COLLEGE PROFESSIONALISM

Six European students, after completing a tour of thirty American colleges, were unanimous and emphatic in their criticisms. Perhaps their most interesting remark was one which had to do with undergraduate activities. In this country, an English student, said, one goes to college not to develop himself, but to distinguish himself. Since the road to distinction leads at present through athletics and "activities" rather than through studies, a distortion of emphasis naturally results. A student's object becomes to "make" a club, team, or organization; and he feels content when he has attained that object.

The English visitor is not the only one who has regretted this condition. Christopher Morley, writing in the Yale News some months ago, seriously questioned the value of certain college activities. In last year's senior questionnaires, several members of the class came to much the same conclusion; while other urged a strict limitation of outside interests, under official supervision.

Mr. Morley's criticism takes a somewhat original slant. He believes that the fault lies in the super-seriousness with which undergraduate pursuits are carried on; he objects to the spirit of professional perfection which guides most student enterprises, and makes a plea for the amateur.

Mr. Morley and the English visitor, then, offer two quite different suggestions: one wants pleasure in the work, the other self-development. Yet the two are closely related. The present objective as the Englishman recognized, is too often simply distinction. If a student's choice of activities were guided by his own tastes, if his aim were the satisfaction or the personal profit which he could find in an interest for its own sake, many of America's collegiate difficulties would disappear. Recently Yale has shown manifestations of some such renaissance, and here, too, the tendency is more and more toward the pursuit of those interests which seem to offer the individual the most of this self-development. The plea should not be for more "recognition" of this and that, but for the fullest opportunity for each to indulge his own choice, regardless of popular values.