York City which was founded in 1898, by decades has been as follows:

These figures show an undue increase in the proportion of instructors and assistants to the teachers of professorial rank. In other Reports attention has also been called to the fact that professorial salaries have not advanced with the increase in the cost of living. This replenishment of the ranks of the instructing staff with junior teachers on small salaries and the failure to provide suitable salaries for the men of professorial rank, are menacing the dignity, importance and attractiveness of the teaching profession in America. If intellect is to be well-trained in America there must be tangible evidence that the public set a fair value on highly educated men. Otherwise the best brains of the country will be lost to the teaching profession. As Burke has well said, "the degree of estimation in which any profession is held becomes the standard of the estimation in which the professors hold themselves." Hence it is scarcely an exaggeration to assert that the provision in Colonel Vilas' magnificent bequest to the University of Wisconsin for the establishment of certain professorships with salary of not less than $8,000 each, will, if it becomes at once effective, mark an epoch in the development of a proper standard for the estimation of professors in the United States.

The problem of securing men of the highest character, ability, and training to fill professorial vacancies is at best a

difficult one. Cornell has never limited itself to the graduates of the University, to the State in which it is located, or even to America. Two years ago a gentleman in France was appointed to a professorship; this year Leeds University, England, and Edinburgh University, Scotland, have furnished two professors. The effect of this policy of selecting professors without any restrictions upon the field of choice was described by The Evening Post, in an editorial on that subject in its issue of March 13th, as follows:

"In the East, Cornell and Johns Hopkins, comparatively new institutions, have been similarly free and untrammelled in their choice; and this policy of taking their own wherever they could find it has been one great cause of the rapid progress of these two Eastern institutions."

EDUCATIONAL LEGISLATION

During the year both the University Faculty and the Faculties of the separate Colleges have given much consideration to educational problems which were pressing for solution. One after another was the subject of prolonged deliberation and discussion, first in committee and afterwards in special Faculty meetings. Detailed and interesting accounts will be found in the reports of the Deans, especially in the report of the Dean of the University Faculty (Appendix II) and the report of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Appendix III). Here there is space only to

summarize results.

(1) In the first place, the requirements for admission to all the Colleges have been revised and, with slight deviations, made uniform throughout the University (except in the Medical College in New York City, which in and after September, 1908, is to admit only graduates in arts or science or others of equivalent education). This revision had become imperative for several reasons. One of them, though not intrinsically the most important, was that the published

requirements for admission were lower than the demands made upon the great majority of matriculants in consequence of the restrictions under which certificates of admission were received by the University or granted by the Regents or other accrediting authorities. A more substantial consideration was that the existing formulation of entrance requirements lacked the flexibility necessary for correlation with the courses as now generally arranged in the public high schools, especially of the State of New York and in the west, and as a result of this rigid prescription a candidate for admission not infrequently found himself unable to secure credit for solid work on which he had spent two or three years as a pupil in the high school. Furthermore, while the educational validity and efficacy of the existing entrance requirements were not disputed, it was believed that a different grouping would not be inferior in this respect while in other respects it was decidedly preferable. And, lastly, it was thought better that the unit in terms of which the entrance requirements are defined should be that which in recent years has come into general use throughout the country, namely, "the equivalent of a course pursued throughout one year in a secondary school with five recitations a week." These and other considerations led to the action finally taken by the Faculties of the different Colleges. Fifteen units are prescribed for admission and, in the College or Arts and Sciences (which may be regarded as typical), these are defined as follows: English, 3 units; history, I unit; algebra, 1 unit; geometry, 1 unit; foreign languages, 4 units; elective, 5 units (these "elective" units to be taken from a list of subjects which includes, in prescribed quantities or units, physical science, additional mathematics, additional foreign languages, etc.) In the Colleges of Engineering and the College of Architecture, also, fifteen units are prescribed but here the number

of foreign language units is reduced to three and it is specified that these three units shall be in either French or German, while the number of elective units is also reduced to four, thus leaving two units to be designated in higher mathematics, the total result being as follows: English, 3 units; history, I unit; elementary algebra, 11⁄2 units; plane geometry, I unit; solid geometry, 1⁄2 unit; advanced algebra, 1⁄2 unit; plane trigonometry, 2 unit; French, 3 units, or German, 3 units; elective, 4 units. The Faculties have still further recommended that the student take at least three of the four elective units in language and history.

(2) Secondly, the University accepted the invitation. of the committee of the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States and Maryland to participate in the organization of a "College Entrance Certificate Board." A meeting of delegates was held at Philadelphia on May 9th, at which Dean Crane represented Cornell University, when definite action was taken. If the committee's report is adopted by the Association the matter will then be referred to the institutions embraced in that organization for their acceptance. Meanwhile it is proper to say that there are already similar organizations in New England and in the states of the middle west. The object is to provide a general scheme for the admission to college by means of school certificates. It does not involve either advocacy of that system or opposition to it, but merely impartiality and effectiveness in its administration in the case of those institutions which have adopted it. As Dean Crane points out, the objection to admission by certificate so far as Cornell University is concerned has not been on account of the scholarship of the students admitted by certificate, but almost exclusively on the ground of the difficulty of administering the system. This will be removed when schools are placed upon the accredited list and removed from it,

not by the University but by a general board representing the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States and Maryland, which board will also prescribe the form of certificate and the rules and regulations for its use.

Students from New York State are admitted on certain Regents' credentials. These have been simplified by the issuance by the State Education Department of a new 'College Entrance Diploma. The requirements of this diploma correspond very closely to the new requirements for admission to the University, which have already been described, and in December the Faculty voted to accept this State "College Entrance Diploma" in lieu of those requirements. for matriculation.

(3) Another piece of important legislation which is likely to have large, beneficent and far-reaching results, not only for the College of Arts and Sciences (which alone was immediately concerned), but for all the Colleges of the University, was effected by the joint action of the Trustees and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

A scheme of education which permits students to elect their own studies, whatever its advantages, is at any rate attended with great risks, especially for the younger and inexperienced undergraduates. The modification of this system which Cornell University has found it wise and expedient to adopt in the interest of Arts students has been described in previous Reports. A considerable portion of the work of freshmen and sophomores is, within certain limits, now prescribed. But the care and supervision of these underclassmen has hitherto remained in the hands of the entire Faculty of Arts and Sciences, a body of thirtyseven professors, thirty-three assistant professors, fortythree instructors, and sixty-six assistants, of whom only a small fraction had anything whatever to do with the instruc