Women, Expansion, Flexner

Biggest U. S. university in point of enrolment is Columbia. Last week it was revealed by Registrar Edward J. Grant that Columbia could also be called the biggest U. S. muliebral institution. Out of 38,230 students enrolled last year (excluding 9,928 who took home study courses) some 20,000 or 52% were female. In the summer sessions was even a greater proportion of women: 9,600 out of a total 13,887. Said Registrar Grant: "Women are simply going more and more into the professions." Hoped he: examination of Columbia's enrolment figures would enlighten those who wondered why Columbia did not produce "for example, a success ful football team." (Columbia College, whence the team came, had but 1,818 stu dents.) A man who has been wondering just what Columbia is producing is Dr. Abra ham Flexner, investigator since 1908 of U. S. and European universities and medi cal schools, expert (1908-12) to the Carnegie Foundation, member (1912, secretary 1917-25) of the Rockefeller General Election Board, director of the Institute of Advanced Study, built with $5,000,000 given by Louis Bamberger and his sister Mrs. Felix Fuld, to open in New Jersey in about two years. Out of Dr. Flexner's surveys of U. S. education came last month a book * that roused to ire many a U. S. college dean. His thesis: that U. S. universities are inferior in most ways to those of England, France, Ger many, that they "have needlessly cheap ened", vulgarized and mechanized them selves ... a wild, uncontrolled, and un critical expansion has taken place." The true university, says he, must be a living organism, devoted to the pursuit of knowledge courses." and Law culture, and not to medicine "endless alone among special professional studies would Dr. Flexner retain; out would go business, journalism, agriculture, "practkal" courses. Said he: Columbia University, "untaxed because it is an educational institution, is in business; it has education 'to sell.' . . . The 'service' [home study courses] of Columbia is for the most part not education. No single institution can educate 20,000 people by mail, or indeed, in any other way. The whole thing is a business . . . out of which Columbia has made in a single year a profit of $300,000. . . . Coumbia possesses not 48,000 students,* but on a generous estimate, perhaps 4,000. [A student may get degree credit by taking courses in] 'poultry-raising,' 'wrestling, judo and self-defense.' Is this not an appalling situation?" Harvard may some day change its motto from "Veritas" to "Veritas et Ars Venditoria" (Truth and the Art of Selling). "The Harvard Business School raises neither ethical nor social questions ... it does not even take a broad view of business as business . . . the main emphasis of the school ... is concentrated on 'getting on.' ... University of Chicago applicants are assured that they can by mail acquire "one half of the units requisite to the bachelor's degree." [It is scandalous] "that the prestige of the University of Chicago should be used to bamboozle well-meaning but untrained persons with the notion that they can thus receive a high school or a college education." To Dr. Flexner's attack came retorts: "Absurd!" Said Dr. James Chidester Egbert, director of the School of Business and University Extension at Columbia: "Dr. Flexner's charge that Columbia offers home study courses for 'business reasons' is absurd. The home study courses are given at a financial loss, in the attempt to keep that 'gullible populace' from the hands of commercial correspondence schools." "Sensational Misrepresentation!" Said Dr. John William Cunliffe, director of the Pulitzer School of Journalism at Columbia: "... I gather that [Dr. Flexner] needs no further training in what he regards as the tricks of journalism, that is, the arts of sensational misrepresentation." Discretion. From Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia's president, came no comment. Said Dr. Flexner: "Discretion is the better part of valor." From Robert Maynard Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, came word that he would say nothing until he had read Dr. Flexner's book. Harvard officials would make no statement, hinted that they took not very seriously criticism of their School of Business.

* UNIVERSITIES: AMERICAN, ENGLISH, GERMAN--Abraham Flexner--Oxford ($3.50). * Dr. Flexner includes the 9,000 odd enrolled in home study.

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