Qualifications of Distributive Education Personnel in the State of Utah 1966-1967 as Compared to Criteria in Distributive Education Issues

During 1962, 15,782 businesses in the United States failed. Nearly half, 7,552 of the failures were in the retail field. Causes of failure ranged from insufficient capital to poor store location. However, more than ninety per cent of the failures in retailing are thought to be caused by a lack of training and experience on the part of store owners and their employees. In 1966, the state of Utah had the highest per capita business failure rate of any state in the nation as reported by Dun's Review Magazine. Undoubtedly business failures in Utah are also caused by the lack of training of store owners and their employees. Distributive education is a program of instruction in marketing designed to train people to become better distributive workers. By examining the qualifications of the distributive educators in Utah it may be possible to determine whether the training program for distributive workers is inadequate, whether distributive education personnel of our public schools are unqualified to provide proper training or if the fault lies elsewhere.