ours, but upon that of European countries. While there is a presumption in favor of the majority, the ultimate test to be applied to these differing types of organization is that of efficiency.
It is difficult to apply exact scientific comparisons to educational systems in countries with different social conditions. The age test is the most obvious to be applied. In a bulletin of the U. S. Bureau of Education on the "Age and Grade Census of Schools and Colleges," Strayer has shown that in ninety-three colleges having more than one hundred students each, the average age[1] of graduation is about twenty-three years. Statistics of ages of graduation from medical schools confirms this figure. The average age of medical candidates in 1912 at the following institutions was: Western Reserve, 27.9; Harvard, 27.2; Rush, 27; California, 27; Johns Hopkins, 26.4; Cornell, 26.4. The average age of students graduating in medicine at these institutions in 1912 was thus about 27 years. As a collegiate degree is required for admission to the medical schools at Western Reserve, Harvard and Johns Hopkins, it appears that medical students in these institutions completed their college courses at about the age of twenty-three. In a recent bulletin of the Bureau of Education, the age at which students complete the course in medicine is given as follows: France, 23; Germany, 23; Great Britain, 23; Netherlands, 24; Switzerland, 23; United States, 26. There is then a difference of at least two years in the ages at which physicians are ready to enter upon active practise in this and European countries. Counting twenty-three years as the average age for completing the college course, the average age of students entering college in this country is seen to be about nineteen years, which, in the absence of more exact knowledge, may be assumed as about the average of graduation from high school. The average age of graduation from the German gymnasium is about nineteen. The gymnasium course is generally regarded as equal in content to our high-school course plus two years of our college course. With this assumption, it will be seen that at the close of the period of secondary education our youth are about two years behind those of Germany. While it is not possible to test for purposes of exact comparison the training received by the graduates of our high schools with that of the German student with two years of his gymnasium course still before him, it is probably not far from the truth to say that not merely in relative time, but also in actual intellectual training, our high school graduates are two years behind those at the corresponding period in the German schools.
Now from the point of view of efficiency this apparent waste of two years is a matter of prime importance. What are the causes of waste? Where does it occur? How may it be checked? These are questions of great educational significance.
- ↑ Harry Pratt Judson, "Waste in Education Curricula," School Review, Vol. 20, page 435.
