"A SOCIETY OF SCHOLARS."

It is generally admitted, except perhaps by extreme optimists, that the college graduate does not as a rule display the learning and power which four years of reading, attending lectures, and studying lead one to expect. Some of the shortcomings may be blamed, as the Alumni Bulletin has pointed out, to the failure of preparatory schools to teach methods of study; but some may also be charged to the haphazard nature of most teaching in the University.

The desirability of instruction for Freshmen in methods of work has frequently been pointed out. Closely connected with this need is that of a more efficient system of assistants. In most undergraduate courses the professor's lectures are used as a supplementary text-book, while it is the assistant only who comes into immediate contact with the student. It is therefore of the utmost importance that the assistant be competent to teach, with enough time for effective teaching, and with genuine interest in the welfare of his students.

In many instances, however, assistants --although men of scholarly promise--are appointed rather for their high records than for their ability to instruct. The tendency is to treat assistantships merely as graduate scholarships, given to aid men who are doing research work for higher degrees; and the professor is more concerned with the progress of that research work than with the teaching which the assistant does.

What results? The undergraduate is often sadly neglected. The assistant not only has his chief interest elsewhere, but he has usually too many sections, and his remuneration is too small to encourage his spending much time upon them. He becomes a more or less perfunctory marker of papers. The professor is interested in the assistant and his other graduate students; and the assistant is interested in the professor. Meanwhile the undergraduate is forgotten. The University is regarded as a "society of scholars," not as an institution for the education of American youth.

Yet the undergraduate and the Bachelor of Arts, to use a platitude, make the University's existence possible. The undergraduate should of course receive first consideration. Not only should the work of assistants be supervised more carefully; but they should also be given fewer sections and larger remuneration. While this last requires more money at a time when the University is none too well off, the strengthening of instruction is at least as worthy of expenditure as some of the new enterprises upon which the University is constantly embarking.