On Federal Aid and Co-Ordination

T HE present lively discussion of whether or not and in the United States should be subsidized and hence to some extent supervised by the federal government has, in my opinion, failed to underscore sufficiently some of the real advantages that would accrue to us if we encouraged and accepted such subsidies with definitely limited strings attached to them. Today we are all deeply shocked and dismayed by what Nazism and Fascism have done to German and Italian universities, and in our understandable aversion to such nefarious doings we are all firmly resolved that such a thing shall never happen here. In this extreme mood, however, we are apt to be too radical and to overlook the many beneficial aspects which would follow in the wake of a discreet intervention by Washington. The examples of European univer-sities other than those in Germany and Italy (for instance, in France, Switzerland, or Scandinavia) amply bear out the fact that a moderate co-ordinating intervention by the state is not at all harmful. The mere existence of scores of institutions in our country which call themselves universities and colleges and which do not in the least deserve these appellatives, no matter how generously we stretch the meaning of these words, has had an adverse effect upon our entire academic life. This is not the place to elaborate on how they lower our standards, cheapen the concept of what a university or a college should be, give the rank of professor an unsavory meaning-not altogether undeservedly-in the eyes of many people, and expose the American system of higher education to unjustified jeers from abroad; but is clear and imperative that we should not permit lower institutions to advertise themselves for what thev distinctly are not. The old saying that there ought to be a law against it should become a reality here. It is idle to argue that such institutions do not fool anybody by assuming a rank which does not belong to them and that they do not hurt anybody by calling their drillmasters professors -for they definitely do hurt the prestige of the entire American academic system, and their behavior is dishonest and should hence be forbidden. By thus forcing a great number of schools to call themselves what they really arehigh schools, finishing schools, preparatory schools, academies, country schools-a much clearer picture would be created and the number of colleges and universities would be greatly reduced. I think that in every state of the Union

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