PRINCETON TUTORS WORK IN COURSES NOT SUBJECTS

"The tutorial system at Harvard has now its counterparts at Princeton and Swarthmore, yet not exact counterparts," Dean E. A. Whitney '17 declared yesterday. Dean Whitney has just returned from Princeton where he was shown the development of the Princeton system. In a speech which he made there he explained the Harvard plan to Princeton undergraduates.

"At Princeton," Dean Whitney explained, "the tutors, who are called preceptors, are attached to individual courses instead of to whole subjects, as are tutors here. Thus a man may have four tutors every term.

"Here the aim of the system of general examinations, and the tutorial instruction which is so closely connected with it, is to interest the undergraduate to think in terms of a whole field rather than upon isolated fragments of it which otherwise might be imperfectly correlated."

Swarthmore has subordinated all courses to individual instruction. Their tutorial system is intended as an aid to men going out for distinction in their fields. They are building up the best that the method is not intended to guide men into academic work or research or other particular forms of career, but to men that they may achieve honors, rather than all undergraduates that this may round out their comprehension of college courses.

"The aim of the University tutors is to aid all students in correlating the work of their courses. We are evolving a system in which neither course nor individual instructor is subordinated.

"At Princeton the course is still the unit. At Swarthmore the individual is the unit. And when the Harvard system is in force throughout the entire college the individual will be the unit of instruction, but he will come to understand his subject is three ways instead of one. Those three means are: through his courses, through his tutor, and through his own independent efforts."

While Princeton and Swarthmore, like Harvard, have not reached perfection in their systems, they are well alone in their development. Many other colleges have instituted portions of these three plans under various names, concerning which further articles will appear in the CRIMSON