THE PRESS

The income of Yale University in 1932 will fall half a million dollars short of estimated expenditures, President Angell has announced. Accordingly, expenditures are to be reduced by 10 per cent. As any one familiar with the affairs of American universities knows, Yale's financial troubles are by no means exceptional. Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, and Chicago are known to be feeling the pinch of the depression. There is probably not a single endowed institution which has not suffered more or less, and most of the state institutions are also facing the problem of continuing their work on reduced incomes.

To college administrators the new poverty is alarming if not tragic, but to the outsider, it will appear salutary. Money has been flowing to the colleges too freely. Much of it has been spent on building, which has added greatly to overhead costs without a proportional return in educational values. Notoriously, the universities have gone in for sumptuous building, and particularly for sumptuous accomodations for students. A fairish college dormitory today offers at least as much in the way of personal comforts and luxuries as can be found at a good club. . . .

As Mr. Mencken recently observed, the royal road to entrance in "Who's Who" is birth in Vermont. That state has presented to the nation a wholly disproportionate share of its distinguished intellects. Of course, it may only be an accident that Vermont is also the state in which simplicity of living is probably more general than any other state in the Union. It may be an accident, and again it may not. Of the five states that have contributed most to "Who's Who" three are New England states whose soils are so poor that luxuries are little known. If plain living makes strong men on the Vermont hillsides, it may do no harm to college boys. Chicago Tribune.