Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/409

Rh or more ago several institutions decided that the fourth year in college is unnecessary and agreed to accept in its place, as counting for the degree, the first year in medicine, law or theology; and now comes the startling announcement that work of similar kind is to be accepted in some cases for the third year also. Fifty years ago, the medical course required two years; now it requires four; but the bachelor degree and that in medicine can still be secured in six years as they could fifty years ago. The writer offers no objection to this, as medical study requires work, but such open confession of the degeneracy of college work was hardly to be expected.

Business men are censured for lack of appreciation because they hesitate to employ college-bred boys, but this is unjust. The college graduate has heard so much about the advantages of an "education" that he expects to find a scramble for his services as soon as he waves a diploma. Without loss of time, he discovers that, in so far as business affairs are concerned, his sojourn within college walls has given him little, it has fitted him for nothing and that it has unfitted him for much. Not long ago, some of the New York dailies had columns of letters complaining bitterly of the miserable pay given to college graduates in business offices. Certainly the pay was small, so very small as to suggest that the complainants would have been employed better in self-examination than in writing letters. There is no reason why a business man should pay more to one incompetent clerk than he does to another. Graduate or non-graduate, that is a matter of indifference; the most efficient man receives most; the graduate must begin where others begin—at the bottom—for, at the outset, all are alike ignorant of business affairs. One must concede that college life does not tend to make business men. The college code of honor would not be tolerated for an hour in a business office; from time immemorial, cheating in examinations has been regarded as justifiable to avoid failure, though cheating to gain honors has always been looked upon as base. In the former case, only the faculty is swindled, but in the latter, injustice would be done to a fellow-student. In a business office a man must do his work thoroughly, no 60 per cent, is a passing mark there. Even the class room atmosphere is not always good. Too many college professors know little of the world outside of their community and the utterances of their favorite newspaper or magazine. They have acquired, subjectively, many and serious convictions respecting the moral condition of the community, chief among these being the inherent corruption of commercial life. The student absorbs the doctrines and goes forth burdened with the responsibility of eliminating the crimes, which he is soon to discover are no more prevalent in business than in professional life, being merely the outgrowth of poor human nature.