BRIDGING THE GAP

Some one once calculated that it would take a man eighty-odd years, on the conventional four courses a year, to go through the entire curriculum offered by Harvard College. Whether these figures are accurate or not, it is obvious the four years of the ordinary undergraduate course are hopelessly inadequate for any man to go beneath the surface even in his chosen field. The modicum of A.B. learning,--"a great deal of knowledge about a good many subject"--is pitifully small when placed beside what could be done if there were "only the time". Most men have to be satisfied with this excuse and resolve mentally each year to visit in" on several outside courses (inevitably abandoned after a few attempts), or to "read up" in prospective years of leisure after graduation. But the incentive vanishes fast and usually the resolutions are forgotten within two years.

Nevertheless, the value of keeping the alumni in close touch with the academic life of a university is self-evident and any move in that direction is useful in making possible an indefinite period of study for graduates. University extension courses.--developed to their furthest extent in this country by the University of California,--go far towards solving the problem, but they imply giving up more time than the average graduate has to spend.

What seems to be the best solution, already applied in several colleges, is the publishing each year of a complete bibliography of the books used in the various courses given by the faculty. The changes from year to year, particularly in the sciences, would keep pace with the most recent pogrress in the different fields. Such a memorandum would give adherents of the much-touted and much-maligned "fifteen-minutes-a-day" system, a definite foundation to work upon, without which the whole idea collapses. It would serve as a powerful stimulant, and as each man could do as much or as little as he chose, there would be no danger of overdoses.

There is an old French proverb something to the effect "if youth but knew, or age could do", which describes perhaps better than anything else the difficulties with any sort of institutional education, however perfect. By assembling and publishing such a bibliography as we have suggested, the University could, without much expense, provide a method for prolonging the applied study of the undergraduate and combining with it the later developed tastes and interests of the graduate.