PRESIDENT LOWELL'S REPORT

The report of President Lowell to the Board of Overseers for the College year of 1908-09 has just been completed. The most important article of the report is that devoted to the choice of electives. The purpose of the modifications of the elective system are, as stated by President Lowell in the report, to require every student to know a little of everything and something well, and to plan his whole College curriculum seriously.

The sections which relate to the Freshman dormitories and football will naturally be of the utmost interest to members of the University and are given in substance below. President Lowell thinks that under the Freshman dormitory system there will be no need for more rigid discipline, if more careful oversight and a closer intercourse between instructors and students are provided. This he advocates as very necessary in Freshman year, the conditions of which largely determine a man's college career. Football, President Lowell says, to be a permanent institution, should be a sport pursued by a large part of the undergraduate body and a College team should represent the best players of this large body and should not be "a trained band of gladiators, maintained solely for public contests against similar bands from other colleges."

Choice of Electives.

In the affairs of the College the most significant movement during the year was that looking toward a modification of the elective system. It has been truly said that the opportunities for education in our universities are now enormous, and that the immediate problem before us is to bring the undergraduate to make the best use of them; for the benefit of a college education to a student consists, not in the abundance of opportunities he neglects, but in those of which he takes advantage. From colleges in different parts of the country have been heard general complaints that students not engaged in professional work have far too little desire for sound scholarship, and slender respect for those who work hard; while athletic triumphs are regarded as of vast importance. Now, it is a very significant fact that this condition is not due in the main to a sincere belief that prowess in sports is intrinsically of greater value than intellectual achievement. Almost every undergraduate would be proud to be told that he was destined in after life to write a remarkable history, or to make a notable scientific discovery and would be shocked to hear that he was to be the best professional baseball player in the world; yet he often submits willingly to drudgery that would tend to prepare him for the latter, though recoiling from study that would fit him for intellectual work. This shows a disproportion between immediate ambition and relative permanent values, even as they stand in the mind of the undergraduate himself. Of course, the disproportion is due in large part to a contrast in the amount of applause won by the two forms of activity in college, for few men at any age are so self-con- tained as to be impervious to apparent estimates of success on the part of the general public. But there is another cause for the distortion of values. Undergraduates are prone to believe that athletic sports are a good measure of red blood, while high rank in studies indicates only industrious plodding. They often rate the two occupations much as savages do hunting and husbandry. That athletics develop essential moral qualities is undoubtedly true; but that is no sufficient reason why intellectual things should be undervalued; and it was the feeling that either out tests for rank were wrong, or that the students failed to recognize them at their true worth, that gave rise to the appointment of a special committee of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in the spring of 1908.

Although the action of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Governing Boards upon the suggestions of the committee does not fall strictly within the period covered by this report, yet the changes are now in substance complete. The object to be attained was two-fold: first, to require every student to make a choice of electives that will secure a systematic education, based on the principle of knowing a little of everything and something well; second, to make the student plan his college curriculum seriously, and plan it as a whole. This is pre-supposed by the theory of the elective system, but, in fact, it is by no means always done, as is shown by the very large number of changes of electives, and often radical changes, made in the first few weeks of every college year.

The value of the new system, so far as the first of these objects is concerned, depends upon the mode of insuring a sufficient amount of concentration on the one hand, and a broad enough distribution of courses on the other. Concentration is attained by providing that every student shall take at least six of his courses in some one field. Distribution is a less simple matter. It has been sesured by classifying all the subjects taught in college among four general groups, and requiring every student to take something in each group. In order to attain the second object, that of making a student plan his course of studies in college as a whole and under the best advice, it is provided that at the end of his Freshman year, when he may be presumed to have acquired some familiarity with college work, he shall present to his adviser a program of study for the rest of his college course. This plan will then be discussed with his adviser, with a view to its coherence as a whole, to the young man's interest and capacity, his strong and weak points, his private reading, his future occupation, and the way in which his different subjects are distributed through his college year. His adviser will see that it conforms to the foregoing rules laid down by the Faculty; or, if it does not, will inquire whether there is good cause for suggesting that the case ought to be treated as exceptional. The plan that he adopts at the end of his Freshman year he must adhere to, unless he can show good ground for a change. It may be added that the new rules will be in force for the class that enters next autumn, but the Freshmen now in college will be encouraged to follow them.

No one claims that the new system is perfect. It is an attempt to construct a positive system of education upon definite principles, and a system that is well fitted to the traditions of Harvard College because it leaves the initiative with the student himself. The essence of the system is that it holds up before a student a positive standard of education, and the setting up of that standard alone is of inestimable value. So long as he is told that any sixteen courses are, in the opinion of the college authorities, equivalent to any others, it is natural that he should often be careless in their choice, and that he should seek the path of least resistance. But when he is given a standard he is likely to feel a stronger motive for working not perfunctorily but well.

Pass and Honor Degrees.

To provide that no student shall gradnate with a merely superficial education, or one that is too narrow in scope, is certainly an advance; but to stimulate a more general interest in scholarship is a far greater and far more difficult matter. It cannot be done merely by raising the standard for degree, for that is merely raising the minimum. A minimum requirement can never be really high nor act as an incentive to exertion for men of superior capacity; and it is not impossible that by constantly harping upon the minimum we have actually lessened the desire for excellence. We are tending in America to make a fetish of degrees. Moreover, in conferring the degree itself we are in danger of relying too much on mechanical rating. The ordinary student is too apt to treat courses as Cook's tourists do the starred pictures in foreign galleries, as experiences to be checked off and forgotten.

The chief evil of laying exclusive stress upon the degree, and of counting by courses, is that it fixes attention upon the pass mark. In order to correct this impression, and create a stronger desire for excellence, the institution of distinct honor and pass degrees, akin to the practice of the English universities, has often been suggested. Whether it would be wise to have different curricula for honors and for a pass, as in England, is by no means clear. The vital point is the importance which those universities have attached, and persuaded the public to attach, to the winning of honors. It is that spirit which must be cultivated here if we would foster a desire for scholarship in college. So long as the distinctions achieved in college are not worthy of perpetuation, or are not deemed to be so by the university itself, it is idle to expect the students or the public to value them highly, or to hope that undergraduates will have any great ambition to excel in their college work.

Age of Entering College.

The age at which boys enter college is a matter for serious consideration. The average age has not, indeed, advanced of late years, but the increase of technical knowledge, and the consequent lengthening of professional training, is bringing to bear a constant pressure to reduce the length of the college term. There are, of course, many youths who are very properly anxious to begin their professional studies early, and in other colleges and universities with combined degrees