ALL COLUMBIA IN THREE PARTS

Attention is drawn elsewhere in these columns to the effort recently Instituted at Columbia to adopt higher education to varying life programs. As outlined by Dean Herbert D. Hawkes, the plan seems designed to remedy such defects as have been found by many, in the plan of study which Harvard has developed of recent years. his so far as this may be true, it will be well for Harvard men to keep their eyes turned towards Columbia. It may well be that President Butler is right and that in endeavoring to arouse undergraduate interest in intellectual activity, Harvard has erred on the side of considering all valuable intellectual activity to fall under head of scholarship.

Intelligence, however, gags at the off-quoted New Haven aphorism: Princeton boys, Harvard scholars, Yale men, though heretofore it has seemed to many impossible thoroughly to do anything intellectual without assuming the title of scholar. It is doubtful if the amount of independent research work done in any undergraduate department can do more than develop the initiative and mental independence of the person involved. Scholarship only becomes dangerous when it centers interest on the piddling detail at the expense of the panorama of truth. Hardly before a man becomes a Ph.D. can he be said to have lost anything of value in the way of breadth.

Granting the evidence for Columbia's abhorrence of the mono-minded Ph.D, her new undergraduate program seems a mere distinction without a difference. The only clearly defined change, that of allowing the scholar and the professional man to specialize immediately on entering college, is not to be applauded. It was possible under the old elective system at Harvard and was considered one of its most glaring faults.

The sixty so-called "maturity credits", the manner of obtaining which is not readily discernible from the article, implies the abolition of an integrated study in one field. Although provision is to be made for specialization during the last two years, it is not, on the one hand obligatory; and on the other. It may be carried so far as to exclude any courses outside the chosen field of the student.

It must be granted that this over specialization in the latter part of one's course is becoming more and more the defect of the Harvard system. Overzealous tutors encourage their charges to get their distribution off in their first two years--out of the way like an old shoe. Students attentive to this somewhat myopic suggestion often find themselves forgetting the excellencies outside their field just as they are acquiring the maturity to enjoy them. One of the purposes of Harvard's present system is the elimination of this sort of thing, and it is unfortunate that the Ph.D attitude occasionally mitigates its potential usefulness. Columbia's new plan does nothing to remove this loophole, and in places reverts to the noxious errors of the elective system. It is still the part of wisdom to extend a tribute of sympathy to Columbia, latest pioneer in the perilous country of experimental education.