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A SALUTARY INFLUENCE prominently in American life in 1940, certainly in 1945, than they had in 1900. The years from 1904 to 1945 were also important ones in the history of American education. Already by 1904 Americans had accepted the idea that every child should have an elementary education, and in the forty years that followed they came close to making it a reality. Especially after World War I, they began committing themselves to the goal of universal secondary education and made commendable progress toward reaching it. Whereas fewer than 7 percent of the seventeen-year olds in 1904 were high school graduates, about 49 percent of those in 1940 had earned their diplomas. There are varying estimates of undergraduate college and university enrollment in 1904, but certainly there were about 760,000 arts and sciences students in 1941-1942, the academic year during which the United States entered World War II. There were 185,346 baccalaureate and first-professional degrees conferred in the latter year, about 44 percent of which were awarded to women.2 It was already evident by 1904 that, in spite of the dire predictions of John W. Burgess and others, the liberal arts college had surprising vitality and ability in responding to the needs of an increasingly complex industrial society. College authorities participated in developing national standards for admission, which assumed a higher level of secondary school performance than many of them had accepted in the past. In an effort to improve faculty performance, colleges began requiring possession of an earned doctorate for holding the rank of professor. In every field, but especially in the sciences, social sciences, education, and business administration, they continued developing their curricula. Both colleges and universities participated with others in formulating criteria which could be used in measuring their capacity to perform creditably. The Association of American Universities, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the General Education Board, the Regents of the State of New York, and the United States Bureau of Education had all begun such efforts before the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States and Maryland adopted its initial set of standards for colleges of liberal arts and sciences in 1919 and published its first list of accredited institutions in 1921.3 By 1904 the United States had become a world power, with overseas possessions and a respectable navy. Although it did not ally 2Federal Security Agency, U.S. Office of Education, Biennial Surveys of Education in the United States, 1938-40 and 1940-42, Vol. 2, Statistics of Higher Education, 1939-40 and 1941-42 (Washington, 1947), pp. 14-17. 3The organization is now the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and will hereafter be referred to as the Middle States Association. 41