352 APPENDIX I 



desiring to aid them financially; formerly they could not receive 

 gifts of money. 



The innovation that is of most interest to American students 

 is one made especially to attract them, as well as foreign students 

 in general, to the various French seats of learning, the fifteen 

 universities in the different sections of the country. It pertains to 

 degrees, and especially to the doctorate. Formerly the only pos- 

 sible way for a foreigner to secure a French diplome or degree from 

 any educational institution was by undergoing the same training 

 and passing the same examinations prescribed for a French student. 

 The French diploma confers rights upon the one holding it. For 

 instance, the graduate who has received a degree from the medical 

 school has the right to practice in France; the graduate, likewise, 

 of the school of pharmacy has the right to open an apothecary shop; 

 so, too, the law-graduate has a right to practice law and to aspire 

 to judicial government positions; and the graduate of the different 

 " ecoles normales " has the right to give instruction in the institution 

 of the grade for which he has fitted himself. The French student 

 begins at the age of sixteen a series of examinations, the first of 

 which is the baccalaureate, a degree which represents, speaking 

 broadly, attainments somewhat beyond those of our high-school 

 graduates but considerably below those of our best colleges. He 

 then goes on passing an examination yearly until he has reached 

 the age of twenty-four or twenty-five years, when he should pass 

 his final examination for the doctorate. These regulations still hold 

 good for French or foreign students who desire to practice the 

 learned professions in France. 



Most foreign students, however, and particularly our own, have 

 no intention of pursuing studies with a view of competing with 

 natives or of profiting pecuniarily by their foreign acquisitions 

 elsewhere than at home. As a rule, American students desire cer- 

 tain advantages procurable by a residence of about two years in the 

 foreign country. They usually have had a college course at home 

 and have no desire to spend nine years in France in order to be- 

 come doctors in their specialties. Moreover, they can ill afford to 

 spend two years of hard work in a foreign country without having 

 an opportunity at the end of that time to possess a substantial 

 guarantee vouching for the genuineness of their efforts. From the 

 French standpoint, it was not possible for the French institutions 

 to exempt foreign students from the regular course or to credit 

 them with work done in foreign parts, without, in most cases, 



