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take the form of weekly groups under leadership, meeting Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday nights; weekly student forums; class discussion groups such as freshman, sophomore, and junior Bible classes; international interest groups such as the Cosmopolitan discussion group, and interracial discussion groups; and the organization of religious discussion groups in the various fraternity and sorority houses. In nearly all of these it was evident that they were organized in response to the desire of the students themselves and were conducted almost wholly by student initiative with help from interested faculty members, student pastors, and Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Association secretaries.

Convocation

Whether the students assemble in a body for religious exercises or for meetings of quite another character most educators feel that there is a real value to be gained from the sharing of such common experience, the singing together with which the convocation usually opens, the common intellectual and emotional stimulus given to the entire audience by a speaker, and the feeling of unification that comes from attending the exercise in a large group. It is quite evident from the report of the land-grant institutions that although only 18 of them conduct chapel exercises, many more are aware of the values gained from this group experience. Thirty-five out of the 44 reporting hold regular convocations.

These are held at regular intervals in 21 of the institutions and on fairly frequent call in 18. The institution reporting the lowest frequency holds them twice a year, while several institutions set aside a weekly period reserved for convocation exercises, even though an all-student convocation may not be held every week.

There is something to be said for setting aside a regular convocation period. The faculty is notoriously fearful that the students will suffer irreparable loss if the number of class periods for any given course is invaded too frequently by outside speakers. When the convocation is not regularly arranged for on the class schedule of the institution there is more danger of this invasion and the students may miss the same class more than once in a single semester.

Where the meeting is not regularly scheduled at a definite period it is usually on the call of the president, but in three institutions it is on the call of the student-governing body of the institution, and in only one of these three does the president share with the student-governing board the responsibility of calling convocations. In 15 of the institutions a weekly convocation period is set aside and in 8 a semimonthly or monthly convocation is held. In two institutions the convocation is held at the first hour in the morning; in the rest it comes in the middle of the morning or just preceding the noon hour. A few mention additional assemblies toward the end of the afternoon, not for the whole student body, and not calling for the dismissal of all classes in

the institution.

Only 12 of the institutions report compulsory attendance at convocations. Since in only 13 of the institutions is the auditorium large enough to accommodate the entire student body, it may be inferred that compulsory attendance coincides with the satisfactory capacity of the auditorium. One institution reports that freshmen are not permitted to attend convocation, since it is regarded as an upperclass privilege. The range of attendance is from 1 per cent to 100 per cent, with the median at about 50 per cent.

The president usually issues invitations to speakers for the convocations, although in several of the schools this is the duty of some other official, such as the dean of the college, the chairman of the convocation committee, the assistant to the president, the secretary of the college, and in one institution the secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association. It would seem that the person who plans the college convocation has to be on his guard because of the large number of individuals who feel that they have a precious message to deliver to the student bodies and who request the opportunity to speak. The number of requests made varies from none to 150 a year. Twenty-eight institutions report that all of these requests were considered but few were granted apparently. Speakers were refused permission to address the students in general assembly for a variety of reasons-conflict of dates, lack of general interest in the subject proposed, inability to meet the requested fee, known inability of the speaker to hold his audience, propagandism, extreme radicalism or religious bigotry, and the speaker's desire to raise money for private interest. One institution reported that a speaker who requested an audience was "rarely refused save for moral reasons.'

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It is interesting to note the large proportion of addresses devoted to foreign affairs. This type of address led all others in general frequency and sometimes in frequency within a single year within the same institution. Cultural subjects came second, technical subjects third, discussion of social and political questions fourth, and questions dealing exclusively with student life or the policies within the institutions ranked last in frequency. Five institutions report the holding of an honors convocation late in the spring when announcements are made of honors and distinctions in scholastic fields. won by members of the student body. It would seem to be a wholesome tendency to make academic achievement at least somewhat comparable in the students' eyes to athletic prowess. Several institutions were unable to give any list of recent convocations held and said that no record was available. If the speakers are worth presenting to the entire student body, some record of their presence on the campus should be preserved in some office of the administration.

Although one institution remarked that the attendance at convocation was very poor because the students had to listen to lectures 16 hours a week anyway and felt that additional lectures were an

imposition, it is evident that the land-grant institutions are not unaware of their responsibility in quickening both the spiritual and the intellectual life of their students through meetings other than those of the regular classroom routine. It is also evident that even though the institution itself may heartily abjure any direct hand in providing a religions program for its student body, the students of the landgrant institutions are not spiritually and religiously starved. A vital and healthy student program of religious interest is maintained on practically every land-grant college campus, all the better perhaps for being student initiated. Institutional responsibility for mental stimulus is more whole-heartedly accepted than that for religious guidance.

The problem of the convocation everywhere would seem to be not how to provide good attractions of an intellectually challenging type but how to make such attractions compete successfully with the vast number of extracurricular interests promoted by the students themselves. No institution seems to have solved this problem of competition. Both the religious program and the extraclassroom intellectual program of the land-grant institutions challenge further study in order to reach their full effectiveness for the student bodies.

Chapter IX.-Scholarships and Fellowships

Eight, thousand five hundred and seventy-two of the 151,196 students enrolled in resident collegiate courses in the land-grant colleges and universities in 1927-28 took advantage of the opportunities offered in these institutions to reduce the cost of their attendance, by means of scholarships, fellowships, assistantships, and other grants. This number would have been greatly increased had all of the scholarship offerings in the land-grant institutions been utilized that year. An attempt was made to ascertain just what this number would have been and several institutions reported not only the scholarships and fellowships awarded in 1927–28, but also those available but not awarded that year, but so few of the colleges supplied data with reference to the scholarships available but not awarded that this item was not considered in the report which follows.

All of the land-grant institutions reported the award of scholarships in 1927-28 with the exception of Louisiana State University, the Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College, and West Virginia University. Of the land-grant colleges in the outlying possessions, only the University of Hawaii reported the giving of scholarships in that year.

The 8,572 scholarships and fellowships ranged in value from less than $49 to more than $2,000. Their total value was between one and a half and two million dollars, an amount which students received without any obligation to repay, except in the higher ranges of values where some form of part-time service to the institutions or to the agency providing the scholarship fund was required. No loan scholarships were included in the report.

The awards showed that the scholarships and fellowships were granted from funds supplied by four major agencies-the State; the institution; organizations of different types, including alumni, clubs, patriotic societies, industrial concerns, etc.; and private individuals.

In a point of numbers of scholarships given, if not in money value, the State was the largest contributor. While only a small number of the States place scholarships in the land-grant institutions, those that do are very generous in their offerings. In 11 States

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the law makes definite provision for the giving of free scholarships for use at the land-grant institutions. In 1927-28, 3,706 scholarships were given to students directly from State funds. If to this number be added those awarded by the institutions themselves, presumably from funds appropriated for the general use of the institutions, the number would be almost doubled.

3

In 1927-28, the laws of Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin, provided for the giving of free scholarships to the citizens of the State for use at the land-grant institutions. South Dakota was also among the States in that year having students studying at the land-grant college on scholarships granted by State law, but the practice of giving these scholarships was abolished by the legislature in 1927. As the act was not retroactive, 97 students were attending the South Dakota State College in 1927-28 on scholarships previously granted by the State for a period of years.

The total number of grants made under the various designations of scholarships, fellowships, assistantships, reductions in fees, etc., made by the institutions themselves was 3,466. Presumably the major portion of these grants was made from funds appropriated by the State for the general use of the institutions and were thus indirectly given by the State. While not all of these grants represented an outlay from which the institutions received no return, the larger proportion of them was given to students free from the obligation of service. Less than one-third of the 3,466 students awarded scholarships, fellowships, or other forms of scholarship aid from the funds of the institutions were required to render service. Organizations of different kinds-alumni, clubs, patriotic societies, industrial concerns, etc.,-place funds for scholarships and fellowships with the land-grant colleges. Six hundred and sixty-four scholarships and fellowships were awarded in 1927-28 from these funds. A very large proportion of these grants being made by industrial concerns for the purpose of investigation of particular problems, the recipients were required more often to render service, usually in the form of research, than in the case of the grants made by any of the other agencies.

Seven hundred and thirty-six of the 8,572 scholarships and fellowships awarded were established by private individuals or from funds contributed by them. These scholarships and fellowships were almost entirely in the nature of gifts upon which the donors placed no conditions of service.

3 The granting of State free scholarships at the State university was abolished by act of the New Jersey Legislature in 1929,

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