Only Junior College in U.S. Run by Jews Reopened for Term

With 400 students enrolled in its first week, registration for the People’s Junior College, conducted by the Jewish People’s Institute of Chicago, has been closed and classes have started in earnest. This was the announcement made today by Dr. Philip L. Seman, general director of the institute, pointing out how the J. P. I. met a serious situation, which had arisen in the educational circles of Chicago as a result of the closing of the public Crane Junior college by the Chicago School Board.

As many of the former Crane college students are residents of the neighborhood in which the J.P.I. is located, Dr. Seman decided upon and carried through the organization in two months of the only accredited junior college in the United States to be conducted under the auspices of a Jewish organization.

With the only public junior college in the Chicago area closed, students with limited means faced the probability of being forced to discontinue their college work entirely. But the People’s Junior College is meeting this situation to their complete satisfaction, the registration proves. The fee, Dr. Seman explained, charged students is from one-half to one-third that which they would have to pay to continue their education in any of the universities or colleges in the Chicago area.

The junior college, which is an all-day affair, has a faculty of sixteen members, who devote their full time to this work. They were taken from the faculties of the University of Chicago and the Crane Junior College. Each one is a specialist in his field.

In all more than sixty courses are being offered this semester in the college’s curriculum. Students are enrolled in pre-medical, pre-legal, pre-dentistry, commerce and liberal arts courses.

Among the subjects taught are physics, chemistry, botany, biology, general science, languages, mathematics, social sciences, psychology, history, literature and economics. In every instance where a laboratory is needed, the Jewish People’s Institute is able to furnish a fully-equipped laboratory for each subject.

“We are unusually well equipped at the J.P.I. to carry out fully the work of a junior college,” Dr. Seman declared. “The J.P.I. has one of the finest reference libraries in the city of Chicago and our laboratories were designed and equipped with the benefit of the student foremost in mind. We have the proper type of class-rooms and are able to supply a true college atmosphere for the students.”

Study of registration figures rereals that about eighty per cent of the registration is in the first-year class and most of them are in the pre-medical and commerce courses.