TWO DEGREES

In the general modernization of undergraduate requirements, a process in which most of the routine of studies has been brought into sympathy with present educational standards, the basis for determining the degree to be received is still antiquated. Certainly whether a man is awarded an A.B. or an S.B. should depend entirely on his college work. Instead, the candidate for an A.B. is obliged to show evidence of three years of Latin in school, or two years of Greek, or of their equivalent. Since comparatively few men continue in ancient languages in college, the result is a separation of graduates based to a great extent on their pre-college studies. From this arises the present conglomeration of degrees. Many men concentrating in Modern Languages are graduated as S.B.'s, while some dwellers in Mallinckrodt whose only college acquaintance with the more gentle side of learning is a year of English 28, are listed at Commencement among the Bachelors of Art.

To the general public, the technicalities that distinguish these degrees are unknown, and only the vague idea that a graduate with an S.B. is probably learned in Science, and an A.B. in Arts, exists. But the reasoning is sound enough; much more so than the desire to maintain an outworn tradition from the time when Latin and Greek were the two poles of a liberal education. On the practical side, the present system is sometimes not brought to the attention of students in Modern Languages until it is too late for them to add the extra quantity of the humanities that would give them an A.B.

The present confusion could be done away with at Harvard by letting the field of concentration of undergraduates determine the kind of degree they are-to receive. The division into Bachelors of Art and Bachelors of Science according to the actual college work of a man is reasonable and advantageous, and a traditional devotion to the Classics should not prevent its enactment.