ate work. I
grant them both, but I hold that the incentive is a low one--much lower
than we need to use--and that the shortening of the course is far from
being an unmixt blessing.

Let me again refer to the matter of content, upon our value of which, to
quite an extent, our estimate of the merit of the "Credit-for-quality"
system must rest. The young people in our colleges and universities, in
planning for lives of usefulness and success, place themselves in our
hands for direction and guidance. Knowing that we are older, wiser,
more learned, and more experienced than they, they ask our advice and,
in the main, follow it. To the incentives we use in dealing with them,
they respond; the motives we supply urge them on; the standards of value
we erect for them, they use; and the ideals we place before them, they
try to reach. All this places large responsibilities upon us. Are we
wise in telling from fifteen to twenty per cent of these young people
that three years is all the time that it is wise for them to spend in
college work? They will all remain the full four years unless we plan
differently for them. To be sure, there is no magic in the number four
as numbering the years of one's college course, nor in three, nor in
two, nor in any other number. But would not any normal student who
spends four years in the college atmosphere, mingling with college
people, both students and teachers, doing college work, drinking from
the pure fountains of literature, of history, of philosophy, of science,
of art, et cetera, be broader in range and more fully equipt for the
varied and complicated duties of life and for life's enjoyment, than he
would be with only three years thus spent? And is not the fourth year by
far the best of the four? Why shall you and I discourage him from doing
that which we know to be well for him and which he is willing to do? Why
deny him the rare fruitage of that fourth year? Why say to him when he
is just ready to enter into the enjoyments of his student life, "you
would better go?" After all, is it not this very three-year student with
his finer ability, his keener insight, and his greater industry who can
most greatly profit by the extra year? Shall we not rather encourage him
to stay longer and delve deeper and reach to the very heart of things?
Whether looked at from the standpoint of the student's own advantage, or
from that of the world at large, which is to profit by his equipment, is
it not real