Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/43

 next. A man came into my office last fall and said that he would like very much to enter college. He, however, had no money and his entrance was dependent entirely upon his ability to borrow a sum sufficient to carry him through the year. He was not young—was in fact, I discovered by inquiry, twenty-eight years of age. He had been out of high school eight years, had had a fair position during all that time, was without responsibilities excepting to take care of himself, but he had not saved a cent; he did not have enough money to pay our matriculation and incidental fees, which are in reality trifling.

I told him that it would be impossible for the University to lend him money, because it now has a tegulation that no loans are available to students until they have been in residence for at least one year, but I went further to show him that if he had only himself to support, and had held a good position for so many years without saving a little money at least, so far as any loan was concerned he was what I should call a pretty poor bet. Any individual or institution would be doing a foolish thing if it lent him money with the idea that it would within any reasonable time be paid back.

The man who does not look ahead before he enters upon any enterprise to determine how he is going to complete what he has undertaken, as well as the undergraduate who enters upon the work of a year in college without having determined upon some way in which he may be able to meet his expenses, is ordinarily a poor risk. If he borrows money he will be quite as unlikely to make definite plans to pay it back and will come up to the time of the maturity of