Columbia University's graduates today outnumber the entire enrolment of many a great institution of learning. The nearly 2,,500 diplomas conferred today are more than two-thirds of the entire membership of Yale University. Brute number in themselves are obviously not the measure of rank in the higher realms of education. But numbers have their significance as a measure of the extent to which a university ties itself u to the life of the community.

Next year's enrolment at Morningside Heights will probably approach close to 30,000. A very large portion of this enrolment is to be accounted for by the extension courses, which to large extent invalidate-comparison with other institutions not equipped with popular lecture courses or enormous summer sessions. Nevertheless as a social force the University does obviously operate through these supplementary activities. Furthermore, if Columbia counts its auxiliary student membership by the thousand, it is also an institutes which today confers about 850 Master of Art degrees. The expansion of sub-academic activities is going hand in hand with development of its post-graduate activities.

These can be no question that with every year that passes the people of the city of New York are being brought into closer affiliation with its principal university, which is today in numbers probably the greatest university in the world. The bond of common interest will be drawn closer when the long-delayed affiliation between Columbia and the Presbyterial Hospital results in the creation of a great medical school for which such need and such advantage exist here.

Columbia is one instance of the remarkable development of the urban universities and college which has been going on the world over. It is significant that the next largest American university in numbers is also situated in this city--New York University. Next comes Chicago University. And if we speak in terms of colleges, second and third place belong to our won municipal institutions--the College of the city of New York with nearly 15,000 students and Hunter College with more than 11,000 students. It has become a commonplace to speak of the drift from the country into the cities as indicating the close of the epoch of opportunity in American. But evidently in our great cities the road of opportunity is not being close to youth and energy and ambition. --N. Y. Evening Post.