1918] EDITORIAL. 303 



instruction as students are for advanced instruction in any other 

 institution of liigher education, and that the degrees it confers shall 

 be of equal worth in their field with the academic degrees conferred 

 by other colleges as certificates of attainment in other fields." 



The relations of the college to the secondary schools of the State 

 are also discussed. The agricultural college is regarded as " the last 

 stage in a State-wide educational system for the advancement of 

 agricultural science," and for this reason should be closely correlated 

 with secondary schools where agriculture is taught. It is recognized 

 that in such schools, and particularly those functioning under the 

 Federal Aid Vocational Education Act, the primary aim is quite dis- 

 tinct from that of college preparation, and that agriculture will be 

 taught there from a very different point of view. Nevertheless, the 

 commission advocates the establishment of optional agricultural 

 courses, so far as practicable, in public high schools, and where this is 

 done, the granting by the college of the same credits as would be 

 given in any other science. It is made plain, however, that other 

 courses properly included in the high school curriculum should not be 

 supplanted, but " should be so arranged as to make it possible for the 

 student to secure a thorough and comprehensive training which will 

 enable him to enter the agricultural college in good standing and at 

 least with an elementary knowledge of the subject on which his 

 future work will naturally be based." 



With reference to the charge that the college has been offering too 

 general an education, the commission reports that substantially three- 

 fourths of the students are giving three-fourths of their time to dis- 

 tinctively agricultural subjects. It finds that science occupies by 

 far the most prominent position in the curriculum, with fifty-four 

 members of the faculty engaged in instruction in agriculture and the 

 cognate sciences and only fourteen in the humanities and mathe- 

 matics. So far from the existence of any trend away from agricul- 

 tural work, it Avas brought out that there is rather a prevailing 

 tendency among the undergraduates to "elect studies according to 

 their supposed commercial values and to neglect those studies which 

 aim to strengthen and cultivate the mind." The commission does 

 not specifically condemn this tendency, but it points out that, " while 

 the State in its acceptance of the provisions of the Morrill Act is 

 bound to give special instruction in agriculture, it is not less bound 

 by the language of the act to give a liberal education as an integral 

 part of its distinctive w^ork, and not to neglect or relegate to subordi- 

 nate places those studies which experience has shown are best fitted 

 to nourish and strengthen the faculties of the mind and which will 

 enable men to do better work, whatever that work may be." 



The familiar criticism that only a small proportion of the grad- 

 uates become farmers, because of a lack of practical instruction, is 



