CHICAGO AGAIN

Among all the innovations in Chicago University's curriculum which President Hutchins described in yesterday's New York Times, one is outstanding for its radical implications concerning university and professional education. This is the "college", an entirely new educational unit, which prepares men in an unprescribed period for advanced university study or for a professional school.

Some plan generally similar to that of the Chicago "colleges" may prove the solution of two pressing problems; the presence of uninterested and unfit students in the advanced stages of university work, and the disproportionate length of time necessary for professional training. The "college" takes a step toward solving the first problem by providing a general education for the large group who neither wish nor deserve specialized instruction in the arts and sciences. It avoids the necessity of persevering through four years merely because "there is no curriculum leading to a dignified terminus at an earlier period."

The solution of the second problem will depend on whether or not the schools of law and medicine are willing to change their entrance requirements. The Chicago "college" will provide the general education which, in fairness to the man of limited means, ought to be the condition of admission into a professional school. Specialized academic work does not necessarily increase a man's qualifications for a professional training. Some satisfactory standard of achievement and ability other than the possession of a college degree could surely be found.

With many universities emphasizing, as Harvard is, higher learning in the liberal arts, there is a distinct need for good "colleges" of the Chicago type. Whether or not such "colleges" do develop the professional schools would make no mistake in studying some plan for the admission of specially able men who have a general education, even though they have no degree.