University Statistics.

Some interesting statistics appear in the United States Report on Education. The number of universities and colleges is exactly the same as ten years ago, in spite of the fact that some have died out and others have sprung up. During the same time the number of students has increased from 32, 316 to 41, 161, and the attendance in each college has increased twenty-four students on the average. These statistics are a favorable sign that the mania for founding new colleges is dying, while at the same time the people recognize that it is better to patronize institutions already in existence. Our surplus of colleges has threatened to become a nuisance. Were our efforts confined to improving our most powerful universities, we might well hope to rival the German universities. Even New England has found it profitable to diminish her small number of educational institutions. In the last decade the number of her colleges has decreased by three; New York has lost two. In the Southern States, twenty-three colleges have died out, while the number of students has increased eleven hundred.