GIANT KILLERS

The days of June have been variously made famous for their warmth, roses and weddings, but to the educational world they signify the season of commencements. For the past two weeks colleges all over the country have been holding their graduation exercises, and simultaneously has come another phenomenon that has accompanied them of recent years. As the number of students graduated shows a steady increase, the peri's of "mass-production" in education become apparent in many journalistic offices and there appears a succession of editorials "viewing with alarm" this development. Last week the size of the graduating class at Columbia University called forth the editorial in the Providence Journal printed elsewhere on this page.

The editorial is fairly representative in the losses it mentions as due to the growth of the size of colleges. All of them are qualities much to be desired in college life and which few institutions would willingly do without. They are the things the "old grads" remember with the greatest tenderness when the last memory of what they learned in courses has long since been forgotten. But what of the primary function of the college--the education it is intended to provide? Nothing has yet been evidenced to prove that this quality is affected one way or the other by increased enrollments. This is necessarily true, for study is in its essence a task for the individual. Lecturers, tutors and advisers are at best only aids to the work accomplished by students themselves, and it is in this work that the essential value of college education lies.

The loss of the intimate relationships within the campus group that characterized the colleges of the past and still exist among the smaller ones today will mean, if it is carried to the limit, the elimination of much that is distinctive and enjoyable in university life. But so long as the educational process is not interfered with in the individual, the real contribution of the colleges is in no danger from mere increase in size.