Soc. Rel. Men Polled on Recent Enrolment Drop

The Social Relations Department has just completed a report on itself, designed among other things to account for the department's recent sharp enrollment drop, head tutor Joseph A. Kahl announced yesterday.

In 1948 Social Relations had 500 concentrators, while now there are 360 in the department.

The study based on statistics called from a questionnaire given to all Social Relations concentrators at the beginning of the term, has been submitted to the faculty members for their consideration.

One of the reasons for the enrollment decrease, Kahl said, was the expansion of the General Education program, which allowed fewer men to take Social Relations 1a and 1b during their freshman year.

He also attributed part of the decrease to the fact that the department has now adjusted itself after a period of too rapid growth following its inception in '46.

GE Expands

Three conclusions of the study were: the field is not so easy as some people think; right now the men in the department represent an almost exact proportional cross-section of the college population as far as ethnic group, family income, and type of high-school education are concerned; there is no "best" or "worst" course or professor in the department.

Kahl substantiated the first conclusion by saying that on the questionnaire 25 percent of the respondents signified that they received better grades in courses outside the department than in Social Relations. Fifty-nine percent of the students said they got about the same marks inside the field as out, and only 12 percent claimed better records in their departmental work.

"Students like professors who approach the world the way they do," Kahl continued, and the value of a course and professor not only depends on the professor's personality and competence, but on the subject matter, and the interest and personality of the student. There can, he said, be no "best" professor, of course.