Why go to College?

by Clayton Sedgwick Cooper

Such scenes are still frequent in commencement time, and they are significant. Does it really pay to send boys to college in America? Is the game worth the candle? Is the contemptuous notice placed by Horace Greeley in his newspaper office still applicable: “No college graduates or other horned cattle need apply”? We can probably take for granted, as we consider the vast expenditure of money and time and men in the cause of American education, that the people of the country are believing increasingly in the value of college training; but to many persons there arises the question, To what college shall we send our young hopeful? There is even a more basic question, Why go to college at all?

Rather than theorize on this subject, I asked one hundred recent graduates of North American colleges to tell me what decided their choice of an institution, the chief values derived from their college course, and the effect of college training upon their life-work. The following is a summary of the testimony thus obtained:

GRADUATE TESTIMONY CONCERNING COLLEGE

I.	What were the reasons that led you to choose your college?
	Financial reasons	40
	Influence of friends or relatives	18
	Type of the alumni	32
	Standing of the institution	10
II.	What do you consider the most important values received from your college course?
	Broader views of life	21
	Friendships formed	18
	Training or ability to think	7
	General education as foundation for life-work	11
	Influence of professors	36
	Technical training	7
III.	In the light of your experience, what would you suggest to a boy relative to the kind of preparatory school to choose?
	High school or public school	45
	Academy or private school	33
	A school emphasizing athletics	22
IV.	Did your college training decide your life-work?
	Decision before going to college	32
	Decision during college	38
	Decision after graduation	2
	Not yet fully decided	28

The values of a college course are strikingly presented by the following answers: A Johns Hopkins man attributes to his university “a desire for, search after, and acceptance of the truth regardless of the consequences.” A recent alumnus of Boston University says: “I learned to have a far broader view of what teaching (my profession) really is. When I entered college I regarded it as a process of instilling a knowledge of facts in a young person’s mind; when I was graduated I knew that this was a very small part, merely a means to the great end—the development of personality.” A graduate of the University of Georgia says that his college course meant to him “a self-unfoldment, a diversity of interests in life, a growth of ideals, of purposes, and of judgment; strong convictions and friendships.” A student from the School of Mines in Colorado considers the chief value of his college training was the giving him “a vision of a life-work instead of a job”; a graduate of the University of Louisiana writes that the chief value to him was “a realization that I was worth as much as the average man”; while an alumnus of Vanderbilt University said that his course gave him “the feeling of equality and of opportunity to do things and be something along with other men. It has meant, perhaps, a greater chance to do my best.”

CHOOSING A COLLEGE

The choice of a college, according to this testimony, is largely dependent upon one of three things,—the location of the institution (involving expense), the influence of friends or relatives, and the advantages the institution may offer for special training. The selection of the college, however, is not so important as formerly. Every prosperous institution now gives sufficient opportunity for the acquirement of knowledge and training. Apart from the prestige which the name of a large and well-known university or college gives to its graduates in after life, the difference between the values imparted by scores of American institutions is not considerable. There are at least a hundred institutions in America sufficiently well equipped to give a boy the foundation of mental training that a college education is intended to supply. Their libraries are filled with books; their laboratories contain expensive and elaborate modern appliances; their gymnasiums are preëminent in equipment; their instructors are drawn from the best scholars in the country and also from the finishing schools of Europe; the spirit of athletics and undergraduate leadership are, as a rule, strongly emphasized, while the fraternity and social systems afford rare opportunities for friendship. Temptations and college evils vary comparatively little in different institutions.

Blair Arch, Princeton University