proctor appointed and paid for such service. Such supervision is valued by honorable students as a guarantee of the good faith of an examination—a guarantee which is absent from a diploma based on examinations which are not supervised. An honest student has no more objection to this method of vouching for the honesty of his examination than a bank official has to having his accounts audited.

It is not my purpose to take up the cudgels for the honor system, but to remove what seem to be the two prevalent misconceptions of the system as compared with the so-called system of supervision. In the first place, Mr. Greene's contention that the honest student has no objection to this method of vouching for the honesty of his examination may be conceded at once. No one would maintain that the students of an institution accustomed to no other system would resent the system of supervision. But how do the two systems prepare for life? If the one system prepares the student for "a kind of supervision which everybody must sooner or later accept," does not the other system prepare the student for a kind of personal accountability which, unfortunately, everybody does not sooner or later accept?

In the second place, is it true that a diploma based on examinations conducted under the honor system is less trustworthy than one based on supervised examinations? Granting that there is undetected cheating under both systems, is there more under the honor system? Having known only the honor system myself, let me cite, out of much available material, the testimony of three teachers who have tried both systems. Says Professor William H. Hulme,' of the College for Women, Western Reserve University:

If any instructor, even with the help of two or three assistant "proctors," supposes he can prevent cheating or cribbing in a room of fifty or more college boys by seating them in any possible order, he certainly does not understand human nature, and he is entirely mistaken. An inquiry among a half-dozen of his best students will convince him that cheating goes on regularly right under his eyes. It is, in fact, the boast of many students in colleges where they are watched on examinations that they cheat and crib at every opportunity, and they feel that they have a perfect right to do so, because they are being watched and are, therefore, suspected.

Dr. G. Carl Huber, of the University of Michigan, writes as follows (May 18, 1905):

In view of the fact that the so-called honor system has been tried only in the department of medicine and surgery of the University of Michigan, President Angell has forwarded your communication to him, of recent date, to me for answer. I may state that some four years ago, largely through the instigation of our present graduating class, a set of resolutions were adopted by the class and approved by the faculty, according to which the class, and especially an appointed committee of the class, which also was approved by the faculty, were to have charge of all examinations, written quizzes, and all written exercises in which this class would participate during its stay in the university. The class adopted a very good set of resolutions, and has been enthusiastic in carrying out the spirit and the letter of these resolutions. As concerns this one class, the honor system has proved very satisfactory. It has elevated the tone of the class, and its conduct has been much more loyal through its entire stay at the university.

Professor H. B. Fine, of Princeton University, writes (May 25, 1905):

* See The Western Reserve University Bulletin, Vol. VII, No. 3 (May, 1904), p. 123.

The honor system, I may say, has proved an unqualified success here in Princeton. It has banished cheating from our examinations, and before the system was introduced there was a great deal of cheating in the Princeton examinations. Once in a while, to be sure, a student so far forgets himself and his honor as to cheat, but he is pretty certain to be detected, and, if so, his dismissal from college on the recommendation of the student honor committee follows almost as a matter of course.

In conclusion, there is no room for pessimism, for there was never a time when the relations existing between college faculties and college students were more frank and cordial than they are today. There was never a time when the personal influence of college professors was more potential for the direction and ennoblement of student life. If the honor ideals of the students find in their instructors prompt recognition, kindly enlightenment, and hearty co-operation, both students and instructors will be alike the beneficiaries.

DOES WIDE ELECTION, PERMITTING NARROW READING,
ESPECIALLY IN
IN LITERATURES; AND DO MINUTE
COURSES, PROHIBITING VIEWS OF WHOLE SUBJECTS,
WEAKEN UNDERGRADUATE COURSES IN UNIVERSITIES?
ARE COLLEGES MORE FORTUNATE IN THESE THINGS ?1
JAMES H. CANFIELD, LIBRARIAN OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK CITY

It seems only proper that a word of explanation be offered. I was asked to open the discussion of President Baker's paper, and consented. No abstract of his paper reached me. Just before coming to Asbury Park, I received a letter from Vice-President Bryan, informing me that President Baker had gone to Europe for the summer, had not prepared a paper, but had sent all the preliminary correspondence to Mr. Bryan, and that the latter would confer with me about this when we met here. At ten o'clock this morning President Bryan brought me a large package of letters, and we determined to present the greater part of them here this afternoon, as a symposium, in place of the paper.

I have read these letters carefully; have classified them, partly according to territory, and partly according to reputation; and am prepared to give you the gist of each. You will observe that they are marked by local color, and by some personal "atmosphere" as well, and that they indicate very clearly that the question under discussion, like the tariff from the standpoint of a one-time unsuccessful candidate for the presidency, is somewhat of a local issue. Yet there are certain underlying principles which are clearly fundamental; and you will find a very general consensus of opinion that a student ought not to "scatter," and that sound and thoro training ought to precede every attempt at specialization.

The material for this paper was collected by President James H. Baker, University of Colorado, who was absent in Europe at the time of the convention.-EDITOR.

I have taken, first, the more well-known universities east of the Alleghanies, as follows:

HARVARD: "In the experience of Harvard University, wide election is more open to the danger of a scattering of attention among elementary courses than to the danger of narrow reading or undue specialization. In fact, the attention of our faculty has of late been directed to several contrivances for encouraging students to specialize more than they do."

YALE: "We have not had much trouble at Yale of the kind suggested by your question-not, I think, more than is the case with small colleges. The influences of the Yale traditions and Yale undergraduate life which tend to take a man outside of himself are strong enough to guard against the danger, except in the case of those few individuals who tend to specialize wherever they are put."

COLUMBIA: "These prescribed courses having been satisfactorily completed, the student will be at liberty to choose the remainder of his courses at pleasure, subject to the general restriction that, prior to receiving his degree, he must have made at least nine points under some one department. This restriction is new and is intended, of course, to prevent scattering. The man who has attained to freedom, and sees before him the immense and variegated bill-of-fare which Columbia College is able to offer in virtue of its place in a great university, is tempted to nibble and sip instead of eating and drinking. There are so many languages and sciences to be begun, so many 'interesting' courses of lectures to be heard, that he is in some danger of making up his entire curriculum out of more or less elementary odds and ends, and so coming to the end of his course without having acquired solid knowledge or the spirit of scholarship in any subject whatever. It should be observed that the new restriction, which virtually requires the student to take from three to five half-year courses in one department, is not at all onerous. It implies nothing more than what is already done by a large proportion of Columbia students. It is not designed to make an utter end of browsing, which within limits is not such a bad thing after all, but to admonish the student betimes of the importance of the long and strong grapple with some one subject."

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: "You will observe that we are not in favor of free election—that a certain amount of required work must be done by every man who is a candidate for any one of our degrees."

JOHNS HOPKINS: "The experience of the Johns Hopkins University cannot furnish evidence of value on the subject referred to in your recent letter. Our undergraduate courses are quite distinct from the graduate courses, and we do not to any extent permit 'narrow reading, especially in literature,' and 'minute courses prohibiting views of whole subjects.' As to whether colleges are more fortunate in these things, I can only say that everything depends upon the college.

CORNELL: "The tendency of opinion in this university, as recorded in the history of its legislation, is toward a wider range of elective work. The course for the A.B. degree at the beginning was practically all required. It is now all elective, and in the professional courses elective work is beginning to creep in of recent years. This course of action reflects the prevailing opinion at this university. We do not think that such wide election weakens undergraduate courses, or that other colleges are more fortunate in making less provision for elective work."

To these I venture to add opinions of three of the typical colleges in the same territory:

DARTMOUTH: "I think that the terms of the question which you propose restrict the answer which may be given. I should say that 'colleges were more fortunate than undergraduate courses in universities,' if the question is stated in precisely the way you put it;

but as regards the latter question of electives, I see very little reason for difference between college work and the undergraduate work of universities. At Dartmouth all courses are elective after freshman year, and a part of the courses within freshman year. The only restriction to this is thru the group system."

UNION: "I regard any system of education that permits narrow reading and forbids a study of whole subjects as pernicious in its influence, and sure to show in the general weakness of our college men."

WILLIAMS: "There is discernible at this time a decided reaction from the elective system as practiced in the universities where it is most free, and an increasing demand for a more careful regulation of courses so as to provide a man with a reasonably symmetrical training before he begins to specialize in any minute way. We have here the group system, by means of which we seek to reach this end, and are likely to diminish the number of courses taken rather than to increase them.”

Of the state universities I have selected the following:

MICHIGAN: "In reply to the question which you have submitted to me, I should say that if wide election and minute courses are so administered as to compel narrow reading and to prohibit views upon whole subjects, they would be open to criticism. But, so far as I know, pains are taken in universities to avoid those perils by requiring a broad foundation in the first year or two of study, or by controlling the work of the student to a large extent by the authority of the committees which direct or advise the elections. We, at all events, take such precautions here ourselves. Probably the danger is greater in the large universities than colleges, for the reason that the colleges are not able to allow much liberty of election, and of course by that fact they lose some of the advantages which are gained in the larger universities by greater opportunities for intensive work."

WISCONSIN: "The question is one which is very difficult to answer except by a long statement; and, in my judgment, it can hardly receive a satisfactory answer. . . . .

"Put in another way, I think the question is equally difficult to answer: Is it better to secure a thoro knowledge of a relatively small portion of a subject, or a more superficial knowledge of a larger part? I do not think that any answer can be given to this question in general terms, but that the only profitable discussion regarding it can be with regard to the wisdom of the practical solution reached in the courses offered by a given department or institution.

"Speaking for the University of Wisconsin, I do not believe that the courses given in literature are so narrow and minute as to weaken the undergraduate courses, as compared with similar courses in colleges. I have no question, however, but that the large number of electives offered permits students to select a course which is narrower than is advisable. This, however, is something which is incidental to the elective system in any form.

"My own feeling regarding the relative advantages of colleges and universities is that, on the whole, the university has a decided advantage in these advanced courses. . . . . "For myself, I do not believe that the advanced courses in our universities are ‘minute,' or that they 'prohibit views of whole subjects.'”

CALIFORNIA: "It is my present conviction that the small colleges have very much the best of us in their maintenance of smaller classes, attended by fixed groups of students; in their provision of instruction in certain selected and most important studies; in their presentation of these studies, especially in the freshman and sophomore years, in the general form more fitting for assimilation to culture-life; in their insistence on a certain order and the wider range of studies. I have in my experience found that the best candidates for advanced specialization come to us from the Canadian colleges, and others that have preserved the narrower curriculum. A man who has browsed about in many cheerful fields which he has chosen at will is very likely to be of no use for graduate work. The academic and the life-chances are altogether against a man who has begun specialization early.

The so-called elective system sometimes turns toward early specialization, sometimes toward continuous scattering; and both are bad. As things are now in this country, I think the first turn toward specialization in method of teaching and of learning should not, as a rule, come earlier than the junior, i. e., the third, year of the college course."

INDIANA: "In general, I believe, as I suppose all do, in broader courses in the more elementary work, and in courses somewhat specialized in the more advanced work. The colleges have the advantage in the more elementary work on account of their smallness; the universities have the advantage thruout the courses on account of their superior facilities."

NEBRASKA: "The undergraduate work in the University of Nebraska for the past four or five years has been almost wholly elective. During this period it is probable that the students never have been happier, or presented a stronger or more efficient grade of scholarship. Yet a majority of the faculty feel that such wide election permits unwise choice on the part of weak students who enter the university without definite plans or purposes. Hence the faculty at a recent meeting recommended a new course of study, which gives opportunity of free election within certain range and groups of studies. This will be explained in the new catalog now in press. . . .

"My own observation has been that students seldom err in selecting too narrow a field. Our own students have in a great majority of cases elected wisely, taking a sufficient variety of subjects to give breadth, and enough of some one subject to give depth. Hence I should reply to the first part of the question: 'No, except in rare cases and usually with purposeless students.'

“Do minute courses prohibiting views of whole subjects weaken undergraduate courses in universities?' Undergraduates are profited by a number of intensive courses, but too many such courses are weakening. The intensive courses should come in the student's major or special lines, and should not, in my judgment, include more than onc-fourth or one-third of his undergraduate work.

....

"Are colleges more fortunate in these things?' I do not think they are."

OHIO: "There is a distinct protest in our faculty against undergraduate students doing very much work in what might be termed 'minute courses.' One or two such courses each year would seem to be all that would meet with hearty approval. We, furthermore, insist on general courses in particular subjects before the more minute courses are taken.

"My judgment is that the ordinary college is no more efficient and the results are no better in their undergraduates than in the universities of the class in which you and I are laboring."

PENNSYLVANIA STATE COLLEGE: "Every complete course of education must furnish at some stage a course of systematic, continuous, well-co-ordinated drill in the fundamentals of the principal branches of human thought and learning.

"The range of knowledge is so wide that no man can fully grasp it in such a way as to make all parts of it equally available; but, in the course of three or four years, the mind of the ordinary student, well trained in advance, can acquire a knowledge of the essentials of mathematics, philology, natural and physical science, moral science, and political science. During the same period, also, he may make excursions, more or less extensive and fruitful, into the outlying fields of literature and art, and general history, so that, at the end, he should be prepared to begin any independent work in any specialty that he should choose.

"During this period he may wisely be offered an election of studies by 'courses,' but only to a very slight extent, if at all, by individual subjects, or parts of subjects. That is to say that, if a young man wishes to pursue studies that will qualify him to become an engineer, men who have spent years in surveying the ground are far better able to direct his course of study than is the young man who enters upon it as a terra incognita.