Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/103

 readily see how young men of eighteen, if left to themselves, would incline to give the authority of their presence to the methods of the New Education. Still, it is by no means certain that the large accessions to Harvard for the past twenty-five years signify all that they might seem to at first sight. During the same period other institutions, not adopting its method, have likewise had remarkable growth; on other grounds than its adoption Yale has constantly grown in numbers during this period. Its growth as estimated by the average number of undergraduates, exclusive of special students (which I suppose Professor Palmer also excluded from his estimate), has been as follows: 1861–65, 533; 1866–70, 610; 1871–15, 704; 1876–80, 745; 1880–84, 792. It should also be said that probably no other college has rejected so large a per cent. of candidates for admission, or sent away so many for failing to keep up to its standard of scholarship.

Even the most recent statistics throw still more doubt upon the argument from the number of students. It is found, by counting the under-graduates in the last Harvard catalogue, that 591 of the 1061, or more than 55 per cent., are from the State in which the college is situated. Only 247, or less than 32 per cent., of the undergraduates of Yale are from Connecticut. Not only relatively but absolutely, more men come to the latter