702 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 829 



most conspicuous of all the motley array 

 of plans for compulsory concentration and 

 distribution of studies, for it comes at the 

 close of the longest and most liberal ex- 

 perience with the elective system in the his- 

 tory of education. After more than forty 

 years of consistent, acknowledged leader- 

 ship as the modern champion of freedom, 

 followed in each step at the respectable dis- 

 tance of about a decade even by Tale and 

 the lesser powers within her sphere of in- 

 fluence, Harvard College requires of the 

 class of 1914 some degree, both of scatter- 

 ing and specialization in the choice of 

 courses for the A.B. degree. 



The rules now require every student to 

 take at least six of his courses in some one 

 department, or in one of the recognized 

 fields for distinction. In the latter case, 

 four must be in one department. Only 

 two of the six may be courses distinctly 

 elementary in character. For purposes of 

 distribution all the courses open to under- 

 graduates are divided among four general 

 groups. Every student must distribute at 

 least six of his courses among the three 

 general groups in which his chief work 

 does not lie, and he must take in each 

 group not less than one course, and not less 

 than three in any two groups. The groups 

 are: (1) Language, literature, fine arts, 

 music; (2) natural sciences: physics, 

 chemistry, astronomy, engineering, biol- 

 ogy, physiology, geology, mining; (3) his- 

 tory, politics, economics, sociology, educa- 

 tion, anthropology; (4) philosophy and 

 mathematics. The committee is instructed 

 in administering these general rules for the 

 choice of electives by candidates for a de- 

 gree in Harvard College to make excep- 

 tions to the rules freely in the case of 

 earnest men who desire to change at a 

 later time the plans made in their fresh- 

 man year, and to make liberal allowances 

 for students who show that their courses 



are well distributed, even though they may 

 not conform exactly to the rules laid down 

 for distribution. In making exceptions to 

 the rules, a man's previous training and 

 outside reading are taken into account. 

 The central principle of the whole plan is 

 that each student must take a considerable 

 amount of work in some one field and that 

 the rest of his courses must be well dis- 

 tributed. 



Two questions of general interest at once 

 arise : to what extent will these restrictions 

 actually influence the choice of studies, 

 and to what extent does the choice of stud- 

 ies promote success in life? 



The best available evidence on the first 

 question is the program of study actually 

 chosen under the elective system. Of the 

 men who graduated from the Harvard 

 Law School cum laude for a decade previ- 

 ous to 1908, only one seventh did not take 

 six courses in some one field. The students 

 in the Harvard Medical School whose 

 undergraduate courses were examined had 

 distributed their courses, but had not con- 

 centrated nearly so much as the honor men 

 in the law school. Only about one sixth of 

 them had taken six courses in any one 

 field. Of 1,000 men from the classes of 

 1908 and 1909 in Harvard College, only 

 about 20 per cent, met all the requirements 

 of the new rules. Had those restrictions 

 been in force, about half of these students 

 would have been compelled to change one 

 or two courses. Only a very few would 

 have needed as many as five changes in 

 their programs. 



The dominant purpose of all disinter- 

 ested plans for administering the courses 

 of study of undergraduates is to promote 

 the success of men and women in the life 

 beyond commencement, however variously 

 success may be defined. A comparison of 

 the courses of study of successful gradu- 

 ates with a random selection ought, there- 



