54 
GEOLOGICAL MENTALITY 
igio 
igzo 
Increase % 
Yale University.. 
. 37 
74 
100 
Cornell University.. 
. 44 
79 
80 
Columbia University. 
. 63 
100 
60 
Chicago University. 
. 80 
113 
40 
Harvard University. 
. 79 
190 
140 
Johns Hopkins University.. 
.245 
243 
0 
Totals. 
.548 
800 
46 
The unprecedented gains of the six universities at the expense 
of the rest of the country merits closest attention. Even more 
phenomenal is the unabated prestige of the Johns Hopkins. That 
this university should hold its own in the face of most discour¬ 
aging internal conditions which might be easily avoided is one of 
the genuine marvels in the annals of American higher education. 
Than these figures of the six universities there could be no more 
complete answer to Thomas A. Edison’s recent foolish, albeit 
widely accepted, tests of college education, as well as reply to the 
North American Review authors of “What do College Students 
Know?” and “What do Teachers Know?”, and to all others who 
sneer at the Ph.D., and regard the gormandizing acquirement of 
unrelated facts rather than sound and clear thinking as the sole 
end of college training. 
Percentage losses of the State universities are tremendous, but 
their force is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the actual 
numbers involved are not large. In the mad race of these insti¬ 
tutions for supremacy of numbers of college students the post¬ 
graduate body necessarily suffers. For instance, one university 
of this class blatantly boasting of over 500 students in its geo¬ 
logical classes, produces not a single star in a generation. It is 
like the famous pontoon bridge over the Golden Horn where a 
hundred thousand people cross each day, but not a single thought 
in twenty years. What else is to be expected of a department 
when the head himself is not a producer, much less a “star.” If 
they expect to sustain themselves along the lines of copious and 
creative productivity it behooves every one of these state universi¬ 
ties to strengthen its teaching personnel by importation of at least 
one instructor of recognized supremacy for each of its twelve 
departments of science. 
The strong retrograde movement of the State universities in 
the matter of national mentality, as indicated by the new statistics. 
