Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/208

204 intuitively that it was not safe to entrust the education of their children to men whose circle of vision was so contracted. A reaction came; and when it came, the pendulum, as was to be expected; swung too far in the opposite direction. Semi-technical schools were established, which soon became either purely technical or purely scientific, in each case thrusting aside almost wholly the literary studies of the older system. These appeared to meet the requirement of the time and quickly grew to great importance, in some cases overshadowing older institutions near at hand. They gave degrees, commonly the scientific baccalaureate, of the college; in many cases they were incorporated with universities and at length stood on the same footing with the schools of law, medicine or theology. They admitted students at the same age as did the colleges, though the entrance requirements in some directions were less rigid. But those requirements were made more and more severe until it became necessary to increase college requirements; and this in turn led to increased requirements as well as to elevation in grade of instruction in law and medicine with, as a final outcome, a lengthening of the course in these two departments—while in some institutions a bachelor's degree became a prerequisite for the professional diploma. The results of these varied changes have been disastrous in several ways to the college and to college training.

The outcome was inevitable in one direction. Two schoolmates, leaving the preparatory school together, go for advanced study to the same institution; one enters the college on the scientific side, to take a course in cultural studies; the other enters the technical school to become an engineer. The boys meet on the same campus almost every day; for a time, they may meet occasionally in the same class-room; they speak in both cases of being at college. At the close of four years, each receives the degree of B.S., one in pure science, the other in engineering. To their friends, the degree is the same in both cases; but it is not, as the friends quickly discover; the engineer has now a profession and is ready to begin his life's work, whereas the other is still confronted with a course of three or four years, if professional work be his aim.

It was natural that a demand for shortening of the college period should be made, that there should be a cry to save the early years of the man's life. It was said that increased requirements for entrance had made it impossible for men to graduate at sixteen or eighteen as they did fifty years ago; that the advance in grade of instruction had made the man who completes the junior year fully equal to the graduate of fifty years ago. But this argument can not hold. The average of college graduates, as appears from study of alumni catalogues, is very little greater to-day than it was thirty or forty years ago, and, in any event, there is no reason why it ought to be greater. That requirements