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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Adult education is a very complex phase of American education, ranging from organized evening colleges to informal classes held at a YMCA or public library. This survey is restricted to the quantitative evaluation of foreign language teaching during the fall term of 1956 in adult education and correspondence programs sponsored by institutions of higher education. The results of the survey are based on 1,127 usable replies.
On 17 Oct. 1956 an exploratory conference on the role of foreign language study in adult education was held at MLA headquarters. Participants were Peter E. Siegle and James Carey, both staff members of the Center for the Study of Liberal Education for Adults, Peter S. Mousolite, and Francis H. Horn, then President of Pratt Institute. MLA staff participants included George Winchester Stone, Jr., Exec. Sec.; Theodore Andersson, then Dir. of the FL Program; and Kenneth Mildenberger, then Assoc. Dir. of the FL Program (Conference Chairman). Dean Mousolite agreed to undertake this quantitative survey; his assistant in the project was Richard Rudquist.
2 Questionnaires were sent to member institutions of the Association of American Colleges (721 schools), of the National University Extension Association (53), of the Association of University Evening Colleges (122), and to all junior colleges (591). Some institutions appeared on more than one mailing list, with the result that duplicate questionnaires were returned; however, no institution has been counted twice. The 1,127 institutions represented in this report comprise 75.8% of the total number (1,487) queried. As a result of the first questionnaire sent, 875 replies were received; a second questionnaire netted 252 additional returns. The data in the second group of replies did not alter by much the tentative percentages compiled from the first 875 replies, and it seems likely that the schools which have not replied would not alter the present percentages by much.
3 The actual enrollment numbers may be computed from the figures given. Thus, the Association of American Colleges had 14,200 registrants in foreign language adult classes; the French enrollments in this category accounted for 32.63% of the total (17.97%, 7.92%, and 6.74%); therefore, French enrollments numbered 4,633.
