Standards (1890-1920)
Relaxing Admissions Requirements
To facilitate the college entrance of high school graduates into higher education, colleges and universities began to change their admission requirements. Higher education institutions slowly made optional or eliminated altogether the classical studies of Greek and Latin. Harvard University eliminated Greek as an admission requirement in 1886, Columbia University eliminated it in 1897, Dartmouth in 1902, New York University in 1902, and Yale in 1904.
Colleges and universities often substituted sciences and modern subjects such as physics, mathematics, American history, modern languages, and geography for the Greek and Latin admission requirements. Some of these modern subjects already were taught in the public high school.
Institutions of higher education courted the public high school graduate, who had an array of practical courses from which to choose, by eliminating the classical studies and substituting the modern subjects. The change in admission requirements by higher education institutions did not require that high schools change their curricula. Rather, the colleges and universities were recognizing subjects as acceptable for admission requirements that the high schools already offered.
