In previous reports attention has been called to the need of improving our upperclass group requirement. The purpose of this is to lead juniors and seniors to specialize in some field of study, but it often fails of its intention because of the wide range of many of the groups, the lack of co-ordination within a particular group, and the possibility of taking rather elementary subjects in the group. In accordance with recent legislation, the range of some of the groups has been narrowed by division into two or more parts; in place of the one large group of Modern Languages, for example, we now have the separate groups of French, German, etc. Many departments have also designated certain foundation courses which shall not be counted as satisfying the upperclass group requirement; and some have restricted the amount of credit to be given to upperclassmen who take such courses after the sophomore year. All this represents a slight step forward. It is to be hoped that the different departments may be able to arrange such sequences of courses as will lead to more than a mere smattering of knowledge. At present the upperclassman is required to devote twenty out of sixty hours of his last two years to some field which may be extensive, yet he may spend the remaining forty hours in roaming over the whole territory of human knowledge, picking from term to term a combination of unrelated and elementary subjects and so losing the opportunity of intensive study and training in a specialized field. Students coming to us from other colleges on the Campus or from the outside, may receive our degree after one year's occupation with studies of this kind, getting very little benefit from their residence in the College. We are still suffering from the evils of irrational freedom of election, from the false conception of liberty to do as one pleases, without knowing what is best. This doctrine, which has been more or less discredited in politics and economics, is leading a lusty life in education. One of the chief functions of our College is to train the student in the use of the sources and the methods of knowledge, in the art of independent investigation, so that he may learn how to find knowledge for himself. To this end he should give a large part of his upperclass years to the intensive study of subjects of an advanced character, for which the foundations have been laid and which form a logical sequence. We cannot realize our purpose unless each department carefully studies the problem and works out a program to guide the particular upperclass adviser in his efforts to help the student. The weakest part of our educational structure is to be found in our upperclass years; it can be strengthened only by the action of the separate departments; and this is a work to which they ought to give their immediate and best care.

The Faculty has passed legislation affecting specified technical courses required of the members of the Reserve Officers Training Corps in the Department of Military Science and Tactics, which may be counted as credit in the thirty hours of professional work allowed to our students. It has also placed certain courses given by the Department of Music in the same category. The rule of the College requiring the satisfactory completion of ninety hours of work in the humanities and the sciences, and permitting the student to elect, in addition to these, as many professional hours as he can profitably carry, makes it possible for him to lay such foundations for vocational training as the University at large may afford. By taking an average of eighteen hours a term throughout the four years of residence, the student could accumulate a credit of fifty-four professional hours. This should be remembered in considering the question of vocational training, so far as

it affects our College. It is not necessary, in order to provide opportunity for preparation in the newer vocations, to transform the College into a vocational school and to destroy what little meaning is stilll eft in the old A.B. degree, which many are still eager to have while repudiating the type of education for which it stood and which made it honorable. If new vocational courses or schools are to be established at Cornell, the policy adopted by the general University Faculty regarding the proposed graduate School of Commerce should be followed, which will enable seniors of our College to enter that school and to receive our A.B. degree after the satisfactory completion of one year's work there, and the M.A. degree after an additional year of graduate work. Cornell University cannot and ought not to attempt everything that any other university in the land may already be doing, but when it decides to enter new fields of practical activity, its aim should be to educate men and women of vision and leading; and experience seems to indicate that for the average human being the path to successful achievement in the liberal professions runs through the colleges of arts and sciences. At any rate, it is safe to predict that the great professional schools of the future will be graduate schools.

During the last two years the Faculty, the Conference Committee, and the Dean have called attention to the overcrowding in many of the freshman and sophomore classes and to the dearth of instructors for section work. The situation has not improved, and it will be difficult to remedy it, not only on account of inadequate financial support but also because of the scarcity of experienced teachers. We cannot conceal from ourselves the fact that there is room for betterment in the quality of our instruction. In this respect we are not alone; like numerous other big institutions we have more students than we can properly care for. It would, however, be unfortunate if we should grow used to this condition of affairs and accept it as inevitable. The most obvious solution of our problem would be to limit the number of our students. We could do this by simply refusing to accept more than we can satisfactorily handle, or by raising our standards, or by both methods. The University has already decided to restrict the number of women to the extent of our housing facilities; would it not be wise to keep in mind the intellectual housing facilities, and to cut the attendance down to our ability to offer good instruction? The American universities have in recent years been too much inclined to measure their progress by quantitative standards; they have pointed with pride to the great size of their "plants" and to the vast army of their student body. Is it not time again to think of quality? There is need of trained minds to train minds, and we have not masters enough to go around. The disproportionate increase in the number of our assistants and instructors to the number of professors tells the tale; and as the mass of students grows, our difficulties multiply. The departments are finding it harder and harder, as the days go on, to provide even the limited supply of assistants and instructors allowed by the budget. The more students we get, the more professors we ought to have, but failing these, the more teachers not yet thoroughly trained we shall have to accept, if we can afford them. If this process goes on, we shall be compelled to continue the endowment campaign indefinitely even to maintain the undesirable status quo. We can stop it by halting the procession of youth which is storming our doors.

The superficial observer may suggest that we might find relief by decreasing the number of our courses; that by concentrating upon fewer subjects within a department we could obtain the teachers needed to assist in the instruction of the overcrowded classes of that department. This would be feasible only in case the classes to be abandoned were small. There would be no gain if a professor gave up his own large class in order to assist in teaching another large class, for the abandoned group would have to find a refuge somewhere else. The smaller classes, on the other hand, are apt to be of a somewhat advanced character, and these cannot be disbanded without injury to the College, since juniors and seniors must be provided for: in a university there must be adequate opportunity for meeting the needs of such learners. It is true, about one-fifth of the courses offered are of the graduate type-not an excessive number for a modern university to offer and these are the ones which persons who apply purely quantitative standards might wish to curtail. But that would mean the abolition of the Graduate School and the decline of effective teaching in the College itself. Cornell University cannot refuse to do its share in recruiting the profession of scholars and in training investigators for the nation. Noblesse oblige. Nothing, of course, is impossible. We could turn the College into a mere preparatory school for the other colleges on the Campus and cease to be a university. No one, however, will endorse a policy that would lead to such a result.

In 1914, our Faculty studied the question of the reduction of courses and found that the total number of courses offered in our College was much smaller than in five other institutions (Chicago, Harvard, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) which had been selected for comparison with Cornell because they were believed to represent the prevailing conditions in the large institutions of the East and West. The difference was seen to be particularly striking in the case of graduate work. In the report of the committee to which this whole matter had been referred, the following points were "deemed obvious":

(1) As a minimum there must be one beginning course in each language, science, or other fundamental subject, and also in each subdivision of those subjects in which advanced work is offered. This will account for the existence of between 200 and 250 of our undergraduate courses (of which there were 376 announced in 1914).

(2) Every teacher above the rank of instructor (and the same is true of many instructors) should be expected as a matter of principle to offer at least one advanced course over and above his routine work, and there are numerous cases where the demands upon him compel him to offer several such courses. It is the opportunity to do some advanced work which renders a university position attractive to men of ability, and the general effect upon our elementary teaching is undoubtedly good. Moreover, since almost without exception the members of the Arts faculty, from the heads of departments down, are engaged in elementary teaching, to which together with administrative work, most of them give the greater part of their time, the maintenance of such advanced courses as are offered can scarcely be regarded as involving any considerable increase in our teaching force.

(3) In view of the larger programs offered in other institutions of the first rank in this country, the committee believes it inadvisable to attempt to reduce materially the number of our courses. In particular, any considerable diminution in the amount and variety of the advanced work offered would, in its opinion, tend to divert to other institutions the more ambitious and desirable elements in the student body and to lower the general quality of our teaching.

I believe that the judgments expressed in this report are still cogent today and that it would be a distinct lowering of our educational standards and a serious impairment of our usefulness to make "any considerable diminution in the amount and variety of the advanced work offered."

If there is any cutting to be done, a beginning ought to be made with the elementary courses which duplicate the work of the secondary schools; but such action would not lead to any considerable decrease in courses, because the underclassmen now taking such courses would help to swell the enrollment of the more advanced classes in these subjects. Only in case they entered other colleges, would there be any improvement in our situation. Something might be gained by limiting the number of hours a student may take during a term. At present the average number of hours taken is eighteen. It is easy to see that it would require fewer teachers to train 1800 students taking fifteen hours a week than would be needed to train 1800 taking eighteen hours a week.

In this entire discussion we should never lose sight of the fact that the College is engaged in giving instruction in fundamental subjects to the underclassmen of nearly all the colleges on the Campus, and that this duty forms a very large part of its work. Its staff would be much smaller and its budget less formidable if this burden were placed upon these colleges themselves. The expenditure demanded for the performance of this function should not be charged against us as a College, nor should we be held responsible for the multiplication of courses made necessary by our double function. It must also be remembered that departments of other colleges list in our Announcement electives that may be taken by our students, and thus increase the number of courses credited to our account. When a member of another faculty is assigned to our College by the Board of Trustees, he may arrange an elaborate scheme of courses open to our students which very few of them actually select. Other such courses may be taken by our students in preparation for professional study, for example, the so-called pre-medical courses.

What I am trying to point out here is that a college cannot undertake to do many different things, that is, provide a general education, teach students of other colleges and prepare them for other colleges, without having a large staff and listing a large array of courses in its catalogue, and without costing a great deal of money. With our present manifold and variegated functions we represent a peculiar, hybrid type of college, unlike the type with which persons not familiar with the facts often seek to compare us. We are a preparatory school for the professions, a liberal college, and a graduate institution. One College cannot be so many things without being peculiar and expensive. We are doing a big work here, and we are doing it as well as we can under great handicaps; such handicaps as only those who have a thorough knowledge of the facts can appreciate. We should look them squarely in the face before proposing remedies. Even the question of limiting the enrollment of our College, simple and feasible as it appears, is bound up with that of the policy of the other colleges on the Campus in this regard. If they should not set a limit and we did, our difficulties would continue unless they decided to do for themselves the elementary work which we are now doing for them. Otherwise the increasing burden imposed upon us by the continued growth of our professional schools would compel the College of Arts and Sciences to deny admittance to an increasing number of students seeking the kind of education it offers, and eventually to abandon its real function in the university life. That would be a calamity to Cornell.

The total registration of the College of Arts and Sciences for the year 1919-1920 is 1812, an increase of 342 over that of last year. Of those enrolled, 1505 are candidates for the degree A.B.; 288 candidates for the degree B.Chem.; and 19 are special students. The number of men is 1190; the number of women, 622.

The following table shows the enrollment for the last ten years:

In conclusion, I wish to commend the standing committees of the Faculty, the Committee on Academic Records, the Committee on Educational Policy, and the Advisory Board for Underclassmen for their patient and efficient performance of duty during the year. I desire also to express my full appreciation of the work of the Acting Secretary of the College, Professor Donald English, who, in the absence of Professor C. L. Durham on the business of the Endowment Committee, has rendered able and loyal service in a responsible and difficult office. To all these colleagues who have labored so faithfully and unselfishly for the best interests of the College the Faculty owes sincere thanks.

In bringing this my last report to you to a close, Mr. President, I cannot refrain from expressing my deep appreciation of the honor of having been associated with you in the service of the University which you have helped to upbuild and to which a large part of your life has been devoted. My duties have been made easy by your wise and unwavering interest in the College and by your constant readiness to aid us all in every effort to promote its welfare. Your courtesy and kindness to the members of the Faculty, your sense of fairness, your respect for the dignity of our profession and regard for the worth of the individual personality, and your ardent championship of sound ideals of education have won our admiration and have helped to create an academic atmosphere in which it has been a privilege and a pleasure to live. We are happy and proud to have worked under your leadership, and we are hopeful that the spirit which you have breathed into this institution will remain a living force. As you take leave of us we extend to you our warmest wishes for your continued happiness.

Respectfully submitted,

FRANK THILLY,

Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.