University Opens Placement Office For Student's Aid

John W. Teele '27, Boston business consultant and public panel member of the War Labor Board, has been appointed Director of the Office of Student Placement as of July 1, the University announced today.

Designed to help students at Harvard plan for post-college employment and do make Harvard graduates useful in society after they receive their degrees, the Office has two main objects in its program, as outlined by Director Teele this week.

It will, first of all, have a vocational guidance and consultative program to help men while they are here, and it will, secondly, endeavor to place graduates in positions for which they are best suited.

Program Just Starting

Teele emphasized, in an exclusive interview with the SERVICE NEWS, that the precise details of his program are no more complete than are his offices which are now being built in Weld Hall. He said that the problem of student placement was of fairly large scale and was tied up with the whole problem of education.

Asked whether the problem might not affect the individual's choice of courses while in college, Teele pointed significantly to an advance copy of "General Education in a Free Society," the report of Dean Buck's University Committee on the Objectives of a General Education in a Free Society, which is scheduled for public release on August 1.

More than just a clearing house for job offers and job applicants, the Student Placement Office, according to Teele, will study the whole problem of how best to place men. It will examine from time to time the intelligence and vocational tests developed at Stevens Institute, in Hoboken, and elsewhere, though as yet there is no planned program to use such tests. Whether those tests will be important is hard to say, said Teele; results may be deceptive in that men of high intelligence may lack the drive and personality necessary for some types of work.

The Office is primarily for the College, Teele stated. Most of the graduate schools have their own placement offices, he said, indicating the Business School's Office, run by Dean Edmond F. Wright, as a primary example.

The Student Employment Office, which seeks to place students in spare-time jobs while they are at College, has operated continuously through the war, said Teele. The Alumni Placement Office, which was supported chiefly by the Alumni Office, closed in 1941, he continued.

Teele said that the Student Employment Office would not operate as an alumni placement bureau, that it would not assume the task of permanent placement of all Harvard graduates. The program of the Office, he said, would try instead, to prepare students to cope with whatever employment problems than might come up in their post-graduate careers.

Instead of being an agency by itself, Teele remarked, the Office ought to be worked into the placement activity of the College departments