rank does not of itself indicate the best teaching ability, it still is evident that too much of this teaching is being done by those whose experience or training is as yet insufficient to entitle them to real faculty recognition. Since the elimination figures of all the colleges show that the freshman year is the most crucial time for a student, the institution that wishes to give him the best possible chance of success in his work should furnish him at the very start with the best instruction at its command.

Apparently there is a strong tendency to prescribe practically all of the work of the freshman year. In the land-grant institutions 40 report that threefourths or more of the work of the freshmen is prescribed in agriculture, 39 report this for engineering, 31 for home economics, 20 for arts and sciences, 17 for education, 16 for commerce and business, and 9 for veterinary medicine. On the other hand, there is comparatively little uniformity as to the requirements of courses as between the various curricula; although 40 institutions reply that they require physical training in the freshman year for all students, and 39 that they require English; the next highest number is 22 which require science, followed by 20 which require psychology; 15 which require hygiene; 10 which require mathematics; 8 which require history; and 5 which require modern languages. Twenty institutions require psychology in the freshman year of college work.

In answer to the complaints that students have not been trained in high school in the wise use of their time and energy, that they come to college knowing nothing of the use of a library with its standard reference works and indexes, that they do not know how to take notes, and that they do not know how to abstract material from reference reading, the institutions of higher education have taken upon themselves the task of giving students preliminary training in the art of studying. The land-grant institutions are following this trend quite rapidly. Some 20 of them report a formal course in "How to study." The 21 who reply that they have no such course, frequently qualify their answers by saying that some work of this kind is given in various departments such as English and education. In one institution the course in "How to study" is eight years old, but most are much more recent. Sometimes this course is given for credit, but not often. A member of the department of psychology gives the course in the majority of the institutions, although various personnel officers are responsible for it— sometimes it is the dean of women, sometimes it is a professor of education, and sometimes it is a member of the English department. It was surprising to find a few of the institutions still using texts in the course "How to study," that are entirely antiquated.

The course "How to study " has been given as a true psychological experiment in a very few of the institutions and the tentative results that have been obtained show that it is no panacea, enabling the dull or lazy student to equal the achievement of his more brilliant brother. The experiments which Dr. Charles Bird of the

University of Minnesota has been conducting for the last two years seem to point quite clearly to what might have been suspected. While his results are still in the experimental stage they seem to demonstrate that when the "How to study" course is based on actual practice in increasing eye sweep, training for rapidity of reading, for accuracy of retention, and for analysis of significant points in the text studied, the students who profit most are those in the upper quartile in original ability; the students who show a fair improvement are in the middle group as to ability; while those in the lowest quartile in this, as in other subject matter, reap the poorest rewards. Doctor Bird reports that in the fall of 1928 when he was given one section of students so low in college ability rating and high-school performance that they were admitted to the university on probation, he was unable to improve the performance of the majority of the group sufficiently so that they either obtained a passing grade in the course or did passing work in their other studies. It is, of course, no criterion of the value of such a course that the student attains a passing grade in the work itself. If a course in "How to study " is justified at all it must be in the carryover of habits and skills to the regular subject matter of the other courses that the student is taking. Such a study as that of Doctor Bird raises the question whether the institutions that give such optimistic reports about their results are not conducting courses along the old lines of exhortation on right habit formation, will power, and attitude of mind. Nine of the institutions giving this course reported that their students showed an increased use of the library as a direct result of it. Nineteen of the 20 giving the course felt that it was worth while, although one gave the guarded reply "It ought to be." It should be interesting to watch the development of this particular line of work in the next 5 or 10 years, for some significant results are sure to come from the sound studies now being made in several institutions.

As was brought out in the discussion on personnel, practice varies widely in the method of freshman registration for courses. While a very large number of freshman courses are prescribed in the various curricula, many of the land-grant institutions feel that the freshman needs a direct personal contact with a faculty member in making out his program. The overworked dean comes in here again in large numbers for he is reported many times as actually meeting and making out the program for the individual freshmen in his college. Other institutions have a group of faculty advisers assigned especially to this work, and many mention the fact that they use only such faculty members as have shown ability to meet the student sympathetically and to plan his work wisely. In some of the land

grant institutions a certain proportion of the time of some faculty members is released from teaching duty so that they may do this work more effectively. The students in the group that the faculty member is to advise are usually assigned to him outright. This adviser not only assists in making out the student's program in most cases, but keeps in touch with him throughout his freshman year, checks upon his work, and tries to help him in every way. The value of this contact can hardly be overestimated where the work is well done. It would seem to be an important enough function to justify more careful studies than have as yet been made as to the number of freshman students needing such advice and continued counsel, the best way of organizing such a corps of advisers, and the proportion of their time that may justifiably be released from the teaching program for this purpose.

In summarizing the work being done to orient the freshman in the institution, the widest variation of practice is found. There has apparently been comparatively little sound study of this important phase of student relationship to the institution. The mortality rate of the freshman class is heavier than that of any other class, and although an unusually large number of factors enter into the mortality rate, it is time that the institutions themselves take the initiative in making a real study of conditions and in testing the efficacy of the devices in vogue to correct it. Probably no more important contribution can be made to educational knowledge than a thorough scientific study of the work of assimilating the new student into the college body in such a way that he shall profit most by what the college has to offer.

The question of student mortality as a whole belongs properly in the registrar's section of the land-grant college survey report. Certain phases of this work, however, particularly those that deal with the student on probation, are usually handled in the college personnel offices. It seems necessary, therefore, to touch briefly on student mortality. The phases handled in the personnel offices are usually threefold: First, discipline in some fashion for failure in classroom work; second, diagnosis of failure; and third, preventive and remedial measures.

Perhaps the first step in the reduction of student mortality should most properly be the weeding out of incompetent prospective students. In the land-grant institutions, however, because they are State supported, there is little possibility of such limitation. A number of these institutions are making an effort through cooperation with the high schools to give authoritative advice to the graduating seniors on their probable success in college. Advising a student not to enter college, however, is a very different thing from refusing him regis

tration. The privately supported institution has the opportunity of making an absolute selection of its freshman class. The State-supported institution, whether State law covers the actual case or not, is in no position to make such selection.

While 26 of the land-grant institutions which replied to this section of the questionnaire said that they made some attempt to eliminate before registration those students who should not go to college, only eight reported that they actually limited enrollment. Twenty-four reported that they admitted all graduates of accredited State high schools. Twenty-seven of the land-grant institutions report that they drop a student automatically when he has failed in more than 50 per cent of the work of his past term.

Automatic elimination seems on the face of it a harsh method of dealing with the student deficient in his work. All of the institutions reporting the use of this method, however, qualified it by saying that a student whose mid-term report indicated probable failure was warned, and put on probation. Twelve of the institutions assigned such students to a faculty adviser to go over his work with him, to see how he was using his time, possibly to recommend restriction of outside activities, and if it seemed wise, to reduce the load of studies he was carrying. Only five of the institutions reported that they also warned the parent at the time that the student was put on probation. This does not represent, however, the real number who use this means of stimulating the student to great effort. Thirtyfour institutions reported that they made a real effort to discover the true cause of the student's failure. Many times this was done by comparison of the high-school record, the psychological test, and the report from the health service. Twenty of the institutions transfer students whose work is below grade to special sections where they have increased attention from the instructor.

The institutions were asked to list in the order of importance what they considered the chief causes of deficiency in their failing students. Almost invariably the causes they listed carried no blame to the institution but were either the student's own lack of ability or his lack of preparation in the lower school. Only 4 institutions reported that poor instruction in college had anything to do with student failure; 15 laid it to lack of foundation in high school; 14 to poor ability of the students; 10 to lack of application; 8 to bad adjustment, including study habits; 4 to irresponsibility on the part of the student; 4 to the distraction of extracurricular activities; 3 to lack of interest; 3 to physical handicaps; 1 to financial difficulties; 1 to inferiority complexes; and 1 to the too great requirement in actual study hours. It is fairly obvious that this list represents opinion and little careful diagnosis of individual cases. Since the percentage reported as dropped in the freshman class because of poor work ranged from 0.6 to 49 with the median at 7.5, it would seem that

freshman elimination is a serious enough problem to warrant some real research based on actual diagnosis of individual cases. When one institution with an enrollment of fewer than 2,000 students reports that 49 per cent of its freshman class was automatically dropped for deficiencies in class work, it appears that the institution has a problem on its hands acute enough to challenge careful examination of its practices. Serious losses that are less startling demand careful research. The experience of the institutions that are developing departments of mental hygiene would indicate that the old rule-of-thumb method of diagnosing causes of failure is far from satisfactory. It is much easier to say that a student is lazy and "won't work" than it is to uncover the emotional conflict that may be at the bottom of his apparent unwillingness to work. It would seem that the services of the mental hygienist should be called in far oftener than they are.

What are the colleges actually doing to cut down student mortality? First of all they are trying to build up stronger cooperation between the preparatory schools and the colleges. In this, many of the land-grant institutions are developing close relationships with the public high schools. Nearly all of them report high-school visitation as the first step in securing this better understanding. In three of the land-grant institutions the State high-school principals are brought together for a joint conference yearly. Eighteen of the land-grant institutions send a definite report of the actual record of each graduate of each high school back to the principal of the school. This is a double-barreled device. It gives the high school an actual measure of the success of its graduates, and it stimulates the student to do his best, since he knows that the report of his success or failure is going back to his home community.

A few of the larger of the land-grant institutions are giving the college ability tests to seniors in the high schools, in the spring preceding high-school graduation. On the basis of these tests and the students' records in high school, they are advising graduating seniors about the probability of their success in college. While the first obvious use of this device is to discourage those whose chance of success is small, two of the institutions that have tried it report that it is almost as valuable in encouraging the student of marked ability who had not planned to come to college. Sometimes because of economic conditions or unsympathetic attitudes at home a student of very marked intellectual ability has felt that he can not hope for education beyond high school, yet he may be the very one who could profit most by such educational opportunities. It is fully as important for the college to find this student and encourage him to