The Graduate School of Princeton University has decided to admit only students who have been "honor men" in college. The Philadelphia Press explains that the proposal is to train a class of "super-scholars." The aptness of this term may be questioned, as well as the value of the new requirement. Most of those who go to the better graduate schools now are men who have been distinctly above the average in scholarly rank as undergraduates; it is a genuine intellectual interest which has led to their desire to do further scholarly work. Moreover, honor standards vary so greatly that injustice is likely to occur.
At Harvard the change should rather be in the direction of higher requirements for the master's degree. An A.M. is easier to obtain in the University than in some graduate schools of less reputation. Four courses, each passed with a grade of B, are sufficient; no research work of thesis, unless incidental to a particular course, is required. And the Faculty are also somewhat freer with B minuses to graduates than to the undergraduates who can pass with C's. It would be a salutary reform which would make the A.M. degree worthy of the prestige it enjoys professionally and even socially.
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