ANACHRONISTIC ABSURDITIES

A knowledge of Latin as the sole distinction between the Bachelor of Arts and the Bachelor of Science degrees is no longer applicable or even sensible in a modern university. For the average man science includes such subjects as Chemistry, Physics, and Biology, and a Bachelor of Science degree should be awarded on the basis of four years study of those subjects.

But under the system now in effect. The man who receives the B.S. degree is not the man who has passed a full academic course in laboratory work, but rather one who has concentrated in any field the College officers but who has omitted the study of Latin. He is often regarded as a second-rate product, a man who was just not good enough to get an A.B. Anyone who feels even the slightest respect for the work done at this College in such subjects as organic chemistry or geology, cannot but wonder at the fatuous regulation which, grants a B.S. award to the graduate of four years of English Literature courses, and insists on the A.B. for a man who has spent his college career in Mallinckrodt or Agassiz, but who has passed Latin Cp. 4 on his College Board Examinations.

The Bachelor of Science degree should be restored to an equal rank with the Bachelor of Arts. A concrete and useful distinction should be made on the basis of laboratory study, and nothing else. There is no reason why Harvard should not lead the way in abolishing the old concept and adopting the new and logical one. Harvard can set up a plan which will have some foundation in reason and will not be regarded as one of the most cumbersome of anachronistic heritages.