Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/413

Rh of thoroughness from the preparatory schools; entrance examinations should be to determine how well the boy has been trained, not to ascertain how fully he has been crammed. It may be well enough for colleges to waste their students' time in athletic contests for advertising purposes, but such "commercialism" in preparatory schools should be treated with indignation.

College methods should be changed. But first of all, there should be a definite legal determination as to the meaning of the term "college." The several states should respect themselves and should repeal the charters of many schools which have power to grant degrees. Drastic treatment has been applied to medical schools within the last two years and similar treatment should be applied to academies which masquerade as colleges and count as students all pupils, even those in the primary department. It has been said that the existence of such colleges is justified in many places, for the question is either poor colleges or none. Xot at all. There is no reason why these academies should be called colleges and be empowered to grant degrees which the recipients think equal to those obtained from colleges properly equipped with men and materials; they should be recognized only as academies and as such they should be self-supporting. There is so reason why an academy in a prosperous community and with 400 pupils should not be self-supporting. If comfortable farmers are unwilling to pay the cost, that is no reason why overtaxed city dwellers should meet the deficit; the canny agriculturist has ovei reached the great cities sufficiently through methods of real-estate assessment.

The cost of some so-called "colleges" is appalling. The writer recently received a circular appealing for assistance to save a college whose prosperity threatens its existence. The "institution," in a prosperous agricultural region, has almost 500 pupils, including the summer school, whose utility in swelling the catalogue list has been discovered. Of the grand total only one seventh can be classed as taking college courses and the academy contains scarcely so many. During the year 1911-12 the expenditures were almost $49,000 arid the deficit was about $23,000, or an average expenditure of $100 per pupil—while the receipts from tuition fees of all sorts amounted to only about $7,500. Of the money expended, $17,000 was paid to teachers, but the other expenditures show some surprising features, for one finds $4,800 for "other salaries"; $1,000, "other expenses"; $5,600, "printing and advertising"; $1,360 for "travel," making a total of nearly $13,000 for administration and publicity in a prosperous community, which cared so little for the advantages that only $7,500 were paid as fees for almost 500 pupils. During an existence of twenty-nine years this "college" has succeeded in accumulating an alumni roll