Professors of Work

From the business and professional world into the academic world went 300 "professors of work" last week, to help celebrate the tenth anniversary of the famed "cooperative plan" of Antioch College at Yellow Springs, Ohio. Members of Antioch's field faculty, representatives of 175 business and professional firms in 15 States, the Professors of Work supervise the periodic excursions of Antioch students into business. They are an essential part of Antioch's scheme, yet few of them had ever before seen Antioch's campus or their professional colleagues.

Plant. The physical background they saw looks much as it did in the regime of Antioch's famed, progressive first president, Horace Mann (1853-59). Though a new science hall, a new gymnasium, a library and a tearoom known as "Ye Anchorage" have been built on the big campus that has never been formally landscaped, still standing are the original four dingy brick buildings with their queer, concave pointed towers. Hard by is the college's Glen Helen, a hilly, 1,000 acre forest tract where a century ago lived a Communistic or Owenite colony. The village of Yellow Springs, named for the oxide of iron in its waters, resembles an oldtime New England town, for Horace Mann attracted many a New England settler when he moved from Massachusetts to Ohio.

Study & Work. Half of Antioch's 650 students were absent last week, for Antioch divides its undergraduates into A and B groups, sends the A's off for five or ten weeks while the B's study on the campus. Then the groups swap places. Because study time is thus interrupted, the course lasts six years, though bright students may finish in five. Antioch was the first Liberal Arts college to adopt this co-operative plan, previously employed in the University of Cincinnati Engineering School.

Picking its students carefully by means of questionnaires and interviews as well as scholastic credits, Antioch aims to enroll only those who will profit by its system. Next autumn it will take in 45 fulltime students, applicants too young to go into outside work. These will take special courses, pay $425 for their tuition. A & B students pay but $300. Because the workers earn part of their way, their average expenses are not much more than $500. Minimum expenses for a fulltime student will be about $1,000.

Soon as possible after matriculation, Antioch freshmen are sent out to work. Some are prepared for it by studying in "gangs" under their resident Professor of Work, C. 0. Schaub, an able, experienced Virginia agronome. The Glenn Gang goes down into Glen Helen to clear underbrush and chop firewood; other gangs do painting, cleaning, repairing of college buildings and equipment. For this work they are paid, their earnings increasing with their responsibilities. Early in their career they take a course in "Personal Accounting and Finance" which trains them to care for their money. Then Antioch sends them out into business. If after two weeks' trial it suits them, they must remain in the job a year. Many a big firm takes in Antioch students--Macy's, Marshall Field, Swift, Dennison Manufacturing Co., International Harvester, Detroit Edison, Cadillac, Ford, National City Bank, General Electric, Westinghouse, as well as local firms in Springfield and Dayton, Ohio. Though it is too soon to point to any nation famed Antioch graduates, Antioch finds its alumni on the whole sticking to the trades they have chosen, eminent in the firms with which they started out.

Co-operative Educator. Many an Antioch field worker last week wanted first to meet the tall man who was eagerly, proudly showing visitors around his plant. President Arthur Ernest Morgan went to Antioch first as a member of its Board of Trustees. He soon (in 1922) became president of the obscure, dying college, reorganized it completely. An engineer, he was mostly self educated. His only degree is an honorary D. Sc. from the University of Colorado. Experienced in flood control, he helped harness the Miami River after the disastrous Dayton flood of 1913. Then he turned to education, established schools for the children of his many subordinates, helped found Moraine Park School in Dayton. He looked to Antioch as a place to carry out his ideas, for its president, Horace Mann, had fought valiantly but ineffectually against local conservatism. He took it over, built up a system and a theory of education which has made Antioch many a friend in the business world as well as in pedagogy. A notable friend: Vice President Charles Franklin Kettering of General Motors, who gave Antioch its $350,000 science building.

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