1938: Carnegie Foundation For The Advancement of Teaching

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching disbursed, during its fiscal year ending June 30, 1938, to American and Canadian colleges and universities $1,478,131 for professors' retiring allowances, and $483,075 for widows' pensions, a total of $1,961,206.

Since 1905 the Foundation has paid on this account a total of $34,731,142 for 1,872 retired professors at 168 colleges and universities, and for 919 of their widows, without cost to the institutions themselves.

To assist researches conducted under the auspices of other educational institutions and bodies, the Foundation during 1937-38 received from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and transmitted $111,000. At the close of the fiscal year the Foundation held securities valued at $27,007,419, of which $18,254,401 represented endowment. Investments were in both bonds and stocks.

In January the Foundation issued a clarified version of its rules for the granting of retiring allowances, which, however, are identical in effect with those in force since 1929. The trustees discontinued the publication of the list of institutions associated with the Foundation.

Through its Division of Educational Enquiry, the Foundation published, in April 1938, its Bulletin Number Twenty-nine. The Student and His Knowledge. by W. S. Learned, staff member, and Ben D. Wood, director of collegiate educational research, at Columbia College, a partial report upon a study begun ten years previously for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The study involved the examination of 26,000 high school seniors and the testing of students in nearly fifty Pennsylvania colleges. Chief interest of the Bulletin centers on the results of an identical eight-hour examination in the main aspects of a general education, given to high school seniors and college sophomores and seniors. Nearly a quarter of the high school seniors surpassed the average college sophomore, and more than a quarter of the college seniors scored below the average college sophomore. Senior college students intending to teach averaged below the general average and below the average of every other vocation group. Many of them had lower scores than high school seniors four years below them. Students intending to become artists, musicians, or dramatists gained most from their college courses; those expecting to teach physical education gained least. The Bulletin proposes practical remedies for these conditions based on the principle that 'intelligent provision for self-education requires that these different starting points, ways of working, and speeds of learning be discovered and allowed their full significance.' The Pennsylvania studies of the Foundation are proceeding with inquiries into the after-college careers of former students.

The Foundation, in its own offices, continued its studies of professional education and of the beginnings of graduate instruction in the United States, and cooperated with the graduate schools of Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale in determining the intellectual equipment of matriculates. The Foundation awards no fellowships or scholarships of any kind.

Dr. Walter A. Jessup is president of the Foundation, and Howard J. Savage secretary and treasurer. Offices are at 522 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y.