COMMENT

Sound and timely are the words of the Yale president in his annual report. The impossibility of meeting demands for tickets for the more important football games "even with the huge resources of the Yale bowl," leads "inevitably to some question regarding the part which these contests have come to play in our academic life."

Right. The question is being asked increasingly all over the land and not merely in the cloisters of the universities and at the conferences of college presidents. Even the newspapers, which President Angell says "frequently exaggerate" the importance of these games, understand full well the signifificance of the present tendencies and they have not hesitated to remind the educational leaders of the country of the problem which they must meet sometime and probably in the not very distant future. It is distinctly an event to read in the annual report of the head of one of the greatest of American universities, and one famous for its athletic achievements, such a paragraph as this:

"Every university within reach of a large population conducts through the autumn months what is practically a great program of public entertainment, for which relatively high prices of admission are charged and from which accrues tremendous income for the purpose of the sport and for the promotion of the general athletic programs. That the case with which this money is gained tends to stimulate expenditure in the conduct of collegiate athletics upon a plane wholly disproportionate to the manner in which the remaining work of the institution is conducted can hardly be questioned."

This is true. It has the merit indeed of understatement. The huge salaries are paid outside the faculty. A great business enterprise of a quasi independent nature is built up. The glory is for those who prove their prowess in the stadium. Athletics, sports, competitions of course. Only that the university itself may control them, and that relative values may be adjusted, for the sake of the students themselves in whom all the worth of the institution is supposed to centre. College presidents are thinking about these things. They even discuss them "right out in public." Changes are coming.Boston Herald.