Education: Report Card

¶ After looking over III Eastern campuses, the University of Vermont reported that a year in college (tuition, room and board) costs the average student $1,310.

¶ California Institute of Technology announced that graduates of the class of ’52 are now earning $5 to $60 a month more than the starting salaries offered to the class of ’51. New median salaries: for B.S.s, $340; for M.S.s, $405; for engineers, $475; for Ph.D.s, $495.

¶ In the current Saturday Review, Claude Fuess, onetime headmaster of Andover, gives his own thumbnail history of education during the last 50 years. Main trends: “Liberation of the Curriculum; the Mania for Military Preparation; the Formations of Small Sections and of Fast and Slow Divisions; the Rediscovery of Interest as a Motive; the Apotheosis of the I.Q. ; the Glorification of the Aptitude Test; the Popular Demand for Individual Attention; the Rise and Decline of Progressive Education; the Cumulative Menace of the Movies, Radio and Television; the Falling off in Voluntary Reading; the Multiplication of Records; and finally, the Training for Citizenship.”

¶ The University of Wisconsin’s School of Education polled 78 high schools in the state, found that Wisconsin school kids spend $17 million a year ($124.02 apiece) on “incidental expenses.” Biggest spenders: the girls, by 66%.