DISCUSSES INCREASED SIZE OF FRESHMAN CLASS

There has been much discussion of the reasons for the remarkable size of this year's Freshman class, which is by all odds the largest that ever entered Harvard College.

One thing is clear: the increase is not due to any special leniency on the part of the College Entrance Examination Board or the Harvard Committee on Admission. The number of candidates this year was tremendously larger than last year and the proportion who fell by the wayside was not unusually small. Another interesting fact may be noted: that the gain has taken place in spite of an increase in the tuition fee from $200 to $250. So far as we can tell, this change in the tuition fee has had no effect at all on registration in the College.

To some extent the increase may be the result of the fact that last year the total entrance requirements under the "Old Plan" were reduced from 16 1-2 to 15 units. The Harvard requirements used to be larged than those of any other college, and they were reduced so as to become roughly parallel to those of several other institutions. It is significant, however, that the number of men entering under the New Plan (in which the requirements have not been altered) has increased quite as fast this year as that of men entering under the Old Plan.

Credit Due to Mr. Pennypacker

To a considerable extent the increase is undoubtedly due to the work of Mr. Henry Pennypacker '88, chairman of the Committee on Admission, in successfully interpreting Harvard and its entrance requirements to school teachers and school boys. Mr. Pennypacker visited a very large number of schools last winter, particularly high schools in centers of population distant from Cambridge, and straightened out all sorts of misunderstanding which had hitherto existed with regard to Harvard requirements and Harvard affairs in general, and which might have kept men from trying for Harvard.

One explanation of the increase which one often hears is that it is the result of hard times in business. The theory seems to be that in a period of economic depression boys who would otherwise go into business are sent to college instead because jobs are scarce. This undoubtedly is a cause of the gain in some of the graduate departments; it is the cause of the coming to college of a good many older men; but I doubt very much if it accounts to any large degree for the size of the Freshman class. Two years ago when many colleges had enormous enrollments, we heard that the cause was prosperity. Now we hear that the cause of enormous enrollments is adversity. Both arguments can hardly be true without qualification, and it is sensible to conclude that at any rate the importance of both arguments has been overrated.

Has Been General Rush to Colleges

The fundamental reason for the increase in the Freshman class seems to me to lie deeper than any of those others which have been advanced. Throughout the country since the war there has been an increasing appreciation of the value of college education resulting probably partly from the record made by college men in the war and partly from the propaganda for education in innumerable endowment fund campaigns. There has been a general rush to the colleges. Generally speaking, those colleges which admitted on certificate or had comparatively low entrance requirements were the first to be swamped with students, because the secondary schools had been more or less crippled by the war, and with many school teachers away in the service, these schools had found it hard to prepare boys for exacting examinations.

Harvard, on account of its high entrance requirements, was hardly touched by the first rush of the flood of students two years ago. In that year it had a comparatively small incoming class of 537. since then, however, the schools have recovered; and now Harvard is feeling the effect of the rush to the colleges which swamped so many of the state universities and the colleges with lower requirements last year and the year before.