senate and House of Representatives Special Subcommittees on Education that the legislation be extended to continue under grant authority the operations of institutes to provide training to improve the qualifications of individuals who are engaged in counseling and guidance and of individuals who are preparing to engage in counseling and guidance, not only on the secondary level, but also on the elementary level and in junior colleges, colleges, and universities.

The Joint Commission on Professional Development of our several associations was formed to identify several of the most critical needs in the area of professional preparation and education of student personnel workers and to recommend ways of meeting those needs. The present and future most critical need at the college level is to provide sufficient numbers of adequately trained counselors and advisers to work with students in order that they may profit more fully from their college educations and in turn give to the economy and welfare of the Nation their skilled brainpower.

Therefore, I ask that the proposed legislation be extended to provide for the training of guidance and personnel workers at all levels of education.

Thank you, Senator Morse, for your courtesy and consideration of the views of our joint commission and of my association, the National Association of Women Deans and Counselors.

Senator MORSE. Dean Shelden, I appreciate very much this statement. It is going to be very helpful to the committee.

COLLEGE COUNSELING SERVICES SUPPORT

I want to join with you in the plea that you make this morning for the inclusion of an expanded counseling program in any Federal support program that is ultimately passed by the Congress.

I want to tell you why I am such an enthusiastic supporter on the matter which you have testified to this morning.

In my 21 years of college teaching, I saw student after student wasted. They were not only wasted, but irreparably damaged, because the students were unable to make satisfactory adjustments to college-not because they could not, but because they were not given the counseling assistance that would make necessary adjustments pos

sible.

Counseling is provided frequently in an unskilled fashion by many of us who have taught, but we are not experts.

I took the position then that if any student failed our law school, it was more the failure of the faculty than of the student. This was certainly true, I felt, if we started out with a capable student. It was my belief that we did start out with such a student, because he or she could not get into law school without the requisite ability.

We started with the assumption that we were admitting to a school, in this instance a law school, a student with a good IQ, and a student with at least an average high school record. If that student ran into difficulty in the law school in meeting the standards, assuming there

was a reasonable application to the work, the fault lay with the faculty and not with the student.

The fault wasn't with the faculty in the sense that it was responsible for the student not making a passing grade. But the fault was with the faculty in not maintaining a system which would locate that student in the proper division of the university which would make it possible for the student to do satisfactory work.

We were not professional counselors, although we spent hours at this work. We used aptitude tests, and worked closely with the psychology department, in trying to find a place for the student. We were successful in getting many students reregistered into other divisions of the university where their aptitudes showed that they could do satisfactory work.

But I know that thousands of students are wasted each year because the faculties of the separate colleges don't take on that responsibility. I succeeded in getting the sons of many lawyers into journalism, into business administration, and into education. Many of these students had real problems, because dad wanted to see their name on his office door. In many instances, they had no more qualifications to become lawyers than I would have in becoming an electrical engineer. I would fail out the first time, I just don't have the ability or the capability to do that kind of work.

So often we get these square pegs into round holes in our colleges, and they don't fit.

I worked on the fathers, more than on the students. Many of the students transferred out of law school, as I say, into other colleges.

But we were just rank amateurs. A certain amount of counseling can be done by just applying the rules of common horsesense, but I knew that it is not the way to do counseling, although we did work out a program where we had the psychology department take over a considerable amount of the job.

The psychological damage that is done in keeping a student in a division of a university where he is certain to flunk out is a form of cruelty, it ought to be stopped.

As you point out in your statement this morning, it is also a terrible waste of a great resource. We cannot afford to waste a single one of these students given the problems which confront us nationally.

UNDEREMPLOYMENT OF TALENT A WASTE

It has been brought out in these hearings, Dean Shelden, on this subject matter and I take the time to mention it because I think you are testifying on a very important need. That we have a problem of the underemployed in this country. By the "underemployed," these witnesses have referred to a large body of college graduates, some of whom have advanced degrees, who did not drop out of college, who did get through, who obtained their degrees, but who have been unable to find employment commensurate with their training. This is not only a waste, but there is another danger. Such a group is a very dissatisfied group of our citizenry. It is a potentially dissident group

with brains.

We cannot run the risk of enlarging this group of underemployed people in America. To do so it may very well become as serious a problem as that which is caused by the unemployed.

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Here again, counseling such students while they are still in college could avoid much of this human waste.

I need not tell you that we are talking about a bill of goods which is going to be hard to sell. It is concerned with many problems that involve abstractions, that involve high skills in the field of human behavior direction. But that is no reason why we should run away from it, or pass over it, or sweep it under the rug.

You, who are working in the counseling programs in our educational institutions from the kindergarten on through to seniors in colleges, are performing a great service which we must recognize as an essential part of the whole educational system and process.

I am glad that you have testified here in behalf of the groups that you represent this morning. I hope that when we come to the final writeup of the bill, or of any bill, if it becomes a question of what we must trade in order to get that one vote over a majority necessary to get any bill from committee, I hope that the counseling service section will stand.

I give you my assurance that as far as this chairman is concerned, I will do everything I can to see to it that it gets fair treatment in the final bill.

Dr. SHELDEN. Thank you very much, Senator Morse. I appreciate the support. And I hope that we can at least make a beginning in the training of counseling and guidance staff on the college levels even a pilot program would help to set fire, as did happen with the high school counseling institutes.

Senator MORSE. I agree with you.

Miss Catton, do you have anything to add?

Miss CATTON. No, thank you, sir.

Senator MORSE. Thank you very much. Is Congressman Wilson in the room? Our next witness will be Monsignor Hochwalt, and Monsignor McDowell, accompanied by Mr. Bernard Powers, a teacher in the parochial school system.

Gentlemen, if you will come forward?

Monsignor Hochwalt, a word before you start testifying. You have certain associates with you here this morning who should close their ears while I now make certain comments, because I know them to be modest men.

But you and I are greatly indebted to them.

I know you appreciate your debt to them, but I wanted the record to show the subcommittee's debt to them.

I refer to Mr. William Consedine, counsel, Mr. Harmon Burns, associate counsel, and Mr. Richard Kelley, also associate counsel, who have worked closely with you and your able representatives. They have also worked closely with this subcommittee.

I don't mean to imply that we have always agreed with their points. But I want you to know you could not have had more able representation in presenting to me, as chairman of this subcommittee, and to my associates on it, the information that we have needed in order to evaluate the phases of this legislation which are of direct concern to you.

I want publicly to thank these three men for their help over the

years.