HALF-COURSE CREDIT FOR MANAGERS.

Yesterday morning the CRIMSON mentioned in its editorial comment on last year's Athletic Association report, Mr. Garcelon's suggestion that half-course credit be given a major sport manager. We wish today to analyze the idea more closely. "If efficiency for work in after life is one of the objects of a college course, the college authorities can well consider the question of giving a young man taking his three-year course (i.e. as Second Assistant, Assistant, and University Manager) under the direction of the Graduate Treasurer, a credit of half a course toward his degree. It ought to be done, and the Graduate Treasurer ought to be more closely affiliated with the Faculty . . ." So runs part of Mr. Garcelon's statement.

If these words be taken to mean that forthwith every manager of a major sport be given credit for half a course towards his degree, the suggestion is not only revolutionary but unsound. For, even granted that in his three years' competition for and conduct of a managership, every manager must devote more time, energy, and ability to his work than is required in many a half-course of college work, the fact still remains that as things now stand; the work of managership cannot receive scholastic recognition, and must in a sense be its own reward. Valuable it undoubtedly is for "efficiency for after life," and the suggestion to catalogue "Football Managership A" along with "Public Finance B" is tempting. But the same thing could be said for a dozen other highly important and worth while outside activities of undergraduate life. To recognize managerships and other major activities academically, would be to give scholastic credit for a course consisting of "laboratory work" alone, indefinite, uncorrelated, and unorganized.

Under present conditions, therefore, such recognition is undesirable and for that matter unlikely. But Mr. Garcelon's proposition involves a decided change. His idea is that the Graduate Treasurer in conjunction with the Business School or the Economics Department shall organize a definite "course" in managership, wherein not only the practice but the principles of business dealing, accounting, correspondence, and the other incidents to the heavy managerial work of a Harvard major-sport can be systematically treated. For this the present rough-and-ready duties of the position might very properly be considered laboratory work. Such a course, however, would of itself presuppose an upset of the entire scheme of unhampered undergraduate competition. At least until a much more definite outline of the proposed change is presented, we do not believe that its possible virtues outweigh its positive defects.