Their Relation to Higher Educational Finance 
83 
balance between them would be most beneficial. The extent to which the 
community offers opportunity for self-help and the amount set aside for 
scholarships and fellowships are of importance to the loan problem. When 
the work available to the Student is scarce, more money is needed for 
loans and more loans should be made. Those who would work and cannot 
are excellent risks and, if conditions are such that Student work is scarce, 
it is better to loan money to many of these students than to allow them to 
leave the institution. If large amounts of money are set aside for unpro 
ductive scholars and fellows who never return the money, a smaller 
number of students are thereby being served than if these funds were 
placed in revolving loans. An understanding of these various phases of 
Student help is vital to an institution. 
Self-Help 
Self-help is the method used by many students to put themselves 
through College and in some institutions as many as 80 per cent. of the 
students finance themselves wholly or in part. It holds a very important 
place in Student finance. However, 
Most of the things which have been written of boys without education, 
like Lincoln, who ultimately became President of the United States, or 
fellows with only fifteen cents in their pockets who got through College on 
their nerve and made Phi Beta Kappa are romantic, but quite misleading. 44 
As to the advisability of self-help for students, authorities disagree. 
Dr. Angell of Yale says: 
It may be hard work and in some cases an undue strain—earning a 
living and getting an education at the same time, but in the majority of 
institutions a real taste of economic necessity is a spur to study. The youth 
who must work his way through College cannot afford to waste time joy- 
riding and jazzing around. 45 
On the other hand, the London Times Bducational Supplement takes 
the opposite view: 
In the American institutions where “working through” is more common 
than in England there is beginning to arise a certain doubt about the de- 
sirability of the plan., There is a growing conviction particularly in the 
Eastern universities that this independence is bought at too great a price. 46 
It is further argued by some that the function of a College or univer- 
sity is to stimulate study; that anything which reduces the potential 
amount of study (where there is not even partial Substitution in ways 
of health or of zest) such as extra-curriculum activities in various spheres 
of Student undertaking, deducts largely from scholastic achievement. All 
44 T. A. Clark, “Discipline and the Derelicts”, p. 93. 
45 Quoted in the Alaska Daily Empire, April 18, 1924. 
46 “Poor Men at the Universities” quoted in School and Society, Dec. 22, 1923.