DEMOCRACY PERVERTED

President Hutchins of Chicago University said last Monday in opening the Storrs lecture course at Yale, that confusion existed in higher education in the United States, and that the advanced university degree had lost its meaning. One of the factors causing this confusion, he said, was the fallacious belief that education is "responsive" to the "irresponsible." Unfortunately the American people have always been of the opinion that everyone deserves an education regardless of how seriously he is prepared to take the educational opportunities offered to him. This theory has been put in to practice by the large sums of money that the country spends each year on its State Universities, with a resulting high percentage of young men and women who have had a college education, as contrasted with the youth of Europe. To go to college is "the thing to do" socially, as well as from the economic standpoint.

Thus America is confronted with the problem of a large group of students in every University who are not deriving benefit from the educational facilities, proportionate to the amount of money expended. This irresponsible element is wasting either the money of the State or of their parents, as well as being a millstone about the necks of men who are prepared to make the most of their education. Our forefathers believed that a man deserved an education if he showed intellectual promise and determinedness of purpose, now the current belief is that everyone, regardless of his or her intentions should have a higher education. It is this attitude that is responsible for the emergence of the "professional college-athlete" and the man who just "gets by." These men could very profitably end their scholastic work after graduating from high school, since it is obvious that the expenses of a higher education would be unwarranted in their case.

This peculiar American concept has made for a comparatively low standard of scholastic requirement in the United States at large, and sent many men to college who could have spent their time much more profitably learning a trade or earning a living.