Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 80.djvu/64

60 for the better. In the old faculty, there was always some one to whom troubled students could go, knowing that he would give the best he had of advice and sympathy; and that man is present in every faculty to-day. Reasoning a priori, the number of such men should be greater now. The college professor of a half century ago was apt to be a recluse, not a man of affairs. Too often, especially in the smaller colleges, he had become teacher late in life, having been more or less unsuccessful in another profession, which, naturally, he regarded as of higher grade than teaching. That type has not disappeared; but the college professor of the last three decades has had, for the most part, special preparation for his work; teaching is, for him, the noblest of professions; except in a few departments, he is a man of the world, not enclosed in a world of his own creation. With wider opportunities, he understands his fellows and can keep in touch with younger men. On the other hand, the student's life is broader, he is no longer regarded as something apart from his kind and he is better able to appreciate his opportunities—even though not always inclined to avail himself of them.

It is true that the output of our colleges in recent years does not give promise of equalling in average quality that of fifty years ago. The vast increase in number of students has not been in the best interests of true education; too many are seeking neither knowledge nor training; too many others are unfitted by native limitations or by early surroundings; they merely limp through the course and by dint of hard labor gain little more than the minimum demanded. It would be well for our colleges, well for the men themselves, if a great part of those now on college rolls should drop out and have no successors of their kind. The lowering of the standard in some quarters and the decreasing average of the output are due to their presence.

But those uttering the current laments respecting inferiority of output rarely consider matters of this sort; actual conditions have little of interest for them and they look far afield. The lack of frankness is nowhere more apparent than in the type of argument used to enforce the assertion that large colleges do not show results equalling those of the smaller ones. One would be justified in using a harsher term than "lack of frankness." Many advocates of present-day "small colleges," with 60 to 90 per cent, of their enrollment taking non-collegiate studies, are not content to say that their work is very good; they maintain that, if one may judge the tree by its fruit, their work is far better than that done by the larger colleges. In an address delivered several years ago at the inauguration of a college president, the speaker said that of the fifteen college graduates, chosen to the presidency of the United States, two thirds came from small colleges; that of seventeen graduates from fifteen colleges, who attained distinction in congress from 1870 to 1885,