B’nai B’rith Announces Study on Career Plans of Jewish Youths

B’nai B’rith announced today its Vocational Service Department was undertaking a study to discover if Jewish youths make good on the college and career plans they formulate as high school students.

The study reported at the annual meeting of the B’nai B’rith Vocational Service Commission, held here, was a follow-up of an extensive BBVS survey conducted in the early 1060’s of 6, 649 Jewish students in the 10th, 11th and 12th grades. It will seek to determine whether the youths, now in college or earning a living, attended the schools of their choice and entered the fields they hoped for while in high school, and how they compare, as Jews, to the general population in successfully completing their career plans.

Milton Berger of Philadelphia, chairman of the Commission, said the study will enable educational and vocational guidance personnel to understand what factors affect the career decisions of Jewish youth so that they may utilize this information in their current counseling. “If we know why Jewish youngsters succeed or fail in college and in their designated professions,” Mr. Berger said, “we can offer more competent guidance to today’s youth who encounter greater problems because of the increasing competition for college admittance and the growing specialization in the labor market.”

Rabbi Jay Kaufman, executive vice-president of B’nai B’rith said the study will “suggest some creative approaches” to increasing the number of workers in the Jewish communal service field. Noting that 19 percent of the youths interviewed in the early BBVS survey expressed an interest in this work, Rabbi Kaufman said the follow-up study should show why this interest waned and what steps can be taken to correct the problem. “If nearly one youth in five can consider Jewish communal service work, but not one youth in 100 enters the field, we must be doing something wrong,” Rabbi Kaufman said. “This study, hopefully will provide some answers.”