Makch 20, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



461 



to increase our tuition fee to $250. This 

 increase will, I earnestly hope, be regarded 

 as only a temporary expedient for which 

 a remedy must be found at the earliest 

 moment. The present high tuition not 

 only is shutting out a large group of prom- 

 ising young men from the advantages of a 

 scientific and engineering education, but is 

 imposing upon another large group a finan- 

 cial burden which they are scarcely able to 

 bear, and which forces them to live and to 

 work under conditions unfavorable to their 

 health and social development. Any of 

 the administrative officers of the institute 

 could recount numerous instances where 

 men have been obliged to withdraw from 

 the institute because they could not raise 

 the last fifty dollars of their tuition, or 

 where they have been living on thirty or 

 forty cents a day in order to meet it. Our 

 high tuition is, moreover, sending young 

 men more and more to the other less ex- 

 pensive collegiate institutions. Many of 

 these take the full courses of study there, 

 but there is a large and increasing number 

 who for reasons of economy replace the 

 first year or first two years of the institute 

 course by corresponding work at another 

 institution, and then enter the second or 

 the third year of the institute. There is 

 involved in this plan a lack of continuity 

 and of adequate preparation which is un- 

 fortunate. 



While we are not interested in bringing 

 about any large increase in the number of 

 our students, we are concerned in drawing 

 to us young men of the highest quality. 

 We must, therefore, not permit the finan- 

 cial resources of applicants to be the prin- 

 ciple of elimination in any greater measure 

 than is absolutely essential. There is, in 

 my opinion, no form of educational ex- 

 penditure which produces so large a return 

 to the community as the higher training 

 for the scientific and engineering profes- 

 sions of those comparatively few young 



men whose character and ability are such 

 as to enable them to rise to positions of 

 leadership. And this type is, I believe, 

 most commonly developed among families 

 which have sufficient means to send their 

 sons to the high school, but yet have 

 trained them to work in the summers and 

 at other odd times to earn money towards 

 their own support. Boys from poorer 

 families are imfortunately not likely to 

 have the opportunity of even a high-school 

 education or the home surroundings or 

 antecedents which conduce to intellectual 

 development, while those from richer fam- 

 ilies are apt to lack the earnestness of pur- 

 pose and inclination to subordinate the 

 pursuit of pleasures to thorough prepara- 

 tion for a life of service which is acquired 

 by the boy who has already learned to 

 work. It is, however, just such families 

 of small means which are finding it exceed- 

 ingly difficult, if not impossible, to meet 

 the high expense of technological educa- 

 tion. 



This difficulty may be met in either of 

 two ways— by a general reduction of our 

 tuition fee or by providing larger fimds 

 for scholarship aid to individual students. 

 Under the existing conditions a combina- 

 tion of the two methods seems most ad- 

 visable. To reduce our tuition fee for all 

 our students would involve such a large 

 reduction of our income that it probably 

 can not be immediately considered; but it 

 might be practicable to adopt the plan of 

 reducing the tuition fee for first-year stu- 

 dents. The advantages of this reduction 

 in tuition for first-year students are pro- 

 portionally far greater than a correspond- 

 ing reduction for those of the higher years 

 — desirable as the latter is. It would en- 

 able a larger number of properly prepared 

 students to enter the institute; and the 

 most deserving of these, after they had 

 demonstrated their ability by their first 

 year's work, could be assisted to continue 



