that this has little effect on the subjects that the teachers are required to handle after they find themselves in teaching positions. Twenty-seven report that they can not confine their recommendations to major subjects only.

In 19 institutions, State limitations in placing teachers affect the work of the placement bureau. This limitation is usually a State requirement in regard to the number of hours of education required as part of the training for teachers in public schools. The requests from employers for teachers are said to come largely unsolicited. The percentage ranges from about 50 to 100, with the median at 60, nine institutions reporting that 100 per cent of their calls came unsolicited. The possibilities of research in the whole placement field are unlimited, and as yet the surface has hardly been scratched.

In 8 institutions, a few job analyses have been made, but 25 report that they have not even attempted anything of this kind. Although 21 land-grant institutions say that they have made studies of occupations in which their alumni are engaged, it is quite evident from the report that some of these so-called studies are nothing more nor less than the success stories of alumni as told in the alumni magazines. Since the best test of the efficiency of any institution's work is its success in fitting the students to take their places in the world of affairs, it would seem that research in this whole matter of guidance and placement is decidedly in order. In the meantime, it is to be hoped that more of the institutions will realize their responsibility in helping graduates to make the first adjustment between the life of the college campus and the life of the industrial world.

Chapter XI. Student Social Organizations

The report up to this point has concerned itself wholly with those services and activities controlled by the institution. While these services and activities intimately concern the life of the student outside of the classroom, their study presents an incomplete picture, since it omits altogether the consideration of the social life of the student, his efforts to amuse himself, to gain some knowledge of the æsthetic fields actually engaging in dramatics, musical productions, forensics, and similar activities; to satisfy his social instincts by the formation of more or less permanent groups; and finally to share in the community life by the assumption of certain functions of government. Some of the activities included in this list are wholly student-initiated and student-managed, and their responsibility is entirely in student hands. Others are joint student-and-faculty, or student-and-administration enterprises carried on for the most part by the students, with advice and some supervision, more or less direct, from the administrative group.

Disinterested outsiders have been assuring students for a long time that what they learn in college makes very little difference so long as they forget it promptly enough, but that what they do of their own initiative in college and the friendships that they make in college will be of lasting value to them throughout their lives. This emphasis has frequently made the students feel that the activities which they themselves conceive and foster are, after all, the true raison d'être of the college.

The survey of this phase of student activities in the land-grant institutions covers, of course, only those activities which are recognized and permitted on the campuses. Although there were 1,300 of these listed, and some of the campuses listed as many as 500, this does not tell the whole story. On every campus there are some activities going forward which the college does not sanction, and of which it is unaware in many instances. These "wildcat " activities range from individual peccadillos to the subrosa meetings of regular groups that have become important enough to join with similar groups on other campuses and effect a semblance of national organization. Naturally there is no report on these outlaw activities included in the survey. For the most part they do not come to official attention, and their participants are careful to avoid, in so far

111490°-30-VOL 1- -35

517

as possible, any official notice. Many times they are not even known to the other students on the same campus, although frequently, on the other hand, their presence is recognized by the other students. There is, therefore, no way in which one can judge, either the scope or the spread of these activities, or the seriousness of their effects upon the participants. The impression among those dealing with college students, as administrators or as inspectors in fraternities and sororities, seems to be that so far as the organized "wildcat” activities go, they are decreasing rather than increasing in seriousness. They have always existed, since college has always drawn that portion of the youth which has initiative and imagination, and "wildcat" activities call for both. The pessimists need only to read the diaries of some of the college students in the early days at Harvard, Yale, the University of Michigan, William and Mary, the University of Virginia, and some of the other of the oldest and most respectable institutions, to know that both individual and group outlaw activities are no modern inventions. It is small wonder if in this day of organization for its own sake these activities are frequently rather more highly organized than they were in the past.

One type of organization seems to devote itself almost entirely to the cultivation of pseudo-intellectual group interests. Its members are apt to call themselves the intelligentsia and to look down on the bourgeoisie and proletariat, their fellow students, who do not rebel at every sign of social convention or authority. These groups are very loosely knit together, and the personnel changes rapidly, as is inevitable in the case of groupings of such individualistic personalities. The personnel and the interests change not only from year to year, but even from month to month. The only thing that seems to remain is the feeling of superiority. Since they are superior, not only to all those outside, but also to each other, the bond of union. is very weak and, fortunately for the rest of the college community, the groups dissolve quite easily. Administrative action is seldom necessary to disintegrate such loosely bound groups. During the last 10 years concerted efforts were made to organize this group of "intelligentsia" in the various colleges for comparisons of views, of methods of revolt, of common interests, and of literature. In order to do this it became necessary to come into the open as college organizations. The glamour then soon faded and sufficient following could not be secured to maintain a publication or to carry on the organization. Apparently, the vast majority of the students in the colleges to-day are little interested in a program of revolt.

Another type of wildcat activity which has little organization is that of the gambling and drinking fellowship. This group too has always existed, and probably in proportion is no larger to-day

than it ever was, although in actual numbers it may have increased with the growth of the student bodies. Since for the most part the members of this group are not long-lived in the college community, it too tends to disintegrate rapidly. Its chief harm is to the members. themselves rather than to the rest of the college community.

Still another type of outlaw activity went on for many years under the guise of interfraternal organizations. The organization known as "T N E" was probably the best example of this. Its members were fraternity men, but often their own fraternity brothers did not know of their membership in this other interlocking organization. Its objects were wholly antisocial in the broadest sense. Its meetings were carouses, and its organization was for the wildest kinds of indulgence which boyish minds could conceive. For some years a sister organization of like nature and purpose, known as Chi, or X, existed in some of the Middle Western universities. Its members were women from certain of the leading sororities, although membership was a dark secret. The initiation ritual violated every canon of decency and good taste. The object of Chi was to permit its members indulgences that they could not enjoy openly. Like TN E, this organization had chapters on more than one campus. These chapters maintained a loose sort of national organization.

As soon as the existence of this woman's group was called to the attention of the national Panhellenic, steps were taken to make it impossible for any members of constituent fraternities to join such an organization on any campus. This has resulted in the complete disappearance of the organization. T N E, on the other hand, has turned from an outlaw to a regular and recognized college fraternity, accepted by other fraternities on the same basis as every other member of the interfraternity council. It no longer permits dual membership.

In the eighties the faculty and administrative officers of all colleges held more or less of a laissez-faire attitude toward all student activities. This attitude has changed rapidly in the last 20 years. For the most part, both faculties and administrative officers take an active interest in seeing that the kinds of enterprises in which their students engage are thoroughly reputable. They show interest and some enthusiasm in fostering the really fine student enterprises and are practially unanimous in attempts to frustrate the other kind. To be sure, faculty members are sometimes undiscriminating in their wholesale condemnation of all student activities as distracting, valueless and unwarranted interference with the true work of the college. That the activities may have value for the college, as well as for the participating students, is not even yet fully recognized by the entire faculty group. On the other hand individual faculty

members and administrative officers enter into the interests of the students, help them with their organizations, and are keenly alive to the values offered by such self-directed activities.

As was said at the beginning of this chapter, there is a great number of authorized activities reported from the land-grant institutions, a total of 1,300. While some campuses report as few as 4, others report as many as 500 in active operation, recognized by the institution and given a certain amount of authorization through this recognition.

The material furnished by a questionnaire study has been supplemented in three ways: (1) By a study of the yearbooks published by the students of many of the land-grant institutions; (2) by a study of the student handbooks, pamphlets, and various other types of material which the institutions themselves furnished; and (3) through the cooperation of the National Intercollegiate Association for Women's Self-Government a study not only of the handbooks of women's self-government associations in many of the land-grant institutions, but also of the minutes and proceedings of some five national conventions of this intercollegiate organization. All of this supplementary material has been extremely valuable in filling out the rather meager outline afforded by the replies to questions asked by the survey itself. Although it will not be possible in discussing the various activities to show just where each element of information was secured, an effort has been made to present the picture in proper perspective.

The range of clubs at the land-grant institutions is very wide. They are organized on the basis of interest, and their value and vitality varies as widely as these interests. Many campuses report i clubs organized on the basis of the locality from which the students come-town, county, or general division of the State. Judging from the write-ups of the clubs in the yearbooks, even where they are the most numerous, they are not particularly important to the students themselves. Their meetings are infrequent, usually not more than one a quarter or one a semester, and in only one or two of the institutions did they seem to have any other purpose than that of promoting a little sociability. One or two institutions mentioned them as nuclei for helping the incoming freshmen, or for keeping up alumni interest.

In one institution one of their purposes, as shown in the yearbook, was to get together the prospective students from a single locality during the summer vacation and give them information about the college, possibly even advising them about courses of study and living conditions.

Membership shifts fairly rapidly, since the bond of interest is not especially strong. Nowhere were they reported as having faculty