Dumbing Down Admissions Standards

"In its larger aspects the matter of entrance requirements and the curriculum, as it has lately been discussed at Princeton, involves the question of whether we arc going in for a greatly in creased enrollment, or whether we are going to continue to insist on quality as more important than quantity. If we are going to adopt the extreme policy of "letting down the bars," we can probably get more students, but how many more is problematical. The experience of Harvard, to take a conspicuous example, has certainly not been encouraging in this respect. President Lowell in commenting upon the degree of Bachelor of Science at Harvard, for which Latin is no longer required, gives figures that show that in seven years there was an increase of only fifty-five in the number of Bachelor of Science degrees conferred, and he goes on to quote Dean Briggs, that "the degree of Bachelor of Science signifies, not knowledge of science, but ignorance of Latin." "The position," says President Lowell, "is certainly anamolous and illogical and ought not to continue indefinitely.""

--- THE PRINCETON ALUMNI WEEKLY, March 5, 1919