274 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



were once plainly put, he would be compelled at the outset to abandon 

 the illusion of " missionary work/' The missionary idea presupposes the 

 poor lad with a keen thirst and capacity for knowledge to whom the col- 

 lege doors are closed. This pathetic image has long ceased to represent 

 any substantial reality. If any such lad is still unprovided for, a hundred 

 college presidents would be delighted to make his acquaintance. As 

 the case stands to-day, it is the colleges who are competing for stu- 

 dents and not the students for admission to college. Like the life-in- 

 surance companies, the colleges are expending a large part of their 

 energies in securing " new business," and their criterion of progress is 

 the life-insurance criterion of numbers. If the catalogue shows no 

 increase of attendance over last year, the year is counted as lost; and 

 in the matter of attendance everybody counts for one, no matter what 

 kind of a one. " The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few " 

 — nothing could be further from the truth at present in the field of 

 higher education. So insufficient, in fact, is the supply of ripe fruit 

 that many of the laborers are gathering stalks. 



Nothing better measures the active demand for higher education 

 — for education, and not for college degrees — than the prevailing acad- 

 emic standards. A few years ago out of a class of forty in formal logic 

 I conditioned ten. A colleague, commenting upon the fact, remarked 

 that " the mortality was rather high " — in which, of course, he was 

 correct. Yet, as I felt called upon to say to the class (many of whom 

 were students of law), if they had been defending themselves by their 

 own logic in a trial for their lives, not half had escaped being hanged. 

 And had they been making shoes, not half the product would have been 

 fit to wear. Think of a factory where the workers receive full wages if 

 sixty per cent, of the product is marketable ! Or of a physician who 

 makes a false diagnosis in four cases out of ten ! Yet sixty per cent, is 

 the usual academic standard; and, as this standard is commonly inter- 

 preted, a student receives credit for the course if he answers correctly 

 six questions out of ten — not iesi-questions, be it noted, but "fair" 

 questions. Similar standards prevail in other matters. Many colleges 

 put up with a laxity of attendance which is unheard of in an office or 

 factory. If it be asked why academic credit should be earned more 

 cheaply than dollars and cents, the answer must be in terms of supply 

 and demand: the supply of student material which would satisfy the 

 standards of fitness that prevail elsewhere is insufficient to meet the col- 

 leges' demand for numbers. 



In the presence of these conditions, " missionary work " becomes a 

 mere euphemism for academic inflation. And nothing has been more 

 fruitful of corruption in academic life than just this policy of infla- 

 tion. Nothing has contributed more to lower the college in public es- 

 teem or to obscure its purpose as the promoter of serious thinking. In 



