648 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 591. 



Entrance Examination Board of the Asso- 

 ciation of Colleges and Preparatory Schools 

 in the Middle States and Maryland, and 

 the accrediting system of the state and 

 private universities and colleges, particu- 

 larly as unified through the Commission of 

 Secondary Schools and Entrance Require- 

 ments, with its board of high school in- 

 spectors, in the North Central Association 

 of Colleges and Secondary Schools! How 

 can an institution hope to become national 

 by becoming isolated and local in setting 

 its own examinations? Under this idea 

 confusion becomes worse confounded as in- 

 stitutions multiply with aspirations to be 

 national, but insisting upon making their 

 own examinations. What a reversion this 

 is is evident in the light of the approxima- 

 tion to something national which began to 

 appear through the three or four great 

 provincial organizations just mentioned, 

 covering most of the national territory. 

 By the same token that the certificate sys- 

 tem is a natural one for the state univer- 

 sity, it would seem to be the one for a 

 national university. 



The great state universities draw their 

 students from many states and countries 

 and have learned by a system of comity 

 that they can safely accept the inspection 

 and accrediting of sister state universities. 

 In fact, with the exception of but three 

 prominent institutions, Harvard, Tale and 

 Princeton, have we not arrived at a prac- 

 tical coordination of the examining, certifi- 

 cate and accrediting system in that the in- 

 stitutions in the great provincial organiza- 

 tions above referred to, upon occasion 

 accept the testimonials issued by the au- 

 thorities of any one of these systems? It 

 only remains to see that what the student 

 migrating from one of these great provin- 

 cial groups to another accomplishes in en- 

 tering an institution, is safeguarded from 

 fraud or misinterpretation, and that posi- 

 tively uniform and high standards are 



maintained by the establishment of a 

 proper channel for exchange of documents. 

 A common administration could be es- 

 tablished through a delegacy consisting of 

 secretaries of the existing provincial or- 

 ganizations. Indeed, the College Entrance 

 Examination Board affords a hint as to a 

 way to do it. It provides that repre- 

 sentatives of the secondary schools on that 

 board may be appointed by the New Eng- 

 land Association of Colleges and Prepara- 

 tory Schools, the Association of Colleges 

 and Preparatory Schools of the Middle 

 States and Maryland, the Association of 

 Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the 

 Southern States and the North Central 

 Association of Colleges and Secondary 

 Schools. 



'Each association may appoint one sec- 

 ondary school representative for every 

 three colleges and universities represented 

 in such association and admitted to mem- 

 bership in the board' ;^ but under the lim- 

 itation that the colleges must be admitted 

 by vote of the board to membership, and 

 that the number of secondaiy schoolmen 

 appointed by any one association shall in 

 no case exceed five. 



The scheme of the College Entrance Ex- 

 amination Board strictly interpreted, it 

 will be seen, is not automatic; it requires 

 election and is exclusive, and necessarily 

 under their scheme, of anything but the 

 examination system. 



Let these associations inaugurate a move- 

 ment by having a conference of representa- 

 tives from the associations, to which also 

 representatives of Harvard, Yale and 

 Princeton might be asked. 



The first step of a common administra- 

 tion, coordinating the examining, certificate 

 and accrediting systems, seems relatively 

 easy. When we import the term national 

 administration in the higher or govern- 



' Educational Review, October, 1904, p. 265. 



