i68 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Plates IV., v., VI. and VII. present the evolution of the individual 

 colleges during the last five or six decades in the matter of concentration 

 of the body of graduates into a few years. We may in a measure take 

 the degree of this concentration as an indication of the homogeneity 

 of the student body, and of the organization of the educational ma- 

 chinery that prepares the students for college. It will be noted that 

 while there is the greatest difference in the degree to which the con- 

 densation has gone on in different colleges, there is, nevertheless, a 

 distinct and uniform tendency towards this concentration, which must 

 in every case be set down as a distinct advantage to the college. The 

 ideal types may be said to be very nearly approximated by such curves 

 as those of Yale, Plate VI., Adelbert and Dartmouth, Plate IV., and 

 Alabama, Plate V. Such a curve as that of Dartmouth, which we 

 may take as the type which all the other colleges more or less closely 

 resemble, shows most clearly that the college has changed in sixty years 

 from a place to which a young man might go for study at any age, to 

 a place to which young men go as a matter of business, so to speak, and 

 at a definite period of their life. In other words, the going to college 

 has become a matter of social organization, with its very definite place 

 in the life of the youth. The intermediate decades, which lack of 

 space prevents our showing, present curves which show how gradually 

 this change has come about. It seems, further, a safe conclusion to 

 say that all the colleges that have not yet reached the high degree of 

 concentration which some show are, nevertheless, distinctly destined 

 to come to it, unless some unseen force changes their direction of 

 development. 



It should be noted, in passing, that an anomaly, such as the curve 

 of Syracuse for 1850-59, is due to the small number of cases. There 

 were but twenty-nine graduates in this decade. 



Plate II. presents in graphic form the same facts that have been 

 given in the tables. Division 'a' shows in the upper line, marked '1,' 

 the average age of all graduates as presented in Table III., 'Average 

 of Totals,' plus the data for decade 1900, so far as available, also 

 referred to above. The second line, marked *2,' gives the actual median 

 age of all graduates considered as students of one college. It will be 

 noted that, while the median has remained practically uniform 

 throughout, the average has varied, but with no marked tendency 

 either up or down. 



Plate II. 'b' presents the same facts as 'a,' except the units of 

 comparison are now colleges instead of individual students. While, 

 as would be expected from the small number of cases, the fluctuations 

 are greater than in the *a' division, the same absence of pronounced 

 trend in either direction is easily observable. 



