SCHOLARSHIP AS A CAREER

A valuable addition to the discussion of the proposal for a Society of Fellows at Harvard is made by R. M. Wernaer '99, in an article in the current issue of the Graduates' Magazine. Mr. Wernaer heartily approves President Lowell's plan to establish a society of scholars to which graduate students of special ability would be appointed with ample stipends for three year terms, but he believes in the necessity of making some provision within the University for scholarship as a life career. To this end he suggests the creation of an Institute of Research, appointment to which would be the normal goal of the prize fellows.

"Scholars who wish to make productive scholarship their calling are advised that there is no place for them in this University." This is the sign which hangs over the door of American Graduate Schools, Mr. Wernaer writes. He says further: "Scholarship has been to us largely a by-product, a means of securing academic promotion, but not an end in itself. Yet, it is, we know, an end in itself, and to see this end realized is one of the chief functions of the university." It need hardly be said that it is the "creative, not merely dissective, form of scholarship" which is in question.

There can be no serious doubt of the value to a university community of either a Society of Fellows or of an Institute of Research. Practically, what the two institutions would accomplish would be to give definite positions to scholars of promise without laying on them any teaching or administrative duties. It has long been recognized that those duties interfere with the productive work of many members of the Faculty. And there is every reason to expect that protection from teaching duties by allowing leisure for growth would enable men who cannot now do it to reach maturity of scholarship.

In planning to make conditions as encouraging as possible for the unusually brilliant scholar the University is putting emphasis in the right place. Mr. Wernaer's proposal to induce the ablest men to choose scholarship as a career by creating a permanent position for them in the university structure is admirable. The Society of Fellows, however, is something definitely worthwhile for itself, and if endowment for the Society is available within a year or two, its establishment need not be delayed until the time, probably distant, when something like Mr. Wernaer's Institute of Research can be founded.