COLLEGE CONDITIONS 407 



us your needs." Finally, it is announced in bold type that full college 

 credits will be given and that the fees will be moderate. One must not 

 fail to note that the athletic teams of this college rank high ; there are 

 less than seventy male students, of whom 60 per cent, are freshmen 

 and partials. Truly the scope of college work is expanding; dress- 

 making and folk dancing have attained the rank of university studies 

 and, judging from past occurrences, there is every reason to suppose 

 that they too will find their place along with other studies in literature 

 and pure science among qualifications for the Ph.D. As that degree 

 has now an actual commercial value to the possessor, the college should 

 make its requirements not too severe. 



But one can not contemplate this amazing increase in the number 

 of candidates for degrees without apprehension. It was not without 

 reason that a foreign visitor recently spoke of the American as " educa- 

 tion-mad." A note of alarm was sounded in France several years ago, 

 because there were 36,000 students in the universities and professional 

 schools ; it was thought ominous for the republic's welfare that so great 

 a number of Frenchmen were looking forward to professional life, to 

 abstinence from physical labor : how much greater is the danger here, 

 where colleges claim an attendance nearly ten times as great; the 

 greater proportion of the students are looking forward to teaching or 

 some profession. Kinds of degrees are multiplied to suit the capacity 

 or lack of capacity of the hoped-for students; hundreds of Ph.D.'s 

 are put forth each year with narrow specialized training, most of whom 

 expect to be employed in colleges where they may promulgate their 

 a priori doctrines respecting conditions and remedies. Manual labor 

 is despised; the youth of the land are flocking to the cities, which are 

 already overburdened with the class not "fitted for anything in par- 

 ticular"; the trades are passing into control of aliens who exploit the 

 country. They give opportunity to radicals for denunciation of a cold- 

 hearted community which permits them to wallow in wretchedness and 

 in a few years they return to their own land with a competence. 



The wide-open door to higher education is not just to the com- 

 munity. Many writers appear to hold that the salvation of this coun- 

 try depends on education of all the people and college canvassers find 

 in this a noble text. But secular education is no panacea for evils, 

 public or private; on the contrary, it may aggravate them. Intellec- 

 tual training in no wise affects the moral sense. Even in denomina- 

 tional colleges of the strictest type, direct moral instruction must be 

 subordinate and somewhat generalized; and in any event the value of 

 such instruction depends wholly on the standing of the man who gives 

 it. The average professor in our larger colleges is hardly so important 

 as the football or rowing coach, while in small colleges such instruction 



