Turning Point

A U. S. business facing a bearish future is Public Education. Its raw material is diminishing. When the public elementary schools open this month, they will have some 20,200,000 pupils, 100,000 fewer than last year. Primary school enrollments, which piled up to an alltime peak in 1930, have been sliding downhill ever since, and the end of the slide is not in sight. Chief reason is the birth rate, which has been falling since 1921. By 1940 there will be one-fifth fewer children under ten in the U. S. than there were in 1930.

Last week New York University's Provost Rufus Daniel Smith, who believes the decline in the birth rate is "a turning point in human history," predicted these results for U. S. education:*

P:There will be fewer schools, smaller classes.

P:Many young women who have been planning to teach had better prepare for civil service or business.

P:For a stationary population, professional schools may have to limit the number of lawyers, engineers and architects they turn out, shift to training youth for new vocations.

P:As old people become more numerous than young ones, social security will com pete more aggressively with education for a share of public funds.

P:Colleges, already a "highly competitive, largely unorganized industry" as "only a slight acquaintanceship with scholarship offerings and athletic recruiting will testify," have about five more "vears of grace" before the ebb in the tide of births reaches them.

Heavily endowed private universities, which now have waiting lists, will survive, but big urban colleges that depend largely on stu dent fees will be left high & dry unless they find "new avenues of service." C, With smaller families, better incomes, more children are likely to go to private schools. Today private schools have a bigger proportion of all school children (9%,) than they had in 1920.

*In the September Survey Graphic.

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