"Examine the Parents"

One-sixth of the college population should be sacked. So says Dean Christian Gauss of Princeton, in Scribner's magazine for October. He further states that a good college course costs the boy's parents and the college endowment fund from $8,000 to $10,000; asks that money be saved by putting certain boys to work.

"I would examine the parents upon their fitness to have a son in college and most certainly upon their qualifications to decide wheth-er he should go there. Where parents fail to pass, the matter should be left for decision to the headmaster or to the high-school principal."

Dean Gauss explains that many parents, not knowing their own sons, send them to college because they, unthinking, think the boys ought to have college educations. Many boys are better off without it, says Dean Gauss. "If a boy does not enjoy study at school, he is not or never will be qualified for (or happy in) college. If a boy does not care to study, a college course will not educate him and will give him nothing worth while.

"With the general obscuring of the colleges' original purpose and function, it has unfortunately become a kind of glorified playground. It has become the paradise of the young."