On the one hand, it is obviously
desirable that the time and opportunities of the university should not
be wasted in conferring such elementary instruction as can be obtained
elsewhere; while, on the other hand, it is no less desirable that the
higher instruction of the university should be made accessible to every
one who can take advantage of it, although he may not have been able to
go through any very extended course of education. My own feeling is
distinctly against any absolute and defined preliminary examination, the
passing of which shall be an essential condition of admission to the
university. I would admit to the university any one who could be
reasonably expected to profit by the instruction offered to him; and I
should be inclined, on the whole, to test the fitness of the student,
not by examination before he enters the university, but at the end of
his first term of study. If, on examination in the branches of knowledge
to which he has devoted himself, he show himself deficient in industry
or in capacity, it will be best for the university and best for himself,
to prevent him from pursuing a vocation for which he is obviously unfit.
And I hardly know of any other method than this by which his fitness or
unfitness can be safely ascertained, though no doubt a good deal may be
done, not by formal cut and dried examination, but by judicious
questioning, at the outset of his career.
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