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Show Terminal Education of Junior Colleges Prepares Youth for Actual Employment i By WARREN BROKER (Released by Weitern Newspapei Union.) NEW YORK. With college degrees needed for only one-sixth one-sixth of the jobs available today, to-day, the great majority of American youth is forced to look elsewhere for training. Young men and women frequently fre-quently find they can't get a job without experience, and cannot get experience without with-out a job. To provide these youth with training necessary for satisfactory satis-factory employment, junior colleges have been founded in forty-four states. Problems and responsibilities of these schools face members of the American Association of Junior Colleges Col-leges meeting in Chicago February 27 to March 1. Unlike high schools which frequently fre-quently serve as preparatory schools for a college education, Junior colleges col-leges strive to prepare their students stu-dents for gemi-professional and skilled occupations. This training for actual employment is known as "terminal education" and represents repre-sents the fundamental purpose of their two-year courses. 'Violates' Old Tradition. Some educators watched the in-tioduction in-tioduction of 'terminal education" courses with distaste. They frowned upon Instruction In trades, where they were accustomed to seeing only English, French and other liberal arts and condemned the policy as beneath the "dignity" of college Instruction. In-struction. Junior college administrators refuse re-fuse to be swayed by this appeal to "tradition." To them the needs of the pupil are uppermost A more Justifiable criticism was raised by other educators who pointed point-ed out that adequate professional education cannot be crowded into two years. Leaders in the Junior college movement explain In defense that their schools don't even attempt to train surgeons, lawyers or engineers. engi-neers. For example, while they don't train doctors, they can prepare dental den-tal assistants, medical secretaries and sanitary inspectors. These semi-professional skills provide pro-vide five times as many Jobs as the ones requiring two to eight years more training. Liberal Arts Still Taught. Specialized training in these skills does not necessitate neglect of the so-called liberal arts. Usually only about half of the time is required to provide the specific training desired, leavlnc the remainder for broader objectives. During the last six years enrollment enroll-ment in the junior colleges has doubled. dou-bled. There are now 610 Junior colleges col-leges In the country serving 236.162 students. Enrollment last year Jumped 20 per cent, while enrollment enroll-ment In four-year colleges and universities uni-versities increased less than 1 per cent. "Experience shows that most Junior Jun-ior college students will not go on Into a university," says Walter C. Eclls of Washington. D. C, secretary secre-tary of the American Association of Junior Colleges. "Although two-thirds two-thirds of them say they are preparing prepar-ing for university or four-year college col-lege work, three-fourths of them do not go beyond the two Junior college col-lege years." Many Business Courses. While Junior colleges offer courses In almost every field of endeavor, no one school gives instruction in all of them. On the contrary they generally gen-erally specialize In certain fields. In business alone, for example, 286 Z7? ill! It! ? ' - v h jj f r ; pi -rfL; it - i'-'i If - i -v V IN- -MJ -' . y lutmmi rtHMwH iiwmiinViiiMMiiiwi i .t-iriiinr.iiii,itTit. -ffii" inftrwr i.-wiff i.v--""'-''- - Junior colleges set aside tradition to offer training in many fields. The student to the left, above, Is doing work which will prepare him to be a competent carpenter upon graduation from his two-year course. The window dresser, right, will have two years of experience behind him wbffl finishes "going to school oq the job" In a local department depart-ment store. Junior colleges are giving terminal, two-year courses. General business courses are offered by 204 of these, and secretarial by 202. There are also many less usual courses, such as accounting in 27, banking and finance In 6, hotel and restaurant management In 5, merchandising In 28, and salesmanship in 24. Business institutions In many cities cit-ies co-operate with the junior colleges col-leges in planning and giving these courses. In Hillyer Junior college, Hartford, Conn., the student works eight weeks as a salesmon, machine ma-chine operator, or secretary, then attends classes for eight weeks while the job is taken over by another anoth-er student, with whom he is paired. When a person In San Francisco buys a shirt or sits down to lunch or registers in a hotel, he may be waited on by a student of San Francisco Fran-cisco Junior college who is taking the course in salesmanship or hotel and restaurant management. Engineering Very Popular. One of the most popular branches of terminal education is engineering and technology, in which 216 junior colleges offer courses. This does not mean they try to persuade young graduates at the end of two years that they are engineers. But it does mean that there are from three to eight times as many foremanships, drafting jobs and technological posi tions requiring two years of preparation, prepara-tion, as there are professional engineering engi-neering positions requiring four to eight years. Requirements of national defense have given impetus to interest in aviation training. Terminal courses in aviation are given by 196 junior colleges. One group of California junior colleges is even participating as a part of the defense program. More than 200 junior colleges cooperated co-operated this winter in the pilot Instruction In-struction program" of the Civil Aeronautics Aero-nautics authority. Nine thousand students were trained for pilots' licenses in these courses. Terminal courses In agriculture are offered by 83 Junior colleges. Seventy offer general courses in this field, while eight give instruction in floriculture and 34 in forestry. Instruct In Many Fields. Training is offered in almost every ev-ery occupation. In the fine artt there is instruction In architecture, costume design, Interior decoration, music, photography and dramatics. Health courses prepare stuaems xo work as dental assistants, medical secretaries and nurse.?. Trades are well represented In junior college curricula. Instruction is given in welding, radio engineering, engineer-ing, drafting, auto mechanics, building build-ing trades, chemical engineering, mining, navigation and oil technology. technolo-gy. There is also a large number of courses In more specialized fields. "When one considers that there are 20,000 occupations, it is' clear that there could not be 20,000 courses of study to train workers for them," Edward F. Mason of the American Association of Junior Colleges explains. ex-plains. "Fortunately the trainings overlap a good deal, thus permitting permit-ting training for one field to help fit the student for several." Although junior colleges have been known in America for only 40 years, and received their real start just 20 years ago, they are found in 44 states. Only two small eastern states, Delaware and Rhode Island, and two sparsely populated western states, Wyoming and Nevada, are without them. In California the junior colleges have had their greatest development with 86,357 pupils. Illinois has 19,-589, 19,-589, Texas 15,085, Missouri 8,143, North Carolina 6,602 and Massachusetts Massachu-setts 5,994. Educators are well aware of the need lor improvement, iney are striving to remedy the evils of a secondary education that frequently persists in preparing students for colleges they will never enter, or giving them vocational training for jobs they will never find. Junior college administrators believe be-lieve they have found the answer. The youth of America hopes they are right. |