1941: Carnegie Foundation For The Advancement of Teaching

The resources of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching at the close of its fiscal year 1940-41 totaled $21,056,682. Of this total $17,663,440 book value was in bonds, $2,239,814 in stocks at cost, and $1,153,427 in bank cash. Endowment funds totaled $16,691,859, of which 26.26 per cent of the investments represented United States Government bonds with a book value of $4,351,884. For the year income from securities in all funds was $721,327.

Disbursements included $1,929,443 for retiring allowances and widows' pensions. Of this amount, $1,387,632 was for 948 age allowances, $33,185 was for 33 disability allowances, $10,160 for 6 service pensions, and $498,464 for 632 widows' pensions. Individual age allowances averaged about $1,418. Of the 68 recipients of retiring allowances who died during the year 4 were over 90 years of age, one being 97, and 25 were in their eighties.

From Carnegie Corporation of New York under an arrangement in force since 1924, the Foundation during 1940-41 received and disbursed $57,600 for studies and researches conducted by various other institutions and bodies. For special educational research projects carried on by the Foundation it received $81,600 from the Corporation. In all, Carnegie Corporation has made to the Foundation 168 grants totaling $1,727,708 for 94 higher educational projects, of which 17 involving $564,743 have been pursued in the Foundation's offices, and 77 involving $1,162,965 have been under 44 other agencies. See also ADULT EDUCATION.

During the year the Foundation studied the effects of National Defense upon the colleges and universities of the United States. The reduction of college attendance by about 10 per cent over the country owing to conscription and defense work, the use of laboratories and other college equipment for government research, the drafting of teaching and administrative personnel for military and scientific service led President Walter A. Jessup to conclude: 'We must be prepared to see the American four-year college course ultimately telescoped to three years for all admitted students' and the outworn system of units and credits for graduation give way to evaluation of achievement in part by examination.

A group of 1,227 male alumni ten years out of Pennsylvania colleges were persuaded by Dr. William S. Learned to give the facts of their experience since graduation. All of these men as undergraduates had taken the Foundation's twelve-hour Pennsylvania test. Dr. Learned found no close correspondence between academic record and later achievement as expressed in salaries or advancement. College grades as now administered do not reflect the students' real power or weakness. 'It is too much to expect that the financial rewards of life will ever arrange themselves outwardly in accordance with any reasonable scale of 'just deserts.' Nevertheless, our predictions could probably come much nearer even the rough scale of values for which the world is willing to pay ... were we not only to find out what and how much knowledge the student possesses but also observe what his knowledge means to him and how skillful he is in putting it to work.'

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

1940: Carnegie Foundation For The Advancement Of Teaching

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, at the close of its fiscal year 1939-40, held resources totaling $24,504,468, at book value. Investments amounted to $22,973,790, with $1,530,677 cash in banks. Endowment funds (General Endowment, Division of Educational Enquiry) contained some $16,817,513; the rest was held in its Reserves. Securities yielded $869,261.

A total of $1,945,191 was disbursed in retiring allowances and pensions, of which $1,414,113 went for 903 age allowances, $34,576 for 31 disability allowances, $10,192 for six allowances granted on a service basis, and $486,308 for pensions to 602 widows. Individual age allowances averaged about $1,513.

Issued November 18, 1939, a New York Supreme Court order enables the Foundation to meet retiring allowances and widows pensions over a term of years when its income will be insufficient. The Court authorized and directed the Foundation to accept supplementary funds up to $15,000,000 from Carnegie Corporation of New York, and to use about one-third of the Foundation's principal. The plan is ultimately to repay, beginning in about 1967, the borrowings from the Foundation's General Endowment Fund and from the Corporation, without interest, out of income. No retiring allowance or pension of the Foundation once granted has ever been reduced. It is believed that this achievement will now be maintained, subject only to the maintenance of the present economic system.

Under a co-operative arrangement with Carnegie Corporation which has existed for 16 years, the Carnegie Foundation received during 1939-40 for studies and researches $21,000 on account of educational inquiries being conducted in the Foundation's offices. On grants for special educational research projects the Corporation paid $55,015 which the Foundation distributed. All told, Carnegie Corporation has made to the Foundation 157 grants totaling $1,606,708 for 88 higher educational projects. Of these, 14 involving $493,843 in 37 grants have been carried on in the Foundation offices.

On Oct. 2, 1939, was published Bulletin Number Thirty of the Foundation, Studies in Early Graduate Education, by W. Carson Ryan. The volume concerns particularly the unusual early achievements of the Johns Hopkins University, Clark University, and the University of Chicago. According to Dr. Ryan, these universities' first presidents recognized the urgency of certain contemporary needs not being met by the conventional college education of their day, placed students and faculty ahead of buildings, enrollments, administration, and organization, and insisted vigorously upon the highest quality of intellect and character in their institutions.

The Foundation's Bulletin Number Thirty-one, issued June 7, 1940, An Experiment in Responsible Learning, by Dr. William S. Learned and Mrs. Anna L. Rose Hawkes, grew out of the Foundation's Pennsylvania study. The main purpose of the inquiry was to 'discover and measure the durable intellectual capital of young students. . . . The student must first learn that he stands alone and that his education is within him.' Results of one experiment to this end, executed at minimal cost but with much care, 'should prove encouraging to any teacher willing and able to undertake the sustained and exacting effort.'

Dr. Learned directs two other studies: the Graduate Record Examination and the Pennsylvania follow-up inquiry. In the Graduate Record Examination project, searching new-type tests were given to 1,457 students in the graduate schools of Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Columbia, representing 448 different colleges and 208 graduate institutions. The series of tests, modified, was subsequently administered to 1,702 entering graduate students in the original four universities and at Brown and the University of Rochester. In 1940 eleven other colleges examined their senior classes, about 2,100 students. The project provides a common standard against which the individual student may note his relative position in academic subjects in comparison with other students of his standing in many colleges.

Dr. Learned's inquiry into the learning and forgetting of some 70 college graduates over a seven-year period shows that the 'peak of knowledge to which the college brings its students as seniors possesses unexpected persistence, and that academic attainment recedes more slowly than many had supposed.'

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

1939: Carnegie Foundation For The Advancement of Teaching

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, at the close of its fiscal year 1938-39, had resources totaling $26,917,932, of which $21,255,900 was in bonds (par value), $4,646,459 in stocks (cost), and $1,319,503 cash in banks. The endowment funds of the Foundation were valued at $18,296,428. During the year $998,714 was received as income from securities.

For retiring allowances to 913 former teachers and pensions for 583 widows the year's disbursements amounted to $1,963,279. Of this sum, $1,434,873 was for allowances granted on the basis of age, $35,694 for disability allowances, $481,331 for widows' pensions, and $11,380 for allowances awarded on the basis of service. The average disbursement per individual allowance for retirement on the basis of age was about $1,618.

From Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Foundation received for studies and researches during the year a total of $197,900, of which $106,550 was paid out by the Foundation to assist researches conducted under the auspices of other educational institutions and bodies. Since 1924, the cooperative grants made by the Corporation and administered by the Foundation have numbered 114 for 71 projects and totaled $1,087,350. Of these only three projects, involving $25,000 could not be carried out as planned.

In the Division of Educational Enquiry, studies of accrediting agencies have been conducted by Dr. Alfred A. Reed, staff member, some of the results of which may be summarized as follows: The production of mutually independent and competing accredited lists may be carried too far. 'Educational accrediting, appraisal, that is to say, of educational work, is in itself a socially desirable activity, but it is likely to produce its best results when it is coupled with an independent attitude on the part of everybody concerned.... It would be well if the same spirit were displayed both by those who seek the educational guidance which accredited lists provide, and by those who supply the requisite information to accrediting agencies.'

Dr. W. S. Learned has conducted 'An Experiment in Responsible Learning,' setting forth certain new methods and approaches to teaching in three Pennsylvania secondary schools — Altoona High, Cheltenham Township High at Elkins Park, and Radnor Township High at Wayne. The central purpose of the experiment implied ridding these schools of the course-credit system. The experiment was unusually successful in replacing the course 'unit,' the 'credit,' and the teacher's 'mark' as dominating a pupil's mind, with a healthy and controlling interest in the meaning of ideas and in a pupil's ability to use them intelligently.

A study of early graduate schools in the United States was completed by Dr. W. Carson Ryan, Jr., staff associate, involving the Johns Hopkins University, Clark University, and the University of Chicago. In addition, the Foundation cooperated for a second year with the graduate schools of Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, and also with Brown University and the University of Wisconsin graduate schools, in a study looking to the determining of the intellectual equipment of matriculates.

The Foundation awards no scholarships or fellowships 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, New York.

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.