A survey of the educational system of the Philippine islands by the Board of educational survey, created under acts 3162 and 3196 of the Philippine Legislature.

UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES

627

of an Experiment Research Station and in the same year extension
activity was organized under a separate director. The College of Agriculture is a well-organized and ably directed school and exhibits a
splendid esprit de corps. The business depression which fell upon the
Islands in 1919 and years immediately following caused a halt in the
expansion of appropriations for the University. The College of Agriculture like other divisions of the University was unable to secure the funds
necessary to meet its growing needs. It is to be commended for facing
the situation frankly and rigidly curtailing numbers to maintain efficiency
of instruction. The activities of the college are so essential to the
welfare of the people of the Islands that it is to be hoped that the support
necessary to carry them on will be forthcoming.
The College of Agriculture has two classes of students: (a) Graduates of high schools who formed 22 per cent of the college enrollment
of 550 in 1924-25 and who take a four-year course leading to the
degree of bachelor of science in agriculture, and (b) graduates of
intermediate schools who formed 78 per cent of the enrollment in 1924 -25 and who take a six-year course leading to the degree of bachelor of
agriculture. Considerable opposition exists in the University Council
to this two-fold method of admission and a demand has arisen in the
Council for the placing of the College of Agriculture on a flat basis of
high-school graduation. With this demand the Commission is not in
sympathy. It believes in maintaining formal standards but it believes
still more in educational institutions making their programs conform to the
needs of the country. Certain facts must not be overlooked: (1) The
majority of the youth of the Islands, after the American occupation, were
naturally enamored of the "learned professions" as they had for the
three hundred years of the Spanish regime been more or less effectually
excluded from them. They turned from agriculture. (2) The high
schools which are almost wholly academic tend to wean their students
away from the soil, and their curriculum is by no means the best preparation for a college of agriculture. (3) The high schools graduate
students at an age which, when taken in consonance with the relatively
early maturity and high mortality of the Filipino race, makes it unwise
to postpone bread-winning in agricultural pursuits. The Commission,
therefore, approves of the methods by which the College of Agriculture
has in the past facilitated lower-end articulation and adopted strict rules
of scholarship which made it difficult to remain in and to graduate from
the college. The fact that American universities have marked the
College of Agriculture "A" is good evidence of the satisfactory nature
of its work.
The Commission has been so impressed with the fact that the real
needs of the country can only be met by an emphasis upon the vocation