Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1894-02-02
THE CURSE OF EDUCATION.

Men OF Mental Ability Who Can Procure
No Suitable Employment.
Ever since the enormous enlargement
numerically of the English universities
there can be little doubt that the value of
q degree has gone down commercially.
The number of first class men seeking
work and finding one is q sorry COM
ment on the development of the English
university system. If this is true of the
first class, what must be the lot of the SEC
ond, the third and the pass man? The
learned professions, in fact, are over
provided. The cause of this unhappy crowd
ing of the market for brain laborers is not
far to seek.
An immense number of persons who in
former times would nave worked with
their hands, as their fathers did before
them, are being educated to work with
their heads. There is a general leveling
up of the social grades if you look at it
optimistically. The son Of the artisan be.
comes a clerk. The son of the clerk aspires
to teach in a school. The son OF the school
teacher aspires to go to Oxford or Cam
bridge. But this leveling up is not an un-
mixed blessing. The result is that we have
So times too many clerks-200 applied for
an Insignificant post advertised the other
day-ten times too many half educated
teachers, and, alas, ten times too many uni
versity graduates turned out every year to
crowd the ranks of the bar, the schools and
journalism and recruit the years crop Of
miserable and hopeless failures.
None OF these people can dig as their ia
theirs did. They cannot make shopboys or;
busmen or crossing sweepers. Too many
of them can only teach or starve. It is,
really impossible to deny that a certain
degree of intellectual education units a,
man to work with his hands and earn his
bread as a laborer. 1t may be that it ought
not to do SO, but in the present imperfect
state of the world SO it is. Therefore,
somehow or other, places must be found
for this enormous harvest of tolerable
scholars as schoolmasters or something
analogous in the social scale. Every year
the problem is how to do it. That problem
formerly the university solved by the fell,
lowship system. The number of scholars
was small, and they had a fellowship !,
apiece. That solution is no longer posi-
BILE, even if it were desirable.
Then the universities tried ignoring the
problem altogether. They, as it were, de-
MED liability. Their position was: stOrr
business is to provide facilities for those
who wish to learn and opportunities to !.
study for those who care to study. When
our men have attained, by the help of our
endowments, to a degree, the connection
between us terminates. They must shift
for themselves" Theoretically, of course.
this was %undeniably a logical position,
which they could very fairly take up, but
in practice they must be held responsible,
in some degree, at least, for the men
whom they have raised out of their OWE
position in life by scholarships and exhi-
billions specifically offered for necessitous !,
ersons.-Saturday Review.
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