Chapter IV.--Teacher Supply and Demand

Reports from land-grant institutions indicate roughly the condition of supply and demand in respect to teachers of different types as shown in Table 8. It will be noted that the types of teachers for which the greatest undersupply is reported are teachers of vocational subjects, and of special or nonacademic subjects, including physical education and health, public-school music, and commercial education. A condition of oversupply is reported for teachers of liberal arts subjects and of elementary public-school grades. Other data largely confirm these reports.

TABLE 8.-Condition in certain States in respect to the quantitative supply of teachers and administrators

The present condition of apparent oversupply of elementary teachers and of teachers of liberal arts subjects has been met in a large number of States by raising certification and employment qualifications. This means that more and more elementary teachers must secure the bachelor's degree, or at least secure two or three years of college-grade work. In the case of the high-school liberal arts teachers, many young graduates with bachelor's degrees are induced to secure the master's degree in order to obtain the better positions.

Such pressure has not yet been brought to bear very heavily on teachers of vocational subjects.

The teaching profession in the United States at the present time undoubtedly faces a critical situation. There is every indication that there is an oversupply in many sections of certificated teachers, or of teachers that meet the usual conditions of employment. Unless certification requirements are raised considerably, the inevitable tendency of employers of teachers will be to lower salaries. Under existing conditions of oversupply, one or more of three things may happen-salaries may be lowered, certification and employment requirements may be raised, or the quantity of teachers put on the market by training institutions may be decreased.

No one having the interest of the schools at heart wishes salaries to be lowered. The machinery for raising certification requirements or raising the standards of employment is an effective means of preventing an oversupply in so far as it reduces the number of candidates eligible for positions. The limitation of the number of students through stringent admission requirements, lengthening or delaying the period of apprenticeship, or lengthening the period of training has proved most effective in occupations and professions other than teaching.

Complaint has often been made that recruits to the teaching profession do not include the brightest members of the high-school classes. It has been claimed that law, medicine, and the higher levels of business occupations and managerial work claim an undue proportion of the more intelligent high-school and college students. Questions of quantitative undersupply or oversupply of teachers are, in some respects, secondary to the question of qualitative supply and demand. There are very definite limits to which the recruiting of mediocre material for teaching should be carried. To offer opportunities to any and all young people to enter teaching and yet deny them after long and expensive training the income for which they prepared is unfair to the individual.

It is clear that the institutions that train teachers can do much to help the profession by doing their part in cutting down the number of poorly qualified workers now competing in the open market for teaching positions. There seems little justification for separated land-grant institutions, for instance, to continue to pour teachers of arts and sciences or of elementary grades into the teaching market when abundant agencies already exist to train such teachers. It must be confessed that with the existing machinery available for regulating the supply of teachers not up to reasonable minimum standards of preparation, the outlook is dark. Until such control is exercised

by State departments of education and by the individual and cooperative action of institutions that train teachers, existing tendencies inevitably will continue toward lowering teachers' salaries and consequently the quality of teaching personnel.

Special study is needed on the part of land-grant institutions to ascertain the desirability of expanding their offerings along new lines. For instance, more emphasis upon the training of administrators and supervisors, teachers of combination subjects, teachers of nonacademic and special subjects, and teachers of various other special types of work might reduce somewhat the excessive emphasis upon quantity production of liberal arts teachers. The desirability of expanding graduate teacher-training offerings should be ascertained. Training on graduate levels is undoubtedly a function of the best-equipped and supported State universities and land-grant colleges. For institutions that are given adequate support the extension of teacher preparation to graduate professional levels is a logical step since the opportunities for teachers of academic subjects who are trained on such levels are increasing continuously in almost all States.

Placement of Prospective Teachers

Placement activities of the land-grant institutions are not organized typically in one central unit; such organization prevails in only 9 institutions reporting, while in 30 institutions placement activities are conducted by two or more separated units of the institutions. About half of all the placement bureaus or agencies are engaged in the placement of teachers only. In 33 out of 45 institutions reporting teaching appointments are handled through the school, college, or department of education. Typically, the officer in charge of such work devotes only part of his time to placement.

Two times in three difficulty is reported in the placement of all graduates. The chief difficulties reported are as follows in order of frequency: Oversupply of teachers, deficiency in qualifications required by employers, training too specialized, race or religious prejudices, lack of experience, candidates too exacting in type of position desired; salaries too low, poor combinations of subjects taken by candidates, and candidates can not assist in extra curricular activities.

There are numerous services that the placement bureau, if given an adequate staff, could afford to the institutional officers. The prevailing conception of the managerial activities of the placement services as being largely clerical is decidedly wrong. The obligation of the institution to its students and to the State is not discharged

when students are given their degrees. Progress is difficult when a large degree of ignorance prevails concerning the nature of positions taken by the institutional product. In the future, probably the best measure of the whole institutional program of activities could be secured if accurate measures could be devised of determining how and where institutional graduates function in our social and economic life. Rough measures only are available for the supply of and demand for teachers. Such measures, however, can be developed and refined and their use in all institutions would constitute one practical starting point for the whole program of teacher training. Placement bureaus or agencies are in a particularly favorable position to render assistance in this respect, and their facilities might well be expanded to enable them to make further study of the placement of the product turned out by the institutions.

Too many of the policies of the placement bureaus have been in the past suggestive of those of commercial teachers' agencies. The number of placements made in relation to the number of teachers enrolled has been the chief measure applied to the success of the placement bureaus. It should be no cause for disparagement of the placement service if it does not place some of the inferior material registered for positions. The quality, and not the quantity, of placements should be featured more in the reports of such activities. A genuine improvement would result if the work of the placement bureaus could be put on a professional, instead of a high-grade clerical level.

Chapter V.-Administrative and Professional Organization and Relationships

Relationships With the Federal Government

Public education is the accepted function of State governments and of local units. The relationships of the teacher-training units of the land-grant institutions to the Federal Government are almost entirely indirect, and chiefly professional rather than administrative in nature. The Federal agencies set up to administer subsidies granted by acts of Congress deal directly either with the States or, to a less extent, with the land-grant institutions, rather than with the teacher-training units.

On the whole, significant relationships are practically nonexistent between the teacher-training units themselves and the Federal Government in respect to the administration of Morrill-Nelson funds. Further, the national vocational education act of 1917 (SmithHughes Act), to provide for the promotion of vocational education, and the George-Reed Act of 1929, to provide for the further development of vocational education, establish relationships primarily with the States and with the land-grant institutions through the agency of the State boards for vocational education. The administration of Smith-Hughes funds has brought with it the largest measure of Federal control so far established in the field of education. Numerous and significant regulations, standards, and restrictions as related to the expenditure of funds have been set up by the Federal board in accordance with the provisions of the act.

The Federal board, by the provisions of the act, makes studies, investigations, and reports, with particular reference to their use. in aiding the States in the establishment of vocational schools and classes and in giving instruction in agriculture, trades and industries, commerce and commercial pursuits, and home economics. Such investigations and reports, when the board deems it advisable, may be made along appropriate lines in cooperation with and through the United States Departments of Agriculture, Labor, and Commerce and through the United States Office of Education.

By the provisions of the Smith-Hughes Act each State shall designate a State board to cooperate with the Federal board, this board to act as a trustee of Federal funds. Plans by which Federal moneys are to be expended for vocational education must be submitted, covering a 5-year period. to the Federal board, and if the plans are