Fortunately no president and no university can confine culture to the college, professional work to the professional school and research work to the graduate school. Each will be found everywhere according to the measure of those who teach and those who learn.
The courses intended to impart "a little knowledge of everything" should, we are informed, be lecture courses by the leading men in the department supplemented by drills from subordinates. In my opinion this is exactly the wrong use of lecture courses. Books and small classes should be used for elementary instruction. Lectures may be needed for special work not to be found in books and are useful as emotional exercises. When used for the latter purpose, the student should not be quizzed or examined on them, but can properly be credited toward his degree for the number of hours he sits in the lecture room.
Futile and somewhat anti-moral is the plan proposed of trying to improve scholarship by persuading students to compete for class rank. We are told that "the free elective system in college has reduced the spirit of competition in scholarship to a minimum," and that "there is a close analogy between outdoor sports and those indoor studies which are pursued for intellectual development, especially in regard to the question of stimulus by competition." As a matter of fact, men pull together in a boat for the glory of their college; the man who plays for his own oar or hand is not esteemed there or elsewhere. There is some excuse for the student's opinion that "C" is the gentleman's grade. To try to make dull and profitless work interesting by competition puts the smell before the automobile.
This does not mean that competition is not a factor of immense importance in life; or that it is out of place in the university. When the best men graduating from the medical school receive the hospital appointments, and the best men in the engineering school find big jobs waiting for them, it is a powerful stimulus to good work. When the first and second wranglers at Cambridge have been assured of fellowships which may be worth $50,000, the attainment has been eagerly sought and highly honored. It should be noted, however, that Cambridge has this year abandoned the ranking in the mathematical tripos, because it was regarded as on the whole injurious to scholarship. If the men who do the best scholarly work in college are properly rewarded for it during their course, on graduation and in after life, their scholarship will be respected even by those who are not scholars.
A proper way to encourage students to do good work is to credit them for the quality of their work as well as for the number of hours of class work which they attend. The Harvard plan of letting the same number of courses be taken either in three or in four years does not accomplish this. The student may do work of the same amount and quality in a year whether he attends ten or thirty hours of class
