THREE YEARS OR FOUR?

The rapidly increasing number of men who take their degrees in three years renders some change in the system of conferring almost inevitable, and that in the near future. Many men at the close of their Junior year are forced to choose between the easy, happy life of a Senior, and the more secluded, studious life of a member of a graduate school. The considerations which influence their decision may best be summarized as financial, athletic and social. They are too well known to need discussion.

Added to this is the feeling, pretty common among members of the Faculty and among graduates, that the intellectual uplift in the professional schools is out of all proportion to that going on in the College. Seriously considered, there are few men in the College today who, if put to it, would not be able to fulfil the present requirements in three years. It is also true that the work absolutely necessary for a Harvard A.B. is by no means so advanced as that required in the English universities, and is made ridiculously easy by tutoring and printed notes.

Many solutions have been advanced, but none has been shown entirely practicable or satisfactory. It might be that a plan adapted from the English model is the key to the situation. A rule that persons qualifying under the present regulations should complete the requirements in three years, while four-year residents should be obliged to take a degree with distinction or fail, would remove most of the difficulties, provided that degree were brought within the reach of the average man after four years' moderate work. Such an innovation would certainly tend to heighten the intellectual standard of the entire College. In addition, the honor degree would in all probability prove so much more valuable and asset as to induce the majority of those who are now graduated in three years to stay on; Senior year would no longer be more pleasure-seeking; and athletes would in a limited sense become scholars. On the other hand, there would remain for those in financial straits or under an immediate necessity of going into business a degree and a training of the present value.