POST-GBADUATE DEGREES IN ABSENTIA. 257 



POST-GRADUATE DEGREES IN ABSENTIA. 



By A. L. BENEDICT, A.M ., M.D., 



BUFFALO. 



COLLEGE faculties have, within the last few years, conferred post- 

 graduate degrees with conservatism and even reluctance. The 

 time is long past when there was a germ of truth in the assertion 

 that A.M. was a decoration for principals of preparatory schools who 

 sent a sufficient number of students to college, or for young alumni 

 whose interest in their alma mater persisted after graduation. The 

 free distribution of honorary degrees, always a possible source of 

 evil, is especially dangerous in the case of professional degrees, since 

 the latter indicate the completion of an apprenticeship rather than 

 the attainment of learning and confer privileges of practical commer- 

 cial value and subject to abuse. 



Unfortunately, the reaction against the old custom of applying 

 degrees ' honoris causa ' and with no very definite requirement of scholar- 

 ship, has led the majority of colleges to insist that the master's and 

 the doctor's degree shall be reached only by courses of study pursued 

 under the immediate supervision of the faculty and has closed the 

 path to these honors for all who are unable to protract their residence 

 in a college town, except those who have distinguished themselves in 

 the most signal manner. It is, doubtless, presumptuous for criticism 

 of an educational system to emanate from one who has no closer con- 

 tact with education than the training of a professional student and the 

 practice of a profession, yet the general tendency of colleges to adapt 

 their methods and aims to conform with the demands of practical life, 

 encourages the writer in pleading in behalf of the worker in the great 

 university of the world, who still desires to keep in touch with the 

 scholarship of the college. 



Through long custom, we have one degree which is admirably 

 adapted to use as a decoration. This is the title of Doctor of Laws, 

 which has come to be the patent of practical success in any line of 

 activity, not incompatible with a reasonable degree of refinement and 

 intellect. Its significance is executive ability and wide influence of 

 the highest kind. If deservedly applied, it can never add materially 

 to the dignity of the recipient, while any tendency to its abuse is 

 checked by the reflex discredit cast upon the donor. 



The master's and doctor's degrees in arts and sciences, on the 

 other hand, represent purely educational attainments, of higher order 

 vol. lxii. 17. 



