Maech 27, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



455 



tunately the admission requirements in this 

 country, owing to the influence of the Carnegie 

 Foundation, the Association of American Uni- 

 versities, the American Medical Association 

 and similar organizations, are being rapidly 

 increased all along the line, but courses are 

 still offered at several universities in which 

 high-school graduation is not demanded for 

 admission. The students registered in such 

 courses should be rigidly excluded in the uni- 

 versity total, but it is not always an easy 

 matter for the outsider to determine who these 

 students are, and consequently our sole depend- 

 ence lies in the cooperation of the reporting 

 officers of the institution concerned. Of less 

 importance, though not entirely without sig- 

 nificance, is the difference that still exists in 

 entrance requirements for the professional 

 schools, several of which insist upon a bach- 

 elor's degree, while others are still satisfied 

 with high school graduation. It would seem 

 that a student in a medical school who holds 

 a bachelor's degree would have greater quali- 

 tative value, other things being equal, than 

 one who has entered the school directly from 

 the high school. The adoption by so many 

 institutions of the so-called Columbia or com- 

 bined-course plan, in accordance with which 

 six years are devoted to work for the bachelor's 

 and the professional degrees, is bringing about 

 a certain amount of uniformity iiji this direc- 

 tion. Yet even where college graduation is 

 demanded for admission to the professional 

 schools, and more particularly to the non- 

 professional graduate schools (political sci- 

 ence, philosophy, pure science), some difficulty 

 is encountered, inasmuch as the bachelor's 

 degrees of American colleges are unfortunately 

 not of equal value, and for that reason a 

 number of graduate schools do not accept 

 graduation from certain specified colleges for 

 admission. This is a matter which only time 

 can remedy, and fortunately there are indica- 

 tions that the work of these inferior institu- 

 tions is slowly but surely improving. Com- 

 parative statistics of the professional schools 

 showing the percentage of college graduates 

 enrolled in these schools are therefore of dis- 

 tinct value. 



A word should be said concerning the inclu- 

 sion of extension students in the grand total 

 enrollment of a university. As a matter of 

 fact, extension students are frequently, quan- 

 titatively as well as qualitatively, on a par 

 with summer-session students. They are, in 

 many instances, at several institutions in most 

 instances, graduates of high schools following 

 work of college or university grade given by 

 regular officers of the institution concerned, 

 and there seems to be no reason why an exten- 

 sion student registered for a graduate course 

 in literature should not be counted in the 

 university's total with as much justification 

 as the high school teacher who is enrolled as a 

 candidate for the master's degree but attend- 

 ing only a single Saturday morning course. 

 On the other hand, extension students are 

 from the very nature of the case practically 

 all partial-time students, and for this and 

 several other reasons it is safer perhaps to 

 keep them in a category by themselves. Audi- 

 tors in attendance on a six-hour lecture course 

 should not be included at all, as they some- 

 times are. 



Considerable difficulty is constantly experi- 

 enced in prevailing upon reporting officers to 

 eliminate the item of double registration. The 

 ideal table of comparative registration statis- 

 tics would simply ignore this item; where it is 

 not ignored, an element of unfairness is at 

 once introduced. The student should be con- 

 sidered primarily registered in one faculty 

 only, and if he happens to be enrolled in a 

 combined course, he should, for example, in 

 his third and fourth years as a candidate for 

 the bachelor's degree, which coincides with the 

 first and second years of his candidacy for the 

 medical or engineering degree, be counted 

 either as a college student or as a medical or 

 engineering school student, but not, as is fre- 

 quently done, as both. The latter method 

 unduly swells the size of the individual facul- 

 ties of the institution. Similarly, the students 

 at Columbia University enrolled as candidates 

 for the master's or the doctor's degree and 

 with the major subject in education should be 

 included either in the faculty of philosophy 

 or in Teachers College, but not in both. In 



