COMING EVENTS...

In a day when it is popular to decry the increasing tendency of American colleges to mimic English universities in their academic environment, it is interesting to see the Yale Daily News outline a plan for undergraduate study which almost duplicates that which has obtained for so long a time at Oxford.

The News yesterday published a plan calling for concentration by thirty students, to be selected at the end of their Sophomore year on the basis of scholastic excellence, "in one field of study, absolved of all routine requirements, including class attendance, until the end of their Senior year. At that time a comprehensive examination or a thesis would be required."

In its outstanding features the Yale plan is not a great deal different from several which are at the present time being tried in as many American colleges and universities. In its absolution of the student from all compulsory class attendance, and in its substitution of a comprehensive examination for the intermittent course tests which Harvard requires in addition to the divisionals, it is remarkably like Oxford. There men "vagabond" all their lectures; indeed, some of them secure their degrees without ever having attended a formal lecture, but do all of their studying under the direction of a don. As the News proposes, the final test for an Oxford degree comes when a man has completed his four years, or less, of residence; then an examining board determines how well he has used his time.

It is interesting to see, that, despite the constant outcry against anglicizing our American colleges and universities, one of our undergraduate journals is advocating the adoption of a plan which is but another of our heritages from England. Our educational system is, after all, derived from England; the Yale program is significant because it is indicative of our growing awareness as a nation that, after all, anglophobia is not all evil.