AMERICAN GRADUATES

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 146, 18 December 1933, Page 16

AMERICAN GRADUATES

CROWDED INSTITUTIONS

EDUCATIONAL SHORTCOMINGS

(From "Tho Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, October 25. The visitor from the Dominions, when •he makes his home in the United States, is most impressed by the number of universities, colleges,'' and institutions of higher learning, and with the ample enrolment at each, as well as the immense private endowments they .enjoy. In good years, these halls of learning are overcrowded. "Education is the ■fetish of the United States," he hears on. every side. . . But when he endeavours to estimate tho intellectual value of the output, he is amazed at its paucity. His correspondence, from Americans 'in the middle and higher ranks of life, indicates that the rudiments of spelling and composition have never been overcome. "He is gradually forced to the conviction that, in their relative sum of knowledge, the graduate of a na-tionally-known V university iv the United States has much to learn from the student about to enter, a, university in one of the Dominions. With very great regret, one is forced to admit that,- with reservations, the same thing is experienced '■ in Canada. A magazine editor advised tho Minister of Education in this province that an article submitted by one of his teachers displayed "rotten spelling and vile grammar." The standard of university education in Canada, while being far behind that of New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, is yet considerably ahead of that of the United States. Because of this, Canadian Governments frequently complain that their most promising students aro lost to the country at graduation, as they are eagerly snapped up by American institutions and industries. 7.'7'::v ' ' Tho influence.,of sport is paramount j in the North American-university system, and woe betide the university professor who fails a representative foot-; bailer or athlete if his father considers that the. time for his graduation hasi arrived. ' What a contrast to !the'days' of our youth in the Antipodes'" When I we watched, year by year/;a: famous ] university player represent".-,his country , at Rugby,, while taking five to seven' years, to get his Arts degree! A professor of a national university I in the United States says he was-con-1 vinced, after five years, of teaching, that he woulcT'lose his job if ho did not pass students whoso intelligence fitted j them for nothing higher than a pick and shovel job. When he eventually j conformed' to the system and passed all his students, except one, "I became a. swell follow, a regular, guy. I am now so pdpular I am called one of the' finest profs, on. tlie faculty."