PRINCETON GRADUATE ASKS SOME BU.RNING QUESTIONS

Under the heading "Are College Men Duds?", Paul G. Tomlinson, Princeton '09, wrote in the Princeton Alumni Magazine recently as follows: A member of the Princeton faculty told us recently of a conversation he had with a banker in New York, a successful man, not college trained.

"I'm sending my boy to Princeton next year," said the banker, "but don't think for a moment I have any illusions about what it's going to do for him."

Our friend asked to be enlightened.

"I get lots of college boys in my office," said the banker. "I give them some work to do. Ten minutes later they're back at my desk asking me some fool question about it; ten minutes later they're back again, and after about two hours of that I usually call in the office boy and give the job to him so I won't be bothered any more. I haven't seen a college graduate in years who was worth anything in business until he'd had at least two years' experience. I don't expect or want expert knowledge, but it seems strange to me that after four years of college a boy doesn't know how to think, or how to go about solving! a simple problem."

Is this a fair indictment? Well, a Princeton alumnus wrote to his college not long ago, and the gist of his letter was: "What is the matter with the young college graduates nowadays? We have taken a number of them into our business, and every single one has proved a 'dud.' "

In a recent issue of the Yale Review the President of Vassar, tracing the growth and development of American colleges, gives it as his opinion that control of them is at present in the hands of the alumni. Certainly the alumni are pretty generally given the responsibility for the evils said to exist in college athletics. If, on the other hand, colleges are controlled by the alumni, can these same alumni also be blamed for the faults which many people seem to think exists in present-day methods of training the minds of college stu- dents ?

Our premise is that the alumni are not interested in this side of college life, and that they cannot, therefore, be said to control this phase of college activity. If this be true, and the instruction given our students is faulty and deficient, the alumni cannot be blamed because they have interfered, as with athletics, but only perhaps because they have not. And if the alumni are responsible for the emphasis on athletics, at least it must be admitted the athletic teams are well prepared for the contests they have to face. Perhaps if the alumni took the same interest in the curriculum the students would go out into the world better prepared for the contests of life.

In the days of our fathers, the curriculum was extremely limited. The student had a narrow choice of subjects, and perhaps that was a handicap to him. On the other hand, though he studied only a few subjects, he knew those subjects thoroughly when he finished with them, and his knowledge of them has not forsaken him since. Put a college graduate of ten years ago alongside one who graduated thirty years earlier, quiz them about what they learned in college, and it is safe to say the older man has a longer memory. The student of 1924 has a bewildering choice of subjects to choose from, but he cannot take them all, and the man who scatters' his fire too broadly is not likely to hit anything very effectively. As a matter of fact, there is room for considerable argument as to whether the parents of our students do not hold the solution of the problem of education in their hands. They do not seem to protest against present methods, and they must be satisfied with results, even if others are not, for they pay the bills, and it is not customary for a dissatisfied customer to pay without protest. Unquestionably many parents have their doubts, but feel that the colleges, the faculties and trustees, who are supposed to be specialists in education, know what is best, though constant changes in the curriculum, and in the various courses of study, would lead the unprejudiced observer to suspect that the colleges themselves are not entirely sure of their ground. A suggestion, therefore, may not be out of order.

The main criticism of boys just out of college seems to be that they do not know how to think. No one expects them to know. If this criticism is just and the business of a college is to teach boys to think, why not concentrate on those subjects which experience has shown will accomplish this result? This would eliminate the so-called "bread and butter" courses, which no one for a moment supposes can ever be exchanged for any lifesustaining quantity of that useful commodity. College faculties might be smaller as a consequence of such a programme, but the reduction possibly would not be entirely disadvantageous, and it might at least solve the question of "adequate" salaries for those who remain. Fewer courses would mean less committee work for the faculty, and might leave them more time for the students. In other words, everyone could devote his attention to the business of thinking, and if the students learned this trade they would be well equipped to tackle the business of life, which measures success by one's ability to think straight about its daily problems. And whether those who read this agree or not, it can do them no harm to think about it.