DEAD WOOD

The Board of Trustees of Princeton University has recently abolished the Bachelor of Science degree. All undergraduates, except those in the School of Engineering, are to be candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Arts. This action marks the official demise of a distinction that had long outgrown any reason for existence.

The conditions that brought about the change exactly duplicate those at present existing in Harvard College. According to The Princeton Alumni Weekly "there was such a slight difference in the entrance requirements, and such a close identity between the various courses required for the two degrees, that it was considered illogical to continue the distinction in diplomas." As the requirements are now fixed at Harvard, the difference between an A.B. and an S.B. may actually mean no more than that one man has taken three years of high school Latin to another's two. Beyond this, the "bachelor of arts" may have taken as many as twelve college courses in Chemistry, Biology, Physics and Mathematics, and only two or three in "cultural" subjects, while the "bachelor of science" may have taken only one science course, and fifteen in Literature and the Fine Arts.

A rational suggestion to end this paradox would be to follow the Princeton plan. A Harvard A.B. degree would then signify that liberal education which it is the purpose of the concentration and distribution requirements to provide, while the S.B. degree would be retained by the Engineering School to designate its primarily technical training. Princeton has shown the way to a little pruning of the dead wood of obsolete tradition.