the association, although all but three require fifteen or more units for admission, in only four are fifteen units actually required, while twenty-two admit students with fourteen units; eight with thirteen and one half units; twenty-nine with thirteen units; one with twelve and one half units; and six with twelve units. If this represents the practise of the stronger colleges of the Middle West, it must be true that many institutions are admitting students with even less units of preparation.
The importance of economy of time in education has long been recognized by representatives of the higher institutions. A notable discussion of this subject from the point of view of the university is found in the proceedings of the National Educational Association for 1903, participated in by Ex-Commissioner Brown, Presidents Eliot, Butler, Harper, Dean West, and others. President Eliot urged that the boy be prepared to enter college at eighteen and that the college course be reduced to three years. A saving of two years was to be secured not by reducing the content, but "by better organization of the whole course of education from the beginning to the end, by better methods of teaching, and by large and early freedom of choice among different studies." At Harvard it has become possible for the abler and more diligent students to secure the baccalaureate degree in three years by accomplishing in that time the work formerly done in four years by all students receiving the degree. President Butler, insisting upon the importance of preserving the integrity of the college, urged that the student should be prepared to enter college at the age of seventeen, or in some cases at sixteen. To preserve the college he proposed "to fix and enforce a standard of admission which can be met normally by a combined elementary and secondary-school course of not more than ten years well spent and to keep out of the baccalaureate course purely professional subjects pursued for professional ends by professional methods." For students intending to pursue professional courses later, however, he regards the four-year college course too long. "Pedagogs," he says, "suppose that the more time a boy spends in school and college the better; educators know the contrary." "There should be," he continued, "a college course two years in length, carefully considered as a thing by itself and not merely the first part of a three-year or a four-year course, which will enable intending professional students to spend this time as advantageously as possible in purely liberal studies." This principle has been successfully carried out in many of our universities. President Harper also regarded it as important to preserve the four-year college course, but thought sixteen or seventeen the desirable age for entering college.
From an investigation on the "Changes in the Age of College Graduation" published in the Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1902, the author, W. Scott Thomas, proposes three possible means of reducing the period of education:
