COMMON FRESHMAN YEAR AT YALE LIKE HARVARD IDEA

In its issue of January 29, the Alumni Bulletin comments editorially on the appointment of R. P. Angier as Dean of Freshmen at Yale, pointing out the similarity between the first-year system at New Haven and here. The fact that an undergraduate engineering course is being developed in close relation with the college proper at each institution is an example of this, the Bulletin asserts. The editorial reads as follows:

"Harvard men have several reasons for being interested in the appointment of R. P. Angier, A. B., '97, A.M. '01, Ph. D., '03, as Dean of Freshmen at Yale University. The appointment signalizes a new organic relation between Yale College and Sheffield Scientific School. Beginning next autumn the 800 or more entering undergraduates will be simply Freshmen of Yale University. To Dean Angier falls the important constructive task of arranging a Freshman curriculum that shall be as far as possible identical for all graduates for the degrees of A. B., Ph. B., and S. B. They will use the same dormitories and dining halls, and will doubtless come to feel that the horizontal cleavage which unites them as first-year men is more fundamental than the vertical cleavage that has hitherto divided the candidates for the A. B. and the Ph. B. from the candidates for the S. B.

"The tendency at Yale is strikingly like recent tendencies at Harvard. The Freshman Dormitories at Harvard have already brought about a social solidarity among the Freshmen, while the grouping of a limited number of courses as "Open to Freshmen," and the new system of compulsory physical training, have given them something approaching a common curriculum. At both Yale and Harvard there is a strong drift in the direction of what might not improperly be called a 'Freshman College.'

"The situation at Harvard and Yale is also similar in that at both institutions an undergraduate engineering course is being developed in close relation with the college proper. We have already noted in these columns the tendency at Harvard for first-year engineering students to enroll as Freshmen in the College, and so to postpone their final choice of a specifically engineering course until Sophomore, or even Junior year. Freshman year thus becomes a year of general studies and of ripening process, which precedes specialization and enables the student to make his later choice more intelligently.

"Dean Angier's appointment is significant of the fact that college officers, even deans, need no longer be domestic products. A good dean can be naturalized as well as native-born. In working out a solution of these common educational problems Dean Angier has the hearty good-wishes of all his Harvard friends."