"It is the purpose of the department to offer to students intending to become teachers an opportunity to obtain a technical preparation for their profession. Hitherto practical training has been thought necessary for teachers of primary schools only, but similar training is very desirable for teachers in high schools and colleges also. Indeed, it is already becoming increasingly difficult for college graduates without practical and theoretical pedagogical knowledge to secure good positions. In addition to the lectures open to undergraduates, courses will be organized for graduate students only, conducted with special reference to preparation for the headship and superintendence of schools."
But the teaching trade is getting choked. There is too much supply. Girls are going to college in hordes. Graduating from college, looking for work, there is usually just one kind of work toward which they are mentally alert. Their college experience has seldom roused their minds toward any other kind of work. They start to teach. They drug the market. And so the teaching trade, the great occupation of unmarried "middle class" women, ceases to be able to provide those women, as a class, with an adequate field of employment.
It is a turning point in the economic history of the class.
At the 1909 annual convention of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, in Cincinnati, Miss Susan Kingsbury (acting for a committee of which Mrs. Richards, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Miss Breckenridge, of the University of Chicago, were members) read a real essay on "The Economic Efficiency of College Women."
This essay was not written till detailed reports on income and expenditure from 377 self-supporting college graduates had been got together.
Out of these 377 there were 317 who were teachers. There were 183 who had followed up their regular college course with from one to eight years of graduate study. The capital invested in education was from $2500 to $3500 and often amounted to $7000 because of advanced work and travel. After all this preparation, the average income achieved may be sufficiently disclosed in the one fact that, among those graduates who had been at work for from six to eight years, more than seventy per cent. were still earning less than $1100.
After drawing a complete statistical picture of the case, Miss Kingsbury concluded with certain questions and recommendations, here condensed, which show the new economic needs of "middle class" women knocking at the door of present "middle class" education:
"Should not the over-supply of teachers be reduced by directing many of our graduates into other pursuits than teaching? This will place upon the college, just where the responsibility is due, the obligation of discovering what those opportunities are and what preparation should be given.
"This organization should endeavor to arouse in our colleges a sense of responsibility for knowing the facts with regard to their graduates, both social and economic, and should also endeavor to influence our colleges through appointment secretaries, to direct women, according to fitness, into other lines than teaching.
"Should not courses be added to the college curriculum to give women the fundamental principles in other professions, or lines of industry or commerce, than teaching?