We understand that a committee from the corporation and from the board of overseers has been considering the question of a radical change in the requirements for admission to the college as well as a corresponding change in making the work of the freshman year wholly or in part elective. The measures proposed in regard to requirements for admission are truly startling in their character, and if adopted, as the committee propose, seem destined to inaugurate nothing less than a revolution in collegiate education in America. These plans include nothing less than the entire abolition of all requirements in Greek and Latin, as prescribed for admission, and the substitution of a scheme whereby a certain number of elective subjects can be presented as the equivalent of the present requirements. The committee declares its disapproval of the present system of groups of requirements and claims that the beginning made in changing the requisities for admission has been defective. "Paring down classics in order to allow room for a little more book knowledge of science, has proved mischievous. It deprives students who prefer classics of some of their proper fitting, and obliges those who lean towards science to cram on superficial primers in a way which is very unsatisfactory." What it proposes is to have two lists of admission requisitions, one prescribed, the other elective. "Under the first head let those studies be placed in which every boy should be trained before entering college, as English composition, arithmetic, elementary algebra and geometry, modern geography and American and English history." There also should be placed "some language or languages other than English; but whether in addition to French or German, both Latin and Greek should be required of all candidates may be doubted."

It then takes up the question of the value of the classics as a prescribed subject in a college training and asks : "What good is done the student by insisting that he shall do these small amounts of Latin and Greek? Is the mental discipline resulting from the reading of three or four hundred pages of easy Greek text, so very valuable as to be indispensable, so that no one should be allowed to take a bachelor's degree without it? Is the difference in point of sound education so great between one who has, and one who has not read a little Greek, that the college may rightfully present the one to the world as an educated man, and decline to present the other?" The committee wishes that the degree of A. B. and all of the advantages offered by the college may be thrown open to the student who is seeking a non-classical education just as freely as it is open to the strictly classical student under the present regime. It is easy to see what the adoption of this innovation by the college would mean. It would mean that the college is following out to its legitimate results the principles of the elective system; that it is thoroughly permeated by the new ideas of the century in the direction of liberality and freedom of studies; and that in this direction as in all others it is trying to keep the leading position already held by it among American colleges. That the changes proposed will meet with violent opposition from many quarters is not to be doubted. It may well be questioned even by those who are inclined to the most liberal policy, whether the college is yet ready for so important a step. What is certain is that whatever future moves may be made by the college in this direction will be watched with the keenest interest by all.