"THE ACADEMIC TRAIL."

The Yale News reprints an editorial from the New York Post, entitled "Harvard and Wall Street," which expresses disappointment at what it considers the "academic" character of the new Ph.D. in Business Economics. The Post sees nothing about laboratory work in the description of courses and assumes that none is required. "It is but too evident," the editorial continues, "that our most advanced universities still look upon their business courses as they have long looked upon their law courses--as convenient means of imparting knowledge merely. If Harvard wants to make a hit, let her induce some millionaire to put up a stock exchange in the Yard, which may do for thousands what her medical school and courses in play-writing are doing for a comparative hand full."

The suggestion of a stock exchange in the Yard is a pardonable whimsicality; but the premises upon which the editorial builds show a lamentable ignorance. The big drawing card of the Business School's course is the practical nature of the work. Men are required to make firsthand researches into the management of all sorts of enterprises. In the case of the retail shoe and grocery businesses they have made over systems; and their suggestions have been widely adopted by practical men. Other businesses now suggest of their own accord that the Business School investigate their methods for their improvement. Actual work in business houses is also required, by the way, in the summer.

The Ph.D. in Business Economics is designed for the teacher of business in various colleges; and it happens that a merely "practical" business man is not always able to impart systematically and clearly all he knows, nor to guide the minds of others.

The Post's sweeping aside of the Business School as academic is ludicrous; but the School is young, and there is some excuse for ignorance. The Law School, on the other hand, is not so young; its case system and law clubs can hardly be called merely convenient means of imparting knowledge. Such traditional generalizations, classing all activities of universities as impractical and academic are getting tiresome. Ignorance accounts for the writing of such an editorial. Was that also the reason for reprinting it?