MASTER BACHELORS

The statement of President Lowell that the degree of Master of Arts is becoming an excrescence in modern education will be as gratifying to students in the upper rank groups, as it is a valuable suggestion for advantageous segregation. For the observation is based on the fact that men graduating with honors from Harvard are now prepared to assume the responsibilities of individual productive research that signalizes the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, without intermediate preparation. The master's degree must continue to exist as a haven for the ambitious but unprepared, and to satisfy the requirements for teaching positions in secondary schools. But with a separation, as President Lowell urges, of the preparation for the two degrees, potential doctors will no longer be restricted by the credit courses which the commercialized lower degree exacts.

That the doctor's degree, too, is often sought by unwilling men, excellent as teachers but incompetent as scholars; that the weary fields of knowledge are re-ploughed for virgin trivialities to satisfy the requirements of colleges for their professors, is an unfortunate condition irremediable in light of the present conception of scholastic values. The important point in President Lowell's discussion of the master's degree is his acknowledgement of the capabilities of the present graduate matured by divisional examinations and the guidance of tutors. The student of distinction in realizing that he is by rights a master if in title a bachelor, must feel a gratification in the different connotation of those terms.