EACH ACCORDING TO HIS POWERS

One of the most glaring discrepancies in modern education is the relative lightness of school and college study as compared with the drudgery of graduate work. Most undergraduates admit that their full powers are not called into play except during the short weeks immediately previous to examinations. An even greater waste is apparent in the average man's twelve years of school spent in preparing for four such elementary courses as Chemistry A, French 2, Mathematics A, and Biology D. The result of this disregard for economy of time is to prevent a man from earning a substantial income until, on the average, he is thirty-three years old. The most obvious and practical way of meeting this problem in part, at least, is to intensify school work and shorten the college course to three years for those who desire it. In favor of long-term education are those who plead that a man is too young for college until he is nineteen, the advocates of inflexible concentration and distribution requirements, and many who demand years spent in broadening the student's horizan by browsing through purely cultural courses. All these views are perfectly rational and acceptable in many cases, but take small account of differing tastes and temperaments.

There are many undergraduates who rebel at the appalling waste of time which is enforced by a custom of long years' standing. Toward these men the college authorities should adopt an encouraging attitude, instead of opposing them by such regulation as the extra course rule. Why should a man have an extra course piled on him simply because he tries to cover the work in less time than his less energetic classmates?

College Board Examinations give only a restricted basis for judging a man's capabilities and should be discarded as far as possible in favor of regular Harvard entrance examinations. These could be used to determine whether a student could do justice to the three-year program. Twenty-six schools already cooperate with the college in eliminating College Boards, and the extension of the idea is the next logical step toward that smoothing of the transition from school to college which President Conant's January Report called for. This would encourage good secondary school training, as would permission for Freshmen to take advanced courses.

The easiest way of working out degree requirements would be to lower the necessary courses to eleven, but demand that these should all be advanced. Elementary courses would not count toward the degree, and would only be taken by four-year men whose lack of school preparation demanded it. In this manner a comprehensible choice would be given to incoming Freshmen which would entail no useless friction and frantic decisions followed by summer school sessions.

Two corollaries of this scheme at once suggest themselves. In the first place, there should be no extra charge for taking a fifth or even a sixth course. This is a perfectly fair provision, as the man who wants to take only four is responsible for his decision and should begrudge no one else the right to add courses to his schedule. Secondly, Freshman Advisers should be empowered to pour cold water on the ambitions of obviously incompetent men who aspire to graduate in three years. Otherwise the mortality of failures might become unnecessarily high.

Until some such plan as this is put into effect, undergraduates will continue to dawdle through college only to find the shift to a graduate school equivalent to a step into another world. It is time that Harvard adopted a flexible policy geared to the various abilities of its many students, instead of to the slow speed of the underprepared, bare-pass men.