Excerpt from Address to the Alumni Opening of William Smith College AnnouncementsThe first of these causes is the admission of special stu dents or of men who desire to do a year or so of college work but who never expect to take a degree. It is but right the Alumni should know that I have seriously con sidered the elimination of all special students whatsoever but that I have been deterred from taking this step because of a strong disinclination to withhold from many worthy fellows the modicum of college training they are able to afford. In these days of technical schools many young men, who because of limited means or of adolescent impatience feel they cannot afford a full college course, wish to have at least two years of collegiate training as a propaedeutic to their professional studies. In the interest of such men in particular and of the community in general it seems desirable that they should receive all the education they are willing to take. At the same time it ought to be said that we have striven to lessen the num ber of special students and to limit them to those who have some serious purpose 111 vlew. To this end we now demand of special students twenty-five counts for en trance instead of the twenty formerly required and also try to assure ourselves that their intention in coming to college is to work and not to play ball. It remains a fact, however, that the special student does not receive a degree and his presence in college is one undoubted rea son why the proportion of men who graduate is as small asitis.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.