AMERICAN YOUTH

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 40, 17 February 1930, Page 8

AMERICAN YOUTH

EDUCATIONAL SURVEY

UNIVERSITY STANDARD

WIDE DIVERSITY

(By Walter J. Hull, M.A., of the Victoria University.)

The class distinction into the quick and the dead, which applies generally in America, is hardly true in the colleges. The typical student appears to be neither •so fast, nor so serious, a worker, as is his brother in industry or commerce. That many' of the universities demand a high standard of scholarship, preceded by heavy courses of study is true: that a degree will be automatically conferred at the end of a period of years in residence, and that study should be regarded, as a means of filling in what little time is unoccupied by sport, jazz, and theatre parties, arc beliefs that many American students confidently hold. - , There is a great demand for college education in America to-day. So much so, that it is sometimes found necessary, to register years in advance at reputable institutions like. Hamilton, Williams, and Princeton. College presidents are complaining, however, that many attending college will not benclit, thereby. The foundation upon which the college professor has to build is often a shaky one. We did not see much of American high schools, but our acquaintance with the college "freshman" led us to conclude that much of the teaching is poor, that there is little insistence upon exactness, . and that, often, their product is a superb example of blissful ignorance. The average student knowns little, if anything,, about American Government: often his pro-, fessor knows little more. It is possible that both have a far wider range of knowledge regarding the condition of the local stock market. I doubt whether geography has. a place in the high school curriculum. One student asked us in which part of Victoria the town of New Zealand might be situated; another believed it to be near Alaska; a third had confidently anticipated that we should be either brown or yellow in colour. After our haka (which one paper described as the "Woof and boom of the New Zealand bushmen"), it is probable that doubts as to our racial origin still exist. STANDARD OF SCHOLARSHIP. In respect of the standard of scholarship, the. ability of the staff and the type of student, there is remarkable diversity. Of the thirty institutions we visited, there are some eight which would bo comparable with leading British Universities. These include the universities of Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and Brown, and the colleges, Hamilton, Bates, Williams, and Dartmouth. Theso Institutions have on their staffs some outstanding men, many of whom, including Moon, Heyes, Dewey, Thorndyke, and Munroo (all of Columbia), have international reputations. Princeton and Williams arc fashionable institutions, situated within e;isy. distance of New York, and many of the students hero are tho sons of America's leading public and commercial men. Harvard appears to demand comparatively high standards, and its Law School has easily the greatest reputation in the country. At the four colleges mentioned,^ there is a e'amaraclerie, a college spirit, and an affection for Alma Mater which strike the visitor, very forcibly.« •'•' ' Hamilton, B/ites, and Boston Universities are generally regarded as tho most successful "debating" institutions: they have reputations which they appear to live up to. Included in the former's team was a brilliant speaker whose skilful-rebuttal carried "the"audienco with him: whilst the latter provided the best debate of the tour—a debate replete with humour and skilful repartee, and successful parry and thrust, with the decision in doubt throughout. " . American college life reflects the general diversity of the racial origin of tho people. Oa many programmes the list of debate professors, coaches, and contained at least 50 per cent. of."foreign".names. Tho Germans, in particular, have contributed very largely to what little culture America has to show the world. Very many of tho institutions of learning have ben founded under the auspices of the Baptist, Congregational, Methodist, and Presbyterian Churches, but, except for a brief chapel service, which almost all can attend without offence to their own particular faith, there is little to remind one- of their origin. STANDING- OF PROFESSORS. The college professor is called, sometimes, "Professor," sometimes "Doctor," but more of ton "Dick" or "Joe". (This is a practice leading to bonhomie and good understanding, and could well be encouraged in New Zealand.) His social position rises a little higher than, that of the clergyman, but remains a little lower than that of the bootlegger. A few of the professors whom we met were redolent of quackery—for instance, the occupant of a chair in oratory who gives special exercises to his unfortunate students in vowel production through the . nose! However, at the other extreme, we have Wbodrow Wilson, who was president of Princeton before becoming President of the United States, and Murray Butler, president of Columbia with its twenty-five thousand students, who may, perhaps, be the Chief Executive some day. At the Women's Colleges—Vassar, Hood, Wells, and Seton Hill—,wo met a very line typo of, girl, but the co-ed, in the mixed colleges.in the East, has little to recommend her, and her attractiveness and beauty are mainly mythical. What she lacks in beauty, she makes up for with pencilled eyebrows and bedaubed lips. Sho is fonder of "dates" than of study, and is by no means as devoted to games and the fresh air as the girl undergraduate in New Zealand appears to be. Howevor, in tho West, where the universities aro partly Stato controlled and where the male prejudice against admitting women to the universities is absent, the co-ed is a very much better type, I believe. - - LAVISH EXPENDITURE. Expenditure upon university ' education is lavish. Very many colleges aro of superb architecture, with costly chapels, libraries, laboratories, and gymnasia. In many places, the college campus consists of hundreds of .acres of well selected, and well laid out, land, beautified in every possible way. Money is spent freely upon sport, and every scientific device is 'brought to bear in order to make the athlete fit, and to help the "grid" squad to victory, but the number of students who take part in games is surprisingly small, and often the footballer, who is forced to train as many as four hours per day, on the average, and to become, for the time being, a specialist, pays scant attention to study during the season. Tho sizo of some American universities is bewildering. At Temple (Philadelphia), Columbia (New. York), and Stanford (near San Francisco), one can walk for hours through streets filled with university buildings, and, at tho two latter, tho staff alone is well m excess of six hundred. If tho intellectual standing and contribution to culture of American universities were in proportion to the wealth of their endowments, they would lead the world. Many of them aro raw and crude, however, and these contradict an oft-quoted motto, "Sapientia niagis auro. desideranda.'-'