The College of To-day.—At the present time things are very different. The old four-year course, consisting entirely of a single set of prescribed studies leading to the one degree of bachelor of arts, has grown and branched in many ways. The better preparation now given in thousands of schools has enabled col leges to ask for somewhat higher entrance requirements and to exact them. The age of entrance has increased. In some quarters the increasing age of the students has raised the question of shortening the course to three years or allowing the last year to be occupied with professional studies in order that young men may not be kept back too long from entering upon their professional studies. A generation ago a young man graduated at 20 without diffi culty and after two or three years in studying law or medicine he began to earn his living at 22 or 23. But to-day a college student is 22 years old at graduation and if he studies law or medicine he must wait until he is 25 or 26 to begin earning his living. Accordingly boys are now passing in considerable numbers directly from secondary schools, which do not really complete their secondary education, to the professional schools. The problem is an economic one, and it is affecting college courses of study. One solution, to shorten the course to three years, was advanced by President Eliot of Harvard. But this proposal has not met with general favor. Another proposal is to keep the four-year course and allow profes sional studies in the last year, thus enabling the student to save one year in the professional school. This experiment is being tried at Co lumbia and elsewhere. A third proposal is to keep the college course free from professional studies, but to give opportunities in the last year or the last two years to pursue liberal courses clearly underlying professional training, thus saving a year of professional study. This is the trend of recent experiments in Yale and Princeton. The one common consideration in favor of all these proposals is that a year is saved. Against the, three-year course, it is argued that there is no need to abolish the four-year course in order to save a year. Against the admission of strictly professional studies it is argued that work done in a pro fessional school ought not to count toward two degrees representing two radically different things. Against the proposal to allow the liberal studies which most closely underlie the pro fessions, it is argued that this is a half-way measure, after all.
Alterations in the Course.— The four-year course, however, no longer leads solely to the degree of bachelor of arts, and this old degree has itself been modified. With the founding of schools of science, aiming to give a modern form of liberal education based mainly on the physical and natural sciences, the degree of bachelor of science came into use. Then inter mediate courses were constituted, resting on Latin, the modern languages, history, philoso phy, mathematics and science, and thus the degree of bachelor of letters or bachelor of philosophy came into use. Sometimes the va rious courses in engineering were made four year undergraduate course with their degrees virtually rated as bachelor's degrees. Still other degrees of lesser importance came into vogue here and there to mark the completion of a four-year college course. The dispersing pres sure of the newer studies and the practical demands of American life proved too strong to be held in form or to be kept out by the barriers of the old course of purely liberal studies with its single and definite degree, and new degrees were added to represent the at tempted organization of newer tendencies. Com pared with the old course such courses lack definiteness of structure. They aimed to real ize new and imperfectly understood conceptions of education, and were composed of studies whose inner content was changing rapidly, or else were °half-and-half) forms of education, difficult to arrange in a system that promised stability, as in the case of studies leading to the bachelor of letters or bachelor of philoso phy. A graver source of trouble was the ad
mission of various engineering and other tech nical studies as parallel undergraduate courses. This tended to confuse in the minds of stu dents the radical distinction between liberal and utilitarian ideals in education, and by the attrac tiveness of the abread-and-butter' courses, to diminish the strength of the liberal studies. When in addition it is remembered that the newer courses, whether liberal, semi-liberal or technical, exacted less from preparatory schools in actual quantity of school work necessary for entrance into college, it will be seen that the level of preparation for college was really lowered.
The present drift of opinion in colleges which offer more than one bachelor's degree is more reassuring than it was some 20 years ago. There is a noticeable and growing tendency to draw a sharper line between liberal and tech nical education and to retain undergraduate college education in liberal studies as the best foundation for technical studies, thus elevat ing the latter to a professional dignity com parable with law, medicine, and divinity. The more this conception prevails the more will college courses in engineering be converted into graduate, or at least partially graduate, courses. Independent schools of technology may continue to offer their courses to young students of college age, but where such schools have been associated as parts of colleges or universities the tendency to a clearer separation of technical from liberal studies seems likely to prevail.
Another hopeful tendency gradually gather ing strength is to give the various bachelor's degrees more definite significance by making them stand for distinct types of liberal or semi-liberal education. First comes the aca demic course, attempting a general liberal edu cation, consisting of classical and modern literatures, mathematics and science, with his torical, political and philosophical studies, and leading to the bachelor of arts degree. The second aims to represent a strictly modern cul ture predominantly scientific in character, and culminating in the degree of bachelor of science. In this course the technical aspects of the sciences taught tended to create a demand for strictly technological instruction. So schools of science do little- save produce experts in the various mechanical and chemical arts and in dustries. Conscious of this difficulty, many schools of science have been giving larger place in the curriculum to some of the more available humanistic studies, especially French, (=erman and English. Economics, modern history and even the of philosophy have found place. Some improvement has also been effected by increasing the entrance requirements in quantity of school work. But the course still suffers from an inner antagonism between technical and liberal impulses, and until it set tles into a strictly technical form, or else comes to represent a strictly modern liberal culture, its stability cannot be regarded as assured. In the independent scientific schools, unassociated with colleges, it seems probable the course will keep or assume a highly technical form. But wherever it exists side by side with other bachelor's courses as a proposed representative of some form of liberal it will almost inevitably tend toward the ideal of a modern culture mainly scientific. The process, however, promises to be slow and difficult. There is not only a financial risk, but a serious theoretical difficulty in realizing this form of liberal education. The antagonism between the technical and liberal impulses in the course seems very difficult to eliminate completely. The utilitarian instinct of the time militates against devotion to the intellectual value of modern studies and tends more and more toward technical standards.