ge has taken place in
regard to what is expected of the college student; distrust has vanished
and people realize that the _intellectual discipline_ which he has had
until his twenty-second year in the artificial and ideal world is after
all the best training, less by its subject-matter than by its methods, is
the best possible preparation for practical activity. . . . The leading
positions are almost entirely in the hands of men of academic training
and the mistrust of the theorizing college spirit has given place to a
situation in which university presidents and professors have much to say
on all practical questions of public life, and the college graduates are
the real supporters of every movement toward reform and civilization."
(Munsterberg--"The Americans" 600-602.)

The true _leaders_ in society are like the snow-capped heights of a
mountain range: they are the first that the new light of a breaking dawn,
of a coming period, is wont to strike with its rays, to be then reflected
on the silent and sleeping valleys. The men who hold to-day the pen or
draughting pencil in the university are the men who will handle the
levers of the world's intricate machinery. There they grapple with the
various problems of the scientifical, economic and political world and
their views, later on, will gradually influence the whole mental attitude
of the masses, who, in their daily life, are confronted with these same
problems.

This leadership of _thought_ and _action_ is no more the privilege of a
few; in our democratic country every one can aspire to it. The days when
primary education was for the masses, secondary or college education for
the middle classes and university training for "the quality," have passed
away and gradually the benefits of higher education are being extended to
all. The _equality of opportunity_, not that of wealth and position, is
_the test of true democracy_. This condition has created the aristocracy
of brains and character before which the aristocracy of wealth, of blood
and lineage fade into insignificance.

The predominance of the "vocational feature" over the "cultural" in the
scope of our modern universities, the vast "extension work" [3] carried
on in the various fields, the multiplicity of "free scholarships" open to
the competition of the brainy and ambitious boy, are other proofs of this
democratic trait of our modern higher education.

* * * * * *

Since