A Kansas View

The mere act of earning a sheepskin is not so hard; it takes only time (four years) and money (a couple of thousands, or so) and then the master technician of the future generation finds the gates of a not-too-receptive world opening for him.

The job that may await the student, when at last he graduates, may be just as humble as the one that might open up the first fall; or perhaps there will be no job at all.

So, then, why college? Where are we bound?

Education is practical or impractical as the student uses it.

There is a job to get, certainly; there are the hours of social contacts that add the spice to an otherwise dull dish; but this is not all.

If life were mere earning and spending, there would be no excuse for college. As the picture fades farther and farther into the past, NRA, Manchukuo, the Polish corridor, dictators, inflation, tariff, open doors, war will be followed by new, more complex problems which must be tackled by men who must take up the unfinished tasks of leaders and followers of today. And as people of the country rise in gyroplanes or tune in a television station piece by piece that panorama of the fullness and breadth of the world will keep unfolding for the student who begins in college to interpret and learn rather than to learn alone.

New experiments will come; old customs will linger by the wayside. The college student simply closes his textbooks at the close of his short journey on an unfinished story of life with its conflict, suffering, and struggle for happiness. The pages that we learn about today will still be there, but new pages in life's experience will be added day by day. Balzac and Longfellow and Bach and Michael Angelo--these will still be on life's pages long after the texts are closed; Roosevelt and Hitler and Doumergue, too, will have filled their niche. But the world moves on. The University Dally Kaneen.