President Faunce of Brown University has a brand-new diagnosis of the conditions which are causing academic congestion. The trouble, in his opinion, is due not so much to the fact that too many men are going to college as that often the wrong kind of men are going. "The vast majority would profit far more by some other kind of education than that given in the traditional American college", he says.

The Brown President instances the schools maintained by banks and corporations for their employees. But does this crm of special instruction realize his ideal of an enlarged horizon" for the student? Shall business concerns take over the work of the colleges on the theory that they can supply something just as good or better in the way of education for students "only a minority of whom are mentally or morally benefited by seclusion for four years within the gates" of universities? This is a novel and disillusioning estimate of the efficiency of American colleges.

But assuming that a sifting process of this nature is adopted, that applicants for admission are tested and received or sent away acording as it is determined whether they will profit more from a college course of a corporation course, how are the tests to be applied? Is there any greater human lottery than the youth of eighteen?

As against this and other selective-process programmes of college Presidents it is agreeable to cite the objections of Acting Provost Penniman of the University of Pennsylvania to the "un-American policy", of adopting "a method of selecting candidates which in any way violates the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence or the rights of American citizens as guaranteed by the Constitution". It is a serious thing, as he says, "to shut the door in the face of the eager, aspiring, earnest youth who has set his heart on coming to college".

There remains the old remedy of raising standards and there are the new psychological tests. But to seek to classify college boys on the basis of their expectation of benefit from a college or business career, is a pretty fine-spun theory of academic efficiency. The New York World