COLLEGE STANDARDIZATION 531 



least six professors giving their entire time to college work. (2) It 

 must require for admission not less than four years of high-school 

 work in addition to the preceding full work of the grammar school. 



(3) It must give a course of four full years before granting its degree. 



(4) It must have a productive endowment of at least $200,000. This 

 of course excludes the valuation of land, buildings, equipment, tuition 

 fees or special benefactions. 



If this law were adopted and enforced in every state of the union it 

 would exclude five-sixths of the institutions now bearing the name of 

 college or university. Whether such a standard is just or unjust is 

 not for these institutions to determine. It depends partly on the 

 standards of the preparatory high schools that are under the control of 

 the state. No institution should be permitted to assume the name of 

 college whose standard of admission is so low as to allow access for 

 students who have not completed the full high-school course of four 

 years. It depends also on the consensus of opinion among the majority 

 of those who are doing college work in the different countries of the 

 civilized world. The standard of admission just set forth is below that 

 required by the universities in England and on the continent of Europe, 

 and above that which has hitherto been possible of attainment in the 

 southern parts of the United States, where the high-school course is 

 often only three years in length. All standards are the results of agree- 

 ment, either tacit or formulated, and the consensus of opinion among 

 educators in the more densely populated parts of the United States 

 seems to be that the New York law is not unreasonable. 



Most institutions that assume the name of college claim that for the 

 average student four years of college work are needed to obtain a 

 degree. But obviously if the starting point is low the ending point 

 must be correspondingly low, since the capacity of the average student 

 is fairly constant. The claim may be made that examination standards 

 are kept high in spite of low entrance requirements, so that only the 

 best students can expect to be graduated, or even to get through safely 

 in the year's work for a given subject. The present writer once entered 

 a college class in mathematics that had sixty members at the opening 

 of the session, of whom sixteen were taking the subject for the second 

 time. At the close of the session he was so fortunate as to be one of 

 only fifteen who were successfully passed. Of the sixteen who were 

 second-year men seven had failed, and of the forty-four first-year men 

 only six had been successful. The standard of attainment was reason- 

 able enough, but the prerequisites for admission had not been so clearly 

 expressed as to give an adequate idea of the ordeal to which the 

 applicant was to be subjected. If three fourths of a class fail, this does 

 not necessarily mean that so large a fraction of its membership is made 

 up of students who have been unfaithful or of less than usual ability. 

 The amount of teaching may have been insufficient, or the discipline too 



