Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/408

404 the reader, acquainted with actual conditions, finds himself commenting involuntarily on some of the expressions. If one read records on sporting pages of the great dailies, he will soon discover that the great subjects are athletics and that the broad teachers are professional coaches, who receive larger remuneration than that of the professors. If he read addresses of college presidents at alumni gatherings and consult the columns of college papers he will find little reason for change of opinion. Nor is he likely to find anything different if he look in other directions, though he may gain enlightenment respecting the minor groups or special interests.

A leading metropolitan daily published once a week two pages of news calculated to bind alumni to their colleges—all reference to athletics being avoided. The communications, many of which carried earmarks of official sanction, were examined during several months. Barely 9 per cent, of the space dealt with the curriculum, increased facilities for study, with the work of professors; aside from the incidental references to such matters, the space was devoted to information respecting glee clubs, society politics, college theatricals, glorification of the democratic spirit among the students, the peculiar advantage of the college over its rivals, with not infrequently a more than casual reference to athletics. In comparatively few instances is anything recorded which would lead a wholly uninformed reader to suspect that college is a place for study—and most of those references are not from colleges but from technical schools. If one consider the important place which these interests occupy in the mind of so-called students, and if he add to them football, baseball, lacrosse, hockey, wrestling, boating, swimming, gymnastics, as well as daily, weekly or monthly publications, he will feel convinced that for a great part of the students none too much time remains to be expended or, as some college boys would say, wasted on study. He will be confirmed in his conviction when he observes that intercollegiate contests are not interrupted by such matters as reviews or approaching examinations. The college course need be little more than leaning against college walls for four years—a simple luxury. The opportunity to acquire knowledge and intellectual training is offered, but students are not compelled to accept it or to leave. A man must be a dullard or an idler indeed who can not gain the passing mark by incidental study and by reasonable attention during recitation hours. Frankly, there is no sense in showing surprise or irritation when business men, demanding 98 per cent, efficiency for promotion, designate college work as a four years course in the science of shirking. The absurdity of the conditions appeals to the professional jester, the "student" has displaced the mother-in-law and the politician.

Some prominent universities have informed the community that the college course is not so important as some good people imagine. A