THE MODERN UNIVERSITY

The great universities of the country have become national institutions, offering, more and more, all the forms of education needed by anyone in any community. From the college founded by John Harvard has grown the University with its many graduate schools. The same expansion is true of Yale, Columbia and Cornell, to mention only a few instances. Education has become so widely available and so standardized that it can be picked up at the nearest supply station. The choice of college no longer depends so largely on what a boy can learn in any particular place; as far as that is concerned, he can learn much the same thing in many different places. "We see no reason why a boy should not go to Harvard, and Columbia, and Chicago, a year at each place," said Henry U. Sims '97, of Alabama, speaking before the annual meeting of the Associated Harvard Clubs. "It broadens his vision, it changes his influences." In other words, if the student body of a modern university represents a wider geographical area, it also represents a shifting population. The enormous increase this year of, the Unclassified men in the College would seem to bear out Mr. Sims' observations.

If these are the facts, what can Harvard in particular, offer to this new group of travelling scholars? Harvard should be the "leader in thought; should lead the whole nation and perhaps the whole world in future years in delimiting, as well as in extending, the field of instruction." For instance, said Mr. Sims, it may not be necessary for a man to go to Harvard to be a lawyer, because practical lawyers must, necessarily, under modern conditions, be made in their own localities. "But it will be necessary for the instructor who teaches him in his own state to go took Harvard to understand what law is, what law has been, and what law ought to be." With the modern university, it is not a question of teaching everything--modern conditions make that impossible; it is a question of being the leader in the thought and expert instruction that every man needs, no matter where his locality.

Mr. Sims has drawn attention to an interesting subject. Just what the facts are, just what conclusions fellow is a matter that, so far, has been little discussed. Certain it is that this University has grown into a thing of the world, and, among its many problems is this one raised by Mr. Sims.