THE NTH DEGREE

Lights gleaming from the lived windows of Sever and Emerson long past lecture, hours, have often puzzled Widener-bound students, but the opening of the university extension courses prosaically explains the mystery. The fact that a degree of Associate of Arts may be attained through persistent attendance of these evening classes adds interest to a program that otherwise resembles those of numerous evening schools throughout the country. Theoretically, this degree is equivalent to that of A. B.

A policy of university extension is based upon the same principles that justify the existence of the summer school. That the facilities of Harvard should be guarded jealously for the use of its official members, is not their wish. Education is no longer a secret accomplishment, to be gained by a few. Rather, it is a rampant movement which needs direction; and the influence of a summer's study upon a numerous body of teachers is not to be disparaged. Extension courses give another such opportunity to perpetuate the ideals of a group of able professors.

Nor is it likely that a demand for specific vocational courses in the extension system will effect the trend of undergraduate study. The university, whose college maintains the tradition of a liberal education, may extend its services by giving courses for which the community about it feels a need. Such a policy demands no change in educational ideals, but it does afford a new field for their development. If it is the function of a university to diffuse knowledge and culture, a method of direct teaching by the extension system may reach the older generation more effectively than does the publication of a scholarly historical research. The degree of A. A. is not to be ridiculed.