school to the college standard after due notice given[1] have thus far lost only one-half or less of their former enrolment. The only thing that falls in proportion is the income from fees; the percentage of graduates is reduced much less. At the University of Minnesota, there used to be an average first-year attendance of 80 on the high school basis; on the two-year college basis it is now 40; at Harvard on the former basis, 160 new matriculants; now, on a college basis, 79. Western Reserve, with 84 on the high school basis, advanced suddenly in 1901 to a three-year college requirement; the enrolment fell to 12, but by 1908 the loss was practically recovered. Most significant is the demonstration that the greatest loss is due to the transition from the high school or equivalent to the one-year college basis; the rise from one to two years of college has relatively little effect on enrolment. It would appear that the college requirement compels deliberation. Once decided, the student is not seriously hampered by the effort or the expense of an additional year.
It does not follow, however, that if schools generally rose to the college requirement, their losses would be only one-half and the recovery therefrom ultimately assured. For the schools that came off thus lightly were previously attended by a large proportion of high-grade men.[2] A much greater loss would undoubtedly take place in the lower-grade schools; many of them would be practically annihilated. For the tendency of elevated standards and ideals is to reduce the number of students to something like parity with the demand, and to concentrate this reduced student body in fewer institutions, adequately supported.
The basis which we have urged for medical education gives an undoubted advantage to the university medical departments. We shall see in subsequent chapters that other equally important factors are at work tending to restore medical education to the university status; but for the moment the difficulty of procuring anywhere else the necessary educational foundation is perhaps most cogent. A countermove, by way of avoiding this tendency, has recently emanated from certain Philadelphia schools,[3] in the form of a suggested five-year course, the first year to be devoted to the pre-medical sciences.
Several serious objections to this proposition may be urged: (1) a single year is insufficient for three laboratory sciences, and makes no provision for modern languages; the very best medical schools could with difficulty give one year's pre-medi-
- ↑ Cornell changed from the high school to the three-year college requirement with less than a year's notice. There was, of course, no chance to readjust matters; the next first-year class (1908) numbered 15; this increased to 23.
- ↑ In these schools standards were elevated in advance of the operation of the formal declaration to that effect. For example, Columbia (College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York) goes to the two-year college basis 1910–11; but the entering class 1909–10 contained among its 86 matriculates 48 students with degrees, and 11 more who had had two years of college work.
- ↑ These schools have no endowments; and the pre-medical sciences cannot be properly taught out of fees, as will become evident in chapter viii., "The Financial Aspects of Medical Education." Hence the work must be mainly make-believe. It would have to be given by already overburdened science teachers, or, still worse, by practitioners. The Medico-Chirurgical College of Philadelphia offers these courses "in conjunction with classes in the sister department of pharmacy." This is absurd.
