THE COLLEGE TRAINED BREAD LINE

It is with somewhat of a shock that one learns, in the annual report of the Alumni Appointment Office, that there are at least 2259 unemployed or dissatisfied-with-their-present-position Harvard graduates.

If one computes the total number of Harvard men at 50,000-a liberal figure and assumes that all jobless and disgruntled sons of Harvard are registered at Wadsworth House, the proportion is very close to five percent. And this, in view of current theories as to the demand and rapid advancement of college-trained men in all lines of work is almost alarming, especially if one be a Senior. Thirty members at least, of the class of 1928, now on the threshold of the arena of life, are doomed, if form holds, to be unemployed or dissatisfied with their work.

One may brighten the situation by pointing out that almost any ambitions man is, in a sense, "dissatisfied" that it is inherent in human nature to always want more than one already has and that many of the 2259 simply refuse to become overcome by inertia. But it is equally, easy to blacken the picture by assuming that the Alumni Appointment Bureau has not a complete file of the jobless and dissatisfied.

It does not seem likely that Harvard graduates have more difficulty securing satisfactory treatment from the world than the graduates of other colleges. Figures are perhaps available on this question, and it would be interesting to examine them. Very accurate such statistics could hardly be, but it seems likely that they would show very definitely that four years spent at college are not a gift-edged security against the rigours of the broadlinge a fact which needs perhaps some emphasis now that Seniors and other graduating students are about to be interviewed by employers-many of them not, at all "sold on" higher education.