I may not have a better opportunity than this to clear up a petty difficulty which seems to agitate some of my critics. They say they want the degree of A.B. to mean something definite, while at present, under the elective system, it means one thing for John Doe, and something altogether different for his classmate, Richard Roe. That is true. Besides embodying the general signification that the bearer has been working four years in a way to satisfy college guardians, the stately letters do take on an individual variation of meaning for every man who wins them. They must do so as long as we are engaged in the formation of living persons. If the college were a factory, our case would be different. We might then offer a label which would keep its identity of meaning for all the articles turned out. Wherever education has been a living thing, the single degree has always contained this element of variety. The German degree is as diverse in meaning as ours. The degree of the English university is diverse, and more diverse for Honors men—the only ones who can properly be said to deserve it—than for inert Pass men. Degrees in this country have, from the first, had considerable diversity, college differing from college in requirement, and certainly student from student in attainment. That twenty-five years ago we were approaching too great uniformity in the signification of degrees, I suppose most educators now admit. That was a mechanical and stagnant period, and men have brought over from it to the more active days of the present ideals formed then. Precision of statement goes with figures, with etiquette, with military matters; but descriptions of the quality of persons must be stated in the round.
XI
COLLEGE EXPENSES[11]
The subject of college expenses has been much debated lately. At our Commencement dinner, a year ago, attention was called to it. Our chairman on that occasion justly insisted that the ideal of the University should be plain living and high thinking. And certainly there is apt to be something vulgar, as well as vicious, in the man of books who turns away from winning intellectual wealth and indulges in tawdry extravagance. Yet every friend of Harvard is obliged to acknowledge with shame that the loose spender has a lodging in our yard. No clear-sighted observer can draw near and not perceive that in all his native hideousness the man of the club and the dog-cart is among us.
I do not think this strange. In fact, I regard it as inevitable. It is necessarily connected with our growth. The old College we might compare, for moral and intellectual range, with a country village; our present University is a great city, and we must accept 273 the many-sided life, the temptations as well as the opportunities, of the great city. Probably nowhere on this planet can a thousand young men be found, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four, who will not show examples of the heedless, the temptable, and the depraved. Let us not, then, shrink from acknowledging the ugly fact; extravagance is here,—shameless, coarse extravagance. I hope nothing I say may diminish our sense of its indecency. But how widespread is it? We must not lose sight of that important question. How largely does it infect the College? Are many students large spenders? Must a man of moderate means on coming here be put to shame? Will he find himself a disparaged person, out of accord with the spirit of the place, and unable to obtain its characteristic advantages? These are the weighty questions. Only after we have answered them can we determine the moral soundness of the University. Wherever we go on earth we shall find the insolently rich and wasteful. They, like the poor, are always with us; their qualities are cheap. But what we want to know is whether, side by side with them, we have a company of sober men, who care for higher things and who spend no more than the higher things require. Facts of proportion and degree form the firm basis of general judgments, and yet I am aware that these are the hardest facts to obtain. Hitherto nobody has known any such facts 274 in regard to the expenses of Harvard. Assertions about the style of living here have only expressed the personal opinion of the assertor, or at best have been generalizations from a few chance cases. No systematic evidence on the subject has existed. It is time it did exist, and I have made an attempt to obtain it. To each member of the graduating class I sent a circular, a month ago, asking if he would be willing to tell me in confidence what his college course had cost. I desired him to include in his report all expenses whatever. He was to state not merely his tuition, board, and lodging, but also his furniture, books, clothing, travel, subscriptions, and amusements; in fact, every dollar he had spent during the four years of his study, except his charges for Class Day and the summer vacations; these times varying so widely, it seemed to me, in their cost to different men that they could not instructively enter into an average.
The reply has been very large indeed. To my surprise, out of a class of two hundred and thirty-five men actually in residence, two hundred and nineteen, or ninety-three per cent, have sent reports. Am I wrong in supposing that this very general “readiness to tell” is itself a sign of upright conduct? But I would not exaggerate the worth of the returns. They cannot be trusted to a figure. It has not been possible to obtain itemized statements. College boys, like other people, do not always keep 275 accounts. But I requested my correspondents, in cases of uncertainty, always to name the larger figure; and though those who have lived freely probably have less knowledge about what they have spent than have their economical classmates, I think we may accept their reports in the rough. We can be reasonably sure whether they have exceeded or fallen below a certain medium line, and for purposes more precise I shall not attempt to use them. Anything like minute accuracy I wish expressly to repudiate. The evidence I offer only claims to be the best that exists at present; and I must say that the astonishing frankness and fulness of the reports give me strong personal assurance of the good faith of the writers. In these letters I have seen a vivid picture of the struggles, the hopes, the errors, and the repentings of the manly young lives that surround me.
What, then, are the results? Out of the two hundred and nineteen men who have replied, fifty-six, or about one quarter of the class, have spent between $450 and $650 in each of the four years of residence; fifty-four, or again about a quarter, have spent between $650 and $975; but sixty-one, hardly more than a quarter, have spent a larger sum than $1200. The smallest amount in any one year was $400; the largest, $4000.[12]
I ask you to consider these figures. They are not startling, but they seem to me to indicate that a soberly sensible average of expense prevails at Harvard. They suggest that students are, after all, merely young men temporarily removed from homes, and that they are practising here, without violent change, the habits which the home has formed. Those who have been accustomed to large expenditure spend freely here; those of quiet and considerate habits do not lightly abandon them. I doubt if during the last twenty-five years luxury has increased in the colleges as rapidly as it has in the outside world.
There is no reason, either, to suppose that the addition of the sixteen men who have not replied would appreciably affect my results. The standing of these men on the last annual rank-list was sixty-eight 277 per cent. They seem to me average persons. Their silence I attribute to mistakes of the mail, to business, to neglect, or to the very natural disinclination to disclose their private affairs. To refuse to answer my intrusive questions, or even to acknowledge that college days were costly, is not in itself evidence of wantonness. Small spenders are usually high scholars; but this is by no means always the case. In the most economical group I found seven who did not reach a rank of seventy per cent. last year; whereas out of the seven largest spenders of the class three passed seventy-five per cent. It would be rash to conclude that large sums cannot be honorably employed.