In-Service Training in Junior Colleges

Abstract

T HE present-day junior-college administrator has grown indifferent to one of his most important responsibilities-the continuous improvement of the classroom efficiency of his instructors. An analysis of the causes leading to the neglect of this important function will lend perspective in re-evaluating the place of in-service training in the administration of the junior college. The underlying cause for the juniorcollege dean's indifference lies in his own education. Ever since Mr. Koos brought out his first important study on the junior college, its administrators have been told and retold that their institution did more effective teaching than did colleges and universities in the first two years of instruction. The staff members of the latter, by offering pointed selfcriticisms of college teaching, helped to substantiate this claim. Mr. Eell's book on The Junior College kept the tradition alive. From time to time studies on the success of students transferred from junior college to universities seemed to bear out the contention. In this way junior-college administrators take for granted that the junior college does better teaching than the colleges-at least in the lower division. This idea is a habit with us administrators. A little thought upon the subject may dispel our complacency. Twenty years ago-when Mr. Koos wrote, and even ten years ago as Mr. Eells was writing-the junior colleges probably were doing more effective teaching. Experiments have been under way since then in many colleges and universities. They have been and are bending every effort to improve their teaching, especially in the lower division. The universities, by a direct attack upon their problem, may have outmaneuvered the junior college from its favorable position of superior teaching. There is this possibility, despite all habits of thinking! But even if the universities have failed to regain their old prestige, is there much consolation for the juniorcollege staff to know it is doing merely better work than the universities? The universities themselves are not too proud of their work. In a very wholesome manner they admit that they have been teaching weakly in the freshman and sophomore years. Then why should junior colleges be content with the claim that they are