5o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



the association, although all but three require fifteen or more units for 

 admission, in only four are fifteen units actually required, while twenty- 

 two admit students with fourteen units; eight with thirteen and one 

 half units; twenty-nine with thirteen units; one with twelve and one 

 half units; and six with twelve units. If this represents the practise of 

 the stronger colleges of the Middle West, it must be true that many 

 institutions are admitting students with even less units of preparation. 



The importance of economy of time in education has long been 

 recognized by representatives of the higher institutions. A notable dis- 

 cussion of this subject from the point of view of the university is found 

 in the proceedings of the National Educational Association for 1903, 

 participated in by Ex-Commissioner Brown, Presidents Eliot, Butler, 

 Harper, Dean West, and others. President Eliot urged that the boy be 

 prepared to enter college at eighteen and that the college course be 

 reduced to three years. A saving of two years was to be secured not by 

 reducing the content, but " by better organization of the whole course of 

 education from the beginning to the end, by better methods of teaching, 

 and by large and early freedom of choice among different studies." At 

 Harvard it has become possible for the abler and more diligent students 

 to secure the baccalaureate degree in three years by accomplishing in 

 that time the work formerly done in four years by all students receiving 

 the degree. President Butler, insisting upon the importance of preserv- 

 ing the integrity of the college, urged that the student should be pre- 

 pared to enter college at the age of seventeen, or in some cases at six- 

 teen. To preserve the college he proposed "to fix and enforce a stand- 

 ard of admission which can be met normally by a combined elementary 

 and secondary-school course of not more than ten years well spent and 

 to keep out of the baccalaureate course purely professional subjects pur- 

 sued for professional ends by professional methods." For students in- 

 tending to pursue professional courses later, however, he regards the 

 four-year college course too long. " Pedagogs," he says, " suppose that 

 the more time a boy spends in school and college the better; educators 

 know the contrary." "There should be," he continued, "a college 

 course two years in length, carefully considered as a thing by itself 

 and not merely the first part of a three-year or a four-year course, 

 which will enable intending professional students to spend this time as 

 advantageously as possible in purely liberal studies." This principle 

 has been successfully carried out in many of our universities. Presi- 

 dent Harper also regarded it as important to preserve the four-year 

 college course, but thought sixteen or seventeen the desirable age for 

 entering college. 



From an investigation on the " Changes in the Age of College 

 Graduation " published in the Eeport of the Commissioner of Education 

 for 1902, the author, W. Scott Thomas, proposes three possible means 

 of reducing the period of education : 



