OVERCROWDED UNIVERSITIES

Sir Michael Sadler's comment on the proportion of University students to the national population in several European countries and the United States has an interesting bearing on the over-crowded conditions of the universities in this country. In England one out of every 1000 goes to college while in the United States one out of every 120 attempt to get a university degree.

It has become almost a custom in this country for every young man that can afford it to go to college. Under these conditions there is a tendency for the intellectual standards of the university to be lowered to meet the capacities of the average student. Also boys of excellent character, though obviously unfitted for scholastic attainments, strain during their whole school life to get into college and then find it most difficult to stay there. The results are that the American universities no longer develop the best minds to their maximum degree, and many men who are not fitted for a scholarly life waste several years in attempting it, and often only succeed in losing some of their self-respect.

In England a man is judged as much by his school as by his college. To be from Eton or Harrow means as much as being an Oxford or a Cambridge graduate. If in this country the secondary schools would also take upon themselves the task of fitting their students for life as well as for college, a great number of men who really do not belong in college would not be there now, and the intellectual standards of the university could adapt themselves to the capacities of the more intelligent students.

There has already appeared an increasing tendency towards placing the emphasis more and more on the school as the final phase in education. The attitude of Mr. Winsor at Middlesex and Dr. Perry at Exeter exemplify this trend, and one also finds in the public schools an increase in manual training. It may be that this tendency contains the solution to one of America's greatest educational problems.