THE COLLEGE 137 



Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Pennsylvania, and many other 

 Eastern and Western universities are now educating ministers, 

 doctors, and lawyers under this shifty and canny arrangement. 



But why, then, apart from the desire of some universities to inflate 

 their professional schools, should the college course be shortened and 

 its content lessened? For let us squarely face the fact that this is the 

 issue involved. It is idle to assert, as has been asserted repeatedly in 

 official Harvard publications (see President's Report for 1901-1902, 

 p. 27, and many earlier reports), that the content and quality will not 

 be lessened by a shortened college course; or, in other words, that 

 four years' work can be done in three years' time. All practical 

 teachers know that the professor must adapt his pace to the average 

 of his class, and that if the majority is doing four years' work in 

 three years' time the majority will see to it that three years' work, 

 and not four years', is done. Harvard itself is a case in point. In 

 1880 twenty-one courses were required for the Harvard B.A. degree; 

 in 1904 only seventeen and one half courses are required, of which 

 one and one half may be passed off at entrance, or in reality only 

 sixteen courses are required in the present three years' Harvard 

 B.A. course as against twenty-one courses required for the former 

 four years' Harvard B.A. course. A recent report of a " Committee 

 on Improving Instruction in Harvard College," appointed in May, 

 1902, whose membership of nine included some of the best known 

 senior professors of the Harvard faculty (see Harvard Graduates' 

 Magazine, June, 1904, pp. 611-620), states that " the average amount 

 of study in Harvard College is discreditably small ; " that " the 

 average amount of work done by undergraduates (more than one half 

 of whom have obtained the grade of A or B) in connection with a 

 three hours' course is less than three and one half hours a week out- 

 side of the lecture room ; " and " that the difficulty of raising the 

 standard is seriously increased by students taking six courses each " 

 (in other words, by students taking the college course in three years) . 

 If under the unrestricted elective system the college course has lost 

 tone and become too easy by one fourth for the ordinary student, 

 the remedy would seem to be in stiffening up the already emasculated 

 course, not in lopping off a year of it. 1 



President Eliot (President's Report for 1902-1903, p. 24) says: " Nobody 

 doubts that at present the degree of Bachelor of Arts can be obtained in Harvard 

 College, or in any other [sic] American, English, or Scotch college or university 

 by any young man of moderate parts with a small expenditure of force during 

 not more than one half of each of the years of nominal residence." 



Professor W. E. Byerly (Harvard Graduates' Magazine, December, 1902, p. 

 186) says: " It is commonly, and I believe correctly, asserted that a student of 

 fair ability, entering college from a good preparatory school, choosing his courses 

 with discretion, using borrowed or purchased lecture notes, and attending one or 

 two coaching ' seminars ' for a couple of evenings before the mid-year and final 

 examinations, can win our A.B. degree without spending more than half an hour 

 a day in serious study outside of the lecture and examination rooms." 



