Word: desideratum
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...foreigner selects his university with an eye to considerations which do not affect the average American student. Family tradition places no obligation upon him; clubs and athletics offer no special inducement; particular excellence of instruction is merely an added desideratum. The foreigner here, like the Rhodes scholar abroad, wishes above all to learn something about other standards, manners, and customs during the few years spent in our colleges. He is peculiarly receptive to every impulse, though, naturally, modest and awkward in asserting himself in the strange society in which he is placed. Behind this reticence he feels that he would...
Retention of facts, said President Lowell, is not the main desideratum in a real education; what the student learns, he forgets after ten years, but the mental processes which he developes as he learns, remain by him and assist him through his whole life...
...last point, the testing of fitness for admission, the desideratum doubtless is that all schools men should be admitted who by their ability to keep up to Harvard requirements show that they can profit by Harvard instruction. That the entrance examinations, whether given by Harvard or by the Board, sometimes fail to test this fitness properly, is as evident as that a course examinations may sometimes fail to measure accurately the work done by a student. The Harvard committee on admission, through its own examinations and those of the College Board, is adjusting as equitably as it can the difficult...
...great desideratum of statisticians is some common method for presentation and tabulation of figures which can be used everywhere. In this way only can an exact comparison of wages be made. For purely economic purposes use can be made of "positions"--that is, using as a theoretic unit the laborer who works at standard wages for a standard length of time. For social purposes however, there can be no theory in the compilation of figures and we must consider the number of laborers and their time of labor strictly according to truth. When some uniform system has been used...
...world, any arrangement which exhibits such confidence in the students, and places such privileges in their hands, ought to succeed. The need of co-operation and a better understanding between faculty and students has long been felt in our colleges, and this new scheme certainly appears to supply the desideratum. May the perfect success of the new departure reward Harvard's progressive spirit, and the consideration which she shows her students by imposing such responsibilities upon them...