A college man is surrounded, therefore, with ample opportunity for individual development. His habits and his executive abilities are considered quite as important as his “marks” when the final honors are awarded. In short, the real government of our large North American institutions is to-day in the hands of the students, however much the faculty may think that they wield the scepter. Honor systems, athletics, college journalism, fraternity life, self-support, curriculum, seminars, unrestrained electives, student researches, and laboratory methods--all these are signs of the new day of student individualism. The parental form of government is less popular; the self-government idea is now the slogan in student life. The dogmatic college president whom I met recently in a Western State who insisted that in _his_ college there shall be no fraternities or no athletics is marching among the belated leaders of modern education. Meanwhile embryonic statesmen and railroad managers are discovering themselves and their life-work in the society and politics of undergraduate days. In the ninety per cent. of his time which it is estimated the American undergraduate spends outside of his recitations, there is increasingly the tendency to make the college a practice-ground for the development of personal enterprise, individuality, and efficiency. LEARNING TO THINK At least twelve college presidents have said to me during the last year that in their judgment the chief advantage of a college course is learning to think. It has been stated by Dr. Hamilton Wright Mabie that to Americans no conquests are possible save those which are won by superiority of ideas. Professor George H. Palmer tells an anecdote of a Harvard graduate who came back to Cambridge and called upon him to express his gratitude for certain help which had come to him in Professor Palmer’s classroom, and which had directly influenced his life. The professor, naturally elated, hastened to inquire what particular remark had so influenced the young man’s career. The graduate replied: “You told us one day that John Locke insisted on _clear ideas_. These two words have been transforming elements in my life and work.”