6o 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



' THE CASE OF HARVAED COLLEGE 1 



By Professor J. McKEEN CATTELL 



COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



ri THE free elective system, three years of college in preparation for 

 -*- the professional school, personal freedom for the student, these 

 are tenets that Harvard has made familiar to us all. But the pendulum 

 now swings backward. It is already decided that the work of the 

 student is to be concentrated and dispersed by faculty decree; that 

 preparatory schools are to be established for freshmen. We are told 

 that the four-year college course should not be shortened, that " every 

 college graduate ought to be equipped to enter any professional school " 

 and that " the professional schools ought to be so ordered that they are 

 adapted to receive him." " College students are amateurs, not profes- 

 sionals " ; they should study " a little of everything," and though each 

 should also have " a firm grasp of some subject," it should lie " out- 

 side of his vocation." " The college may be regarded as the last period 

 of play." 



The scheme on which the president, fellows, overseers and faculty 

 of arts and sciences of Harvard University have united has one merit; 

 they announce that they do not intend to enforce it. Compulsory con- 

 centration is useless and compulsory dispersion is bad. Neither good 

 students nor those who do not want to study will be helped. Any such 

 scheme breaks down under the load of its artificiality. The field of 

 knowledge is divided into four divisions for purposes of dispersion, but 

 no faculty can put asunder what God has joined together. According 

 to his interests and needs the student may find his concentration scat- 

 tered through the four divisions and his dispersion within a single 

 department, as well as the reverse. In my own subject he can find 

 boundless dispersion — witness the fields tilled at Harvard by Pro- 

 fessors James, Miinsterberg, Eoyce, Palmer, Santayana and Yerkes — 

 or he can choose a unified and consistent course by innumerable com- 

 binations of studies. 



Ten years ago a committee from the Harvard department of edu- 

 cation made a detailed study of the programs of study of 372 mem- 

 bers of the class of 1901. It was concluded that only 7.8 per cent, ap- 

 peared open to the charge of undue specialization, of whom one third 



1 An address read after the annual dinner of the Harvard Teachers' Asso- 

 ciation in the Harvard Union on March 12, 1910. 



