Just charges of pedantry have been made against the specifications for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy; the emphasis has been placed by Universities on accumulation of course credits and by examiners on display of minute factual data. The announcement by the Department of Sociology of its changes in Ph.D. requirements shows a healthy tendency toward requiring rather a broad and mature outlook on the subject as a whole. The changes will exempt the exceptional student from the preliminary and largely factual examination which the department has required of all graduate students at the end of their first year of work. Emphasis will be removed from regular courses and will be placed to a greater extent on research, seminar work, and the acquisition of a profound understanding of fundamentals. The final doctorate examination, moreover, will no longer merely test memorized knowledge of the limited field covered by the candidate's thesis, but will test his ability to solve new problems and to correlate facts and impressions by original thought.

The innovations are a desirable change in the meaning of a Ph.D degree in Sociology. It will cease to indicate mere pedantic knowledge of the facts in a restricted field and will show a more mature and profound grasp of fundamentals. The steps taken will facilitate this opportunity for the superior student by exempting him from mechanical examinations on fact. The average student, through not exempt from the preliminary examinations, will in the final oral quiz have to show the same intelligent grasp of first principles. Both the superior and the average student will profit by the removal from graduate work of the incubus of men of sub-normal intelligence. The changes will make the degree of Ph.D. in Sociology mean intelligence rather than mere encyclopaedic knowledge and will enable the department to test much better that intelligence.