Mr. DANIELS. Oh, high school courses? Mr. MORTON. Those are high school courses. Mr. DANIELS. Has any consideration been given to extending it to college courses? Mr. MORTON. We offer some college courses now. Most of them are elementary courses in mathematics and the social sciences and modern languages, French and Spanish. Mr. DANIELS. Do you think there would be a sufficient demand for the institution of such a plan? Mr. MORTON. It is very likely. Mr. DANIELS. What do you base that on? Mr. MORTON. I base it on the experience we have had with the high school program. The first year that was used there were only about 45 schools in the State that incorporated this as a regular part of their high school offerings. This last year there were more than 400. I think what was useful for those high schools is a very good index of what could be anticipated in the way of service to people interested in working on college degrees. This is an idea that is foreign to the whole past experience of people. It takes a little while to get the idea in their minds that this is a practical thing to do. Mr. DANIELS. Have you witnessed any of the television programs that are presently being portrayed over the airwaves at the present time? Mr. MORTON. Yes, sir. Mr. DANIELS. And have any conclusions been reached as to the practicability of those courses? Mr. MORTON. A good many studies have been made on the effectiveness of teaching by television as compared to the effectiveness of teaching in a classroom. And apparently the capacity to learn is just about the same. We have had some of those experiments on our campus. However, they have been conducted at numerous other places. They have some at Penn State. They have had some at the Naval Academy, that I think of right offhand. But in the last 3 years on our own campus we taught to our students on the campus just for experimental purposes, second-year college English, freshman mathematics and freshman accounting, and in fact all the freshman courses in accounting last year were taught by television only with one control group that they could work on face to face and they found no difference of any significance in the learning ability of the students whether it was taught by television or taught face to face. Now, there are a number of studies that have been made and published on that subject. I do not have them here but I can get them for you if you are interested in looking at them. Mr. DANIELS. That is all, Mr. Chairman. Mr. ELLIOTT. Dr. Morton, is this business of correspondence courses a growing thing or declining? Mr. MORTON. I think it is growing, probably at no faster rate than the population growth of the country, however. But we will have some other witnesses in here today and tomorrow that I believe will probably be in a better position to discuss that question than I am. Dr. Adolfson from the University of Wisconsin ought to be asked that question because they do a great deal more intensive work at that institution than we have ever done at our institution. And he con sequently would be much better prepared to give you an answer to that question than I am. Mr. ELLIOTT. What about this business of library services by mail? How has that worked out in your extension division? Mr. MORTON. We confined our services only to people who had no access to local libraries. Mr. ELLIOTT. You serve throughout the State? Mr. MORTON. That is right. Mr. ELLIOTT. To people who write in for a particular book? Mr. ELLIOTT. Who maintains that library? Does the extension service maintain that? Mr. MORTON. It is a joint operation with the university library. As a matter of fact, extension services are joint operations with other parts of the university. The person we have who is our director of library extension is a joint appointment. The university library and the dean of the extension division have to agree on the appointment of that person and he or she is jointly responsible to the two. Mr. ELLIOTT. Could you give me any figures as to how many books circulate through that system in Alabama in a year, for instance? Mr. MORTON. Between 1,500 and 2,000. Mr. ELLIOTT. And those go to people who live in areas where the possibility of getting that particular book that they requestMr. MORTON. Where they have no other possibility. Mr. ELLIOTT. No other possibility. Mr. MORTON. That is correct. Mr. ELLIOTT. If they have a public library they get it there? Mr. ELLIOTT. If it is available. Mr. MORTON. However, if it is a specialized kind of material that they write to us and say, "Our public library doesn't have that." On the other hand, normally we ask them to have their librarian to write if they have a public library, and let us provide it through the local library. Mr. ELLIOTT. Now, this business of conference activities, I should think that is probably a very growing activity in the field of extension. Mr. MORTON. It is, indeed. That is correct. Mr. ELLIOTT. I should think in the sponsorship of those conferences you have certain lines that you have to draw, yourself, there are points beyond which conferences certainly Mr. MORTON. Well, Mr. Elliott, there are many associations that would like to come into a university and use its facilities and good name for the promotion of their own programs. We, I do not believe any university in the list that you will consider here will go for that sort of thing. Mr. ELLIOTT. So you do have certain guidelines and rules that you follow? Mr. MORTON. That is right. Mr. ELLIOTT. In the sponsorship of this growing business of conferences? Mr. MORTON. Institutional departments from which the knowledge will come that will be used in the conference, will have a hand in the planning of the conference and unless it has their approval and support, I believe most institutions have no part of it. Actually, the primary limitation on the growth of the conference program is the physical facilities that are available at most institutions and the number of days in the week. I do not think we can change the latter but we can do something about the former. At our institution in the last 12 years we have probably moved from the point where we were serving from 600 to 1,200 people in a year to where this year we will serve more than 30,000 in the conference activities without any real increase in our available physical facilities. If we could make an improvement in our physical facilities the possibilities there are just almost indefinite because this is a very flexible way for people to use the university. Almost anybody can spend a day or 2 days or a week or 2 or 3, some of them go as long as 6 weeks, and your consumer group can plan for times and places that they can fit into their regular programs and your best faculty people can take part in these short conferences quite readily. In many ways the conference program has more possibilities than any of the rest of these devices. Mr. ELLIOTT. Is it customary for the conferences held at a university to reimburse the extension service for its participation in the conferences such as it Mr. MORTON. By and large that is true. Mr. ELLIOTT. Well, now Mr. MORTON. Those operations are self-liquidating. In our State we have some very prosperous groups that come in there and we charge them enough to pay the bill of some of those that are not so prosperous. That is a limiting factor. Mr. ELLIOTT. So your conference activities in your extension association are self-sustaining? Mr. MORTON. Well, that is about right, yes. They could be, at any rate. Mr. ELLIOTT. You and I are talking a lot about Alabama, but that is the Mr. MORTON. I have excused myself on that ground. I am saying it is not the best but it is the one I know the most about. Mr. ELLIOTT. We have some 31 colleges in Alabama, and universities. Do they all have in some degree an extension department? Mr. MORTON. No; they do not. In that respect I believe Alabama is somewhat different from most of the rest of the States. At the time the university extension division was established it was established by the legislature and the Governor acting jointly as indicated in my testimony. For that reason there has been some hesitancy on the part of the other State colleges to establish any formal extension service, general extension service. The six State colleges that used to be teachers' colleges offer extension services in the sense that they offer night and Saturday classes for teachers. The agricultural college does the same thing. Alabama College, which was formerly the women's college and is now coeducational, does the same thing. So really about all you have in Alabama is the general extension program of the university plus the evening and Saturday class offerings for teachers in the area immediately surrounding the other State colleges. Mr. ELLIOTT. What about the private colleges of Birmingham Southern and Howard? Do they have extension divisions? Mr. MORTON. The Howard and Birmingham Southern and Springhill in Mobile offer night classes. Howard College has a fairly extensive program for Baptist ministers over the State but other than that they have no programs. Mr. ELLIOTT. You have done something there at the university that I think is unusual in that you have established a graduate school in certain courses at the Redstone Arsenal at Huntsville, Ala. I have had the privilege of visiting that school is the reason I know about it. That is the only school that I know of anywhere in the country that offers the graduate degrees off campus. Mr. MORTON. There are others. Dr. Sheats from the University of California is going to testify here and they have a very excellent and extensive program in that field that they have worked on with the Navy. You may like to question him on that point. We have some graduate offerings in Birmingham and have had for a number of years. They have revolved primarily around that Southern Research Institution and the engineering groups in that community. Mr. ELLIOTT. How many university extension centers do you have in Alabama? Mr. MORTON. We use the term there in a rather specialized sense and we have a term of "Center," capital "C," which we use in our own convenient sense there, in six of these locations at Huntsville, Gadsen, Birmingham, Montgomery, Dothan, and Mobile, we have buildings and a resident staff there of some size. We permit there part-time students to earn as many credits as they can toward their degree up to the point of satisfying the resident requirement which is 1 year at the central campus in Tuscaloosa. Now, the term "center," and the small "c," not the local sense, we are using it there, is characteristic of extension programs all over this country. But in those urban centers that I mentioned we have built up a pretty big program, sometimes faculty groups of some size maintain their residences there and we have good building facilities, two of them, and we are building a new building in Huntsville, right now. Mr. ELLIOTT. Does the Birmingham center, for instance, give the bachelor's degree? Mr. MORTON. No. Mr. ELLIOTT. It does not? Mr. MORTON. No. We permit students to earn all the credits except satisfy the residence requirement, which is 1 year in residence at the campus in Tuscaloosa. Mr. ELLIOTT. You need not answer this question unless you want to. How long will it take us to abolish that rule, the 1 year at campus? You do know that is coming, Doctor, but you do not have to answer it. Mr. MORTON. I am not afraid of questions. My friends and supporters in all of the communities where we operate those centers are working on me with baseball bats as far as that question is concerned every time I see them. That change is not going to occur, in my judgment, until population growth in the State and at the university forces it on us. Mr. ELLIOTT. That is exactly what I meant. I think that the population Mr. ELLIOTT. My own guess is that the existing university facilities will become so thoroughly filled in the next 5 years that we are going to have to back into doing some of the things that you questioned me about, not because we necessarily want to and when I say "we" I am talking about the university as a whole. Mr. ELLIOTT. I understand that. Mr. MORTON. But because we have no other alternatives in serving the people. We are either going to have to turn them away or going to have to do that. Mr. ELLIOTT. I have been reading the President's committee report lately. I foresee that the need for knowledge in this fast-moving world in which we live is going to force us to do some things. Mr. MORTON. Mr. Elliott, you are a better student of history than I am. You know institutions never voluntarily do anything. They are forced to do things. And circumstances are going to force that question that you asked me to be answered in the affirmative in the reasonably near future. I cannot tell you the timetable, but it is not going to be voluntary anywhere in the country. Mr. ELLIOTT. We are living in a day of exploding population as the writers have called it, a growing population. Mr. MORTON. The universities do not relinquish any of their prerogatives any more readily than Congress does, for example. Mr. ELLIOTT. I hope you do not get Mr. MORTON. Universities and Congress are both made up of good people and they function at somewhat the same rate of speed. Mr. ELLIOTT. I thank you very much, Dr. Morton and it has been a pleasure to have you and both of your associations and also the extension dean of the University of Alabama. Mr. MORTON. Happy to be here, sir. I will file that additional information you are asking for with you. Mr. ELLIOTT. Thank you very much. Our next witness for the day is Dr. Paul Sheats, who occupies the position of dean of extension of the University of California at Berkeley, Calif. May I say to you, Dr. Sheats, that we are very happy to have you with us today, and we look forward to the testimony which you bring. Dr. Sheats, my information shows that you have an A.B. degree from Heidelberg College at Tiffin, Ohio, an A.M. from Columbia University, and a doctor of philosophy from Yale University; that you have held the post of instructor of New York State College at Albany and instructor at Yale; worked for the U. S. Office of Education, associate professor, University of Wisconsin, educational director, Town Hall, New York City, and University of California since 1946. We are very happy to have you. We look forward to hearing your testimony. STATEMENT OF PAUL H. SHEATS, DEAN, UNIVERSITY EXTENSION, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Mr. SHEATS. Thank you, Mr. Elliott. My name is Paul H. Sheats, as you have indicated, and I am the dean of university extension at the University of California. My headquarters are on the Los Angeles campus of the university. I am |