Maech 5, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



375 



qualities whieli result in their being recog- 

 nized as social leaders. 



Besides the general pressure in the di- 

 rection of leniency as regards the stand- 

 ards of admission and graduation, the 

 notion that it is desirable to fill up our 

 colleges with a class of students who have 

 no serious ambition to study, has created 

 a tendency to the more liberal admission 

 of students on special courses. I think 

 there would be substantially unanimous 

 agreement among college faculties in the 

 belief that there ought to be some persons 

 admitted as special students. The oppor- 

 tunities of instruction which a college af- 

 fords can, without any detriment to those 

 who are taking regular courses leading to 

 a degree, be afforded to certain classes of 

 students whose age, financial condition or 

 other circumstances may make it entirely 

 impracticable for them to complete the col- 

 lege curriculum. Teachers in high schools 

 and similar institutions can often get leave 

 of absence for a year, or for a part of a 

 year, and improve the time in earnest 

 study in college in a department in which 

 they are teaching, and in which they have 

 already attained a proficiency which fits 

 them to take advanced work in college. 

 Men and women engaged in various pro- 

 fessional or technical pursuits may, in like 

 manner, gain very much by special courses 

 in the colleges in lines of study connected 

 with their work. In such cases, though 

 the persons may not have completed any 

 of the prescribed courses of preparation 

 for college, they are yet fitted by maturity 

 of age, definiteness of purpose and 

 thorough training along some lines of 

 study or intellectual work, to take up the 

 studies of some departments with great ad- 

 vantage to themselves, and with positive 

 benefit rather than loss to the college. It 

 is sometimes justifiable to admit as special 

 students those who wish to take a some- 

 what general course of study similar to 



that which would be required for the 

 bachelor's degree, but whose preliminary 

 schooling has been irregular, and who have 

 not covered exactly any prescribed course 

 for admission to college, though the aggre- 

 gate of training which they have received 

 may be equal in amount or even superior 

 to that which would fit them for admission 

 to college. This is the case sometimes with 

 those who have commenced professional 

 or technical studies and subsequently 

 awake to the necessity of gaining more of 

 general education. In- some cases it is 

 legitimate to admit as special students 

 candidates who are expected eventually to 

 get into a regular course of study and take 

 a degree. But to smuggle into college 

 under the name of special students candi- 

 dates who have simply made a failure of 

 the preparatory course, through lack of 

 ability or through lack of industry, is an 

 evasion which can not be practised without 

 demoralization of the college. But there 

 are probably very few administrative 

 officers or committees having charge of the 

 admission of students to college, to whom 

 the outside pressure for the practise of 

 such evasions has not come to be a familiar 

 experience. 



The principle must be explicitly af- 

 firmed, and consistently and at times 

 sternly maintained in practise, that, how- 

 ever widely diversified may be the college 

 course under the operation of the elective 

 system, and however cordially men and 

 women preparing for careers widely dif- 

 ferent from those involved in the tradi- 

 tional learned professions may be welcomed 

 to college, only those students are welcome 

 who come to study— who feel the genuine 

 vocation of the student, and in whose plans 

 for the years of college life the avocations 

 of student life are to be distinctly subor- 

 dinate to the great vocation. Within 

 limits by no means narrow, they may study 

 what they please; they may shape their 



