A LEGISLATIVE WEDGE

State universities labor under a greater handicap than endowed institutions in the present movement toward further restriction of enrolment because of the limitations imposed upon them by their governmental connections. Almost without exception they are required by charter to admit all graduates from accredited high and preparatory schools. They are dependent for reform upon legislative action.

Particularly in view of the double facts that the tutorial principle is about to make its first important invasion of the state university at Oregon and that the successful application of this principle is dependent upon the limitation of enrolment, it is significant that the Committee on Taxation of the Ohio State Legislature has recommended the establishment of a state board of college entrance. The Ohio State Lantern reports that "The committee proposes that standents ranking in the lowest third of the graduating class of high schools who seek admission to state universities or normal schools be required to pass entrance examinations."

This particular proposal is a modest one but it will serve very well as an entering wedge into the citadel of precedent and inertia. As the Lantern says, "If the legislature does create a state board of entrance this session it will be showing the way to other states. The thing is bound to come and it is only a question of which state will be the first to do it."

It is of course to be expected that legislative progress in this direction will be slow and cautious. The effects of the Ohio recommendation, as it now stands, upon university enrolment would be negligible. When other states become accustomed to the principle, it should be possible to extend the entrance examination requirement to all applicants for the university and to so regulate the examination that from one third to one half of graduating high school classes should fall of admission. One very effective means for silencing the opposition to this development is a ceaseless propaganda for the Junior College. The importance of this weapon in the success of the contemparary reorganization can hardly be over-emphasized. It will not only provide for that element now in the university which the requirements will shut out. It will also silence the accusations of intellectual exclusiveness of "shutting the gates of higher learning to the great mass of our American youth", which the legislative mind is particularly prone to absorb and to act upon for the benefit of seats at the next elections.