UNIVERSITY STANDARDS 69 



United States, and the whole number of secondary schools, public and 

 private, was only 1,400. In 1907 the number had risen to 10,238, an 

 increase of over 700 per cent. And the modern high-school course 

 comprehends a broader training than was given by the college of fifty 

 years ago ! Everything would seem to be prepared for college work of 

 the highest efficiency. 



By common admission, quite the contrary is the case. Different 

 colleges are differently affected, but the same virus has found its way to 

 all. " The college has lost its deflniteness of aim," says ex-President 

 Woodrow "Wilson. " There is -no question," affirms Mr. Flexner, " that 

 the college is under fire. . . . The college faces the new and unforeseen 

 problems rather helplessly. It is bewildered. . . . Unless I greatly 

 err, the college has already lost a trick or two." "Notwithstanding 

 the enormous improvement and growth in machinery, plant and facili- 

 ties of our colleges," declares Mr. Birdseye, " their methods and sys- 

 tems are archaic and the average of their product — from the point of 

 good workmanship — has decidedly deteriorated." " The important 

 thing " — I quote from Flexner's " American College " — " is to realize 

 that the American college is deficient, and unnecessarily deficient, alike 

 in earnestness and in pedagogical intelligence; that in consequence our 

 college students are, and for the most part, emerge, flighty, superficial, 

 and immature, lacking, as a class, concentration, seriousness and 

 thoroughness. ... A youth may win his degree on a showing that 

 would in an office cost him his desk." There is " on the one side a 

 formidable array of scholars and scientists, libraries, laboratories, pub- 

 lications; on the other, a large miscellaneous student body, marked by 

 an immense sociability on a commonplace basis and wide-spread ab- 

 sorption in trivial and boyish interests. How are we to account for 

 the disparity? Clearly the college fails to enlist a respectable portion 

 of the youth's total energy in intellectual effort; either its sincerity or 

 its pedagogical intelligence is discredited by the occupations and diver- 

 sions which it finds not incompatible with its standards and expecta- 

 tions." " So far as the colleges are concerned," says Professor Munster- 

 berg, " one imperative change stands in the center of every platform : 

 scholarship must receive a more dignified standing in the eyes of the 

 undergraduates. ... So long as the best human material in our col- 

 leges considers it as more or less below its level to exert effort on its 

 studies; so long as it gladly leaves the high marks to the second-rate 

 grinds, and considers it the part of a real gentleman to spend four 

 years with work done well enough not to be dismissed, and poorly 

 enough never to excel, there is something vitally wrong in the aca- 

 demic atmosphere." President Lowell, in a recent address before the 

 University Convocation at Albany, said : " It requires little familiarity 

 with students to recognize that they not only regard the athlete or the 



