A PRESSING PROBLEM

In a practical world, the problems of rental culture and physical equipment impinge on one another to an embarassing degree. Even granting the ability of colleges to train men in the mass, they lack the necessary equipment. In consequence, universities have had to cull from the stream of applicants those best equipped for advanced work. The methods used to effect this choice, intelligence tests, photographs, entrance examinations are simply practical rules, admittedly imperfect, which give some measure of the candidates for admission.

It seems, however, that these at tempts at selection are headed towards the proper ideal, a standard of quality. On the other hand, suggestions such as appear in the New York Times editorial reprinted in this column, aim toward the reverse ideal of quantity. Part-time instruction, an excellent device in over-crowded high-schools, appears of doubtful service in college work.

The essential of university education is leisure to make a courtly acquaintance with scholarship and scholars. Toward this end, the tutorial system is directed. The jeopardizing of progress already made for the sake of greater numbers is scarcely wise.

In spite of democratic theories, the advance of culture depends on the few rather than the many. A plan of college admissions looking toward the selection of the leaders at the outset of their career is certainly less wasteful than a system admitting a greater number. With a lack of educational facilities, the universities can not afford to spread their efforts think over a large mass of mediocre material.