THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM.

What Harvard man is not proud of the free elective system under which we are left as free to choose our courses of study as we are free to choose our lines of work in future years? We like to be treated like men, and so we seldom stop to consider the flagrant abuses of this privilege that are perpetrated each year. In every class there are many men who are capable of electing their courses with forethought and an eye to a well-rounded education; but there are as many more who elect an irrelevant mass of studies, either because they do not honestly know what they want, or because they are easily influenced by rumors of "snaps," and, with their friends, follow the lines of least resistance.

Any attempted corrections of such an evil would mean that the innocent must suffer with the guilty; but it would be better to subject the thoughtful to a useless supervision than to permit the rest to drift through College as fancy dictates. Freshmen, whose ignorance is presupposed, are assigned to advisers, who are busy men and seldom give the kind of assistance that helps a man to make a judicious choice his Sophomore year. Frequently the adviser does no more than sign the card and leave the Freshman to his fate. During the second year there is absolutely no provision for the men who will not or can not learn to use judgment, and any possible good that the Freshman adviser system may do is in such cases reduced to nil.

What Harvard undergraduates need today as much as anything else is a centralized system of advisers; preferably young men in the Faculty, or even members of the graduate schools, who are familiar with Harvard life and capable of judging of the needs and possibilities of the men assigned to their care. To be most efficient the board should be large enough to give one adviser not more than ten Freshmen each year.

Nor should the Sophomores, or even the Juniors, be permitted to drift away from their advisers altogether. The older a man becomes, the better able he is to choose for himself; but only by keeping in touch with all can the adviser hope to distinguish between the careless and judicious. To the latter every consideration should be shown; but the former should be taught to think for himself, and if that is impossible, should be compelled to make the most of his opportunities.