The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1912-03-15
ARE UNIVERSITIES
WORTH WHILE?
(H. X. Brush Brown)

acid test OF an education Is what a
man can do. Is 1t fair to put COM
mercial test to a university degree?
Such test, however, has been made
by the Harvard appointments office
and the showing while startling, is
certainly far from flattering. Accord
ing to the statistics available the av-
erage wage of a man who has re-
ceived bachelors degree is at first
about SIS per week. Princeton re-
ports show that its graduates start
at an average of Sc per week. From
tables made up from the salaries
paid graduates in certain lines of en-
ployment the averages are as fol-
lows: Brokerage business, So to So
per week; manufacturing, 81 to $12;
and engineering $40 to $15. In all
these lines the college graduate does
not receive more than the average
high school graduate. 1t is obvious
that these institutions are not meas
uring education in dollars and cents.
Their declared purpose is to give an
all around education for gentleman.
That they are doing this to good pur-
pose is shown by the following Incl
dent which recently occurred ct Har-
ward Professor w. H. Scofield, in
structor of comparative literature,
asked class of more than 100 when
Aristotle lived. Not one could an
swer. When he further inquired how
many thought he was born after 1910
six men held up their hands.
The attainment of the degree
which stands for culture insures,
however, a respectable position in
society. Most graduates are also
skilled in several of the gentle arts
of idleness, and while they have not
increased their earning capacities,
they have quite necessarily acquired
the needs and facilities for spending
more than when they entered col
lege. With the earning capacities of
children and the spending capacities
of men, the period of dependence is
prolonged and unless the earning and
spending can be made to balance the
danger is that our elegantly educated
gentlemen will serve no higher pur-
pose than to distribute the wealth
that his forbears have accumulated.
And this alas, through no particular
erage college graduate has higher
ambition, and SO let us leave him to
struggle with life on his small earn
ings and strain our imagination while
we contemplate different kind of a
university. One that does not deal
with the theory of life as set forth
in text books, lectures and libraries,
but is ruled by science and art in ev-
cry phase of its manifestation, hav-
ing control over large area of land
and dedicated to showing youth by
actual contact with all kinds of pro-
ductive, occupations, the marvellous
possibilities of the arts and sciences.
Not merely talking about them and
analyzing them but learning how to
produce by means of them.
1t would be necessarily divided in
to two great interlacing and overlap
ping sections, one of which would be
devoted to the minor is of express
sion or to those things which are de-
voted to the care, and development
and welfare Of the body, and the 9TH
er to the major arts or those things
devoted to the care, development and
welfare of the spirit
In order to comprehend this new
university we must establish a new
fundamental principal that education
is not commodity that can be &C
quired for fee. 1t can only be had
by living it. That only by self-re-
liant, self-supporting and self-respect-
ing work can we attain real knowl-
edge of the arts and sciences. BY
dealing with them personally at first
hand and not by the means OF indi-
rection from someone else, great
university would deal with life in all
its conditions and be in perpetual ex-
Fermentation with every problem for
the uplife of mankind. An ideal, per-
feet city, state in itself, wherein ev-
cry vocation would play its part in
the highest form, so that those who
studied in these surroundings would
find no contrast in stepping into the
outside world, except that inspired by
the knowledge of his own great work
to do in order to fulfill his part in
the great struggle for better sur
roundings and better kind of living
innate in every soul. That if our
great republic is to succeed it must
be through constructive cooperative
work for the uplife of all, and not
through tndividu licu opd oop,no+