THE COLLEGE 149 



that all the more on this account should they be raised by their educa- 

 tion above the petty routine of their after-life. 



As the outcome of this discussion of the college this afternoon I 

 have hoped that there might be some practical way suggested of 

 uniting together, for the collection of statistical and other informa- 

 tion in regard to college education, those of us who are interested in 

 maintaining and enriching the college as the source of all our culture. 

 It would not be necessary to include in such an association all of the 

 477 colleges of the United States. It would be entirely feasible, 

 and eminently desirable, to adopt, for example, some such clear and 

 definite conditions of admission as I have indicated on pages 11 and 

 12 of my monograph on.the Education of Women, By applying four 

 entirely impersonal and general tests I was able to select the 58 best 

 equipped and most advanced colleges of the United States. In 

 such an association there would be no secret rites of initiation such 

 as seem somewhat to interfere with the influence of the Association 

 of American universities; but each college would understand clearly 

 why it was admitted or excluded, and these very conditions of ad- 

 mission would tend to raise the excluded colleges to the admission 

 standard. The colleges thus banded together could then mutually 

 agree upon a systematic way of keeping, collecting, and publishing 

 educational statistics. At present our college statistics are scarcely 

 kept at all, or, if kept, are kept by such different methods that com- 

 parison is impossible. For example, no subject has been more hotly 

 debated than the elective system, and the debate has raged during 

 the past thirty years. Yet we have no satisfactory records of the sub- 

 jects elected by students in different colleges covering a series of years, 

 or even last year. The Harvard Exhibit at this Exposition contains 

 a chart of electives chosen during a series of years, but there is no 

 indication of whether the one required course in Freshman English 

 inflates the bloated block of English electives; nor do we know 

 whether other required courses affected earlier blocks. Chicago 

 University frankly states that required courses greatly influence the 

 tables of electives published in its reports, but we are not told how 

 great this influence is. Cornell in its tables lumps Semitics, Greek, 

 and Latin. Some other colleges put in one elective class philosophy 

 and education; still others bibliography and elocution! 



Such a college association as I have suggested would make it im- 

 possible for any one ever again to base radical changes in college 

 courses on mistaken facts, such as I have referred to in my brief 

 discussion of the length of the college course. Such a statistical 

 association would greatly lighten the labors of the overworked college 

 president, who now has to collect his educational data as he runs, 

 and perhaps I may be permitted to add as my own trade is also that 

 of college president that it wculd also greatly improve the trust- 



