Herbert Parnes

A Prof's Life: It's More Than Teaching Herbert Parnes

A boy sixteen years of age enters college in the depths of the depression of the 1930's to prepare for governemt service, but almost by accident ends up in a graduate program in economics that leads ultimately to a Ph. D. degree and to professorships at the Ohio State University, Princeton University, and the University of Minnesota. In addition to his roles as teacher, researcher, and administrator in university settings, his service as consultant to an international organization allowed him and his family to reside in Paris for a year and to enjoy considerable travel in Europe. For the quarter century prior to his retirement he directed a major research project sponsored by the U. S. Department of Labor that has continued even into the beginning of the third millennium, resulting in more than three thousand studies by social scientists that have served both the policy interests of government and the research interests of academics. Now, sixty-five years after this story began, the author turns to a completely different kind of writing-the subject of this book.