THE COLLEGE 145 



1 in 600 of non-college graduates; or, in other words, a college gradu- 

 ate's chance of this kind of Who 's Who eminence is more than 5.6 

 times that of the non-college-bred man. If we assume that 27 per 

 cent of lawyers are college graduates, this 27 per cent forms 46 

 per cent of the eminent Who 's Who lawyers. Likewise the 24.7 

 per cent of college-bred clergymen form 53.3 of the divines mentioned 

 in Who 's Who, and although only 7.5 per cent of physicians have 

 received a college degree, this 7.5 per cent furnish 42 per cent of 

 the physicians who have attained Who 's Who fame. 1 



What does a year more or less matter in beginning professional 

 life, even if all college graduates entered the learned professions 

 (which they do not), if college-bred professional men have five 

 times the chance of other men to attain wealth and eminence? Why 

 should college graduates wish to enter business life younger than 

 twenty-two and a half years of age, if their college education will 

 insure them more than five times the chances of success they would 

 have had had they begun work four years earlier? How can we be 

 sure that this chance will be reduced only proportionately by taking 

 away one, two, or three years from the present college course? 



Why should we wish to lay rash hands on an institution so wonder- 

 fully adapted to our needs as the American college? How could we 

 have hoped for more overwhelming proof of its efficiency and success, 

 measured not only in the wider vision, broader intellectual sympa- 

 thies, deeper personal happiness of its graduates, and in all the in- 

 tangible and ineffable things of the spirit, but also, in this truly 

 unexpected and marvelous fashion, in the ringing coin of the market- 

 place? I confidently believe; therefore, that the college course of the 

 future will be four years. 



Will the college course of the future be wholly elective? When 

 President Eliot became president of Harvard College in 1869, only 

 one half of the Harvard college course was elective, but from that day 

 to this Harvard has led the way under his guidance toward unre- 

 stricted electives, not only in the college, but in the school. Since 

 1890, however, there are many indications that the pendulum is 

 swinging back again and common sense reasserting itself. Every one 

 believes in giving the student a wide choice in studies under certain 

 restrictions; the question is precisely whether or not the student 

 shall be guided in some degree by the accumulated experience of 



1 Professor Edwin Grant Dexter, " A Study of Twentieth-Century Success," 

 Popular Science Monthly, July, 1902. See also his " High-grade Men: in College 

 and Out," Popular Science Monthly, March, 1903. (Three times as many <t> /3 K 

 graduates, or high-grade graduates of twenty-two colleges, are shown to have 

 attained mention in Who 's Who as we should expect; in other words, if an ordi- 

 nary college graduate has five and one half times the chance of eminence of other 

 men, a college graduate of high academic rank has more than fifteen times the 

 chance of eminence.) The investigation is carried farther by Professor A. 

 Lawrence Lowell, " College Rank and Distinction in Life," Atlantic Monthly, 

 October, 1903. 



