Training Research Workers

Abstract

Educational progress in America might be accelerated if more people were trained in a definite way for research investigation. Such training is not given on a large scale except in universities ; and even universities are turning out a comparatively few per sons equipped to do this work. The scarcity of university-trained research workers is to be explained in two ways. First, the recruiting program is inade quate. Many students fail to enter research, because they have not been encouraged so to do and have not known the joy of original investigation. The advertisers of merchandise attach coupons to their advertisements to make the purchase easy for the customer; they remove every possible obstacle to his choice. Yet the university has, to a certain degree, assumed that the student who by temperament should become an investigator will brush aside all barriers and force his way into the field of re search. The recruiting is further handicapped by the discourag ing reports of the struggles of graduate students which the Juniors and Seniors in the university often hear. These un fortunate graduate students, many of whom are attempting to do research work for their theses without adequate training or guidance, leave the impression on prospective candidates for higher degrees that the preparation of a thesis is almost a super human task and that it is presumption for any but a few geniuses to dare to attempt it. Why should anyone dread the thesis re quirement if he has been properly trained for the work? A second cause of the inadequate supply of trained research workers lies in our failure to train effectively those recruits whom we get. As long as the research necessary to prepare a thesis is on a plane of blind and helpless floundering, the common result will be that the student upon the completion of his thesis will heave a sigh of relief and determine never to undertake such a task again. 366