instructors for freshmen. If grade children and high-school boys and girls are worth enough to demand teachers who in addition to good scholarship have studied the science and art of teaching, and have practiced under the eye of an expert, why are the freshmen, the choice and pick of all of these, not entitled to equal consideration? No college, large or small, has quite done its duty to the freshmen until it has supplied them with teachers who can teach.

These con

The absolutely necessary conditions for good work in college or university are good material equipment, scholarly, cultured and well-paid men, who believe that their first duty is superior teaching, and satisfactory arrangements for keeping all classes of first- and second-year students small. ditions, however, are not sufficient. The university has not done its whole. duty until through its administration the individual is reached. Some substitute must be found for the locus parentis of the old and small college. It will hardly do to assume that because the numbers are so large the leakage must be proportionately great. The complacent assumption that when men, libraries, and laboratories are provided the university has performed its whole duty is already challenged by the parents who furnish the raw material for the plant. The individual is too sacred and too valuable to be forgotten or neglected. The university should make strong individuals. Looked at as a factory for the making of men it is a failure if its products are uniform. Diverse individual traits must be recognized and then developed or destroyed as the case requires. This can be done only through close personal contact with the individual.

Some of the large universities have endeavored to reach and care for the individual through the patron professor. Each student is assigned to some member of the faculty who becomes his guide and counselor. Theoretically the plan commends itself. The patron takes the place of the parent and because of his wide training and large experience with young people he is able to be a helpful guide to the student. The practical difficulties in this method are great. The modern professor is not able to give expert advice outside his own field of work. He generally has neither the time nor the inclination to become closely acquainted with students other than those of his own classroom. As a result the contact is perfunctory. Many times a student sees his patron but a few times during his whole college course. The plan looks well in the catalog; it quiets the fears of anxious parents; it occasionally saves an individual; but as a general working plan, it is not to be commended.

Nearly all our large universities are now organized on the department plan. In these schools the student's individual needs are looked after by the professors in the department to which he attaches himself. They advise and direct him in his work. They also look after his habits, methods of study, general reading, in fact, everything that may contribute to his efficiency as an individual. This method takes excellent care of the student after he selects his department. It misses the freshman entirely. Only those who survive the leakage of the first year come under its beneficial care.

Princeton University, by the establishment of the tutorial plan, has done much to solve her own problem in caring for the individual. She has rendered great service to education by causing college men everywhere to think seriously and plan carefully for the more rational care of freshmen. Princeton's plan has strength and weakness. Its strength has been admirably shown in the many public utterances of President Wilson, Dean West, and other Princeton men. Its cost is so great that most institutions will hesitate before introducing it. Very few modern trained men are wise enough to advise a freshman in all the fields of study that he may enter. Perhaps the greatest weakness in the plan is that it tends to relieve the regular professor of that close, sympathetic touch that every teacher should have with his students. The real work of the university should be done by its faculty. Anything that has a tendency to put the molding, directing power elsewhere is fraught with danger.

At Indiana University for the past year and a half two of the larger departments have been giving special consideration to the freshman. A description of the work in mathematics will show the plan clearly. The classes in the freshman work are kept small, rarely exceeding thirty students and averaging about twenty-five. These classes meet for regular recitation work four days of the week. On the fifth day, instead of the regular recitation, the teacher of the class spends four hours with his pupils, meeting them in small groups of four or five. In these weekly conferences the student is encouraged to talk freely of his difficulties and is sympathetically helped to master them. Part of the conference hour is generally spent in a spirited review of the most important things studied in the past four lessons. The strong and promising student is encouraged and collateral work of interest and value is suggested to him. The weak and struggling student is shown where he needs to put more emphasis, and is patiently helped to unravel his difficulties. The results have been very gratifying. The number of failures has been reduced to almost nothing and the number of students continuing the study of mathematics has been greatly increased. In English composition the plan has given results equally gratifying.

The extension of the plan to all departments that teach beginning classes will mean that the freshman will have as a friend and personal helper every man under whom he studies. In each study he will be directed by a man who knows both him and the subject. In a conference of one hour a closer personal and individual contact can be made than in the work of the classroom during an entire month. The conditions are most favorable. The student is anxious for success and the teacher desires it. The timidity and embarrassment that many students show in the classroom entirely disappear in the conference and the teacher and student work as friends mutually interested in attaining a common end.

In conclusion, the freshmen is so valuable that he deserves the thoughtful, considerate care of the entire university organization. He must be met and treated as an individual. The glory of his alma mater is in his individual

achievements. Her glory for the future is secure only when she gives to every freshman the care that will make him individually strong.

THE RELATION OF THE WORK OF THE COLLEGES TO THE WORK OF THE MEDICAL SCHOOL

WILLIAM H. CRAWFORD, PRESIDENT, ALLEGHENY COLLEGE, MEADVILLE, PA. Among the questions engaging the attention of the colleges of this country few, if any, are of more vital importance than the relation of the colleges to the medical schools. Judging by the discussions of the subject whether by college people or by the medical fraternity it would seem that the colleges and the medical schools are about equally interested. The colleges are interested because their integrity is affected and their right to a place in the American scheme of education is called in question. The medical schools are interested because their relation to the colleges touches such vital questions as attendance, income, scholastic standard, and length and character of the courses of study. Contributions to the general discussion are being made not only by the colleges and medical schools themselves, but by medical societies, examining boards, public-school boards, and in fact by nearly all who have to do in any way with the educational program of this country.

The subject assigned me is so large that I shall not attempt to discuss all phases of it, but shall take the liberty of confining myself to a discussion of The Place of the College in the Program of Preparation for Entrance to the Medical School. In a general way I want first of all to present a brief review of the situation as it now is, then I want to point out some of the things we ought to strive for.

A. THE PRESENT SITUATION

One of the most interesting and helpful discussions of this subject occurred in January last in the city of Pittsburg at a special conversational meeting of the American Academy of Medicine. After some interesting papers had been presented and considerable discussion had taken place the president of the meeting, Dr. Thomas D. Davis, read to the members present a few items he had jotted down-items which seemed to him to express the consensus of opinion as revealed in the conference. The items were as follows:

First, A preliminary college education is just as important as ever, and for the same old

reasons.

Second, That it is advisable for a few medical colleges to require the A.B. degree for entrance to their institutions though at this stage of our development it is not advisable for all medical colleges to have such strict requirements.

Third, That the requirement of the medical colleges and state boards that four years and nothing less be required for a medical degree is an arbitrary one.

years.

Fourth, That universities, as a compromise, may have a combined course of seven

Fifth, That too much time is consumed in public schools and high schools. In Germany almost two years are saved in this regard.

Sixth, That a thorough public-school and college and medical course should be arranged to be completed in twenty-four years and that it can be completed in that time.

These ideas seemed to Dr. Davis to be practical working ones and he asked the members of the Academy to confine their remarks to them. The discussion which followed showed quite general acceptance of the statement made by President Davis.

Keeping his statement in mind I wish to point out in a general way the attitude men are taking toward the question of the place of the college in the program of preparation for entrance to the medical school. There are actually only three possible positions that men can take:

1. A college course is not necessary to an adequate preparation for entrance to the medical school. There are those who go so far as to maintain that a college course is not even desirable, that it unfits rather than fits for entrance. Within two years I was present at a meeting of college and university presidents where the subject of the relation of the colleges and medical schools was under discussion, the particular phase of the subject commanding attention being whether certain scientific work done in college should be credited in the medical course. A representative of the medical department of one of the great universities of this country who was present calmly told us that in his judgment, based on the experience of many years as professor in a medical school, high-school graduates were better workers and accomplished better results in their medical studies than college graduates. He even went so far as to say that a careful examination of the records of his institution had been made comparing high-school graduates with college graduates and that the result of the investigation proved beyond a doubt that the high-school graduates maintained higher standing in their studies than the college graduates and that the success of the high-school men after graduating from the medical school was as great if not greater than the college graduates. You can imagine that the college presidents in that meeting were not particularly pleased with the statements made by this medical professor. What he said was so out of harmony with what we had been telling our patrons and so out of harmony too with the results of investigations published from time to time in some of the magazines of the country and in Who's Who, that when the meeting adjourned there was quite general feeling among the college men that if this medical professor had actually represented the prevailing sentiment of the medical departments of the universities the time had come for the colleges, particularly the so-called small colleges, to combine and see to it that so far as possible their graduates should go only to those medical schools which required the bachelor's degree for entrance.

In justice to the medical department of the university referred to I ought to say that the Dean of the said medical school shortly afterward asked for an interview with one of the college presidents and assured him in the most positive way possible that the professor who had been present at the meeting had not at all represented the sentiment of his school. He insisted that they

wanted college men-wanted many more of them than they had and that they were just then raising their entrance requirements in order to secure a much larger number of college graduates. But the medical professor who spoke his views in the meeting described represents a class, and a very large class, who hold that a college course is not only unnecessary but is not even desirable as a preparation for entrance to the medical school. I am bound to believe that this class does not number as many as it did twenty-five years ago and I desire here to express my conviction that it numbers more today than it will twenty-five years hence. The fact remains, however, that there are medical men and in considerable numbers, many of them professors in medical schools, who do not believe in the college course as a necessary or even as a desirable part of the preparation for the study of medicine.

Then there are those who hold that while a college course is desirable for the few-the favored-it is not actually necessary. Their chosen lines of argument are: that the medical profession could not be supplied if a college. course were required of all candidates; that many young men of limited means would be kept out of the profession; that many men of good minds whose mental awakening did not occur early would be altogether debarred.

2. A partial college course is desirable and perhaps necessary for entrance to the medical school. The number holding this view is decidedly on the increase. Not all who hold it would work out the problem in the same way. In fact they do not. There are three different methods now in actual operation. One is the method by which a combination course is offered in some of the universities making it possible for a student to finish both a literary and a medical course in seven years. The plan is this: A student does three years of straight college work in the liberal-arts department of the university; then, instead of taking his senior year in the college of liberal arts he enters the medical department and after successfully completing the first year's work he is given his bachelor's degree and three years later his medical degree. This method has proved rather attractive and has done much to increase the attendance at certain large universities to the detriment of some of the small colleges. Another method is that by which the small college enters into alliance with the university whereby the college excuses a student from residence during his senior year with permission to return for his bachelor's degree after he has successfully completed the first year's work in the medical department of the university. This method has not been sufficiently tested as yet to justify the drawing of any conclusions. It may be safely predicted, however, that if the small colleges find that they are losing students in considerable numbers because of the combination course offered in the universities, they will combine for their own protection and excuse from residence during the senior year those students who expect to take up the study of medicine. Still another method is for the medical school to require at least one or two years in college as a preparation. Marked advance is being made just now in prescribing requirements of this kind. I think I am right in saying that beginning