THE PRESS

Harvard undergraduates have been casting a critical eye at their University's curriculum and have brought to light the same inconsistency at Cambridge that President Hibben pointed out at Princeton in his annual report last fall. At Harvard as at Princeton, the CRIMSON says, the degrees of Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science are given without regard to a student's college course but are determined by the nature of his entrance credits. Thus, a man who has entered with four years of Latin and who subsequently enters the Department of Chemistry is graduated with an A.B., while one who has but three entrance units of Latin, or none at all, and goes into English receives a B.S.

The suggested remedy at Princeton is the abolition of the B.S. degree. The most important result of such a move, aside from the correction of the present situation, would be the necessary modification of the entrance requirements to the present B.S. level, namely three units of Latin or of a modern foreign language plus two units in another ancient or modern language. The actual effect would be to abolish the requirement in Latin, and doubtless its study would still further decline in college and, more important, in prep schools.

Fully realizing how similar are the time-worn yet ever valid reasons for the study of Latin, we cannot refrain from repeating a recent piece of testimony. In speaking here informally to a group of students interested in law, Dean Roscoe Pound put great emphasis on the value of Latin and Greek, together with mathematics, as discipline in exact thinking. "In languages and in mathematics two and two always make four, while in the social sciences they may make five," the Dean said in effect, adding that rigorous adherence to the "two and two make four" rule is essential in law.

The proposal of the CRIMSON to settle the degree situation seems a satisfactory one from every aspect. It suggests awarding an A.B. or a B.S. according as the student's "field of concentration"--his upperclass department at Princeton--is in the arts or the sciences. With the additional change of setting three or four units of school or college Latin as prerequisite to the arts departments, such a plan would appear desirable at Princeton. --Daily Princetonian