ies were performed by Nutting, Mason, Jackson, and Reed. William Nutting (1959, pp. 439 442) observed that one of the major impediments to the development of adequate teacher preparation programs in Liberia was an absence of census and educational records on which to base effective policy decisions. Since that time, record keeping in Liberia has improved to some extent, and these records tend to reveal a dismal state of teacher preparation (Mehaffey, 1980, pp. 161 181).
M. J. Mason (1971, pp. 184 190) found that most of the country's elementary teachers have had than a high school education, and little or no professional training. M. Bolor (1974, p. 96) found that low levels of formal educational attainment, and generally low skill levels tend to characterize the members of Liberia's teaching corps at all levels of the system.
By 1975, R. Reed (p. 56) found that only 29 percent of the country's secondary school teachers had less than a college degree, and that 19 percent had a master's degree or higher a significant improvement in each instance over a five year time period. Teacher preparation programs in Liberia, however, remained inadequate. One problem with teacher preparation in Liberia is the quality of the teacher training institutions, a topic which is discussed in greater detail in the following chapter of this study. Unfortunately, in Liberia, the demands and expectations with respect to teacher training institutions have often been subverted to adhere to more immediate goals of the bureaucrats administering the institutions and the country's educational programs (Jackson, 1982, pp. 1 22).
The Florida State University Studies
Three recent studies dealing with Liberian education were conducted by a consortium of Florida State University, Howard University, the Institute for International Research, and the State University of New York at Albany. These three studies are (1) The Feasibility of Integ...