The Elective System.

When streams of new students entered American colleges early in the century, they found most colleges in a state of disarray and poorly prepared to educate them. This situation was partially because of a fragmentation in the existing curricula. In the first years of the twentieth century, most colleges and universities had established an elective curriculum. Although Harvard was not the inventor of this system, the university, under the leadership of Charles W. Eliot, had become its chief proponent. Under the elective system students (even freshmen) had been free to study any courses they wanted, and their options had expanded exponentially. Old courses of study had been subdivided into many subjects, and new courses were added to the curriculum. Under the spectacular advances of science, for example, the old courses in natural philosophy were replaced by the whole...