DISTRIBUTING THE BURDEN

The substance of President Angell's annual report upon the condition of Yale University contains little that is new and a great deal that is just. The public may be tired of the oft-repeated assertion that teachers are underpaid but until the instructor is given at least a living wage such repetition should be continued. Eventually poor salaries may affect others than the unfortunate instructors and their families, fears; Dr. Angell. He foresees a steady decline in the quality of young teachers, who are not blessed with an independent income or an heiress in marriage.

The capacity of alumni and general public to give endowments has all but reached the saturation point. Whence is more money to come? From the students themselves, answers Mr. Angell. As it is, the tuition fee covers only from one third to one half of what it costs the college to educate a man.

But here again is an impasse. Raising the tuition fee would deprive a number of men of higher education. Scholarships would have to provide their fees and additional scholarships would put further burden on those President Angell says are near the end of their capacity or willingness.

Following the implication of Dr. Angell's remarks to their conclusion, part of the burden of the cost of bettering education must fall upon the parents of students. It is they upon whom increase of tuition would fall. A possible expedient for enlisting their support might be the sliding system of tuition now in existence at Kent School where no boy is excluded because of parental inability to support him, where several parents pay as much as twice the tuition fee, and where the average fee is well over that the school sets as a standard. Objection to this scheme on the grounds of its setting up artificial distinction between students would hardly be borne out by experience at Kent--and in a school of 250, such danger would be greater than in a college of 3000. But there is a very valid objection in that the personal touch necessary between school and parent would be largely lacking at college. Some might regard it, too, as a move toward socialism--a tax on wealth.

All in all, the Kent School system is hardly feasible at college, but it would be a small matter merely to present parents with other data sent them by college authorities a comparative statement of what they pay the college to educate their sons and how much more the college pays them. Such action might produce a response from persons who will presumably benefit from the college education of their progeny in addition to that from the alumni who have already benefitted. It would at least be a gesture toward a more direct and businesslike distribution of a university's financial burden.

Many parents are already assessed by what President Angell terms rather unfortunately, "hit or miss methods." These methods, endowments, alumni funds, and personal gifts, are too valuable from both a monetary and a sentimental standpoint ever to be abandoned. But they must be added to,--whether or not by such a method as that suggested above is no matter--if the coming generations are to be educated by an acceptable type of man, if a teacher is to live on as high an economic plane as a white wing.