The Degree of A. B.

There seems to be a profound ignorance on the part of Harvard students regarding the comparative values of the degree of A. B. from Harvard and from the great English Universities. There is a widespread idea that a graduate of our college would be obliged to do a great deal of hard work at Oxford or Cambridge before he could get a degree from either. Personal inquiry and comparison lead the writer to think differently, in fact quite the reverse.

At only a few of the colleges of Oxford or Cambridge are admission ex-examinations required, and without exaggeration it may be said that for these the previous preparation and the papers themselves are no more difficult than similar work for Harvard. At the remaining colleges all that is needed is a certificate from an instructor, somewhat similar to that required from our special students.

After admission, the candidates for the simple degree of A. B. spends on the average, twelve hours a week in recitations, while only three years are necessary to complete the course, and not even all of this time need be passed in residence at the university. Their recesses are also longer, so that the three terms contain only about two hundred and twenty-seven days. Moreover, at a certain period in their course, arts students may take professional studies, and by a certain selection of subjects, may have their choice of either a degree in arts or (say) in law.

Now it does not seem probable that our English fellow students, with no more knowledge at the start, can acquire more learning, in a shorter time and with no harder work than we. Besides the possibility that their arts students have acquired in that time, some professional learning (for which we have to go to our Medical, Law, or Divinity schools) does not raise the standard of their arts degree in comparison with ours.

Reference has been made so far to those men who are candidates for the simple degree of A. B. Of course men who try for honors put in more time and work, but that is necessary here as well as there and would not affect the comparison of the values of the simple degrees.

CHIC.