MAIL ORDER EDUCATION

DR. NOFFSINGER, styled Director of the National Home Study Council, has lately spread on the records the fact that, with 1,250,000 students enrolled in correspondence school courses, the mail-order brand of college has it, numerically at least, on the institutions to which men go to live and study. He says the correspondence schools now have about twice as many students as all the resident colleges, universities and professional schools in the United States. The exactitude of this statement is open to question. It is doubtful that 1,250,000 is double the number of college students and professional school students—but it is certainly somewhat larger.

Not that it proves anything, necessarily, as to the superiority of imbibing your education by letter and getting your degree from the casual hand of the local letter-carrier. It is chiefly significant of the thirst for educational betterment—for it may be assumed that those who seek out this method of learning are usually in serious earnest, else they wouldn't do it; and in that respect there is room for a claim that the correspondence school has a distinct advantage over the others. Certainly there is no overstressing of football, there are no hazing problems, and the fraternity house parties cause no loss of sleep to the conductors of the schools. Organized cheering is understood to consist in such cases in placing the postage stamp in some peculiar position on the envelope.

Disdain not the correspondence schools. They evidently fill a niche in the educational scheme, but without splendor or parade. They have no alumni fund campaigns; reunions are unknown.