News and Views

Opening

of the College Year.

It is not possible, at this early date, to make any accurate estimate of the enrollment in the various departments of the University. There is every indication, however, that the number of students in Harvard College will be substantially larger than it was in September, 1920. The applications for admission have been considerably more numerous this summer, and more men were admitted after the June examinations than is usually the case. If the September examinations produce the normal crop of entrants there will be a record freshman class. On the face On the face of things it is bound anyway to be the largest class we have ever had, for a change in the method of classifying undergraduates, which goes into force this autumn, will considerably augment the number of students who are rated as freshmen. Hitherto when students have transferred to Harvard after a year or more at some other institution of collegiate grade, they have been listed for the time being as "unclassified" students. Not until after a full year's attendance at Harvard have they been given regular rank in one of the four undergraduate classes. This arrangement was very unsatisfactory to the men concerned and it has now been abandoned. Students who come from other colleges will be provisionally ranked as freshmen, sophomores, juniors, or seniors, without

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the necessity of having to spend a year in the category of the unclassified. Most of them will be assigned to the upper classes, of course; but a good many will go to swell the list of freshmen.

The graduate and professional schools, taking them as a whole, will undoubtedly hold their own and may show a considerably increased registration. In two of them, the Graduate School of Business Administration and the Graduate School of Education, there will almost certainly be an enlarged enrollment; in the others the signs point the same way, but no predictions are safe until the registration is completed. It is a fair wager, however, that the total student attendance will prove to be larger this year than it has been at any previous time.

Changes in the teaching staff this autumn. are relatively few, although the number of professors who are to be absent during the whole or a part of the year on sabbatical leave or for other reasons is somewhat larger than usual. For the most part, the instruction which is ordinarily given by these teachers is being provided during their absence by other members of the same departments or by instructors who have been temporarily secured from other colleges. The program of instruction is sufficiently flexible to permit this without causing serious inconvenience to anyone.

Harvard has no new buildings to dedicate this autumn, indeed has had none for several years. The high cost of building