"VIDER AND VISER"

There is a widespread tendency at present to limit the enrollment of colleges, either because of a lack of facilities or because of the strong feeling which many have against institutions of large size. Swarthmore has seven hundred applications for a Freshman class of one hundred and eighty. Princeton and Dartmouth have set bounds beyond which they cannot go; and some of the smaller colleges have announced that they are filled up for four or five years to come. The few colleges which remain unlimited are in almost every case crowded to the doors.

Does a man who goes to a university with ten thousand students find as much of value as the man who attends a small "fresh water college" of only a few hundred? An article in the "Educational Review" after discussing this question at some length comes to the conclusion that limitation of enrollment is a bad thing,--at least under the present methods of elimination. The college of today, the article points out, is no longer for the few. "Not only the proverbial hayseed but the sons of laborers and foreign born now attend universities." Yet they frequently are the first affected by restrictions, particularly in those colleges inclined to favor the sons of their own graduates,--a tendency which the Review considers a return to the evils of inbreeding.

But elimination on the basis of scholarship is no more effective. Too many men enter college with high grades only to prove themselves unprepared to make the most of their opportunities by graduating "viser but not vider" as Mr. Weller expressed it. Others who barely pass their C.E.E.B.'s become the outstanding men in their class not only in social affairs but scholastically as well. As a remedy for this difficulty Columbia has instituted mental tests for admission and the Harvard Business School has also been experimenting with them in an effort to provide an equable basis on which to work.

But in spite of the prejudice against the large college which is as widespread, probably, as are the limited facilities, the university with open doors and a large enrollment is of real value. True, many men enter only to wander about vacantly for a year or two, "lost in the shuffle", and finally drop out in discouragement. But for those who can keep their feet--and their heads--a large university can offer more courses, better instruction and wider experience than is possible in the smaller institutions.

There is one thing, however, which is of primary importance in preserving the value of the big college,--and that is contact; the college, the faculty, must do their utmost to keep in touch with the men. Only in this way can the number of misfits, always too numerous, be lessens Only by combining the small group and the wider field can be the ideal of college be difined and the ever present specter of limitation laid.