broad-minded, cultivated students, if they have to give all their time to earning a living, are often kept narrow and inefficient by the hard, cruel grind. If I were to come to the aid of the borrower in college I should do so with my eyes open, I should face the actual facts which experience with these things had taught me, and I should surround the granting of these loans with such restrictions as would make them comparatively safe risks.
Of course if the terms upon which loans are granted by the college are so rigid as to make it next to impossible for the needy undergraduate to meet them, the whole purpose of the loan is defeated. If the student must meet the conditions which a bank imposes then, barring the fact that the college loan is usually made at a somewhat lower rate of interest than one must pay at the bank, the borrower might quite as well patronize his local bank. I should not make such loans prohibitive, but I should grant them only after a careful investigation and study of the character and need of the prospective borrower; for after all the main safeguard in making such a loan is the personal character of the individual who is receiving the loan.
I should very seldom lend money to students under the junior year. If the under classman must begin to borrow he is likely so heavily to handicap himself with debt at the very beginning of his college course that he grows discouraged, gives up the task, and never graduates. He is too young usually to realize the meaning of debt. Since such a man seldom graduates, he, therefore, does not fit himself for rapid advancement in any line of work which he may take
