The Future of the American Liberal-Arts College

T HE American college is a hybrid. It is not a counterpart of the English college from which it received its name, and it is not like the French lycee or the German Gymnasium. Like the latter institution it is a preparatory school, and like the former it does university work. Yet, on the whole, it has served us well during the past three centuries of its history, especially as a preparatory school to the graduate courses in the learned professions. There are indications, however, that it is facing a crisis, a crisis which may materially modify its form and its function. Like many other institutions, its success has been its hazard. It has undoubtedly been overextended and must retrench; its popularity has attracted many unfitted to profit by its advantages, and it must circumscribe its clientele; it is meeting new elements in the educational world and must adapt itself to a new situation. One of the most serious problems which it is facing is its demand for students; its overextension requires more than the present can supply, and the outlook for the future is even less encouraging. The oversupply of colleges and the undersupply of students are apparent even now when students are most plentiful. Never before in the United States, and probably never again, will there be so many prospective students eighteen years of age as about the year I940. In that year there will be 2,S36,ooo persons at the average age of students entering college; in 1980 there will probably be fewer than two million. Look at the following table which shows the number of persons eighteen years of age, by decades, for

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