tion in our national life, the large expenditures for schools and other agencies of education, the increasing extension and differentiation of education to meet the new and increasing needs of industrial and civic life have created a demand for such information as is contained in these bulletins in many and widely varied fields of education. From no other source can this demand be supplied than from this bureau, and from this bureau it should be met as fully as possible. This will require the printing of a large number of bulletins each year, and many of these should be printed in much larger editions. The limit of 12,500 copies for any edition of a bulletin should be removed, so that it may be printed in such numbers as in the judgment of the Secretary of the Interior may be necessary. Fifty thousand school officers can not be supplied from an edition of 12,500 copies of a bulletin on a subject in which they are all equally interested.

(24) Congress should again be requested to except the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Education from the law in regard to the time of submitting copy of annual reports and accompanying documents, so as to permit the copy for the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Education to be submitted for printing not later than January 15. The nature of this report is such that it can not under any circumstances be completed as early as the middle of October. Under present conditions it can hardly be completed earlier than January 15.

(25) When the vocational education bill which passed the Senate at the last session of Congress becomes a law, the vocational education commission provided for in the bill and of which the Commissioner of Education will, according to the terms of the bill, be the adviser and executive agent, and the employees of the commission should be housed in the same building with the Bureau of Education and have easy access to its library, its mailing lists, and other conveniences. For the effective work of the commission it must bring together at its office courses of study, plans of buildings and equipment for trade schools, schools of agriculture, and commercial schools, and other schools in which the commission is interested, and samples of school work in trades and industries. For the work of the bureau, which it now does, more room is needed and still more will be needed as its staff of experts and clerks is increased. There is now need for more and better arranged space for the bureau's library, which is increasing from year to year. The Nation needs an educational museum, a kind of perpetual educational exhibit in which there may be found at any time, properly arranged and catalogued, typical courses of study, samples of school furniture and equipment of all kinds, specimens of school work, plans and photographs of buildings, grounds, and whatever else will be helpful in enabling students of education and school officers and teachers to gain an accurate and comprehensive knowledge of purposes, methods, and results of education in this and other countries, and assist them in forming ideas for the improvement of their own schools and school work. This museum should, of course, be under the direction of the Bureau of Education and constitute an essential part of its equipment. I therefore renew the recommendation contained in the commissioner's statement for 1915 that plans be considered at once for the erection of a building that will afford ample room for the work of the bureau and allied activities of the Government, house the bureau's library, and furnish ample room for such collections of materials as those mentioned above.

Respectfully submitted.

The SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

P. P. CLAXTON,

Commissioner.

The number of persons enrolled in educational institutions in the United States is increasing at an average rate of half a million annually, on the basis of statistics compiled by the Bureau of Education. In 1910 the enrollment was 20,616,338; in 1913 it was 21,632,513; in 1914, 22,462,342; and in 1915 (partly estimated), 22,929,677. It would therefore be safe to say that during the past year there were 23,500,000 persons attending schools of some kind, and that for the year 1916-17 the figure will go well above 24,000,000. This would mean that approximately 24 per cent of the inhabitants of the United States are attending school, as compared with 19 per cent in Great Britain, 17 per cent in France, 20 per cent in Germany, and a little over 4 per cent in Russia. Obviously it is not intended that such a comparison shall be strictly interpreted. It should also be noted that the result would be much less favorable to the United States if daily attendance, rather than enrollment, formed the basis of the comparison, since some of the other nations have better attendance and a longer school term than the United States.

The following table shows the enrollment for four periods-1910, 1913, 1914, 1915.

1 Figures are for the school year 1914-15 unless otherwise indicated. Medical-school and law-school figures are in part for 1915-16. For detailed tables the reader is referred to Vol. II of this report.

2 Partly estimated.

IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Of immediate public concern is the increase in elementary and secondary public enrollment. The number of pupils in public kindergartens and elementary schools rose from 16,898,791 in 1910 to 17,934,982 in 1914, or an increase of more than a million in four years. In the same period public high-school students increased from 915,061 to 1,218,804, and for 1915 the corresponding figure was 1,328,984. The total secondary enrollment, public and private, for 1915 was 1,484,028 students, an increase of 110,367 over the previous year. For several years the proportion of public-school pupils in the total enrollment, elementary and secondary, has remained about the same; elementary pupils in public schools constitute 92 per cent of the total elementary enrollment, and public high-school students are approximately 89 per cent of the total secondary enrollment. There were 13,929 public and private high schools in 1915. Of the 11,674 public high schools reported, 8,440 had full four-year courses, as compared with 8,275 in 1914, and an enrollment of 1,236,099 students (1,126,456 in 1914). Ninety-three per cent of all public highschool students are now in four-year high schools.

HIGHER INSTITUTIONS.

The number of students in some types of higher institutions has increased steadily; in a few fields, especially professional education, there has been a decrease due to the insistence upon higher standards.

Colleges.-There were 237,168 students in the collegiate and resident graduate departments of universities, colleges, and technological schools for 1915, as against 216,493 in 1914 and 184,712 in 1910. The bureau's statistical list for 1915 includes 563 colleges, a reduction of 4 as compared with 1914 and of 33 as compared with 1913. States and municipalities controlled 95 of these institutions and private denominations or corporations 468; the 1914 figures were 93 and 474, respectively.

Professional schools. Students in the 123 law schools reported by the bureau in 1916 numbered 22,876, as compared with 21,923 in 1915, 20,958 in 1914, and 12,516 in 1891. There were 14,022 medical students in the 96 schools, a decrease of 2,898 from 1915. The number of medical graduates was 3,518, a decrease of 18. Theological schools had 10,588 students in 1915, as against 11,269 in 1914; there were 164 schools in 1915. Dentistry students increased from 9,315 in 1914 to 9,647 in 1915, the number of schools remaining unchanged. Teacher training.-The number of students in public and private normal schools passed the hundred thousand mark in 1915. Besides the 100,325 students in normal schools, 25,721 students were reported in public high-school training courses for teachers and 5,952 in simi

lar courses in private secondary schools, while 35,831 students in professional courses in education were reported by universities and colleges. The latter figure had not been called for in the previous years, so that a complete comparison for 1914 and 1915 is impossible. The increase, exclusive of the college and university figures, was 9,552, or less than 8 per cent.

TEACHERS.

Men and women teachers.-The number of teachers in the United States in 1914 was 706,152, of whom 169,029 were men and 537,123 women. In 1900 there were 163,999 men and 339,599 women; in 1910, 158,574 men and 471,633 women. The total number of teachers for 1913 was 683,415. In public elementary schools the number of men teachers decreased from 116,416 in 1900 to 89,615 in 1914; in the same period the number of women teachers in public elementary schools increased from 402,690 to 432,534. In 1900 teaching positions in public high schools were evenly divided between men and women; in 1914 there were 25,047 men, an increase of 14,875, and 32,862 women, an increase of 22,662.

Teachers' salaries.-The average annual salary of all teachers for 1914 was $525, as compared with $512 in 1913. The average salary is highest in the Western and North Atlantic States, with $699 and $696, respectively, and lowest in the South Atlantic States ($329). It varies from $234 in Mississippi to $871 in California and $941 in New York.

COST OF EDUCATION.

Expenditures for education in 1914, partly estimated, totaled close to $800,000,000. An estimate, making due allowances for the intervening two years and for items necessarily omitted, would easily bring the nation's current educational expenditure to a billion dollars. Public elementary schools cost approximately $500,000,000; public high schools, $70,000,000; private elementary schools, $52,000,000; private secondary schools, $15,000,000; universities, colleges, and professional schools, $100,000,000; normal schools, $15,000,000.

Of the $555,077,146 expended for public elementary and high schools in 1914, $398,511,104 was by the North Atlantic and North Central States. The amount expended by the State of New York ($66,000,000) was nearly twice that spent by the entire group of 9 States in the South Atlantic division, one-fourth more than the entire South Central division, and slightly less than the 11 States in the Western division. Pennsylvania is the only other State that expended more than $50,000,000 annually for schools. Illinois spent $39,007,314, Ohio $35,172,950, California $26,579,804, Massachusetts