College Degrees

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 7, 1906

At this season of college commencements it seems to be a fitting time to consider the question of granting degrees. Under the title “The College Degree and an Honest Suggestion” there appears in The World’s Work for June an editorial upon this subject which is worthy of thoughtful consideration. When the editor of the REVIEW was directly connected with our educational work he made the same suggestion, but it seemed too radical to be acted upon at that time. Possibly the same suggestion made in an influential magazine will carry more weight. We quote the following paragraphs from the editorial:—

Nowadays a college graduate has spent from two to five years in an institution where he may have eaten a substantial intellectual meal, or may have tasted instead a vast number of tempting educational dishes—or merely had a good time and hired a coach to do the required thinking. He may have entered college after a thorough training in a good fitting school, or he may have been “accredited” by a perfunctory school-teacher, and have been really unprepared for any higher studies. Under such conditions the conferring of degrees is a piece of scholastic buncombe, endeared by tradition and of some supposed commercial benefit to the recipients.

Any one who is familiar with our colleges knows that the units of instruction, upon the performance of which the getting of degrees depends, are of very various worth and difficulty. There is no human method of estimating properly their respective values in the curriculum. And it is coming more and more to be the case that colleges give their degrees for work performed elsewhere, which they estimate roughly and accredit to the students. So far as the commercial consideration for holding to degrees is concerned, outside of academic circles, nobody cares whether a man has a bachelor’s degree or not, unless he wishes to teach. And to secure any good position in teaching the college graduate must have the doctor’s degree, which is given by respectable institutions only for very real accomplishments.

It is natural enough under these circumstances that young people in college should confound the taking of a degree with the getting of an education. But what is really more lamentable is that American colleges seem unable to put their stamp upon their graduates in some more enduring manner than by giving them little rolls of parchment and the right to add some capital letters to their names.

A remedy for this state of things is not hard to find. Let the university or college issue to every student leaving its doors a document which shall be an exact and concise statement of the term of actual residence, and the amount and nature of work performed by the student under the supervision of that institution. It would require scarcely more parchment than the present degree to provide a record of the student’s work that would mean something. In it should appear a brief description of the subjects pursued, the names of the instructors, the amount of class or laboratory work done, of the grades given by examinations in the respective courses, all countersigned by the proper college officer. Thus it would be a concise summary of the educational history of the student.

There are certain obvious advantages of such a system, besides its honesty. It would permit the student in search of the best instructors in his field to move freely from one college to another. To the young man looking for work such a document would have real commercial value, provided that his studies had had anything to do with the job he was seeking. And it would enable those aiming to enter the professions to begin their professional studies just as soon as they had completed the courses prescribed by the faculties of the professional schools.

Of course there would be a sentimental outcry against doing away with the time-honored degree. Colleges are timid, always fearful of a possible loss of patronage. But a frank recognition of the emptiness of the bachelor degree would appeal to the best sense of the community. It would tend to eliminate the loafers in college, because parents would no longer have the excuse of maintaining their sons in idleness through four years “for the sake of the degree.” College would become more and more a part of the business of life, and a place where something can not be had for nothing.

The course here recommended seems so sensible and so honest that it would doubtless be accepted and acted upon were it not for the fact, as stated in the editorial, that “nowhere else have ancient prejudices such a steady hold as in universities.” The question of granting degrees may not be a burning one in our educational institutions just now, and yet it might be wise to give the subject some study at the coming educational convention.