Out of five hundred degrees conferred by the university in one year, one-fifth go to students residing in the county in which the university is situated. It is obvious that the university is bringing higher education to one county, and failing to bring it to sixty-three counties. The work however is being done by the small colleges. But the dean was right when he intimated that many of these small colleges are fighting for their lives. Twenty-five years ago the professors in College X were receiving $1,500 a year,--a home missionary's salary even in those days; but to-day they are still getting $1,500. Last year a deficit made a considerable inroad on the endowment fund. This year the deficit will be larger, because seventy of her advanced students have gone into the army. And the state stands by in indifference, watching an institution die that has served it well for forty-five years--an institution that it must replace at public expense, or leave a corner of the state in educational darkness. I think that the real hope of the dean was that such colleges might be reduced to junior colleges, and that the available funds might be spent in improving the instruction in the freshmen and sophomore years. But he could hardly say this, for last year the students in his own university were loudly protesting that they were being neglected, and that teaching had been sacrificed on the altar of research. But even if the dean could not say it, why is it not a reasonable suggestion? Why not cut off the last two years of the college course and improve the instruction in the earlier years? For the simple reason that the state is too rich to permit of any curtailment of the opportunity of intellectual growth for its young people. It is gratuitous assumption that the students who had done two years' work in the small college would complete their work in the university. The small minority who are going into professional work would do this, but the large majority would end their training with the sophomore year, and democracy and humanism would suffer simultaneously an irremediable blow. Let us hope that the historians of later times will not be compelled to write: "In 1917 the Kaiser not only blew up the cathedrals in France, but he also helped to dynamite our American colleges."