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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



proper sense of duty, as through any spe- 

 cies of coercion, in either case there can be 

 no doubt that this regularity of attendance 

 is of indispensable importance, and that, in 

 one way or another, it must be secured. It 

 is supposed by Dr. McCosh that Harvard 

 University may have been influenced in her 

 views as to this subject by the presumed 

 usages of foreign institutions of similar 

 grade, or by the known practice of the pro- 

 fessional schools of our own country ; and, 

 in regard to the colleges of Great Britain 

 and Ireland, he hastens to correct the im- 

 pression, if it exists, that attendance upon 

 scholastic exercises is not made compulsory 

 in them. It seems to me, nevertheless, to 

 be unnecessary to go beyond the reason as- 

 signed by President Eliot himself as indicat- 

 ing the expediency of the change, in order 

 to discover his motive for proposing it. This 

 reason is, that the average age of the un- 

 dergraduate students in Harvard University 

 (and it may be added in all our colleges at 

 present at least in all those of the Atlan- 

 tic States) is three or four years more ad- 

 vanced than it was in the earlier part of 

 this century. Dr. McCosh admits the truth 

 of this statement. He does not even seem 

 to deprecate the fact that mature young 

 men seek to avail themselves of the educa- 

 tional advantages which colleges offer. But 

 he hardly attempts to disguise his convic- 

 tion that the college was not designed for 

 this class of students, nor that their actual 

 predominance in it in numbers is evidence 

 to him that it has been perverted from the 

 original object of its institution. This is 

 apparent from his remark that, " if there be 

 a diminution in the number of young men 

 attending colleges in relation to the popula- 

 tion, it is very much owing to the circum- 

 stance that certain of the colleges have 

 been practically raising the age of entrance, 

 so as to prevent persons from entering upon 

 their professional business until some of the 

 best years of their life are spent." In his 

 view, therefore, the existing state of things 

 is an evil, and the blame of it is directly 

 chargeable upon the colleges themselves. I 

 do not, I confess, find the evidence to sus- 

 tain this view of the case. The colleges 

 have not raised the age of entrance by le- 

 gislation. The minimum age in Columbia 

 College is fifteen years. In Yale College it 



is fourteen, as it has been for the past half- 

 century. In Harvard University there is 

 no minimum at all. If there is any mode 

 of " practically " raising the standard ex- 

 cept by arbitrarily rejecting the younger 

 class of applicants, notwithstanding that, 

 by the published regulations, they are legally 

 admissible, it does not occur to me to con- 

 jecture what it can be ; yet this is not a 

 practice which I have ever heard imputed 

 to any American college. But it may be 

 said that the colleges have brought the 

 observed result to pass by increasing the 

 severity of the entrance tests. This hy- 

 pothesis can certainly not be sustained, so 

 far, at least, as the classics are concerned 

 (and it is here that the great labor of prepa- 

 ration lies), if we take as our guide the 

 published entrance conditions. As a rule, 

 the reverse is even the case, the amount 

 exacted, measured by quantity if not by 

 quality, being materially less than it was 

 fifty years ago. Some little addition has 

 been made to the amount of exaction in the 

 mathematics, but not enough to make it 

 difficult for a lad to prepare himself for col- 

 lege as early as fourteen, or earlier. To 

 these statements, Harvard College may pos- 

 sibly present an exception, but the in- 

 creased entrance exactions there have not 

 been in operation long enough to have had 

 any influence in producing the phenomenon 

 in question. If it is a fact, therefore, that 

 the average age of undergraduate students 

 has risen and I believe there can be no 

 doubt about that it is a fact which is not 

 imputable to the colleges, nor one which 

 they could control if they would ; unless, 

 indeed, instead of legislating about mini- 

 mum ages, they should think proper to es- 

 tablish a maximtim age, above which no 

 applicant should be admitted, and should 

 place this low enough to exclude every in- 

 dividual who has passed the years of boy- 

 hood. Such a measure would probably 

 meet with few advocates. If it were im- 

 portant that we should explain the re- 

 markable fact above mentioned, it would 

 be quite sufficient to point to the immense 

 improvement which has taken place within 

 the century in the training-schools cf grade 

 inferior to the colleges schools admirably 

 and precisely fitted to the wants of boys 

 of tender age, and armed with a coercive 



