ILLITERATE COLLEGIANS.

It has often been remarked that the average college graduate is woefully deficient in his English. Few college men are able to punctuate or spell with any degree of accuracy, and what is much harder to correct, they cannot express themselves clearly, verbally or on paper.

This inefficiency was recently brought out strikingly in a test applied in the Graduate School of Business Administration. That this incapacity for clear expression should appear so markedly in the Business School, is even more surprising, for only graduates of approved colleges,--men representing the upper strata of mental ability--are accepted. The tests were not difficult. A series of reports was assigned the first-year class in marketing, and each report was turned over to the English department for criticism and correction. The results were astonishing. On the first assignment seventy-nine per cent. failed to write even fair English, and only three per cent. were above mediocrity. Other tests showed similar results. A distorted circular letter was given with the request to revise or re-write in better form. Less than one-half the class obtained passing grades, while fifty-five per cent. received less than C.

This deficiency is not confined to the Business School. Undergraduates are equally or probably more, deficient. Instructors often deplore the lack of good English in theses and reports, and the majority of class-room papers are full of solecisms and had spelling. The English standards of most courses are lower than they should be. Who is to blame?