THE HONORS COURSE

News that the University of Oregon is contemplating adoption of the Honors Course emphasizes once again the rapidity with which this modification of the tutorial system is spreading throughout the colleges of the United States. That the essential spirit behind this important development in educational methods remains the same whether at Harvard, at Swarthmore, at Wisconsin, or at Oregon is true, but there are certain phases in its advance which merit serious question.

Included in the Oregon plan, and quite typical of the advanced thought of today is the provision for rigid selection at the close of the Sophomore year and its corollary: "A Junior certificate might be granted at the end of the Sophomore year and that regarded as a certificate of graduation and honorable dismissal for those who do not wish to pursue the university course further." This idea is carried still further by Professor Root of Princeton who recommends that only 50 to 75 percent of the entering class be retained as Juniors the remainder being eliminated on both competitive and comparative standards. These figures are not so startling as they might at first appear for an examination of the present enrolment at Harvard shows that the Freshman Class numbers 950, and the Senior Class just under 600. Nevertheless the spirit behind the suggestion is unmistakable. What Oregon is probably forced only to recommend because of the limitations of her state charter and what Professor Root wishes is the transformation of the first two years of the college course into an elimination contest with highly limited enrolment in the latter two years and a constantly extending tutorial system which should largely supplant the old course and lecture method.

The reasoning behind such a development runs somewhat as follows: Tutorial systems are expensive. They require larger endowments than the average college is willing or able to obtain. They are therefore re-named Honors courses, narrowly limited in number to the highest grade students. The bulk of the undergraduate body continues under the old plan. Against this stabling together of the old with the new arise two different protests. John H. McDill writes to the Yale Daily News advocating "an enlarged system of honors", through which "More than the present limited few undergraduates would be enabled to engage in serious, intensive, perhaps constructive work in one department of study. . . ." On the other side there are many educators like Professor Roots who would eliminate from college at the end of two years about half the student body and apply the Tutorial system, or same form of it, to the remainder in the upper two years.

Both are right in principle. The Tutorial system when transformed into an honors course is an incongruity in which many educators have allowed themselves to become involved because of the plausible distinction between the treatment of A men and C men. But when that distinction involves the application to the A men only of a new and fundamental principle of higher education then it logically implies that the C men are not worthy of higher education as it is applied under the new principle. That this extreme is nonsense, the Tutorial system at Harvard clearly demonstrates, but it is nevertheless true that state universities particularly, and endowed colleges to a less degree, admit at present many unfit for higher education. This too the Tutorial system has disclosed by placing so much more emphasis on mind, so much less on memory.

The solution of Professor Root, and he is by no means alone in it, appears, however, both cumbersome and dangerous. In effect it divides the college into two parts, the elementary and the advanced, and at the same time limits higher education under the new methods to two years, a period far too short. The more logical solution embraces three factors, each inseparable from the other. First the college should further limit its enrolment by such admission requirements as would, in the judgment of its administrators, admit only those who are capable of profiting by higher education under the Tutorial system. In cases of very limited finances further elimination by other admission requirements might be necessary. These measures would automatically force a reorganization of the curriculum of schools preparing for college to meet the changed demands. Finally, for those capable of further education beyond school but unable to obtain admission to the college, an intermediate stage, already represented in the Junior College, should be developed which would offer a two year course and a diploma. In this way the gaps, injustices, and inconsistencies which are cropping out in the present reorganization of educational methods and ideals would be largely eliminated.