OCTOBEK 17, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



615 



which is already ample. Columbia offers 

 the most generous assistance to students 

 who are able and willing to meet its stand- 

 ards and who need help in order to carry- 

 on their studies, but is not willing to lower 

 those standards at the cost of social and 

 educational effectiveness. 



4. Secondary school graduates, however 

 well taught, are necessarily without the 

 more advanced discipline in the study of 

 the liberal arts and sciences and withoiit 

 that wider outlook on the world of nature 

 and of man which it is the aim of the 

 college to give. It is oiir hope and wish 

 that those who hold professional or tech- 

 nical degrees from Columbia University 

 will be not only soundly trained in their 

 chosen professions, but liberally educated 

 men as well. No stress is laid upon the 

 college degree as a mere title, but it is 

 held to stand, in the vast majority of cases, 

 for greater maturity of mind and broader 

 scholarship. 



5. For Columbia University to admit 

 students to the professional and technical 

 schools upon the same terms as those by 

 which admission to the college is gained, 

 would be to throw the weight of our in- 

 fluence against college education in gen- 

 eral and against Columbia College in par- 

 ticular. After a few years, no student who 

 looked forward to a professional career 

 would seek admission to Columbia College, 

 or to any other, except those who had 

 ample time and money to spare. 



On the other hand, while I hold a sec- 

 ondary school education to be too low a 

 standard for admission to professional 

 study at Columbia University, personally 

 I am of opinion that to insist upon gradua- 

 tion from the usual four years' college 

 course is too high a standard (measured in 

 terms of time) to insist upon, and an 

 unsatisfactory one as well. My view of 

 the matter is concurred in by the dean of 



Columbia College, by the dean of the Fac- 

 ulty of Law, and by the dean of Teachers 

 College, as will be seen by reference to their 

 annual reports, which accompany this docu- 

 ment and are a part of it. 



My objections to making graduation 

 from a four years' college course a pre- 

 requisite for professional study at Colum- 

 bia University are mainly two: 



1. I share the view, already alluded to, 

 that the whole tendency of our present 

 educational system is to postpone unduly 

 the period of self-support, and I feel cer- 

 tain that public opinion will not long sus- 

 tain a scheme of foranal training which in 

 its completeness includes a kindergarten 

 course of two or three years, an elementary 

 school course of eight years, a secondary 

 school course of four years, a college course 

 of four years, and a professional or tech- 

 nical school course of three or four years, 

 followed by a period of apprenticeship on 

 small wages or on no wages at all. 



2. Four years is, in my opinion, too long 

 a time to devote to the college course as 

 now constituted, especially for students 

 who are to remain in university residence 

 as technical or professional students. 

 President Patton, of Princeton University, 

 voiced the sentiments of many of the most 

 experienced observers of educational tend- 

 encies when he said that: "In some way 

 that delightful period of comradeship, 

 amusement, desultory reading, and choice 

 of incongruous courses of what we are 

 pleased to call study, M^hieh is characteris- 

 tic of so many undergraduates, must be 

 shortened in order that more time may be 

 given to the strenuous life of professional 

 equipment." For quite twenty years 

 President Eliot has advocated this view 

 and in arguments which have seemed to me 

 unanswerable, imder the conditions exist- 

 ing at Harvard, has urged that the degree 

 of bachelor of arts be given by Harvard 



