U. S. Colleges

All weeks, all days witness a great expenditure of time, mental effort, breath, ink and paper upon that perplexing variable, the U.S. college. Presumably, though not always demonstrably, a threefold premise is kept in view during this pedagogical theorizing, that premise being: That the beginnings of higher education are in 1) the home culture of the matriculant, 2) the nature of his secondary schooling and 3) the personality and intellectual equipment of the college professor. Thereafter the questions are: What is the U.S. college now? What does it do? What should it be? What should it do?

Last week was particularly notable for formal discussions of this sort, among them being the following:

"Transcript" Review. Following its annual custom, the Boston Transcript published a statistical survey of a representative group of institutions to indicate the numerical expansion of the national student body. In the 84 institutions chosen there had been a growth of 6.4% in aggregate enrollment for the college year 1925-26. For 1924-25 the same group had registered a growth of 6.5%. In other words, if the group was representative, the national student body had grown more than 12% in two years.

Without quoting figures, the Transcript said: "This rate of growth is much faster than the rate at which the population is increasing." The Federal Census Bureau estimate for the rate of increase of the U.S. population between the 1920 census and July 1, 1925, was 7.4%. Thus, colleges have lately been absorbing students almost ten times as fast as the population has been increasing.

"Ideal College." Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn, onetime (1912-24) president of Amherst College, at present lecturer in philosophy at St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.) and expert administrative assistant to President Enoch B. Garey (TIME, Sept. 14), signalized the week by two speeches on his conception of the "ideal college"trol).

A uniform curriculum (i.e., minus assorted elective subjects).

A teaching method curtailing lectures, substituting tutorial supervision, demanding independent, original work from students of initiative.

A "certain" set of dimensions (buildings, teachers, students) which the institution would not interrupt its work to enlarge or decrease.

Dr. Meiklejohn spoke broadly, shrewdly of point No. 1 (home culture) in the general premise for pedagogical discussions as follows: "Only subjects understood by the American people can be taught successfully in its colleges. . . . They say there is drinking in American colleges. . . . The reason for it is that there is drinking outside the colleges. . . . America is a very hard country in which to teach because as a nation it has no purpose. . . . Englishmen study with the idea in mind that one day they will take part in managing the British Empire and Frenchmen have the idea of the advancement of the culture and beauty of France."

"Life v. Business." That there is no unanimous idea about the purpose of a college education in the U.S. is obvious from the wide range of answers that invariably results when undergraduates are asked the perennial question, "Why did you come to college?" It is likewise obvious from the perpetual conflict between the forces of culture and practicability, between the humanities and bread-and-butter courses. Last week there was a typical outbreak of this conflict between the Yale Daily News and Mr. Roger W. Babson, chief of the Babson Institute for Business Training.

In this argument there was the usual give-and-take about "butter- and-egg men" on the one hand and idling college wasters (a college education as "an earmark of prosperity") on the other hand. But the argument simmered down, also as usual, to this: Mr. Babson assumed, as do many persons who conduct businesses without any diminution of their sense of being alive, that "business" and "life" are interchangeable terms. But as a business man he questioned the value of any form of training for a business career other than a businesslike training. The News simply held youth's dewy conception of "life" as an impalpable, magic state that should be entered into before "business" is undertaken. "Business" it can never be, nor any other thing besides its sweet and lucent self.

Affiliations. The 25th annual meeting of the Presbyterian College Union took 22 college heads to Manhattan. An annual meeting of the National Lutheran Educational Conference took many more. These men discussed the place of religion in higher education. With varying vehemence and latitude they deplored the conflict between science and religion, one lamenting that the Bible has undergone "a total dissolution" as interpreted in some U. S. colleges (he mentioned Wellesley and Bryn Mawr); another saying, "Why not apply what we know of God to economics, sociology and allied subjects as the atomic theory is being applied?"

President John H. MacCracken of Lafayette College (Easton, Pa.) was present among the Presbyterians, and though he made no notable pronouncement, in his annual presidential report, published at Easton during his absence, he had written of the growth and maturity of U.S. secondary schools, which are now being built at the rate of one a day. "There is little in the college life of the last generation which does not find its reflection and imitation in the life of the preparatory school of today. If the college is to maintain its claim to a position superior to the preparatory school, it must intensify its life particularly on the creative side in literature, art, science, politics and religion . . . must become a man and put away childish things."

"Effective College." The Association of American Colleges convened in Manhattan and devoted three days to discussion of "the effective college." Dr. Frank Aydelotte, President of Swarthmore College, made the main address. Dr. John H. Finley of the New York Times, Henry Allen Moe of the Guggenheim Foundation and Dean Herbert E. Hawkes of Columbia were other speakers. Dean Hawkes recommended to his large audience of college executives and professors "a detached, scholarly and impartial study of religion" for college students, a "clinic on creeds." He drew an analogy between instruction in religion and that in the fine arts.