Columbia University.

Last year a movement was started by members of the board of trustees of Columbia College which advocated a radical change in the college proper. The object was to do away with the undergraduate department-the Arts School-and make Columbia a University on the German plan, according to which all faculties are on an equal footing, a thing, they said, which could never take place when a student first obtains his general education at a college and then studies for his professional degree at a postgraduate school. This proposed radical change has given way to a more conservative scheme. At present the trustees are debating as to whether they should make the courses in the first three years entirely compulsory. They object to the introduction of the elective system as is now in vogue at Harvard, because, as they say, the professors in the higher courses are compelled to give young college men university courses, for which often times a knowledge of law, ethics, philosophy and political economy is necessary, so that if the professors explain topics referring to such subjects, they lose valuable time and impair their courses; if on the other hand they pass by such matters without giving the needed explanations, but a small number of the students will derive much benefit from the courses. According to the proposed scheme during the first three years the student will belong to the undergraduate department which will have no special faculty. All the courses will be conducted by instructors, while the professors will lecture in university courses only. The university faculty of arts will then begin with the senior year, and will last for three years, at the end of each of which the student will get his B. A., A, M. and Ph. D. The arts faculty will thus be co-ordinate with the Law, Mines and Political Science faculties, and if this scheme is carried out and the proposed faculty of Philology, Philosophy and Fine Arts established, Columbia, the trustees think, will be on the same level as the German universities.