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Kansas University Weekly.
it of doing this we need not expect to have any college spirit. Why not turn out to the coming oratorical contest and rouse things up a little? The program is unusually good; the association is slightly in debt and needs help; the orator who wins needs to feel that the students are back of him. Let's turn out and be enthusiastic for once.
THE NEW catalogues of Harvard and Yale Universities contain some interesting figures. Harvard has 3,674 students in all departments, a gain of seventy-four over last year. Yale has 2,495 as the total enrollment, which is eighty more than were in attendance at that university last year. The Yale faculty seems to be growing more rapidly than the student body, as there were thirty-seven new instructors elected during the past twelve months, about half as many as the total increase in students. This suggests the fact that in Kansas University just the opposite condition exists. The number of students is increasing much faster than the number of instructors. Sometimes the work suffers in consequence of the overcrowded classes, but usually such classes are divided, and the professor, perhaps already overworked, is compelled to put in another hour every day.
THE HIGH schools of the state have made noticeable improvement in many directions during the past three years. Not only has the character of the work done in these schools been improved in many instances, but a spirit of progress has manifested itself in other ways. One of these is the increase in the number of inter-high school affairs of various sorts, such as athletic games, debates, and oratorical contests. Almost anything of this kind which will bring the high schools into better acquaintance with each other, and broaden the interest of each in the others is to be encouraged. Another sign of progress is the steadily increasing number of high school papers. Every high school which is situated in a town of medium size can afford to have a paper of some kind. It takes energy and enterprise to run a good paper even if it is
a small one, and many young men are receiving valuable training in this direction.
As the University advances the high school must advance also. The young men and young women which they send out each year must be a little better equipped than those sent out in the years before, they must be a little better prepared to perform successfully the work of practical life or the higher educational work in the University. This fact seems to be generally recognized. Progress is the order of the day, and the next few years are to be filled with the realization of large hopes.
Two or three Kansas newspapers have lately formed an alliance for the extermination of "fakes and jim crows." Most newspaper editors are now engaged with larger game such as Turks and Spaniards, but these two or three not being jingoes are compelled to uncork their pugnacity in some other way. But let the jim crows be annihilated; we don't care. It is evident at the start, however, that these iconoclastic sportsmen wouldn't know a jim crow from the American eagle for they seem to have the idea that college papers are jim crows. They say that advertising in college papers—in fact in anything but their own columns—doesn't pay; that the merchants are burdened with the support of a lot of useless sheets which do them no good. Whatever may be the conditions in other college towns, in Lawrence there are a thousand students who spend their money with Lawrence merchants. Practically all of these are either subscribers to or readers of the Weekly. If any advertising pays why not advertising in the Weekly? When there were three or four University papers the merchants had a right to feel burdened; but they do not feel so now. The Weekly carries the "ads" of the best business men in town; it is conducted on purely business principles and if the competition is too sharp for our contemporaries let their grave-stones be erected.
CHARLES F. THWING aptly says that a university is a mother of men rather than a nurse of scientists.