NO CUT PROBATION AT GERMAN UNIVERSITIES

"In Germany, students do not want to be educated, they want to become scholars", said Professor Kurt Koffka of the University of Glessen, Germany, internationally known educator and psychologist, to a CRIMSON reporter yesterday. Professor Koffka was comparing German universities to our own.

Don't Have to Do Anything

"Here", he continued, "you are compelled to go to lectures, to take examinations and tosts at frequent intervals. At our universities, on the other hand, no one is compelled to do anything. There are no entrance examinations, and one may go or not, as one likes, to the lectures."

Professor Koffka went on to comment on the large part outside activities, and especially athletics, play in American universities.

"Your college life is made far more colorful and exciting by your many outside activities, and especially athletics. "Football", he said, "is an interest which makes all the world akin. It is something which everyone can talk about, and it is, oh so interesting.

Rock Climbing the Big Sport

"In Germany there is no organized sport, in your sense of the word. Once a year there is a kind of Olympic meet, in which most German universities complete. And then there is rock climbing. Yes, that takes a great deal of nerve, as you express it, and it is developed almost to a science.

I think an important reason for the lack of organized athletics is that the newspapers pay no attention to it. Over here a student wins fame by athletic achievement: in Germany it attracts no attention at all.

Approves College Journalism

"I like the chances", he continued, "which you get here to go into journalism and dramatics while in college. It makes voa much more independent and selfreliant than the German student, and broadens your outlook. In regard to cholastic work, on the other hand. I think you are much more dependent. Your authorities allow you nowhere near the amount of freedom which German students have. A certain amount of compulsion is undoubtedly necessary, however."

When Professor Koffka was asked, in reference to the recent friction between the undergraduate body and the University authorities, if German universities had the same troubles, he replied:

"No, you see all our universities belong either to the state or to the city. There are no private colleges and no presidents. There is a Rector at the head of the university, but he is elected for one year only. German universities are much closer to Oxford and Cambridge in their organization than they are to Harvard."

Professor Koffka has been invited by the Graduate School of Education to spend three days here lecturing on a new and very important movement which has started in Germany and which may affect educational methods all over the world. He is Acting Professor of Educational Psychology at Cornell University this year, and has therefore had ample time to study and compare American universities to those in Germany.