568 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



satisfied to have his son ignore it also. "My -son's college life/' said 

 he to the dean, " has been just what I wanted itHo be ; of course," he 

 conceded as an afterthought, " I wish that he had won his promotion." 

 One case of that kind may not be conclusive, but some who know the 

 college world are convinced that the instance is typical — that the 

 conception of college life which subordinates study to athletics or to 

 social success (or else ignores it altogether) is limited to no single 

 group of individuals and to no one institution, that it seems to be the 

 honest ambition of an appalling proportion of fathers and mothers who 

 are sending their sons to fashionable colleges, in the same spirit that 

 accompanies their daughters to fashionable finishing schools. 



After hearing the testimony of parents, our investigator may do 

 well to learn also how some alumni feel about college work. Let him 

 listen, for instance, to an intelligent young physician who received the 

 bachelor's degree from Princeton seventeen years ago, and who puts his 

 ideal of a college career in somewhat this fashion: "Don't talk to me 

 about making students work harder; work in itself is not only useless, 

 it is degrading. There is but one thing of value to be got from college 

 courses, and that is the ability to cram hastily into one's head a few 

 essential facts, which comes from the passing of examinations. No man 

 ought to be compelled to work hard and steadily at anything that does 

 not interest him. You remember X; he was a grind in college and 

 graduated near the head of the class but missed a lot of fun ; Y, on the 

 other hand, finished about as near the bottom of the class, but had a 

 royal good time. Did it do the grind any good to work so hard ? Both 

 men are in medicine ; is the loafer any the worse for his loafing ? " We 

 do not stop now to question data nor to analyze fallacies; 3 we merely 

 note in passing that this feeling appears to be shared — though, perhaps, 



3 ' ' Only one man in twelve years whose college record fell below C has 

 contrived to change his habits sufficiently to graduate with honor from the 

 [Harvard] Law School. . . . The same general truth holds for students in the 

 Medical School. . . . These facts are quite at variance with popular opinion. 

 Eeturns from several hundred Harvard undergraduates express the prevailing 

 idea that success in college scholarship furnishes little or no indication of those 

 intellectual qualities that men desire to possess. 'College life' is said to be the 

 thing. The notion has spread that 'sports' in college settle down in the profes- 

 sional schools and surpass the men who in college were ' grinds. ' Pity is often 

 expressed for the unfortunate salutatorians and valedictorians who are supposed 

 to be doomed to failure in life. Such notions must now go the way of many 

 others, though some men will still comfort their mediocre college work by exalt- 

 ing opinions above facts. There are still people who believe that the earth is 

 flat." W. T. Foster, op. cit., pp. 230-232. See further President A. Lawrence 

 Lowell 's analysis of some interesting evidence along this line in The Educational 

 Review of October, 1911 ("College Studies and Professional Training"). 

 Possibly these facts will come as news to a good many of us who used to share 

 the Harvard undergraduate's illusion in regard to the capabilities of "sports" 

 and ' ' grinds. ' ' 



