April 3, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



525 



teenth, seventeenth and eighteentli cen-_ 

 turies. For the attainment of these ideals 

 private tutors stood in the place of the 

 school teachers of our day, and education 

 was necessarily confined to those who 

 could afford this luxury. The ideals of to- 

 day are not lower, but they are more diffi- 

 cult to attain in the class-room where the 

 teacher has two score or, more pupils at 

 one time. It is the inevitable dilution of 

 personal influence as classes increase in 

 size which prevents the school of to-day 

 from becoming the power for good it might 

 be if the teacher's strength were not ex- 

 hausted in hearing and marking recitations 

 and maintaining order. There are not, I 

 fear, many school boards that would appre- 

 ciate the suggestion of increasing the 

 teacher's efficiency by limiting the number 

 of his pupils. This efficiency is ia inverse 

 proportion to the number of pupils; per- 

 haps it might be safe to say the square of 

 the number, so rapidly does the personal 

 influence decrease when a limiting number 

 is overstepped. Thus does penuriousness, 

 combined with ignorance, on the part of 

 city councils and of school boards, often 

 defeat the cause which they profess to 

 maintain. 



Two tendencies are now distinctly 

 mai'ked in our higher education, namely, 

 the demand of the professional schools that 

 the baccalaureate degree shall be required 

 for admission, and the willingness of the 

 colleges to shorten the time in which the 

 baccalaureate degree can be obtained. 

 There was a time, not very long ago, when 

 theology was the only profession for which 

 the A.B. degree was considered necessary. 

 Now law and medicine are demanding this 

 preparation, and it will not be long before 

 engineering and the related technical pur- 

 suits will claim recognition of their pro- 

 fessional character. And on the educa- 

 tional horizon we see the rise of a new 

 profession — commerce — which will doubt- 



less in its turn demand a similar recogni- 

 tion. 



Two influences are at work in requiring 

 the baccalaureate degree as a preparation 

 for law, medicine and engineering; one is 

 to give a greater dignity to these profes- 

 sions, and the other is the conviction, based 

 on experience, that narrowness in educa- 

 tion is accompanied with a narrowness of 

 outlook which prevents a full development 

 of a man's powers in his special line of 

 work. By this increased requirement we 

 are brought to face the practical question 

 whether there is a gain in professional 

 equipment to compensate for the time con- 

 sumed; for nearly half a lifetime may be 

 consumed (including the apprentice years) 

 in getting ready for life's work. 



It is this question, which carries its 

 answer with it, that has led colleges to 

 abridge the time within which the A.B. 

 degree can be had, some by condensing the 

 four years' work into three, others by 

 admitting professional studies into the last 

 two years, and still another by deliberately 

 casting oS two years' work. The signifl- 

 cance of the A.B. degree has been so far 

 modified in American colleges in the last 

 generation that it no longer implies any 

 definite course of study. It is, therefore, 

 meaningless for the professional schools to 

 insist upon it as a necessary preparation 

 for advanced work. What these schools 

 really need, and what they should require, 

 is satisfactory evidence that the applicant 

 possesses the necessary knowledge and the 

 necessary maturity to undertake profitably 

 the work involved. It may well be that a 

 high school graduate would prove by these 

 tests to be better prepared to enter schools 

 of law and medicine than many a college 

 graduate. The faculties of the profes- 

 sional schools should not try to evade the 

 responsibility which belongs to them of 

 ascertaining by some tests the fitness of 

 the applicants to undertake their work. 



