256 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 



and the giving of degrees has been resumed — 

 wisely, I. think — by the institution in question. 



The same end is being reached in another way 

 by the University of Virginia and some others 

 which are following its lead. In these schools 

 the Bachelor's degree receives little or no atten- 

 tion, being practically merged in the higher re- 

 quirements for the degree of Master of Arts. By 

 merging both these in the still higher degree of 

 Doctor of Philosophy, we have a condition similar 

 to that in the German Universities, Vv^here only the 

 Doctor's degree is now given. Towards this condi- 

 tion our universities are tending; and through the 

 change of the college into the university the Bach- 

 elor's degree may in time disappear. But this re- 

 form — if reform it be — can be the work of no one 

 man or one school. It must come as a natural 

 result of the development of the college. 



So much for the phases, past and present, of 

 the college curriculum in America. What of the 

 future? Will there be a fourth, a fifth, a sixth 

 stage in its development; or is the system now 

 full-grown, and the elective plan, as we know it, its 

 full fruition? 



We can be sure that the world is still moving. 

 Nothing is stable, nothing is perpetual, nothing is 

 sufficient. With the new needs and the new men 

 of the future will come new departments, new 

 methods, and new ideas. The curriculum in its 

 original sense of a little race-course, with thirty-six 

 hurdles to be leaped in thirty-six months, with a 

 crown of laurel berries at the end, will very soon 

 be no more. Special courses of study in as many 



