Education: Vocational Guidance

“Vocational guidance today is no better than guessing and considerably less honest. . . .”

Such was the challenge flung last week in Cleveland at conferring members of the National Vocational Guidance Association. Challenger was Research Associate Irving Lorge of Columbia’s Teachers College. His “proof” was a survey conducted in New York City under Columbia’s famed Psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike.

In 1921 Columbia researchers gave standard vocational-prediction tests of intelligence, clerical ability and mechanical adroitness to 2,500 schoolchildren, aged about 14. Careers of more than 2,000 were followed, their occupational success at ages 20 to 22 measured by: 1) earnings; 2) occupational level; 3) contentment with jobs.

“Correlation between the success predicted for the children by the original tests and the success which they actually attained,” said Dr. Lorge, “hovered around zero.” Concluded he: “Using the best tests and skills the counselor now has, his predictions at best will have 95% as much error as a guess.”

Outraged counselors leaped to defend themselves. Cried Dr. Henry C. Link of Manhattan’s Psychological Service Center: “Dr. Lorge’s methods in arriving at his conclusions are comparable to making cheese pie without any cheese. . . . There was no professional assistance in guiding the boys and girls. If they had been given true vocational guidance the results would have been different.”

“Vocational guidance is not fortune telling,” declared Dr. Harry Dexter Kitson, director of Columbia’s Teachers College vocational guidance department.