Page:Education and Life; (IA educationlife00bakerich).pdf/142

 law schools require entrance qualifications, and only twenty of them require a three years' course. All medical schools advocate a thorough scientific foundation, many of them in a very ideal way, and urge extensive laboratory practice in many special subjects. The most of them think the first two years of a medical course could well be spent without clinical work. Many colleges and collegiate departments of universities provide electives that are accepted by some schools of theology, law, or medicine for their regular first-year work. In rare instances, studies covering two years are made common to the college and the professional schools. But only a few universities have within their own organization a plan for shortening the period of college and professional study.

The "Report on Legal Education," 1893, issued by the United States Bureau of Education, says: "Admission to the bar in all Continental (European) countries is obtained through the universities which are professional schools for the four learned professions—theology, medicine, law, and philosophy. In England and America the colleges and universities are chiefly schools for general culture; only a few offer provision for thorough professional studies. While in England and America the erroneous idea is still predominant that a collegiate education need not necessarily precede professional study, in Continental Europe it is made a conditio sine qua non.

No one more needs than the lawyer the power of general education to grasp all the facts relating to a subject, to weigh their value, discard the unessential, and give prominence to the determining factors; no one more needs the power to avoid fallacies and