Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/381

Rh as it is of the utmost importance for scientific leaders to familiarize themselves with the teaching of science in the public schools. We ought to know, for example, why the number of high school students studying physics decreased during the past ten years from twenty-four to eighteen per cent, while the number studying Latin increased from forty to fifty per cent.

most interesting discussion at the meeting of the National Educational Association was one on the length of the baccalaureate course and the preparation for the professional schools, in which Presidents Eliot, Harper and Butler and Deans West and Hering were the official speakers. It is a most important question. There are now somewhat over 100,000 students in our colleges, universities and technical schools, and somewhat over 50,000 students in our professional schools of theology, law and medicine. In 1901, the last year for which the records have been published by the Bureau of Education, there were graduated from the colleges and technical schools 16,513 students, of whom 11,463 were men and 5,050 were women. Fifty different kinds of degrees were given to these graduates; but the classification of the commissioner of education is apparently faulty in attributing students of engineering to the colleges rather than to the professional schools. The number of regular academic bachelor degrees conferred was as follows: A.B., 7,943; B.S, 3,023; Ph.B., 1,112; B.L., 716. Of higher degrees the numbers were A.M., 1,280; M.S., 192; Ph.M., 22; M.L., 12; Ph.D., 343; Sc.D., 5. From the professional schools there were: graduates in theology, 1,585; in law, 3,306; in medicine, 5,472; in dentistry, 2,311; in pharmacy, 1,373; in veterinary medicine, 109. The number of students in theology has remained practically stationary since 1890; medical students have increased 73 per cent., and students of law to the remarkable extent of 202 per cent. In this period the men attending the colleges have increased 68 per cent, and the women 159 per cent., a relation which some will find gratifying and others will regard as ominous. The large figures do not represent the real increase in students, as the high school is now doing in large measure what was formerly done by the college. The increase in the number of high

school students, as shown in the accompanying chart, is truly remarkable. Worthy of note is also the fact that the increase is entirely a matter of the public secondary schools.

Of the 650,000 students in high, normal and preparatory schools, the 100,000 in colleges and the 50,000 in professional schools, the college students appear to cause the most difficulty to educators. The relation of the college to the high school, on the