160 



C. U. C. P. ALUMNI JOURNAL 



^ CmijWt ^"TMUJ 



^ 



ANNUAL REPORT OF DEAN RUSBY* 



Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, 

 President, 



Sir: 



I have the honor to submit below my 

 report for the academic year 1915-16. 



The most important educational events 

 of the year in pharmacy are the con- 

 tinued discussion of correct and expedi- 

 ent entrance requirements and the en- 

 trance of secondary public schools into 

 the field of professional pharmacy edu- 

 cation. The Board of Education of 

 Detroit, Michigan, has established a high 

 school course in pharmacy, to occupy 

 the last two years of their four-year 

 course. The arguments advanced in 

 support of this action are that by the 

 steadily extending requirement of high 

 school graduation as an entrance require- 

 ment to American pharmacy schools, the 

 number of matriculants is being so re- 

 duced as to result in a very inadequate 

 supply of drug clerks. In other words, 

 i-t is held that to make pharmacy a Uni- 

 versity department will defeat its object, 

 and that if it is -not to be a University 

 course, the high school is the proper 

 place for it. The conclusive argument 

 against the propriety of such a proce- 

 dure is that it involves a misappropria- 

 tion of public funds, in that the object 

 and purpose of such expenditure is the 

 individual, rather than the public wel- 

 fare. This situation is likely to prove 



a potent factor in the discussion of en- 

 trance requirements that will occur at 

 the annual meeting of the American 

 Conference of Pharmaceutical Facul- 

 ties, to be held at Philadelphia, in Sep- 

 tember. In the meantime, the Education 

 Department of this State, acting upon an 

 unanimous recommendation of the State 

 Pharmacy Council, has established an 

 entrance requirement of two years of 

 high school work, in place of the pres- 

 ent one year, to take effect in 191 8. It 

 is with great satisfaction that we contem- 

 plate the policy of our own school, in 

 providing an excellent training for the 

 ordinary pharmacy clerk, in the form 

 of a two-year course based upon moder- 

 ate entrance requirements, and also a 

 University course, second to no other, 

 for those who aspire to the higher ranks 

 of the profession and who are willing 

 to pay the price in preliminary and pro- 

 fessional training. We thus find that, 

 although our attendance of the past year 

 in the former class has exceeded all 

 previous records, yet the ratio of Uni- 

 versity to College students shows a still 

 greater rate of increase. But a few 

 years since, our University class was in- 

 augurated with two students ; now they 

 number more than fifty. 



More important than the increase in 

 numbers has been the development of a 

 new spirit among our University stu- 

 dents during the past year. A definite 

 and strong organization for mutual en- 



