THE BUDDING PLANT

Yielding none of its peculiar educational features, St., Stephen's, an Episcopal college for men, became yesterday a part of Columbia University. St. Stephen's College has not only been one of the first to introduce the English in tutorial system in America, but it has realized the tenets of progressive educationalists by allowing its students complete intellectual freedom. Only men of exceptional ability are admitted, and those who do not prove qualified are dropped at the end of the second year. For most of the Juniors and Seniors there are no classes, but individual work with tutors. For all, there is a liberal administration readily adapted to the exceptional student, a successful student government, and a renunciation or intercollegiate activities.

President Butler of Columbia, upon the completion of the merger, declared mouthfillingly, that it was "a significant step in the evolution of the organization of higher education". But if most innovations have borne this tag, such a union must be admitted as the really hopeful direction for the dreaded mass education to take. Business developments have sufficiently demonstrated the advantages of the branch system. It universities can have the strong trunk of efficient administration and authoritative lecturers, and still diversity their branches with unit colleges of different types, such as Yale promises and Columbia provides, the fear of Ford factory scholasticism may well be forgotten.