114 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. Ng. 969 



privileges gained by wealth. It remains 

 for the American people to establish, by 

 means of their ideals and temples to Lib- 

 erty, the nobility of character as expressed 

 by service to the welfare of all, through the 

 realization of the brotherhood of man. 



' ' I ask not wealtli, but power to take 

 And use the things I have aright. 

 Not years, but wisdom, that shall make 

 My life a profit and delight. 

 "I ask not that for me the plan 

 Of good and ill be set aside. 

 But that the common lot of man 

 Be nobly borne and glorified. ' ' 



H. K. Bush-Beown 



THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF THE COLLEGE 

 STUDENT " 



It is worthy of note that, while the crit- 

 ics of the college have been able to adduce 

 facts as the basis of their unfriendly opin- 

 ions, the colleges have, for the most part, 

 been unable to point to any considerable 

 collection of accurate data regarding their 

 own present effectiveness. It is, of course, 

 quite true that the deductions drawn from 

 their facts by these unfavorable critics are 

 oftentimes manifestly more imposing than 

 the factual structure can properly stand. 

 It is also true that along certain detached 

 and scattering lines this college or that has 

 been able to point with pride to a small 

 amount of accurate material more or less 

 scientifically collected. Speaking broadly, 

 however, the statement first made is true. 

 It is perhaps to be acknowledged that the 

 introduction of the larger use of facts into 

 the measurement and development of col- 

 lege values will make education somewhat 

 less interesting, for it will reduce the range 

 of philosophical discussion and the applica- 

 tion of personal opinion. Still, if the signs 

 of the times are at all to be believed, the 



^ Address before the Section of Education at the 

 Cleveland meeting of the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science. 



day is fast approaching when the colleges 

 and universities wiU be using facts and the 

 scientific method as much in the direction 

 of their educative processes, as a whole, as 

 they already are using them in their lab- 

 oratories and classrooms. 



Secretary Furst, of the Carnegie Foun- 

 dation, has said that there should be little 

 talk of efficiency in college work untU 

 something has been done to make use of the 

 enormous collection of data already pos- 

 sessed by the colleges of the country in the 

 records of the hundreds of thousands of 

 students who have passed through the four 

 years of the campus and into the work of 

 the world. Certainly there does exist a 

 large body of facts worthy of study in con- 

 nection with the administration of the 

 present-day college. It seems to me rather 

 doubtful, however, whether these facts are 

 as likely to be given the attention they de- 

 serve as those collected according to some 

 new method and with closer reference to 

 the various problems to be solved in con- 

 nection with the present and the future 

 generations of students. 



If this question is to be answered in the 

 affirmative, it raises another. Shall the in- 

 formation for measuring the effectiveness 

 of the college work with the present genera- 

 tion be attacked piece-meal — one problem 

 one year, another the next, one phase in one 

 college, another phase in another — or shall 

 each college endeavor to conduct a study 

 that shall be for it at once fundamental, 

 broad, permanent and, in addition, as 

 nearly scientific as the twentieth century 

 permits 1 



A study possessing these dimensions has 

 already been proposed by one of the great- 

 est educators America has ever known. In 

 1899, President Harper, of Chicago Uni- 

 versity, recommended what he called the 

 "scientific study of the student." Said 

 that educational path-finder: 



