| Sumario: | The article focuses on the profession of college teaching. With the demand for well-qualified college teachers threatening to exceed the supply, it is particularly disturbing to note that the profession seems not to be attracting many new aspirants. This state of affairs suggested the desirability of a study of the existing perceptions and evaluations of college teaching as a profession among those from whose ranks the members must come--the college students. It is useful, in analyzing a social problem, to view it at some of the different levels at which the various social sciences operate. The present problem, for instance, may be seen in terms of economics. In this frame-work, college teaching is not valued as a good investment in that too high a price must be paid for the moderate yields. On a sociological, ethnological level, one might note the materialistic values of the culture, the importance of salary in the selection of an occupation. College teaching does not appeal to upper-class students. For them it would constitute a downward socioeconomic move. It does not appeal to the average upwardly mobile lower-class and lower-middle class student, who feels he can climb faster and higher, and with less effort, in other segments of our economy. College teaching recruits only from those lower and lower-middle class students who possess a certain intellectual endowment and seriousness about scholarship.
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