THE importance of education (or training-take your choice) is shown by the fact that agencies which were never in this field before are beginning to assume educational functions and responsibilities. Industry is of course the best example. Many progressive industries now regularly maintain training programs for their employees which often compare favorably with courses given in colleges and universities. Not only to equip their employees better for their jobs, hut also to raise the general educational level, several large concerns have established programs of graduate and undergraduate scholarships. The educational value of summer jobs for undergraduates has been recognized to the point that such summer work is said to have been increased 300 per cent in the last few years, thus filling a need which has long been felt by technical schools, their students, and teachers. All this is perhaps secondary to an even more important point: the dawning recognition by industry of its responsibility for helping to pay the rising costs of higher education. It gets too many golden eggs from this hen to allow the old bird to languish. But another agency is coming into the picture. Institutions for hoth pure and applied research have multiplied during the last few decades. Some of these are attached to universities, but many of the largest are independent. Some of the large industrial research organizations belong in this category also, despite their industrial connections. are really exercising l.hese research an educational function, whether or not it is recognized. Young men often come into these laboratories frankly to further their professional training, sometimes leaving for further academic work and degrees. The frequency with which academic posts are exchanged with research positions in these organizations shows their close connection with the recognized educational field.
This relation will doubtless become closer and closer. When will we recognize it in a formal way? I n a well-organized research organization a young man may go through as rigorous a course of training and development as his classmate who is working for a higher degree in the university. When this is t r u e and I have no doubt it is in some cases-it might well he acknowledged by some kind of permanent and visible stamp like the graduate degree. This mark, whatever it might be, would not he a substitute for the recognized academic degree, nor would it need to, cheapen the latter. But many new elements and prac-: tices have come into the educational picture and change is so rapid that many more will appear. A proposal like this could be hoth useful and logical. We are a long way from a stage of development in which any such plan could be administered. Agencies would probably have to be "accredited" by some competent professional organization. Busy industrial or research executives would perhaps insist that they could not afford such distractions nor undertake semiacademic responsibilities. But all sorts of people are now performing social functions which they never would have dreamed of a short time ago. All business men are now (perforce, and with not too much complaint!) doing the job of the tax assessor and making out their income tax returns regularly. Of course, when a man has served a term in a research laboratory the fact goes into his personnel record and a future employer can find it if he is interested. So frequently the specifications read: "The Ph.D. or the equivalent." Well, here is a way in which we might start to regularize the equivalent, As things stand now, the m2.n who has eq~valent,,has to dig it out of the papers-ifhe can find it-while his classmate writes his equivalent with his name. To he sure, this is one of the facts of l i f e h u t some of the facts of life could perhaps be changed.
