THE UNDERGRADUATE UNDER FIRE

The undergraduate is under fire in the current number of The New Republic. He is charged with not taking his curricular duties as seriously as his voluntary outside "activities"; with lacking serious intellectual interests, and with introducing into all of his life the sporting spirit which reigns in athletics. In particular the American undergraduate is compared disadvantageously to his European cousins.

The charges are essentially true. The most optimistic would hardly defend the intellectuality of the majority of undergraduates. Some of the causes for this condition, however, are to be found elsewhere than in the student's own depravity. The German student, for example, is usually older than the American and has had greater preparation. Moreover, this is still a new and essentially commercial country, where ideas are not so much in the minds and lives of men out of college as they are in Europe. The charge that undergraduate interest in public affairs is more of the sportsman's interest in men and candidates than in movements is of doubtful validity. The Forums last year, in which prohibition, the war, the administration, and other such matters were heatedly discussed, tend to refute it; and public affairs as well as men are often the subject of argument at undergraduate tables.

Most damning, however, is the charge that the "sporting attitude" prevails in regard to college courses. Most students are interested in "passing" examinations, or, if their standard is higher, in winning A's for their value in securing scholarships or elections to Phi Beta Kappa. The degree and other honors overshadow the more important interest in the problems of life. This is a serious charge, and one that is ninety per cent. true. In choosing courses today the undergraduate should remember that he is disposing of opportunities for broadening and deepening his intellect which will not offer themselves in later years.