Teacher Personnel Problems in Junior and Senior Colleges and Universities

Abstract

Junior-college teachers became better prepared in the last 25 years, according to Colvert (7), for three reasons: a 50-percent increase in graduate degrees, summer-school attendance by faculty members from 80 percent of the junior colleges, and inservice programs of several types in more than one-half of the 325 junior colleges reporting. The Research Division of the National Education Association (29) reported an increase in doctorates conferred from the low of 1966 in 1946 to 8996 in 1954; but Maul (24), in a sample of 829 full-time college teachers, found that 31 percent of new full-time college teachers in 195354 held doctorates, whereas only 23 percent of the 1956-57 group held that degree. In 1953-54, 18 percent of the newly employed full-time college teachers entered service without at least the master's degree; the figure had risen to 23 percent in 1956-57. The same report raised questions about the doctor's degree as a preparation for college teaching and about the new recipients' interest in teaching. Another NEA Research Division study (28) suggested the need for defining competencies for the various fields and a better co-ordination between fields of training and areas of need. Maul (24) found that among the recipients of doctorates in 117 of the 146 institutions which conferred degrees in 1954-55, only 57 percent entered educational service. He referred to the need for a study of the competence of college teachers for