Enrollments

The generations swell and press against the college gates. The colleges guard their gates and ponder. The prosperity that affords all these tuition fees is quite able to endow whatever physical expansion may be necessary. "But," the question is, "can we retain the character of an institution if we permit it to grow from 500 students to 1,000, from 2,000 to 5,000?"

Retention of the character of Princeton, "a cultural centre apart from the busy world," was the motive of that college in setting 2,000 as the limit of its enrollment three years ago. The character of Amherst was large in the minds of the decided majority of its undergraduates who last week voted to reserve Amherst for 600 or 700 men. Physical handicaps were not chief among the reasons that led Smith to turn" away two-thirds of the girls who sought entrance this fall. The standard of teaching was a great factor in the decision, but greater yet was the atmosphere, the personality of the college, the factor which will ultimately attract or repel great teachers, desirable students, helpful bequests.

The solution to its enrollment problem last week announced, through President James A. Blaisdell, by Pomona College (Claremont, Calif.) was unique in the U. S. It was proposed to develop that institution into a group of colleges around a central administration, as the colleges of Oxford and of Cambridge cluster under a common seal. There will be the university library, laboratories and museum; presumably the university debating or social union and the inevitable university athletic machinery. "The plan justifies the concentration of large educational facilities and yet has the advantage of .economy." If the development is actually modeled on Oxford and Cambridge, the separate colleges will grow up with their own endowments and faculties, and have the advantages over our present "schools" within universities, of separate living quarters and other distinctive possessions, including personalities and traditions.