COLLEGE AND LAW SCHOOL

With the opening of a new year, a subject that merits far more attention than has been given it, is Dean Pound's recommendation that the law school course be lengthened from three to four years, and, concurrently, that the last year in college and the first year in law school be combined.

This practice has been adopted by several universities, with notable success at Michigan. It has several advantages. First, for the man who has early decided on a law training, much that is irrelevant in the present requirements for a degree is obviated. Second, it permits of a more thorough legal training, which the complicated nature of modern law increasingly demands; at the same time, the number of years requisite in obtaining the two degrees suffers no increase. Third, it provides for a more unified, coherent and thus more rounded seven years' course than is possible under the present arrangement.

One of the faults in the American educational system is the hard and fast division between the various stages in a man's training. From grammar to high or preparatory school is in itself a jump; that from high school to college even more pronounced, and with harmful effects on the adjacent years in both; while that from college to law school is at present literally a step from one world to another. A development in education that promises to be interesting will be the gradual fusing of these three phases into one another.

Dean Pound's recommendation is sound and progressive, fully in tune with the changing times. The faculties of the college and the law school should give the plan the most serious consideration, for, once concluded, it cannot fail to hasten the trend towards a closer integration of the last years in school and the first years in college.