Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/252

236 236 A Short History of Nursing two a similar course was made available in Teachers College, to students wishing to secure additional preparation before entering nursing schools. The success of such courses has not been very promising, all of them (except Simmons) having been discontinued after a few years' trial, or continued in some other form. The time proved, as a rule, too short to get any great advantage from the college connection, the course gave the student no definite academic standing, hospitals offered very little, if any, inducements to students taking such work, and since the additional training was usually optional, and taken at the student's own expense, it is not perhaps surprising that so few took advantage of the opportunities offered. During the war, in the summer of 191 8, a pre- paratory nursing course of three months was fi- nanced by the Red Cross, and given at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, to 418 young college graduates, who wished to enter nursing schools to prepare for war service as nurses. A number of training schools throughout the country offered to reduce the regular course to two years, for col- lege graduates bringing this additional prepara- tion. The experiment proved, on the whole, successful, and the example of Vassar College was followed by a number of other colleges and univer-