FEW DIE...

That only one fourth of the students in the graduate schools of Columbia were men whose capabilities justified their quest for a degree was the substance of a report made public by Doctor Frederick E.J. Woodbridge, Dean of the Graduate Faculties of Columbia. In his opinion this proportion is not peculiar to Columbia, but is typical of the graduate school situation throughout the United States. His statements are based not on conjecture, but on the figures supplied by the registrar of the university. Only 35 per cent of those who matriculate into the graduate schools of Columbia ever gain their degrees, and only 25 per cent, according to Dean Woodbridge, may be said to have justified the expense of their tuition. In such a situation it is clear that the problems of elimination of the applicants for the graduate schools of the country are fully as acute as the corresponding college problems.

Columbia has an evil all its own in the kind of student who is content to taken only one or two courses and either win a degree by endurance or let his studies become incidental to other interest. Precisely the converse of the problem has been encountered in the Harvard Graduate Schools, where the difficulty has been in finding means to bring the graduate student out of his cubicle. The evil of the paucity of outside interests has been in a measure allayed by such activities as the inter-mural sport leagues and the Graduate Societies of Harvard and Radcliffe.

Dean Woodbridge touches on an educational nerve center in the phrase which sums up his conclusions: "Education has already produced too many excited individuals. It is producing too few dispassionate scholars." On this point the graduate schools of the country are undoubtedly indicted. The force of education as a projection of knowledge into the future should be nowhere more clear than in the graduate school. Neither pedants nor radicals, but rather teachers with something of the inspirational touch are to be expected when a long overdue attention is paid to what constitutes graduate school eligibility.