THE PRESS

If Henry Ford should actually devote the rest of his life to a $100,000,000 chain of technical schools, he would discover that the apparently crowded field of motor manufacturing is sparsely occupied in comparison with the academic grove. The rivalry among educators was never so keen as it is today. In no other country do so many institutions try to attract students--the sad experience of "Jude the Obscure" in Thomas Hardy's overpowering novel seems hardly possible in the United States. From the time when a child is ready for kindergarten until and A.B., he enters a graduate school, he can pick and choose his institution, if one has not already picked and chosen him. Some may reject him, but others will welcome him. If "bad times" should diminish the number of applicants for admission to preparatory, undergraduate, and graduate schools, the competition for students would be even more resourceful and keener.

The bare figures tabulated in the World Almanac indicate our abundance of educational opportunity. Take for example state institutions. According to the Almanac, the value of grounds and of buildings a few years ago was respectively $225,000,000 and $908,000,000. The total number of students in American colleges and universities increased from about 110,000 in 1899-1900 to about 900,000 in 1927-8. The number of institutions with a minimum endowment of $2,000,000 is about 100. If the American people are not the best educated in the world, certainly the fault is not due to a lack of facilities. The states have been most liberal, and wealthy Americans, from John D. Rockefeller down, have lavished millions on the intellectual training of our boys and girls. . . .

Mr. Ford is essentially a revolutionist an innovator and pioneer. Nothing which seems susceptible of improvement is sacred to him merely because long usage and empty tradition sanction it. It is not improbable that he will try to work out a new educational scheme in the same spirit in which he improved the method of making glass, of assembling automobiles, of bringing up to date that specialization which Adam Smith outlined in "The Wealth of Nations" a century and a half ago. But in the new field he will not have so much liberty of action as in a room filled with machinery. Man has been making and unmaking educational systems since organized society was young. Educational skeletons strew the highways of old and modern civilization. If Mr. Ford succeeds finally in evolving something partly or entirely new, and more effective than we have known heretofore, his revolutionary achievements in industry will seem relatively only a commonplace. --Boston Herald