LIFE WORK STARTS TOO LATE STATES LOWELL'S REPORT

Continuing the publication of the text of President Lowell's 1926-27 Report to the Board of Overseers, the Crimson prints today the section dealing with the age at which students-should enter college.

American secondary schools do not complete the secondary teaching that ought to be done at the age our young men come to college. The result is that with the preparation now required for professional and business life--much longer than it was formerly--the young man does not begin his active career until a later age than is wise. An artisan at the age of 20 may be earning as large an income, and be as well able to support a family, as he ever will be; but his contemporary who is looking forward to the bar or to medicine, for example, is only half way through college at that time. The ordinary age of entering an American college is over 18, so that if the young man completes his four years before beginning his professional studies he is over 22 at graduation. The three years in a law school and another year in an office bring him to 26 before he takes up practice. In medicine he is even later, with the four years in the medical school and one in a hospital, so that he is at least 27 when he begins to earn his living. One method of shortening the period is the socalled combined degree whereby professional studies start after two or three years in college, the first year or two in the professional school being counted towards the degrees both of that school and of the college. We have never adopted that plan here, because the last two years in college, and most of all the last year, far exceed the earlier ones in value for giving breadth and depth of intellectual power.

The reason that young men come to the age of eighteen with minds less trained than their contemporaries in Europe is to be found chiefly in the fact that they begin their schooling later, and in the early years proceed less rapidly. Masters of secondary schools have often asserted that they could prepare boys for college earlier if sent to them younger, and there can be no doubt that boys would be prepared earlier if there were a demand for it. But although a feeling appears to be gaining ground that education is finished at too advanced an age, yet a considerable number of parents whose sons are prepared for college and pass their admission examination at 17, postpone their entrance for a year. This is almost always a mistake. The youth is taken out of the normal current of his life to do something else, and does not usually regain his pace. Statistics covering a number of years, show that the students who enter college young are on the average better scholars and incur less serious discipline than those who are older. No doubt this is in part due to the fact that they are the brighter and more industrious boys, for that is a reason why they have been prepared sooner than their fellows; but the very age is in itself a factor. There is a natural time for the innocent pleasures and preparatory studies of youth, and a time when a man should be occupied in his life's work. A century ago a certain boy was sent to college by his father at a tender age that he might be too young to be dissipated. In his case the precaution seemed to a later generation needless, but it was not without good sense.

The parents who keep their son out of college a year after he is prepared are often moved by a belief that he would otherwise be at a social and athletic disadvantage, and this is so far true that if such things were the main object of college the motive would be serious. A student younger than his classmates is usually somewhat less prominent in these matters; but by no means always. Some years ago a father sought advice about sending his son, to Harvard College at 17. He was advised to do so, but warned of the social disadvantage. Wisely the son was sent, and became president of his class and captain of its football team in his Freshman year. By means of a more highly organized staff for the purpose, and with the provision of Freshman Halls, we are paying far more personal attention to the Freshmen than ever before, and are constantly doing so to a larger extent, with the result that parents need not worry about sending their sons at 17. For the boys of normal maturity to come at that age and graduate at 21 would be better for the whole body of students