The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (collection)/The Men Who Do not Graduate
Every year at the opening of college the papers are full of the accounts of the large number of freshmen who are flocking to the various colleges and universities. I do not know what percentage of these entrants persists through the four years of their undergraduate course and come up for their degrees, but I suppose that it varies in different parts of the country and in different types of institutions. An investigation made recently by the assistant dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois showed that at this institution approximately forty per cent of those entering the freshman class of that college continued through the course and received their degree at the end of the four years. A few, perhaps, returned later to finish their work or occupied five years in the completion of their courses, but even counting these in, the percentage of matriculants who ultimately graduate would not exceed forty-five per cent. I presume that if statistics were compiled in the other colleges of the University, the result would not be particularly different from that which was shown in the College of Engineering. A good many reasons might be alleged for this large percentage of mortality, but very likely one of the strongest is that going to college was never so universally popular as it now is, and a large number of young people, therefore, enter college in the fall who find out before spring that they are not particularly fitted for the work or interested in it. These often do not return.
One of the most serious problems the fraternity has to solve is concerned with the men who do not graduate. There is a very large class of fellows who enter college, join a fraternity, and then at the end of the first semester, or the first year, or the first two years, give up their college work and go at something else. This class of men causes the fraternity a considerable amount of trouble from the fact that while they are in college they are often unstable, dissatisfied, and irresponsible, and after they leave college they are unlikely to meet their obligations to the fraternity or to show much interest in it. Fraternities are coming to see that when they are rushing men one of the first things to discover about them is whether or not they have serious intentions of remaining in college for the entire course. The student who does not, is more likely than not to be a poor asset for the organization.
A fraternity is strong or weak under the present system in accordance with which fraternities are managed, as its senior class is strong or weak. I have in mind a number of instances of fraternities at the University which have started in with what was thought to be an excellent freshman class, and have come to the end of the four years with one or two or occasionally with not a single one of the men who were originally pledged. Such a fraternity is unquestionably weak. With no seniors it has little organization, and it reveals the fact that for some time it has had little, or there would have been someone to save a few of the upperclassmen from the wreck. The organization which by one means or another can carry a large percentage of the men through to the senior year and graduate them, has a strength that is worth much to the organization and to the institution of which it is a part.
It has been a matter of interest to me to make some investigations at the University of Illinois relative to these men who join fraternities and who do not finish their college course. Recently I sent to the local secretary of each of twenty-three national fraternities a questionnaire asking the number of initiates over a period of four years in each fraternity, and also the number of these initiates who finally graduated. Through our class annuals and the registrar's office I was able to check results which came in reply to these inquiries, so that I feel sure that my figures as to percentages of men who do or who do not graduate are reasonably accurate.
I included in this inquiry also a question relative to the reasons which had induced the various men to leave college before graduation time. For sixty-three per cent of these men no reason was alleged, and I am not inclined to put much faith in the accuracy of the replies to the thirty-seven per cent for which reasons were given, although I include these. The men who answered the questionnaires were of necessity acquainted with only a very small number of the men concerned, since they were not in college when most of these other men were, and could know but little other than that which comes through hearsay or tradition as to the influences which induced their brothers to withdraw. Neither the records of the fraternity nor of the University ordinarily indicate why a man has withdrawn or failed to return to finish his course, so that at best it must be a matter of conjecture or of memory in drawing any conclusion as to the causes operating. Since I have known practically all these men personally to whom reference was made in the questionnaire, I am inclined to think that only general conclusions can be drawn, and that it is impossible accurately to set down percentages.
In reply to the question as to why these men had left college before graduation, for four hundred and fourteen, or 63.2 per cent no reason was given. The reasons alleged for the two hundred and forty-one, or 36.8 per cent remaining were as follows:
| Reasons | Percentage |
|---|---|
| To enter business | 49.9 |
| Lack of money | 17.4 |
| Failure in studies | 13.3 |
| Indifference to work | 9.1 |
| Dropped from course | 4.9 |
| To get married | 4.0 |
| Trouble at home | 1.3 |
As I have said before, I am not inclined to put much confidence in these last replies, excepting that the reasons alleged are usually the reasons one or another of which induce men to leave college before graduation. "To enter business" is a reason which may mean almost anything, and might with propriety be asserted of any man who following his failure to come back to college had secured a job.
A study of the table of percentages of those who graduated and of those who did not brings out a few interesting facts. The percentage of graduates is about five per cent higher than was shown by the College of Engineering, even granting that five per cent of the students of this college who did not graduate ultimately cleared up their work and received their degrees. The percentages of graduates varied from 75.3 to 15.2 which is pretty wide, but is partially explained at least on account of the varying conditions in the different organizations.
The internal organization of those fraternities which had the higher percentage of graduates has also been stronger and the unity of feeling more marked than in those fraternities which occupy the lower half. My conclusions are that the fraternity that can keep up its scholarship, that can choose men with a serious definite purpose, and that by a well knit organization can hold its men together will always have a high percentage of graduates.
It will be seen that the average percentage in these twenty-three fraternities of initiates who graduate is approximately fifty. If before I had begun my investigation I had been asked whether the percentage of fraternity initiates who graduate is larger or smaller than that of men in general, I should have been inclined to believe that it is smaller. Even though the figures show that with us the percentage is larger, I am quite sure that it is not so large as it should be nor so large as it will be when the fraternities realize the importance of pledging men whose purpose it is to graduate.
I am not sure that the reasons which keep fraternity men from graduating are different excepting in degree, perhaps, from those which are instrumental in keeping other men from continuing in college. The percentage of fraternity men placed on probation for poor scholarship or dropped from the University is practically the same as the percentage of other men. I am sorry to admit that a somewhat larger percentage are dropped for other irregularities, but this fact may be accounted for, I believe, because, it is almost always easier to find out what a man in an organization is doing or has done than it is to find out similar facts concerning the isolated individual.
The social life of the men in the fraternity is on the whole considerably more intense than is that of the men outside, especially in a coeducational institution like a state university. The young man who associates regularly with girls is likely to fall in love, or at least he is likely to think that he has done so, and a young collegian in this state of mind seldom does much with his studies. The experience steadies and stimulates a few men to better work, but the large majority whom I have known can not attend to their books and to their love affairs at the same time. The fact that these young people do not marry—and there is little likelihood that the college man in love in the early years of his college course will marry the girl who has made the impression on him—does not settle the question. The man in love is restless, dissatisfied, unlikely to stick to his work. He usually fails in some subject, becomes discouraged or dissatisfied, and does not return the next year.
Few men with us fail to graduate because of dissipations or bad habits unless the habit of loafing may be included in this list. I cannot now recall a dozen men whom I have known in fifteen years who were kept from graduation by bad habits. Young fellows may be indiscreet, they may do irregular things, but they do these irregular things so irregularly as to have very little damaging effect upon their college work. The week-end party may have its bad effects upon the character, and it no doubt does lay the foundation of objectionable habits later in life, but it has seemed to me seldom to have an immediately damaging effect upon the man's studies. It is undeniable, however, that the fraternity house is usually a comfortable place to loaf, and it is generally possible for one adept at this recreation to pick up someone at almost any hour of the day or night who will help him at the game. There are too many loafers at our fraternity houses and too little discouraging of loafing. The loafer is not always dropped from college by the authorities, in point of fact he is dropped only in a small percentage of cases. He is in many cases like a young friend of mine who had changed his occupation rather often during the first five years he was out of college. "What was the matter, Paul?" I asked. "Were you dismissed?" "Never but once," was his reply, "but every other time I saw it was going to happen, and I beat them to it, and resigned." A very large percentage of the loafers in college usually see what is coming to them in the future, and rather than reform they decide to quit college before they must.
I think it is fair to say that although there are in every fraternity with which I am acquainted young fellows who come from families of little means and who must themselves be self-supporting, yet on the whole the man in a fraternity has more money behind him than has the average man in college. I think it can be shown, also, that a larger percentage of fraternity men than other men expect to go back home when they leave college and go into business with their fathers or with some other member of their family. Though many fraternity men must strike out for themselves when they leave college and build up their own business or profession, there is, however, a good percentage who know that a first-rate job is waiting for them when they leave college. Though the fathers of these men usually want their sons to finish a college course and get a degree, yet since not many of them have themselves had a college education they do not always feel strongly the importance of their son's finishing his work.
"My son does not have to have a college degree," the father of a twenty-year-old sophomore who wanted to quit college and get married, said to me this spring. "He's had two years of college. That's more than I ever had; and there's a good well-stocked farm waiting for him whenever he comes home." Why should a son like that stay out of agricultural affluence and matrimony in order to finish a college course? It were foolish, indeed. This financial state and general state of mind I am sure is not uncommon among parents, and I am convinced is responsible for the unfinished courses of a good many fraternity men.
A good many men, however, do leave college because of financial matters. It costs more to go to college than most people think it does. There has been an impression extant for a long time that one can live more cheaply in college than at any other place in the world. It is an error. It costs more to live in a college town than in a big city; and it costs a fraternity man more than it does a good many other men, because he lives better than they do. Some fraternity men have more money than others, and it is rather hard sometimes for the man with little money to live contentedly with the man who has more. Rather than economize, rather than struggle along and finish what he has undertaken, even though it demands sacrifice, a good many men quit and go to work.
Indifference drives other away. I am surprised over and over again at the lack of purpose or real interest in many men who enter college. They come because it is the thing to do, because their friends are coming, because nothing better presents itself after they have graduated from the high school. They have no special interest in books, they do not enjoy study, and they have formed no specially definite plans for their own future. Sometimes these men wake up and find an object in living and a purpose, but if their indifference continues, they usually give up the intellectual business—I can not call it a struggle—and go into something else.
The salvation of the fraternity is in the men who graduate, who have the definiteness of purpose and the willingness to work which will ensure their finishing their college course. Less society, less loafing, a more moderate expenditure of money, and a simpler method of living when this has been extravagant will keep more men in college. A good many of the mistakes which fraternities make could be solved at rushing time if the fraternity would take the trouble and the time to find out a little more definitely what the purposes of the new men are. The time of the fraternity is usually wasted if the men do not stay beyond the first or second year. Accidents happen, of course, the unexpected comes to pass, and things occur which make it necessary at one time or another for every man to change his plans, but it is possible, I believe, if the facts are found out at rushing time, and if the organization of the fraternity is properly looked after and the scholarship kept up, to graduate seventy-five per cent of the initiates rather than fifty per cent as at present.