Neap Tide

Startling and incredible is the upcurving graph that indicates the increase in U. S. college enrollments since 1918. Beginning with a ripple of backwash from the War, it rolls, surges ever upward, froths to a peak in 1927. To many an oldster who went to college when colleges were smaller, less heterogeneous, this is a sorrowful thing. A profusion of academic degrees, to them, is a metabolistic agent, transforming incipient, able bricklayers into impotent lawyers. For oldsters came comfort last week.

Dr. Adam Leroy Jones, Columbia's Director of Admissions, had scanned the 1928 rolls of 216 representative colleges, reported that there was only a 2% student increase over the previous year. In 101 of the institutions having fewer than 500 students there had been a distinct decline. In the larger colleges (those of 3,000 and more), he found a less appreciable wane but in 22 scattered States fewer students were at college in 1928 than in 1927.

Scanner Jones' reasons for the flattening enrollment graph: 1) Reduction in immigration; 2) Small rate of increase in native population; 3) Increased enrollment in Junior colleges.