Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 137, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 June 1913 — AN EDUCATIONAL BOOM. [ARTICLE]

AN EDUCATIONAL BOOM.

tt Struck Our Colleges Along In the Early ’Bos. The curves representing the number of students are astonishingly similar In the oase at American lnstito* done of higher education, whatever their character and location. There is a normal Increase In at* tendanee corresponding to the growth in population until about 1885, when the curve tehee a sudden leap upward, and In the ense of the State universities, assumes a parabolic form. The curve fbr German universities shows the same peculiarity, with the sudden upward bend ooourring at 1871. This is easily referable to the consolidation of the empire, but in the United States there was no such political revolution in 1885. Where the authorities in different universities have been asked to explain this sudden lnerease of attendance in the early ’Bos they have attributed it to some local cause. “Oh, that waa when our college got a new president,” or “That waa the year of the big corn crop," or “The now school law cam# into effect then,” er "The Legislature was unusually generous.” But there is a difference of only two or throe years between Harvard and California in the date when the curve started upward, and It is obvious that when Eastern and Western institutions, private and publlo, high schools sad universities, classical colleges and technological schools, are affected almost simultaneously In the same way the fundamental cause must be a general not a local one. This cause, however, according to a writer In the Independent, remains to be discovered.