William Trufant Foster

“ President Thwing of Western Reserve University, the historian of higher education in America, says that he has found no exception, in the records of any American college, to the general rule that those who achieve most before graduation are likely to achieve most after graduation.
The list of the first ten scholars of each of the classes that graduated from Harvard College in the sixth decade of the last century, as presented by William Roscoe Thayer, is a list of men eminent in every walk of life. ”

“ It is well known that the universities of England and the English people generally have much more respect for scholarship than is common in the United States. One reason is doubtless the eminence for centuries in the Old World of leading university scholars. Of the 384 Oxford University men called to the bar before 1865, 46 per cent. of those who received first-class honors at Oxford subsequently attained distinction in the practice of law, as indicated by the offices they held. Of the men who were content with pass degrees, only 16 per cent. attained distinction. ”

“ The philosopher has been likened to a blind man in a dark cellar hunting for a black cat that isn't there. The aim of education seems as elusive as the proverbial black cat.
Nevertheless, we do not close our schools. We strive for concrete ends, such as proficiency in handwriting, aware that any particular end may not be regarded as not worth the effort to attain it. ”

“ Are there not men and women doing worthy work in comparative obscurity who should be regarded as successful? Certainly there are, many thousands of them. For obvious reasons, no statistics are available concerning them: all we can say is that we have every reason to suppose that they are not exceptions to the general rule that the superior service of certain citizens in any community will be found to be correlated with superior scholarship in earlier life. ”

“ Indeed, it is likely that the first quarter in scholarship of any school or college class will give to the world as many distinguished men as the other three-quarters.
What can we say in this connection of the 420 living graduates of the ten Wesleyan University classes from 1890 to 1899? Just this: Of the men in that group who graduated with the highest honors, 60 per cent. are now regarded as distinguished either by Who's Who in America or by the judgment of their classmates; of those who were elected to Phi Beta Kappa—the scholarship honor society—30 per cent. ”

“ Of all of the living graduates of these colleges, he found about 2 per cent. in Who's Who; of the honor scholars, he found 5.9 per cent. It thus appears that the chances of this kind of success in life of a good student are about three times the chances of students selected at random. Looking at the records in still another way, we may observe that about 15 per cent. of all graduates are Phi Beta Kappa men. If rank in college has nothing to do with success in life, we should expect to find that 15 per cent. ”

“ It appears that about 90 per cent. of the men who had conspicuous success in the field of forestry were among the better students in their professional studies. Dean Sills of Bowdoin College has made a long list of famous graduates of Bowdoin and shown that their scholarship records were, as a rule, noteworthy. The graduates of West Point—General Grant to the contrary notwithstanding—follow the same general rule; high scholarship at the academy is the single safest criterion of success in the Army. ”