Practical Choice

"Bread and butter" courses, not the arts or physical sciences, are the first choice of the thousand veterans enrolled at Dartmouth College this term. On the basis of the electives filed by the men back from service, there appears to be a strong trend toward studies which have some direct and practical bearing on future business and professional careers. Robert O. Conant, Dartmouth registrar, attributes this to the fact that most veterans have returned to college for a definite purpose, not to develop general background or acquire maturity, which the war has already given them.

The business administration course offered by the Tuck School at Dart- mouth has had more applicants than the school could handle, and this trend is reflected also in heavy election of economic courses in the college proper. Psychology has registered the most striking gain by any one subject, nearly tripling its election proportionately over the last prewar year of 1940-41, and other significant gains have been made by government, accounting, administration, history, public speaking, geography, and education.

While the physical sciences in general have fallen off, possibly as a reaction to wartitae emphasis, mathematics shows a sizable jump over its prewar election; and while foreign languages are also down, Spanish shows a slight increase. With such courses as art, English, music and the classics generally below their prewar levels, gains in the humanities have nevertheless been registered by religion, advanced philosophy, biography, Chinese civilization, and comparative literature.