The copper country evening news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.) 18??-1907, 1898-03-24
OUR COLLEGE LIFE.
PRESIDENT r. e. JONES SAYS 1T BE-
GINS AND ENDS TOO LATE.

henithier, simpier, Cheaper ana more
Earnest Student Life - Excessive En-
trance Requirements.
A meeting of the Drawing Room, an
organization for the study Of literature
and science, was recently held in the
Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York.
Mrs. William b. Neftel. the president,
was in the chair, and the Rev. DR.. Rob.
ert Ellis Jones, the president of Hobart
college, was the speaker of the evening.
He was introduced by Walter s. Logan,
the vice president of the society, and
discussed "Some Tendencies In Educa-
tion. f" He said in part:
when, at college football game,
one sees hundreds of well dressed, stall
wart undergraduates 20 years and over
rejoicing in boyish sport, and reflects
that few of them could earn 50 week
If thrown upon their own resources, he
feels that there must be somewhere q
forgotten man. Some one must pay the
cost of all this. The forgotten man is
the parent There is something wrong
when it is possible for full grown men
to find their chiefest JOY in shouting on
a grand stand at an age when men in
other countries are graphing with their
life work.
Many old fashioned people are hon.
estly perplexed at the elaborateness and
luxury of college life, at pursuit of
recreation evidently incompatible with
substantial attachments. For them the
college is kind of Alice's Wonderland,
where all things are topsy turvy. Col
lege life with us is too expensive. 1t be-
gins and ends too late. The average age
of graduation is 90, then come three or
four years of professional study, then
an equal period of waiting for practice
and reward. The man is 20 or 80 before
he reaches self support and full self re-
spect. At a recent Harvard dinner this
complaint was importunate, from alumni
and professors alike. This is felt no less
keenly in other college circles.
There is great unvoiced demand
for an earlier, healthier, simpler, cheap
er and more earnest college life, which
shall permit of earlier self support. The
parental paymaster will not always con-
sent to be forgotten. The worm will
turn.
Many causes cooperate to produce
an unfortunate lateness in entering col
lege, but the chief cause is the excessive
entrance requirements, which involve
nearly two years more work than was
necessary % years ago. All our present
arrangements seem to conspire to COM
pei the average boy to tarry at the
Jericho of the fitting school until his
beard be grown.
"This increase in entrance require
ments has been brought about by a
movement to assimilate our colleges to
the model Of the German university
and to force the fitting schools to be-
come German gymnasia, both of which
attempts have failed. The entrance re-
quirements should beof such reasonable
extent and character as to make it pos
sible for any boy II years old to enter
college. rs.
"Unless a boy can begin his college
course at II no great change in the ex-
pense of college life can be looked for.
Its expense while it lasts is as great an
evil as its lateness. A simpler, more
earnest, healthier, less luxurious college
life is imperatively demanded, and it
cannot be had unless the collegian be-
comes such at an age when he is con-
tent with simple pleasures, routine
work and unaffected boyishness. Under
90 simplicity and tutelage are natural,
over 90 they are not At 20 the boy be-
comes man, and he wants to be man
of the world and to have everything and
to do everything necessary to brilliant,
recreative, social life.
CONSIDER what modern college life
nvolves-beautiful fraternity houses,
costing sometimes as high as $40, 900,
whole weeks in midyear given up to
dances and junior promenades, football
games netting $50, 600 in season, tours
of mandolin and glee clubs, subscrip-
tions to dramatics and score of other
objects which make the poor student
hopeless tail ender and in other cases
bear hard on the forgotten men. The
expensiveness of college life is not caus-
ed by tuition and other official charges,
nor by actual living expenses. but by
the cost of the social encourage, by the
cost of keeping up with the social pace.
The cost of being in the academic swim
has increased immensely in the last 30
years and is directly the result of send
ing men to college instead Of sending
boys.
"If you want to enforce disciplinary
study and procure a simple, earnest,
healthy college life, you must get your
boys into college when these things are
natural and acceptable. Our present
college life is i'll timed 1t combines the
tasks of boys with the pleasures and de-
sires of men. In its original intention
the college was halfway house be-
tween adolescence and maturity, its in