Education: Preceptor Guys

Here's to those preceptor guys

Who're coming here to make us wise—

Too late to stuff them down our throats,

They'll make poor Oughty-six the goats.

This verse was added to the Princeton University "Faculty Song" in the spring of 1905, after Woodrow Wilson had announced his plans for Princeton's famed, pioneering preceptorial system. A year later the Class of 1906 was singing:

Here's to those preceptor guys Fifty stiffs to make us wise—

Easy jobs and lots of pay,

They work the students night and day.

Besides the 50 new...