74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Men from foreign universities are astonished to find that Harvard, 

 Yale, Princeton and other great universities are known to the public 

 generally only as football associations; that the newspapers so rarely 

 make reference to the eminence of men composing the faculties of those 

 universities, that such references as are made are too often in the shape 

 of squibs ridiculing statements charged upon them by irresponsible re- 

 porters. Little is said now about sitting at " the feet of Gamaliel " and 

 apparently Gamaliel's race has disappeared. It is no wonder that the 

 callow graduate of a few years' standing announces to the gaping under- 

 graduate that he never derived any advantage from the professors and 

 that his present greatness is due wholly to himself. 



The effect on the morale of our colleges is increasingly bad ; alumni 

 of less than fifteen years' standing seem to think that they can show 

 their love for alma mater best by a gift for a grandstand, a stadium or 

 something else to increase interest in team exhibitions; the athlete is 

 the college hero, the mere student is a " dig " without college spirit ; 

 worse than all, the new generation of college instructors has grown up 

 in this atmosphere and favors continuance of the condition; appeals of 

 a highly-paid coach or of the team manager do not fall on deaf ears 

 when addressed to such instructors, who are not likely to check the 

 growing tendency to lower the standard in favor of efficient athletes. 



It is impossible to ignore the fact that this tendency exists. The 

 college curriculum was arranged so as to require much time for actual 

 preparation outside of the class-room ; yet men, who during a consider- 

 able part of the college year are unable to give serious attention to 

 study, succeed in " catching up " so as to pass examinations and in 

 obtaining their degrees. The usual reply to this argument is that so- 

 and-so, who was very prominent in sports, graduated at the head of 

 his class and did well afterward. Very true. And the writer knows a 

 man who, throughout his college course, earned his livelihood as night 

 watchman for the custom house on a New York pier, yet graduated at 

 the head of his class and made his mark afterward in the world's affairs. 

 But to offer such men as representing the average student is as absurd 

 as would be the assertion that Aristotle typified the Greek intellect or 

 that James J. Jeffries typifies American physique. The average stu- 

 dent finds much study a weariness to the flesh; glee clubs, athletics 

 and the rest increase the weariness; they absorb the chief interest and 

 there remains only a petty fraction of the original interest to be de- 

 voted to study. Other men, loving study quite as little, spend their 

 energy in " rooting " for the team and they too receive their degrees. 



But the matter of good faith must not be neglected. This wild 

 craze for outside courses is of comparatively recent origin. The great 

 funds acquired by our colleges were given for the training of the mind, 

 not for the training of the body; the money for gymnasiums and the 



