To those colleges which exist under the guise of educational institutions and are really trade schools, to those hard-headed men who believe that the empirical sciences are the backbone of the age and culture a luxury only for the wealthy, Robert Maynard Hutchins issues a poignant challenge. He has written so logical and convincing an analysis of the content and purpose of education that we find it practically impossible to refute any of his principal convictions.

Dr. Hutchins aims to resurrect the American university from the depths of its degradation and confusion. He points out that the objective of education should be to prepare the student for intelligent action. With this as his central theme he clarifies the proper function of a university in the scheme of a man's whole education. A university is equipped only to pursue the fundamental truths and no more--to attempt anything else is to cripple its prime purpose. Taking wisdom as the result of both intellectual training and experience, Dr. Hutchins insists, contrary to the existing curricula of most colleges, that the university can supply only the former. There is no substitute for experience; every business has its own idiosyncrasies, its own methods its own peculiarities. Universities today bow to every whim of corporations giving narrow, technical courses that really should be items of expense on the corporation balance sheets.

"The Higher Learning in America" also advocates a general education for all who can learn from books. Such an education is to center primarily upon a study of the classics of all ages, to continue until the student is twenty years old, and to be paid for by the state. Dr. Hutchins firmly believes that a general education of this sort is as essential to the young man who must end his formal education early as to him who goes on to the university.

Many of the mechanical reforms suggested in the book may or may not be necessary or desirable. Dr. Hutchins has quibbles with the present examination methods and the close association of research fact-finding and the professors; but whatever qualms we may have with these details, we wholly succumb to the relentless logic of his central theme. We thoroughly agree with his simple statement: "All that can be learned in a university is the general principles, the fundamental propositions, the theory of any discipline."