FIGURES AND FACTS

While Harvard's forces are being marshailed for new forays into the experimental fields of educational development, there arise murmurs that all may not be well in some of the recently conquered territories. For the second successive year since the adoption of the Reading Period, the membership of the Dean's List shows a slight decrease in enrollment. The figures are far from alarming, showing only a drop from 18.4 of the total registration last year to 16.8 in the records just published, and the fluctuations are so small that they might readily be accounted for by temporary considerations such as the severity of examinations.

It is just this negative quality of the figures that may cause the more hopeful supporters of the Reading Period qualms of uneasiness. At the end of the first full year under the new system it was announced that the averages of the A, B, and high C, men were bettered and the lower grade men somewhat lowered. One would expect the proofs of the continuance of this tendency to be found in the Dean's List enrollment, for dealing as it does with a much smaller number it is more sensitive to changes affecting these upper strata of the student body than the more inclusive general rank list. Certainly nothing of the sort can be gathered from the figures for the first half of the current scholastic year, and the best that can be said is that there is no positive sign of decline that can be laid to the innovation.

While the Reading Period is still comparatively young as college institutions go, the major problems of balanced reading lists, library facilities etc. should have been at least largely solved after three trials. There is still time to hope for more than intangible results from the Reading Period, but the contrast between the facts and the enthusiastic prophecies offered at its outset shows that change in the institutional environment alone is not enough to bring about any very far-reaching improvements in the results attained.