TO THE BOARD OF OVERSEERS:--

The President of the University has the honor to submit the following report for the year 1914-15:--

In the last annual report it was stated that the class entering college in September, 1914, was eighty-four larger than the year before. This autumn the number has remained very nearly the same, the new Freshmen being in fact seventeen less than last year. Curiously enough the increase in the number of men who enter is less regular than that in the number of applicants for admission. The applicants, those admitted, and those who entered for the past ten years, are given in a table at the top of the next page.

In these figures, several things may be observed. Of the applicants admitted a good many do not come. Some of them are thought by their parents too young--in most cases a grievous error. Others, for financial reasons, give up college and go to work. Others, again, especially those who have taken the examinations of the College Entrance Examination Board, are entitled to enter more than one college and go else-where; while some probably never intend to enter, but try the examination merely as a test. Another fact to be observed is that for the last eight years the number of applicants has increased almost steadily while the number admitted has not, the percentage of rejections having varied from 23.2 in the first of these years to 31.1 in the last. The natural inference is that the standard of marking varies from year to year. No doubt-this is to some extent true, and with the necessary changes in the examiners it is in part unavoidable. The fact that our old-plan examinations are now wholly conducted by the College Entrance Examination Board, and that the papers for the new plan are to be prepared in common for Harvard. Yale, and Princeton, will reduce this difficulty to be minimum; or at least subject us only to irregularities common to all colleges. But a variation in standard is not the only explanation, for the examiners declare that the average proficiency of candidate in certain subjects varies at times quite rapidly with a change in methods of teaching in the schools. Much that is of interest about the two methods of examination and the subsequent standing in college of men admitted through each of them, will be found in the report of the Chairman of the Committee on Admission.

Not Yet Time to Judge Freshman Halls

The most notable change in the College during the past year was the opening of the Freshman Halls. The time for discussing the effect these halls are expected to produce has passed; the time for weighing the final results achieved has not yet come, nor will it come until more than one class has lived in them and passed through the rest of its college course. As is often the case, the by-products may prove more far reaching than the direct effects. Moreover, one of the chief objects in view; the breaking up of groups with a similar origin, the provision of an opportunity for friendship among men from different environments, is in its nature intangible, or at least incapable, of exact measurement. The impressions of any single individual are likely to be partial and misleading, while the total result cannot be reduced to statistics. Those who have come into close contact with the life in the halls have not been disappointed in their hopes. The only serious difficulty has lain in turning so many boys into men at once. In view of the fear entertained by the boys before coming that they would be subjected to the discipline of a boarding school, the supervision of order was not first so close as it has since become; and a few of the Freshmen, to show their age, were youthful in conduct, played roughly and broke panes of glass. Probably there was no more of this than in past years, and certainly it can be avoided in the future.

The general conduct of the Freshmen in the halls was good, and the remarks of the Dean on this point are interesting. He shows also that the record in scholarship was somewhat better than in the preceding year. The percentage of men eliminated for low record was slightly less, the percentage of high and of satisfactory grades was slightly larger, and the number of men with a clear record of A's increased from three to seven. If all this does not prove that the Freshman Halls had a distinctly good effect on scholarship, it certainly shows that assembling the men in large dormitories has not lessened their attention to study.

The age at entrance of the seven men who achieved a clear A record is notable. Two were eighteen, four were seventeen, and one was fifteen; the oldest was eighteen years and three months, while the average age of the class was about eighteen years and six months. This is one more illustration of the truth that the younger men are the better scholars.

The Freshman Halls are not an isolated project, an attempt to treat the newcomers by a method peculiar and distinct. They are a part of a general tendency to be seen in all American colleges, the object of which is to bring the strongest possible influences for good to bear upon the student, instead of merely offering opportunities to be seized or neglected as the may please. The unlimited elective system presented to the student the broadest and most diversified opportunities, placing upon him the responsibility of making a wise use of them. The attention of the college authorities was naturally directed to the list of courses given, in an effort to make the offering as rich, as varied, as comprehensive as possible; and the conscientious instructor strove to make his own course as valuable as he could. Save in the case of candidates for distinction in a special field, or men who proposed to carry their studies in one subject far, it was not the duty of an instructor to inquire what courses other than his own a student might be taking, or might thereafter elect. Nor was it the business of anyone but the student himself. The single course inevitably became the unit in college education, and the degree was conferred upon the accumulation of a fixed number of those units. They might be well or badly selected; they might form a consistent whole, or be disconnected fragments of knowledge, according to the earnestness and wisdom of the student. If he selected well, he obtained an excellent education, not because he had to his credit so many units, but because he had so chosen them that together they gave him the development he required.

Students More Important Than Courses

But in fact, the single course is not, and cannot be, the true unit in education. The real unit is the student. He is the only thing in education that is an end in itself. To send him forth as nearly a perfected product as possible is the aim of instruction, and anything else, the single course, the curriculum, the discipline, the influences surrounding him, are merely means to the end, which are to be judged by the way they contributed and fit into the ultimate purpose. To treat the single course as a self-sufficient unit, complete in itself, is to run a danger of losing sight of the end in the means thereto. In no other part of the University, in the requirements for no other degree, is the course, as a unit, complete in itself. In the Law, School, where the freedom of election is the greatest, many courses are required, and the-rest all aim at a definite and narrowly circumscribed object, preparation for practice at the bar. In the Medical and Divinity Schools general examinations on specific fields of knowledge have been established -- of which more will be said later. The same thing has always been true of the doctorate of philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; and for the Master of Arts, which was formerly attained by a sufficiently high grade in any four courses, it has now been the rule for many years that the courses must form a consistent whole, approved by some department of the Faculty.

In the College the problem of making the student, instead of the course, the unit in education is more difficult than in the other parts of the University, because general education is more intangible, more vague, less capable of precise analysis and definition, than training for a profession. Nevertheless, in the College, some significant steps have been taken which tend in this direction. The first was the requirement that every student must concentrate six of his seventeen courses in some definite field, must distribute six more among the other subjects of knowledge, and must do so after consulting an instructor appointed to advise him. The exact prescriptions may not be perfect, nor in their final form. Experience may well lead to changes, but the intent is good, to develop and expand the mind of the student as an individual, as in himself the object of education. So far as the rule affects the care with which the student selects his courses, there has certainly been a gain, for there is no doubt that the requirement has made his choice more thoughtful and serious than before. The Committee on the Choice of Electives makes exceptions freely in the case of earnest students, and it is a significant fact that although the members of the Committee hold very divergent views upon the principles involved, they are almost invariably unanimous on the question of allowing an exception in any particular case.

The rule of concentration, coupled with the provision that not more than two of the six courses shall be of any elementary character, is intended to compel every man to study some subject with thoroughness, and acquire a systematic knowledge thereof. Certain departments have so arranged their sequence of courses that this result is fairly well attained: but in others where the offering is large, and the nature of the subject is not (as it is in Mathematics, for example, or the physical sciences) such that a mastery of one thing is indispensable for the study of another, it is still possible for a student to elect six courses in the outlying parts of the field which have little connection with one another and do not form a systematic whole. This possibility is attractive to undergraduates seeking easy courses, whose object is not so much to obtain as to evade an education. Of late years, indeed, many easy courses have been made more serious, whereby the minimum work which shirkers must do for a degree has been sensibly raised, to the great benefit of the college as an educational institution, and incidentally with the result of increasing the respect for high achievement in college scholarship. As the requirements in various subjects are stiffened it is interesting to observe the flocking of students from one department to another.

New Requirement for Graduation

The second step in treating the student, instead of the course, as the unit in education, was taken by the Division of History, Government, and Economics, when, and with the approval of the Faculty, it set up the requirement of a general examination at graduation for students concentrating in that division. The examination, which is entrusted to a committee representing the three departments within the division, is to be distinct from that in the courses elected, and is to include not only the ground covered in them, but also the general field with which they have dealt, and the knowledge needed to connect them. This is a marked departure from the plan of earning a degree by scoring courses; and it will take time to adjust men's conceptions of education to a basis new to the American college, though familiar in every European university. To assist the students in preparing themselves for the general examination each of them at the beginning of his Sophomore year is assigned to the charge of a tutor who confers with him about his work and guides his reading outside of that required in the courses. As the plan could be applied only to men entering after it was established, the first examinations will be held next spring, and then only for men who graduate in three years. In the Divinity School, where the course for the Masters and Doctors degrees is shorter, a general examination has already been put into operation with gratifying results.