Bachelor Eligibility

After twitching spasmodically on the shelf where it has been buried for the last eleven years, the motion to streamline the archaic distinction between the College's two Bachelor degrees has once again come alive. The intervening decade has seen the faculty majority of scholars in the classical tradition who so roundly defeated President Conant on the issue in 1935 either fade from the scene altogether or yield to the pressure of what they confess is an inevitable trend. Odds are on the chance that all men now in College may graduate as a Bachelor of Arts, or at least as a Bachelor of Science who is a scientist . . . . but, regardless of the outcome, the modern student would be as much the loser if he did not hear the classicist's defense of Latin or Greek as the soul of education as if he chose to ignore Plato's theories of government.

Natural sciences were not necessary adjuncts to the educated man when, in 1851, the degree of S.B. was first awarded to graduates of the Lawrence Scientific School, then a completely separate entity. With the incorporation of the School into the newly-formed Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1890 under President Eliot, the last real distinction between the two degrees died and the present anomaly was born. Science began to take its place in the realm of knowledge, President Lowell bestowed B. S.'s on English concentrators and A.B.'s on physicists, and the late Dean Briggs aphorized on the B.S. that it showed "not a knowledge of science, but an ignorance of Latin."

Most graduates care little whether they appear as an A.B. or S.B. on the Commencement program, but minor bitternesses in addition to the absurdity of the present requirements make a revision sufficiently urgent. The original faculty committee appointed by President Conant to investigate the matter was aware of the inconsistencies but was unable to agree on a remedy. Although the dual degrees and the varying admission requirements were then treated as a single problem, the suggestion has been well made that there are actually two.

Unless the S.B. tag is considered of particular usefulness to any considerable proportion of men, it ought to be dropped in favor of the single degree, indicating merely "a college graduate." Especially in such an integrated and comprehensive curriculum as is projected under the General Education plan, all melds have mixed their materials, and Philosophy has already met with Physics in forming the link between fields which once seemed poles apart.

For admission as a candidate for the A.B.--be it one or the only degree--the ancient languages requirement has been supported on such inadequate grounds as the sentimental, "I took it and it did me good." But with an increasing and just emphasis on wider geographic representation in the college, the fact that many schools feel Latin and Greek is unnecessary as a preparation should indicate that an argument for the classics needs more in its support than a sentence in the catalogue.

Discussion of both the twin degrees and of the college's standards will appear on many sides and from several quarters before the impending faculty vote. Consistency is imperative, yet rash decision may force the intellectual price of a degree down to firesale levels. Those who would study the problem and the faculty members who must live with it must create order out of the chaos which will lead to the objectives which education has found for itself in a free society.