Word: octopus
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This abuse, bad enough in itself, points to an allied evil which is one of the most serious defects in modern education, what William James in characteristic fashion variously termed the "Doctor Monopoly" and the "Ph.D. Octopus". It is the growing tendency, especially in the newer colleges, to appoint no instructors who are not also doctors of some sort or other. The college catalogue looks far more impressive when every member of the faculty has two or three magic letters after his name. The result is that a tradition is established, and any man who would obtain a desirable teaching...
Lovers of the best fiction will be glad to hear that Frank Norris is once more in print. "The Octopus" and "The Pit" have been difficult to purchase for a number of years, and undeservedly so, for we know of no more thrilling episode in the vast litter of stories about the Stock Exchange than the "Pit," Tom Lawson's "Friday the Thirteenth," a sample of "frenzied finance," strung on a thread of romance, runs it a close second, though falling short of real literature...
...shame to name a thing a "problem" in these days of thousands of "vital problems," but the octopus journalist is certainly eligible for this title. Ten million persons are said to buy his papers daily. This particular problem is to ascertain how many persons, besides Mr. Hearst, take Mr. Hearst seriously. The question is how many people are being fooled how much of the time...
...spite of a rain of facts to the contrary, some persons still believe that our endowed universities are out of the reach of any but men of wealth. The writer of a letter to the Transcript, and the author of a tirade against the University, called "The Educational Octopus," makes the accusation that the "intellectuals of Harvard mistakenly believe that the son of the laboring man should not be allowed to aspire to equality, professionally or otherwise, with the young men of more favored parentage. They are engaged in a great conspiracy to prevent it." This is nonsense. An investigation...
...Above all there seems to be an absence of the apparently overpowering critical instinct which so pervades most numbers--little recourse, in fact, to antedeluvian poets or appreciations of literature which but for the efforts of the writer, would probably never, be unearthed. The first article particularly the "Ph.D. Octopus," by William James, strikes one as being vital and altogether human. The statement that only a man of evident native power is now allowed to receive the degree, and that for a college to appoint instructors only with such qualifications is snobbery and sham, seem hardly consistent. Nevertheless the main...