Evening star., 1934-06-17

a substantial contribution toward
paying their expenses"
From the point OF view of the stu
dent eager for an education and un-
able to pay from $3.50 to 81 800 a year,
the advantages of the self-help plan
are obvious. In addition, 1t seems to
possess positive educational value.
If what a student learns to do with
his hands Is important. as many edu-
Gators contend, self-help or cooper
ative plan under the supervision Of
college authorities has much to rec
ommend it. To some extent the stu
dent and the kind Of manual work
mos. useful to him or her can be
matched. 1t also is possible to avoid
the problem, so common In high-cost
colleges, Of the very needy but de-
| termined student who seriously over
works and gets less than full value
from his studies. Work and study are
properly balanced at Blackburn, as
at other institutions. If a student
falls sick his work is carried on by
others.
The question Of the working stu
dents social status, OF course, does
not arise. Some educators believe that
| anybody who has reached college age
ought to work In order to accustom
him to the idea of self-support and
| to avert the risk of his becoming a
''leaner." Each year a number of
parents who can afford to pay for
the education of their children try to
enter them at Blackburn because they
believe in that kind Of training.
Is the Blackburn plan generally ap-
plicable? No one expects that many
universities will or should become ex-
clusively self-help institutions. Yet it
Is reckoned that at least so per cent
Of all college students must earn all
or Part Of their expenses. A study
made at Ohio State University showed
that per cent of the students there
had all expenSes to meet, 16 per cent
had to provide food and shelter, 48
per cent had to provide all incidentals
and 80 per cent had to provide part OF
| their incidentals. A study Of 780 self
help students at Harvard in one year
showed that 288 had to earn some
where between $400 and 81 900 a year,
while 255 had to earn from 5000
to 1899.
All colleges aim to help working STU
dents find jobs, but the amount OF
work on the campus itself varies
greatly. At Harvard about two-thirds
Of student employment comes from of
the campus At Princeton approxi-
mately 80 per cent is hitched up in
some way with university life. Presi-
dent Hudson Of Blackburn says:
1T does seem that colleges search
ing diligently within will find many
employment opportunities hitherto
unsuspected, or not developed for lack
Of urgent need. Some revision of
ideas might be necessary as to what
is suitable or dignified I believe al
most any college could run dining
halls complete with student labor and
supervision; students could bake the
bread and operate laundry at savings
to all students. They could constitute
a campus force to take care of land
scaping and planting. Without
a construction program or its equiva-
lent, no college could provide enough
campus work for the entire student
body. But few colleges have any such
problem as that"
He believes that eventually there
will be scattering OF Self-help COL
leges, perhaps of the Blackburn type,
all over the country. He believes that
with this self-help idea spreading
every boy who wants a college educa-
ton badly will still be able to get It..