COLLEGE IN THREE YEARS

Among the reports which issue out of University Hall, we hope to find a suggestion for initiating a three year college course which will recognize the fact that a Bachelor of Arts has spent one third of a normal lifetime in gaining his degree. And with all branches of the business and professional world demanding more specialization, it has become necessary to seek special knowledge in post-graduate courses of from one to four years.

While a radical reform in the whole educational system must come within the next fifty years, it would be an easy step toward the desired goal to reduce the number of years spent in College. There are at present 26 schools associated with Harvard in helping their students pass the required language examinations and in working out a process of certification to obviate College Boards.

This same group could be taken as a nucleus for the present proposal. The staffs of these schools are competent to teach elementary courses of College calibre in History, Government, English, Mathematics, the Language, and most of the Sciences. There are at present many alumni of this group in the College who are able to loaf through their Freshman year on the training received in courses similar to those open to them here. This waste and repetition should be saved by giving credit for the work done in the preparatory schools and making the Freshman year a valuable part of a Harvard career.

Those students who do not come from these selected schools should be allowed to take examinations which would cover the work of the courses in which they desired credit. This plan is now being used by those Freshmen, admitted by certificates, who wish to avoid English A.

All those students who chose to complete the required course in three years would be treated as a unit and allowed to take five courses each year without extra tuition. They would also be assigned tutors immediately who would have the power to authorize course reductions for their tutees. The objection has formerly been raised that the Freshman Class is too large to allow tutoring but this group would be small enough to enable administration of the plan, it would have an exceptionally small mortality, and it would be more intellectually select than the undimensioned mob which now inhabits the Yard.

Harvard has already taken the first steps which lead along these paths. The small effort required to reach the goal would be more than repaid by the increased vigour and achievement of those men who graduate from College only to spend several more years in post-graduate study.