NECESSITY OF UNIVERSITY EXTENSION WORK STRPSSED

In a recent speech on the importance of university extension work, Philander P. Claxton, United States Commissioner of Education, recommended that the Federal Government appropriate $15,000,000 a year to induce the states to take greater interest in this work.

University extension work should be provided, he pointed out, to meet more than 30,000,000 people in the United States who are in need of various kinds of instruction. Foremost among these are the 4,500,000 returned soldiers who were preached to about the value of education, but denied the means to get it. Next are 10,000,000 laboring men and women with their short hours and large pay, well able to devote the time and money to study. The foreign element, he listed next, men who especially need this educational treatment to make them better citizens and better able to understand the government of which they are a part when they come to this country.

Another important group are the 15,000,000 women who soon will have the ballot and who need and want instruction in national issues before they will be able to properly use the ballot. Into another group Mr. Claxton put the 2.500,000 young men and women who become of age each year and of whom but a small proportion are privileged to go through high school.

Mr. Claxton is endeavoring to help speed on the great strides made in university extension work during the last few years. Last year, he said, 42 states had some form of university extension work 129 institutions had some provisions to carry its work beyond the walls of the institutions and from this, 72,000 students were registered in classes, 120,000 were either in classes or doing their studies by correspondence, 2,000,000 others were reached by lectures, and 5,000,000 more were reached by illustrated lectures and moving pictures of an educational character.

The magnitude and importance of the work was shown in a statement that in all the colleges and universities of the country the regular student bodies number only 300,000 young men and women.