The Value of High Marks

President Lowell of Harvard is not alone in regretting, in his annual report, the general underestimation of the value of high marks attained in college work. In pointing out the discrepancy between the regard in which the high-stand man in the college is held, and the comparative advantage which the attainer of similar excellence in the professional schools holds, he comes upon a problem to which it behooves American universities soon to find a solution.

It has became almost a tradition at Yale for Senior classes to vote Phi Beta Kappa the most desirable attainment for which undergraduates may compete. The failure of last year's Senior class to vote it so created almost as great consternation among the orthodox as had the failure of their immediate predecessors to uphold the desirability of compulsory chapel. But of those who each year recorded their vote for the supremacy of Phi Beta Kappa, how many, when confronted with the choice between curriculum and extra-curriculum earlier in their college careers, actually chose the former? It isn't necessary to quote statistics to prove the answer.

Wisdom comes to Seniors by devious paths, however, and though so few would, even if they had the choice again yield the apple to Minerva, the traditional vote for Phi Beta Kappa is extremely rational. One comes to college, after all, to be educated; if the curriculum is education, why then, Phi Beta Kappa is the mark of success in curricular pursuits--and most to be desired. Unfortunately, the hypothesis that the curriculum in itself constitutes education is the weak link in the chain of this logic; for it is too obvious that the curriculum is but a part very likely the most important part, but not the whole of the connotation of a "college education" in America today: Friendship, personal relationships, and contacts, a certain amount of freedom for individual initiative--all these things are too dear to be abjured. And when, in one way or another, these become divorced from the curriculum, someone dubbed them the extra-curriculum,--a term of decreasing popularity with the professorial class. --Yale Daily News