AS WE WERE SAYING

The enrollment problem, with all the side-issues which it has raised, cannot be dismissed by a mere committee report. The report itself admitted that its proposals were tentative in many respects. It was pointed out yesterday that the larger objective is to build a University which will "attract the more ambitious intellects". But the whole move is made on the assumption that examinations and school records will select the more ambitious intellects and not merely the more capacious. Furthermore, it seems to assumes that purely mental training is the whole function of a college. It neglects the old idea that a liberal education should concern character and appreciation as well as learning. The question seems pertinent. Does Harvard want to give a true liberal education?

For the old question of why the overage young American goes to college, there is nowadays a common explanation: he goes, or is sent, to increase his earning capacity. Perhaps that confession seems quite proper; yet in it lies the key to a large part of Harvard's difficulties. A liberal education is not intended to increase a man's earning capacity. It does so merely as an incidental; and many men, mistaking the incidental for the final end, are now seeking an education for that sole purpose. It is they, as much as any, who are disturbing the University's program. Bent on securing practical knowledge, they miss most of what Harvard offers in true culture--the broadening and deepening of the student's background. The American spirit of utility has put Harvard under constant pressure to serve these men better; the hue and cry has been to make the college a more particular preparation for the world. And by putting itself in competition with professional training-schools, the college has had to let go some of its older ideals, at the expense of those students who still seek learning for its general advantage rather than direct utility.

The Committee's report has suggested how the college can raise the calibre of its students: but it does not involve a change in the aim of their study. There is an alternative. Instead of setting the college apart by a cross-stratum, taking off the upper layer of scholars, a division might be made vertically. America needs now more than ever, a place for the pure liberal arts, the education that does not prepare for any calling in life except living. For the men who choose that education, who are willing to give the rest of the world a four-year head-start in the race for "success", there should be a place where they can secure it, and Harvard is the logical place.

What that liberal learning amounts to, is not vastly different from what the present Harvard curriculum purports to offer. But in many courses now, the emphasis is misplaced on the practical side; others, such as Accounting and Commercial Spanish, do not belong in such a curriculum. There should be more attention to the "Humanities" to the "cultural" aspects of Economics and the Sciences. A dozen other factors are involved, such as distribution, and the tutorial system.

The mechanics of this change do not consist merely of externals. Almost any college course may be taken for either of two purposes, the practical or the cultural, and it will be only by changing the purpose of those who enter Harvard that the right emphasis can be gained. Raising admission requirements will not help; changing their quality might. But chiefly it will be a matter of making prospective students understand the aims of the college. They must know that they are not wanted if they come merely to increase their earning capacity. They must be brought into sympathy with the ideal of an education which trains not for immediate power in one position, but for potential power in any. Discrimination, then, will be necessary; not of race or creed, not even of mentality; it will be discrimination on the basis of purpose.