40 
unmarried; such unwholesome symptoms are usually most conspicuous 
in institutions with the least merit. The preparation of an undergraduate 
thesis may be a valuable item in the course if it is not so administered as 
to waste the student’s time, narrow his mind, and swell his head. I 
believe its most valuable feature is its compelling him to go to original 
sources for information, namely, library work. Too many students gradu- 
ate without this experience and with a knowledge of books limited to the 
prescribed texts employed in the course. To choose a subject of real in- 
terest to the student and of suitably narrew scope, and to find out by 
systematic search in the scientific journals all that is known about it, and 
then to write an essay in which the information is carefully arranged and 
well presented, is a task well worth the performance. 
It is entirely laudable for every institution to aim at ever higher 
goals; not, however, by raising the entrance requirements beyond the reach 
of its natural constituents to meet, even at the dictation of some self- 
appointed board demanding uniformity under diverse conditions, and not by 
changing the object of its training 
there would not be any necessary gain 
to the community at large should a school of pharmacy gradually become 
a theological seminary or even a medical college; a school of pharmacy 
is just as necessary as either of the others. 
It is perfectly natural for any teacher or group of teachers to aspire 
to more advanced grades of work. but this should not be undertaken 
unless the more elementary and fundamental work is adequately cared for. 
We are suffering from too much ambition of this kind; too many trade 
schools attempt to be technical colleges. and too many colleges attempt to 
be universities, at the expense of their efficiency in their original equally 
important field. Let us imagine that every grade school gradually intro- 
duced more and more work of the high school, and that every high school 
gradually became a college, and that every college gave more and more of 
its energies to graduate students! Or let us imagine that every institution 
giving grammar school instruction attempted also to provide training 
through the high school, college and university curriculum! What a ridicu- 
lous and inefficient educational system must result. Roughly speaking, for 
every thousand grade schools we need about a hundred high schools, ten 
colleges and technical schools, and one graduate university. 
Fortunately there is a supervision that prevents the transformation of 
grade schoois into high schoels, and separates the work of the two as soon 
