Colleges Will Help Army Training Program
Institutions Will Cooperate Soon in Preparing Selected Inductees for Over-All Army Officer Examinations
DARTMOUTH'S ACADEMIC TRADITIONS have produced alumni who are vitally concerned with the place of a liberal arts college in a nation at total war. This article attempts to convey the Army's thinking on how colleges will be used to help train officers and technicians.
Many educators have long desired to see the higher educational system of the nation take its place in the war effort. Suggestions for that place have ranged from closing the colleges and universities for the duration to granting almost perpetual deferment to any individual who can get to college in the first place. The Army Specialized Training Program is not a compromise between these two extremes. It is a program which has been carefully thought out and worked out by the Army with the help of recognized civilian educators to produce men trained in specialized fields required by the arms and services.
The joint statement of the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy on "Utilization of College Facilities in Specialized Training for the Army and Navy" says in part:
"With the demands of a mechanical war and of steadily growing armed forces, the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard are in need of a flow into their respective services of large numbers of young men who require specialized, educational, technical training. Their own facilities of teaching staff and equipment are not sufficient for these needs The Armed Services will contract with colleges and universities which will furnish.... instruction in curricula prescribed by the Services, and also the necessary housing and messing facilities. Selection of those institutions which will be asked to undertake such contracts will necessarily be governed by their facilities for undertaking such responsibilities."
The directive under which the Army Specialized Training Program will operate provides:
i.The Army will select soldiers for such training from enlisted men who have completed or are completing their basic military training and who apply for selection for specialized training. Selection will follow the general plan used in assigning men to officer candidate schools.
2. All selected men will train in the grade of private, organized under a cadet system, and military training will be subordinated to academic instruction.
3. Curricula and standards, both academic and military, will be prescribed by the Army.
4. The assignment of soldiers to this program will begin in late February or early March of 1943.
Although there are other requirements and regulations, probably the above are of most interest to men eligible for assignment to the Program.
It is important to remember that the objective of the Program is to meet the needs of the Army for specialized technical training of soldiers for particular Army tasks. Army needs include engineers, doctors, mathematicians, and similarly trained professional and technical men.
It is equally important to remember what the Program is not designed to do. It is not designed to keep men in college. It is not designed to save the educational system. Most adverse criticisms are based on the assumption that the Program is supposed to do the very things for which it is not designed. It should be obvious that there is no desire on the part of the Army to cause any avoidable difficulty to any college. The problem of saving the educational system, however, is one which only the educators themselves can solve.
Many problems of a temporary nature arise during a transition period and this summary is perhaps best confined to a discussion of those aspects which are common to all concerned.
In brief, it is contemplated that inducted men, who have the equivalent of a high school education, will be given the basic military training course of thirteen weeks as required of all enlisted men. Those who apply for Army Specialized Training Program work and who qualify for it by satisfactorily completing required selection and screening tests will be assigned to a unit located at a college or university.
They will be on active duty during this assignment, under the direction of a commandant who will prescribe necessary regulations with respect to reveille, mess periods, inspection, and other military questions. They will not be college students in uniform—they will be soldiers in training for specialized and technical Army needs.
The Program contemplates a work week of twenty-four hours of class room and laboratory instruction, twenty-four hours of required study periods, six hours of physical conditioning and five hours of military training. Men will be off duty from late afternoon on Saturday until about six o'clock Sunday evening.
The Program is divided into twelveweek terms, and further separated into a basic program, consisting of three twelveweek terms, and a series of advanced programs which will run for as many additional terms as are necessary to provide the training required by the Army. Concentration during the basic program will be on physics, chemistry, mathematics, English, history and geography. Approximately twothirds of the instructional time will be devoted to physics, chemistry and mathematics, and the remaining one-third will be devoted to English, history and geography.
RAPID TRAINING NECESSARY
The object of the Program is to train men just as rapidly as possible, and to train them in the specialized fields required by the Army. Some men will, of course, be routed to officer candidate schools at the conclusion of the basic program; others will be recommended for promotion to such grades as technical sergeants or corporals; still others will fail to qualify at one level or another and will be returned to duty with troops.
At the conclusion of the basic program, men who qualify for specialized advanced work will, through a series of continuous selection and screening processes, be directed into advanced programs of medicine, dentistry, chemistry, physics, chemical engineering, rare languages, and similar subjects. The number of terms in advanced programs will vary considerably, as doctors, for instance, require longer formal training than the Army's specifications for mechanical engineers.
At the conclusion of the advanced program, qualified men will be directed to officer candidate schools of an appropriate arm or service.
College trained Army men who volunteer for this Program will be assigned to the highest phase of the basic or advanced programs for which they can qualify.
There are two questions about the Program which have aroused an unusual amount of comment. They are "Why a twelve-week term when some colleges are on a semester system?" and "Why prescribe curricula?"
THE TWELVE-WEEK TERM
The twelve-week term was selected by the Army, after consultation with educators, because it best meets Army requirements. It is the shortest period for which satisfactory curricula can be prescribed, and is therefore the most flexible period which the Army can use. The Army has been advised, for example, that the work in physics and mathematics called for by the basic program can be accomplished in three terms, or thirty-six weeks. Two sixteen-week semesters do not provide enough time. Three sixteen-week semesters provide twelve weeks more than are necessary. The object is to save every possible day.
The question of prescribing curricula is really quite clear, although it has been misinterpreted on various occasions. Some subjects are more important to the Army than others, and it does not intend to leave any portion of the content of this Program free in the sense that all varieties of college courses can be worked into it at the discretion of individual faculties. It is essential that all men attain prescribed standards even though the instruction is given in many colleges throughout the country. It is interesting that all of the educators who have worked on the details of curricula believe that curricula should be prescribed. In this case the reference is to educators concerned with the liberal arts as well as those who are engaged in technical fields.
There is no attempt on the part of the Army to tell any institution what must be said about any subject, or in what way it must be presented, or how it must be taught. Methods of instruction will of necessity vary within an institution as well as among institutions. Army requirement will be that the men working under the Program be able to pass over-all Army examinations in subjects of instruction.
Dartmouth sets the standards which undergraduates must meet before they will be awarded degrees. Business sets standards which determine personnel promotions. Industry sets standards to control the quality of products. Until there is a better way to obtain quality in individuals, the Army will continue to set standards of attainment and character in selecting and promoting members of the Armed Forces and in establishing standards of the Army Specialized Training Program.
The colleges have asked what they can do in the war effort. The Army Specialized Training Program tells them what they can do in the war effort—for the Army.
PLANS COLLEGE TRAINING PROGRAM Wilbur C. Munnecke '27, former vice presi-dent cmd general operating manager of theMarshall Field & Cos., Chicago, is responsi-ble for putting the Army's vast specializedtraining program into operation. His de-scription of the Army's objectives and re-quirements is carried in the accompanyingarticle written for this MAGAZINE.
Deputy Asst. Chief of Staff for Personnel, Service of Supply, U. S. Army
