1919 RECORD-BREAKING YEAR FOR AMERICAN COLLEGES

Enrolment in the colleges today is the largest in the nation's history, as disclosed by figures collected by the Boston Transcript from the returns of more than 60 institutions representing every type of higher education in every part of the country. It is larger by 42 per cent than in 1918 and larger by 21 per cent than in 1916, the record-breaking year of pre-war prosperity. So immense and insistent has been the flow of men, that for many colleges the old-time problem of how to attract more students has given way to the problem of how to take care of the students who want to enter.

Altogether it is a rare tribute to American education and the fundamental soundness of its system that this first year after the war finds it in such a genuinely healthy condition.

Colleges Disorganized in 1918

A year ago the colleges were disorganized by the necessities of war and the changes they had to make to meet the demand for officers' training camps. As educational institutions they had almost ceased to function. They were military camps first and colleges afterward.

All that was less than a year ago. Today they are relatively in a stronger position than ever before. Not only have men who served with the colors come back to them; they have attracted thousands of boys who never had thought of going to college, but whose eyes were opened by the things colleges and college men did in that great struggle.

Large Universities Gain Most.

Analysis of figures of any kind is not always easy; often it is wholly unsatisfactory. The returns from the colleges, however, would seem to indicate certain definite developments. Primarily it is the large universities and technical schools which have benefited most by this new-found popularity of higher education. Take, for instance, the enrolment statistics of 11 of the representative big city or state universities -- Boston University, Columbia, Cornell, New York University, Northwestern, Syracuse, and the universities of California, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Their total registration today is 90,947, compared with 53,316 in 1918 and 72,646 in 1916. Here is a gain of 55 per cent. over last year and of 25 per cent. over three years ago. In other words, they are well above the average in both instances.

Such a situation was perhaps to be expected. Even before the war the practical arts were in the ascendancy. Now as a self-evident result of the war they are still more in the ascendancy. It is not an unhealthy condition, and it will not be a positively unhealthy condition until the liberal arts colleges show actual losses.

Columbia's Influence Widest.

It is not the simple matter it looks to be to name the country's largest university. Choice depends entirely on whether one is ready to grant that men and women enrolled in extension courses, night courses and summer schools are really university students. But in the figures below students in extension and night courses are omitted.

Counting its 9000 or so summer school students, Columbia has an enrolment of nearly 16,000. Of one thing certainly there can be no question. Columbia's sphere of influence is the largest of any institution of learning in this country. Indeed, it probably wields more influence over more men and women than any other university in the world, because its announced registration of 16,000 does not begin to tell the whole story. Thousands of other persons come under the Columbia spell through the medium of extension courses and lectures given in all parts of Greater New York.

The same reasoning applies in a measure to the University of Pennsylvania, with its 10,321 students; to New York University, with its 9695; California, with its 9208, and Michigan, with its 9800. All of those institutions and others like them are rendering a public service of tremendous dimensions.

Harvard Beyond 5000 Mark.

Somewhat to the surprise of the University authorities, Harvard's enrolment has passed the 5000 mark, and registration in the College alone exceeds 2500. The exact figure for the entire University, excluding University Extension and Summer School, is 5201. All the graduate schools except the Law School, whose small upper classes hold its numbers down, have a record enrolment.

Despite the abolition of the popular select three-year course in its scientific school, Yale has a larger enrolment than it had in 1916. The university is undergoing a thorough reorganization, which includes departmentalization of the faculty and some changes in admission requirements. For the first time in Yale history, boys may now be admitted without Latin. Such students will receive the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy, which was formerly conferred on those graduating from the Sheffield Scientific School. On its part "Sheff" will now offer only the degree of Bachelor of Science.

B. U.'s Enrollment Almost Doubled.

For sheer rapid growth few institutions in the country, and assuredly none in New England, have a record comparable to Boston University's. In a single year enrolment has almost doubled. B. U. has been adding new departments with considerable regularity, and the result is that today it has about 5400 students. These figures include the registration in the popular night courses given in the College of Business Administration. This fall the university has opened a college of secretarial science, a school of education and a department of religious education and social service.

Records of 62 institutions show a like increase. From 130,630 students in 1916 the total has swollen to 158,816. Although the colleges were not wholly prepared to receive these great numbers, and even had to tell many that they could not receive them, and although they found that educational conditions were in a chaotic state, they set to work to effect a readjustment on a fundamental and expansive basis. Today they are ready to solve any problem that may be thrust upon them and ready for an era of unparallelled prosperity.

While the number of women students in our colleges has increased to a substantial extent, the advance is again largely in the great State and urban universities. In nine strictly women's colleges, enrolment this fall is 8870, compared to 8723 last fall, a gain of less than two per cent. Enrolment of women in coeducational institutions has made a gan of 22 per cent. This condition of affairs is not impossible of explanation. Many women's colleges, like Vassar, Bryn Mawr, and Wellesley, have only limited accommodations to offer, and must perforce limit the number of students they annually admit. Their enrolment in consequence remains practically the same from year to year. Smith, with nearly 2000 students, continues to be the largest women's college in the world Wellesley and Simmons follow in the order named, but at some distance to the rear.