Profit and Loss

An article recently published by the United States Daily brings further light upon that grotesquely magnified problem, "the monetary value of a college education." This time, however, the undergraduate will find the light to be of a chilling blue color, for Walter J. Greenleaf, "associate specialist in higher education" at the Federal Office of Education, finds that the questionnaires, surveys, and periodically issued ratings are at best, unreliable and misleading.

But interesting as this authoritative judgement is, still more noteworthy is the fact that surveys of graduates' salaries have reached the abundance at which they themselves constitute the subject matter for a survey. To the critical, the fact will appear as a further indictment of the American collegiate mind. It is becoming apparent that for an increasing number of undergraduates, the four years of university life are chiefly financial investment; the external acknowledgment, the diploma, in its function of "social background" and "vocational recommendation," is rapidly superseding the education itself in point of importance. Hanging from this punky bough is a whole hornet's nest of educational evils, which include, among the more painful stings, "gut-hopping" and the neglecting of natural talents for more practical pursuits and courses of study.

Simply because published salary-surveys are an acknowledgment of the existence of this unfortunate undergraduate attitude, they are at the same times an encouragement of it--a sort of tacit official approval. We are tempted to suggest that the results of such investigations be confined to the ledgers of statisticians, and that, as a substitute, the Federal Office of Education make a yearly survey among college men to determine the answer to the question: "What percentage of graduates find it necessary to get soused after business hours in order to keep their minds off themselves until the next day's money-grubbing begins?" --Princetonian