7. It will so improve the first two years of undergraduate work that students will be much better prepared to take up courses leading to professional and graduate pursuits in their junior year. And this is what many educators, together with the National Association of State Universities, wish to bring about.
Several objections to this plan are already on the reader's lips. It will make the doctorate equivocal. It will remove the professor from the freshman, who really needs him most. Nobody will try for such a doctorate. Or, maybe the opposite; every senior anxious to get a job will rush into this line, and there will be no candidates for research. With all the younger students under young men, discipline will become lax, A student only five years beyond his freshman days can not teach freshmen. To all these and many more, I think, good answer may be given. In the meantime, if we admit that some project for training college teachers is urgently needed, this one recommends itself to trial because it can be put fairly well to the test without cost, without change of curriculum, and, if necessary for prudence's sake, in only one department.
