IS THE ADVISOR A FAILURE?

Yale has just instituted for her Freshman class a series of seven lectures on the selection of courses: President Angell will give the initial lecture covering "General Problems"; the other six topics, "Science", "The Humanities", "Engineering", "Science and Industry", "The Social Sciences", and "The Study of Literature", are to be treated by leading professor in the university.

The inference is that Yale has found the faculty advisor system Inadequate if not useless, an evaluation of its merits as true at Harvard as at Yale. The advisors frequently either know less than the advisee about the problems of the curriculum or are quite as modest as he in advancing their ideas. Sometimes, too, the advisor turns dictator, forcing the student to take a course blindly, "for his own good". But in each case the effect is the same: having "ended" his troubles by putting down certain marks on a card, the undergraduate either wonders for the ensuing three years why he took what he is taking or else potitions for a change of concentration.

But Yale's solution puts emphasis too much on wholesale distribution of information: followed to its logical conclusion, such a system of lectures would supplant the old system which, with all its faults, has that very desirable personal element, student contact with the faculty. This would be a loss. The real trouble with the faculty advisor system is that the advisors are so over-worked that they have but little time to inform themselves or their advisees concerning courses or fields of concentration. With some ten or fifteen men in line to be advised the man "in the presence" does not feel at liberty to say very much. The real remedy is to lighten the advisor's load. Seniors, for example, might be struck from his list without any great danger to their degrees: by the time a man reaches his last year in college he does not, or should not, need advice on courses. And if the plan works, the freedom could be extended to Juniors, giving the advisor even more time to devote to Freshmen and Sophomores. But whatever is done, some effort should be made in improve the advisor before admitting his failure.