Apeil 27, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



647 



The Cornell ease, showing that there can 

 be a local coordination, shifts the emphasis 

 of our discussion to the question whether 

 there can be a common or national admin- 

 istration in the interest of students, colleges 

 and the preservation of standards. That 

 there are a tendency and need and a long- 

 ing for a common, and indeed a national 

 administration, is evident. The tendency 

 springs from axioms of economic science 

 like that of 'planless production makes 

 waste.' The spirit of this era of coopera- 

 tion and combination intensifies the long- 

 ing and the need becomes positive as rapid- 

 ity of transportation and communication 

 facilitates migration. The unifying of the 

 republic, the emphasizing of American 

 ideals with a deepening consciousness of 

 our world-wide relations, unitg the tend- 

 ency, longing and need into an aspiration 

 and positive demand for the recognition 

 and development of a national system of 

 education. 



This appears in unexpected ways. Presi- 

 dent Schurman in his report, referring to 

 Mr. Carnegie's professorial pensions and 

 Mr. Rockefeller's subsidies for general 

 education in colleges, says: 



Both philanthropists have risen above the idea 

 of a single institution and have grasped the 

 conception of a national system of higher edu- 

 cation. And the bounty is as splendid as it is 

 unparalleled in the history of higher education 

 in America. But relatively to the ideal of an 

 eflfioiently organized system of higher education 

 in the United States, it is only a beginning.^ 



President Hadley's last report,* true to 

 the spirit of Tale, breathes with the 

 thought of becoming national. He would 

 gladly appropriate the genius of the state 

 university. He cites Yale's work in for- 

 estry as 'including the kind of public work 

 which makes the modern university some- 



^ Cornell University, President's Report, 1904- 

 05, p. 74. 



* Science, October 27, 1905, p. 514 and fol- 

 lowing. 



thing more than a mere group of schools 

 and elevates it to its highest possible rank 

 — that of a public servant.' He dwells 

 upon considerations of public duty as af- 

 fecting the requirements for admission. 

 He says: 



If the Yale requirements should get so far out 

 of the line of work furnished by the better kind 

 of high schools in the country that we could not 

 expect to get boys from those schools, we should 

 soon become a local institution. Yale would be a 

 school for boys of one kind of antecedents, instead 

 of for boys of all kinds of antecedents; and as 

 soon as it became a school for boys of one kind 

 of antecedents only, it would lose its value as a 

 broadening influence to its students and as a fac- 

 tor in the life of the whole nation. 



Our policy with regard to entrance requirements 

 is thus governed by two separate considerations: 

 our duty to ourselves of not admitting boys ex- 

 cept those who are able to do the kind of work 

 which will be required of them, and our duty to 

 the public of admitting all kinds of boys who can 

 do this, on as equal terms as possible. Our 

 student body must be at once hard working and 

 national." 



He then makes this surprising applica- 

 tion of this splendid doctrine: 



In order to make ourselves national we admit 

 boys to our undergraduate courses by examination 

 only and not by certificate. We believe that the 

 examination method is fairer to boys who come 

 from distant places. The certificate system is 

 the natural one for the state university, which 

 draws its pupils chiefiy from the schools of one 

 locality and can inspect and examine those 

 schools; but if a national university tries to apply 

 this system it gives either an unfair preference to 

 the boys from schools near at hand, or an inade- 

 quate test to the boys from remote ones.' 



The i plausibility of this conclusion dis- 

 guises the logic of the actual present con- 

 ditions. As if one institution could be- 

 come national by refusing recognition to 

 the arrangements of great national groups 

 of secondary schools and colleges like those 

 of the New England College Entrance Cer- 

 tificate Board, and those of the College 



= Science, October 27, 1905, p. 518. 

 ° Ihid., p. 519. 



