Fifty Million Students

For the 17th straight year, the colossal U.S. educational system is under way with more students than ever--49.3 million (out of a population of 184 million) in all public and private schools, from kindergarten through graduate school. Since last year, estimates the U.S. Office of Education, enrollment has risen by 1,400,000, or 3% The breakdown:

Elementary High

Public 28,700,000 9,500,000

Catholic 4,469,000 933,000

Private 831,000 267,000

Special 200,000 100,000 34,200,000, up 1.2% 10,800,000, up 7%

U.S. higher education will enroll 4,300,000 students (about 2,545,600 public, 1,754,000 private), up a plump 7 1/2% Postwar Babies. The sharp rise in all U.S. high school enrollment is a consequence of the high 1945-47 birth rate, which colleges in turn will start feeling in 1965. Colleges are now mainly confronted with rising ambition: from 14.6% in 1950. the proportion of Americans aged 18-24 seeking degrees reached 23.1% in 1960 (and 38% in California, the top state in college enrollment). All this fuels a rise in the median number of school years completed by adult Americans--from eight years in 1940 to eleven today.

Worst hit by these pressures are some 209 big cities and their suburbs, which together got 85% of the 28 million rise in U.S. population between 1950 and 1960. Suburbs now pay most of the U.S. public school bill, which rose 153% in the decade, to $16.5 billion last year--more than $91 for every American.

No one can yet predict the cost this year, but needs are obvious. Latest estimate of the public school classroom shortage is 156,000 against 132,400 a year ago. The defeat of President Kennedy's aid-to-education bill left many a school system in the lurch--although Congressmen who opposed the bill last week voted to help their own "federally impacted" districts, where the loss of such long-established aid would be political suicide. One clue to possible taxpayer reaction is the fact that last year 23% of all U.S. school-bond issues were rejected, including 37% in Michigan and 40% in Minnesota.

The Teacher Scandal. Yet the main shortage is teachers. The nation's public and private schools not only need 3% more teachers--or 1,684,000 in all--but also much better ones. Last week U.S. Commissioner of Education Sterling McMurrin called this the "basic" problem facing U.S. schools in 1961. "It is a national scandal,'' said he. "that large numbers of our teachers are inadequately prepared in the subject matter they teach.'' More pay might help. U.S. public schools last year paid classroom teachers a record average wage of only $5,215, and the variation between states was such that no Mississippi teacher got more than $5,500 and no California teacher got less.

Nonetheless, innovations and reforms abound as the year begins. New ways of teaching science, math, reading and foreign languages will reach more youngsters than ever. From noon seminars to Saturday morning classes, more time will be spent at studies. TV teaching will reach nearly half the classrooms in California. In six Midwest states, two DC-6 airplanes will beam taped lessons to earthbound schools under the Ford Foundation-financed Midwest Program on Airborne Television Instruction, which by June may reach 2,000,000 students.

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