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Show o COLLEGE DEGREES. One of the college customs inherited from the scholastic schol-astic education of antiquity, is the conferring of literary degrees. These have become rather meaningless. Many inferior colleges hand them out as mere personal compliments com-pliments to benefactors. Discriminating people inquire what institution gave it when a man tacks this sonorous tail to his name. But the degrees conferred by our more important universities are an honor that means something. From the every day view point, handing out even the inferior literary degrees to the ordinary run of college graduates has its absurd side. These boys come to college from the most mixed motives. For many of them it is for sports. The title of bachelor of arts suggests the days when college students came for study of the learning and literature of the world. The most characteristic qualification of the bachelor of arts of today is his proficiency as a baseman or pitcher or half back. Or he may have come to college -with an idea that the better training makes a man more of a 'money maker, an idea equally inconsistent with the old conception. I Yet it is only fair to say that contrary to a prevailing belief, the great majority of college students do really work. Perhaps they are entitled to all the more credit, 'considering that their heart is apt to be elsewhere. If notwithstanding these interests, a fellow does stick to his books in spite of the things that he cares for more, he is as well entitled to his degrees as anyone. The book worm studies because he loves it, and it means no effort against nature. The athlete who studies is forcing himself to a task not inherently pleasing to him, consequently it is all the more disciplinary. In after Life he will never forget it. Some day he will realize how much the world of books and leai'ning has broadened his conception of life. |