THE PRESIDENT'S REPORT.

THE most noticeable feature of the Report this year, as of the last two, is the record of the attempts made to raise the standard in the different departments of the University. The requirements for admission and graduation have been made stricter, and the number of teachers has been largely increased. In the College alone, "the present number of teachers of all grades is more than double the number employed in 1866-67; and every teacher gives at least as much time to the College now as then."

Few people, however, appreciate the difficulties under which the University labors in attempting to increase the thoroughness and extent of its teaching.

The Law and Medical Schools, particularly, are insufficiently endowed, and depend somewhat for their maintenance on the number of their students. Any attempt to raise the standard of the Schools diminishes the number of students; and though the class of men who are sent or kept away by this cause, as students, can well be spared, financially their loss is a serious one.

"The year 1871-72 was the first year of the new plan of instruction in the Medical School and of the new requisitions for the medical degree." The expenses of the School for that year were $600 more than for the year previous, while the receipts from students were $3,600 less.

"To fill out its curriculum the [Law] School greatly needs a fourth professorship, to be devoted to Roman Law, Jurisprudence, and the History of Law; but this chair must be amply endowed, for the number of students in this country who know enough to desire thorough instruction in these subjects is small and likely to continue so for many years to come." The School itself cannot pay such a professor, as it barely meets its expenses now; so the deficiency must remain unsupplied.

The lack of money has been a great hindrance to this work of improvement, and, with the losses of the College in the Boston Fire to retrieve, the deficiency will be still more severely felt the coming year.

It will be with no ordinary feeling of satisfaction that the students of the College proper will read these words: -

"The College, regarded as a place of instruction and discipline, has grown and improved so much during the last twenty years that it is not unreasonable to hope that it will soon get entirely rid of a certain schoolboy spirit, which is not found in the professional schools, and which seems to have its root in the enforced attendance upon recitations, lectures, and religious exercises. This enforced attendance is characteristic of American colleges, as distinguished from European universities, and was natural enough when boys went to college at fourteen or fifteen years of age. The average age of admission to Harvard College is now above eighteen, and it is conceivable that young men of eighteen to twenty-two should best be trained to self-control in freedom by letting them taste freedom and responsibility within the well-guarded enclosure of college life, while mistakes may be remedied and faults may be cured, where forgiveness is always easy, and repentance never comes too late. Whenever it appears that a college rule or method of general application is persevered in for the sake of the least promising and worthy students, there is good ground to suspect that that rule or method has been outgrown."

Of course this does not mean the immediate abolition of all restraints on students' time and conduct; but it is exceedingly important as being an official expression of the opinion that has been steadily gaining ground for several years past, both in college and out, that if students are to behave like men, they should be dealt with as men. There are doubts and prejudices in many minds tending to delay the desired changes in this direction, and these words will do much toward removing these obstacles.

It is quite common in many of our American colleges to disparage the services of young men; advanced age and wide experience being considered essential qualifications to a good instructor. So strong is this feeling in some minds that one of our New England colleges, in a recent prospectus, holds out as an inducement to students the fact that it employs no tutors. In contrast with this notion, that young teachers are to be tolerated only because older ones are not to be had, it is interesting to read in President Eliot's Report these words:-

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"There is a difficulty in the organization of the Divinity and Law Schools from which the College proper and other professional schools are exempt. . . . . All the other Faculties contain a considerable proportion of young men fresh from their studies, possessed of the most recent methods of instruction, and penetrated with the spirit of their generation. The lack of this refreshing youthful element in the Faculties of Divinity and Law is a serious defect."

This cordial recognition of the worth of young instructors is very gratifying, coming as it does from the head of the first college in the country.