1 84 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



been thoroughly imbued with the idea that the chief object of his 

 teachers is to impose tasks and limit his personal liberty. He feels a 

 certain degree of exultation in ' getting ahead ' of those whose duty it 

 is to be vigilant, and he carries this spirit to the college. The tempta- 

 tion to cheat continues as long as fetters exist, whether actually or in 

 his imagination. 



3. The difficulty is least where there is the greatest freedom in the 

 election of courses of study, and greatest where a fixed curriculum is 

 maintained with a high standard for graduation. The existence of a 

 curriculum implies rigidity. The student must endure much arduous 

 labor because it is prescribed. He may be informed that it will do him 

 much good in due time, but he is skeptical, and cheating is the most 

 natural resource. 



4. The difficulty is observed to be greater in technical and profes- 

 sional schools than in those where much of the work is avowedly for the 

 sake of culture. In the technical school the cost to the student is high. 

 He wishes to begin applying his acquisitions to the work of self-support 

 as soon as possible. To fail in an examination may mean the spending 

 of many hundreds of dollars extra, and the loss of a year of valuable 

 time from remunerative employment. He regards the entire subject 

 from a commercial standpoint and treats it as such. 



The most conspicuous tendency in America of late years has been 

 toward the substitution of urban activity for rural quiet. Urban stand- 

 ards are increasingly established in all the more prosperous institutions 

 of learning outside of the cities. The gradual extinction of the honor 

 system in colleges, as we understand this term to-day, seems, there- 

 fore, inevitable. Such a conclusion, though unwelcome, is not wholly 

 pessimistic. The honor system where it now exists should be care- 

 fully guarded and everything possible should be done to encourage 

 self-government in colleges, to develop the feeling of responsibility 

 among the students for the integrity of the degrees conferred by the 

 institution with which they are identified. The reputation of the col- 

 lege suffers irreparable injury if the public has reason to believe that 

 its degrees are won by fraud. But in general society the honor system 

 has its substitute in the unwritten code maintained by people of refine- 

 ment and social culture. When interests clash or crime is committed 

 recourse is had to the law of the land, and well known rules of legal 

 procedure are applied. By the general public a man of honor is rec- 

 ognized as such after his habits of speech and action have been mani- 

 fested and his character has become thus established. Whatever may 

 be the differences of standard professed, college ethics will be con- 

 formed to the ethics of general society. Every student should be at 

 least provisionally assumed to be a man of honor; and he should be 

 treated as such so long as his conduct warrants the assumption. In 

 the great majority of cases his word can be accepted, just as this is 



