COLLEGE CONDITIONS 405 



cade or more ago several institutions decided that the fourth year in col- 

 lege is unnecessary and agreed to accept in its place, as counting for 

 the degree, the first year in medicine, law or theology; and now comes 

 the startling announcement that work of similar kind is to be ac- 

 cepted in some cases for the third year also. Fifty years ago, the med- 

 ical course required two years; now it requires four; but the bachelor 

 degree and that in medicine can still be secured in six years as they 

 could fifty years ago. The writer offers no objection to this, as medical 

 study requires work, but such open confession of the degeneracy of col- 

 lege work was hardly to be expected. 



Business men are censured for lack of appreciation because they 

 hesitate to employ college-bred boys, 1 but this is unjust. The college 

 graduate has heard so much about the advantages of an "education" 

 that he expects to find a scramble for his services as soon as he waves a 

 diploma. Without loss of time, he discovers that, in so far as business 

 affairs are concerned, his sojourn within college walls has given him 

 little, it has fitted him for nothing and that it has unfitted him for much. 

 Not long ago, some of the New York dailies had columns of letters com- 

 plaining bitterly of the miserable pay given to college graduates in 

 business offices. Certainly the pay was small, so very small as to sug- 

 gest that the complainants would have been employed better in self-ex- 

 amination than in writing letters. There is no reason why a business 

 man should pay more to one incompetent clerk than he does to another. 

 Graduate or non-graduate, that is a matter of indifference; the most 

 efficient man receives most; the graduate must begin where others 

 begin — at the bottom — for, at the outset, all are alike ignorant of 

 business affairs. One must concede that college life does not tend to 

 make business men. The college code of honor would not be tolerated 

 for an hour in a business office; from time immemorial, cheating in 

 examinations has been regarded as justifiable to avoid failure, though 

 cheating to gain honors has always been looked upon as base. In the 

 former case, only the faculty is swindled, but in the latter, injustice 

 would be done to a fellow-student. In a business office a man must do 

 his work thoroughly, no 60 per cent, is a passing mark there. Even the 

 class room atmosphere is not always good. Too many college professors 

 know little of the world outside of their community and the utterances 

 of their favorite newspaper or magazine. They have acquired, sub- 

 jectively, many and serious convictions respecting the moral condition 

 of the community, chief among these being the inherent corruption of 

 commercial life. The student absorbs the doctrines and goes forth 

 burdened with the responsibility of eliminating the crimes, which he is 

 soon to discover are no more prevalent in business than in professional 

 life, being merely the outgrowth of poor human nature. 



1 This does not refer to graduates of schools of applied science. 



