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THE AMERICAN BOOKS 
 
 A LIBRARY OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP 
 
 " The American Books *' are designed as a 
 series of authoritative manuals, discussing 
 problems of interest in America to-day. 
 
THE AMERICAN BOOKS 
 
 THE AMERICAN COLLEGE BY ISAAC SHARPLESS 
 
 THE AMERICAN INDIAN BY CHARLES A. EASTMAN 
 
 THE COST OF LIVING BY FABIAN FRANKLIN 
 
 THE AMERICAN NAVY BY REAR-ADMIRAL FRENCH 
 
 E. CHADWICK, U. S. N. 
 
 MUNICIPAL FREEDOM BY OSWALD RYAN 
 
 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE BY LEON KELLNER 
 (translated from THB GERMAN BY JULIA FRANKLIN) 
 
 SOCIALISM IN AMERICA BY JOHN MACY 
 
 THE DRAMA IN AMERICA BY CLAYTON HAMILTON 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY MOVEMENT BY IRA REMSEN 
 
 THE AMERICAN SCHOOL BY WALTER S. HINCHMAN 
 
 {For more extended notice of the series, see the last pages 
 0/ this book.) 
 
The American Booh 
 
 The 
 American College 
 
 BY 
 
 ISAAC SHARPLESS 
 
 President 0/ Haverford College 
 
 
 GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 191S 
 

 Copyright, 191 5, hy ' 
 DOUBLEDAY, PaGE & CoMPANY 
 
 All rights reserved^ including that of 
 
 translation into foreign languages^ 
 
 including the Scandinavian 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
 Isaac Sharpless was born in Chester County, 
 Pennsylvania, December i6, 1848. Graduat- 
 ing from Westtown School, he subsequently at- 
 tended the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard 
 University, from which he received a diploma 
 in 1873. His early interests were in teaching 
 mathematics and astronomy; since then he has 
 devoted special attention to the science of edu- 
 cation and to the political and social movements 
 of his neighborhood; in both these spheres he 
 has taken a prominent part. From Westtown 
 School he was called to Haverford College as Pro- 
 fessor of Mathematics in 1875. In 1884 he 
 became Dean; since 1887 he has been President. 
 
 Dr. Sharpless holds honorary degrees from 
 Hob art College, Swarthmore College, and the 
 University of Pennsylvania. His pubHcations 
 include, besides several text-books on mathe- 
 matics and astronomy, "A Quaker Experiment 
 in Government," " Two Centuries of Pennsyl- 
 vania History," " Quakerism and Politics." He 
 
VI Biographical Note 
 
 is regarded as a leading authority on Penn- 
 sylvania colonial history. Besides these books, 
 he has published " English Education " — the 
 result of a year, 1 890-1, spent in England study- 
 ing the methods of the EngHsh schools and 
 universities. He is a member of the Council of 
 the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The object of this little book is to give to the 
 general reader a fair idea, hiding neither blem- 
 ishes nor virtues, of that peculiarly national 
 institution, the American college, as distinct 
 from the university and technological school. 
 This college has no exact counterpart in the 
 educational systems of other countries. It 
 has grown up partly perhaps as the result of 
 certain accidents of history, but mainly because 
 it satisfied peculiar needs and conditions of 
 American life. Its lack of fitness to articulate 
 with schools of other grades has often been 
 urged against it, and its extinction from the 
 system has been prophesied and advocated. 
 But it seems to retain its hold upon its patrons 
 with undiminished vigor, and there are few 
 signs of any lack of prosperity in its best repre- 
 sentatives. It undoubtedly has had and will 
 have a large influence upon national life and 
 character, and while it probably would not, 
 vii 
 
viii Preface 
 
 just as it is, find a place in a system created anew 
 to suit ideal conditions, it is so firmly rooted 
 that the future tendency will be rather to 
 strengthen it and adapt it to the new wants 
 which are certain to arise. The American 
 college is not likely to be crowded out of its 
 niche between the high school and the univer- 
 sity, though this fate may await certain of 
 its weaker members. It has been the case in 
 Germany that the college has disappeared, and 
 the secondary schools keep the boys and girls 
 till they are ready for the highly' specialized 
 work of the universities. While this may hap- 
 pen in America, it does not seem probable at 
 the present time. 
 
 A sketch of the growth of the system may 
 throw light upon its ability to resist the same 
 tendency here. 
 
 A brief bibhography will show some of the 
 sources from which the material of the book 
 has been derived. The author, however, has 
 for years been living with the subject, and has 
 had the advantage of intercourse with many 
 collegiate friends of better judgment and wider 
 information than himself. He cannot hope 
 that his statements of facts, still less his opin- 
 ions, will go unchallenged, but the book may be 
 
Preface ix 
 
 something of a way-mark in the history of 
 a rapidly developing movement. 
 
 I. S. 
 Haver ford, Pa. 
 November y 19 14. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Historyofthe American College . 3 
 
 II. College Administration .... 44 
 
 III. The Courses of Study .... 94 
 
 IV. Student Life 135 
 
 V. The Function of the College . . 175 
 
 Brief Bibliography 213 
 
 Index 217 
 
THE AMERICAN COLLEGE 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE 
 
 The early American colleges were founded by 
 men who had no model but the EngHsh colleges 
 from which they came. The new world schools 
 were products of the inextinguishable love of 
 learning and the belief in its necessity for both 
 State and Church, which filled the minds of the 
 EngHshmen of the Puritan Age. The strongest 
 stimulus was at first the need of the church for 
 educated ministers, and those bodies which did 
 not strongly feel this need were the slowest 
 to take up higher education. In time political, 
 industrial, and other secular motives came to 
 the aid of the ecclesiastical impulse, and finally 
 almost engulfed it. 
 
 The growing love of freedom of the new world 
 found its best expression in the lives and utter- 
 ances of college men. While the subject matter 
 of the curricula seemed to have little relation to 
 the demands of a pioneer and experimental 
 age, the training resulted in the creation of a 
 
 3 
 
4 ' -V . ' :The American College 
 
 \:<:>' w :l, : • \,,. 
 
 line of colonial and Revolutionary fathers most 
 admirably fitted to meet and solve its problems. 
 Without this leadership it is hard to see how 
 the early American attempt at nation-making 
 could have succeeded. At the best a very differ- 
 ent product would have resulted. 
 
 Learning easily perpetuates itself. They who 
 have it will desire it for their children. It 
 was well for the country that the fathers did not 
 allow a generation to pass without giving the 
 children a chance to have something of their 
 own opportunities. Once engrafted upon the 
 Hfe of the nation it was sure to grow. The mag- 
 nificent zeal and the vast provision for higher 
 education which we see to-day we largely owe 
 to our pioneer ancestors who in the midst of 
 the struggles for a living under crude conditions 
 found the time and the motive to institute a 
 spiritual movement of tremendous significance. 
 
 Colonial Colleges 
 
 HARVARD 
 
 Harvard College was founded in 1636 by a 
 vote of the "General Court of the Colony of 
 Massachusetts Bay/' which agreed "to give 
 400 Pounds toward a School or College." Two 
 years later John Harvard, a clergyman who had 
 
History of the American College 5 
 
 been a year in the colony, died and left to the new 
 school one half his property and a library of 300 
 volumes. These riches enabled it to open at once, 
 and it took the name of its greatest benefactor. 
 
 In 1643 an old account explains the purpose 
 of the foundation: "After God had carried us 
 safe to New England and we had builded our 
 houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, 
 rear'd convenient places for God's worship, and 
 settled the civil government, one of the next 
 things we longed for and looked after was to 
 advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; 
 dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the 
 churches when our present ministers shall lie 
 in the dust." 
 
 The principal object of the college was frankly 
 theological. The settlers had among their 
 number learned ministers who had degrees from 
 the English universities. These institutions 
 would henceforth be closed to them, and if the 
 standards were to be maintained they must 
 keep up their own supply. The curriculum 
 was prepared largely with respect to this pur- 
 pose, but others than divinity students who 
 were ambitious for a similar training were ad- 
 mitted, and Harvard College became the centre 
 of the intellectual life of the colony. 
 
6 The American College 
 
 The number of students during the first half 
 century of its existence probably never ex- 
 ceeded twenty, but upon this little group was 
 expended much mental and spiritual care. The 
 President, a learned as well as a godly man, was 
 sometimes the sole teacher, sometimes a tutor 
 aided him. But the aristocracy of scholarship 
 of Massachusetts gathered around the little 
 college, and a steady stream of learned men came 
 out from it. 
 
 John Harvard was a graduate of Emmanuel 
 College, Cambridge. Of the one hundred uni- 
 versity men who came to New England between 
 1620 and 1640 about seventy were from Cam- 
 bridge, and a goodly number from Emmanuel. 
 This college was Puritan from its origin in 1583. 
 The Calvinists of England made it their head- 
 quarters, and not a few of the New England 
 colonists had their inspiration and education 
 within its walls. To found a new Emmanuel 
 in the new country, to maintain its theology 
 and its traditions, its rigid Calvinism and its 
 devotion to human rights, its demand that a 
 commonwealth must be godly and its religion 
 orthodox, that dangerous heresies must be 
 crushed and the truth upheld by the civil power, 
 this was the spirit of the Harvard of the first 
 
History of the American College 7 
 
 generation. With varying ideals and methods 
 to suit the age and the denomination, Harvard 
 may be said to be the precursor of a long line 
 of small colleges which, if less professional in 
 aim, have felt it part of their mission to main- 
 tain and promulgate religious truth along with 
 mental training and sound knowledge. 
 
 It was probably in the minds of the Harvard 
 founders to gather around the little college 
 other colleges of coordinate grade after the 
 fashion of the Enghsh universities. They had 
 no other model. But succeeding benefactors 
 instead of creating new colleges strengthened 
 the original institution. It grew constantly 
 larger. New foundations were created in other 
 parts of the country, and were independent in 
 their powers. So the English type of a group 
 of colleges closely related in function and local- 
 ity was departed from, and the American school 
 of higher learning became largely a type of 
 itself. Had some one about the year 1700 
 erected in Cambridge another college under the 
 same general government, but standing for 
 a slightly different idea in education or religion, 
 and had the example been followed by others, 
 a university on the English plan with a cen- 
 tral degree-giving authority would have resulted. 
 
8 The American College 
 
 But for good or ill each college in America is 
 independent of the others, grants its own de- 
 grees, and sets its own standards. 
 
 By the year 1700 the college had become 
 liberalized both in politics and religion. Its 
 growth in numbers was slow and its teaching 
 force remained small. There were fifteen grad- 
 uates in 1700; in 1770, thirty-four, and in 1800, 
 forty-seven. It identified itself with the Amer- 
 ican cause in the Revolution. Besides the 
 President, its three professors during the latter 
 part of the century were those of divinity, 
 mathematics, and foreign languages. Latin, 
 Greek, Hebrew, philosophy, oratory, history, 
 and a little natural science were the subjects 
 studied, and were required of all. The addi- 
 tion of professional schools and the establish- 
 ment of Harvard University were of later date. 
 
 During colonial days the published list of 
 students was arranged in the order of the social 
 and political standing of their families. It was 
 not till about 1770 that this was changed to 
 an alphabetical order. 
 
 WILLIAM AND MARY 
 
 While the Virginia College represented a 
 different phase of Christian theology and church 
 
History of the American College 9 
 
 government, it was in its avowed purposes 
 equally ecclesiastical. The charter of 1693 
 gave as its objects: "That the church of Vir- 
 ginia may be furnished with a seminary of 
 Ministers of the Gospel, and that the youth 
 may be properly educated in good manners, 
 and that the Christian faith may be propagated 
 among the western Indians to the glory of 
 Almighty God." Then it indicated the sub- 
 jects to be studied: "divinity, philosophy, 
 languages, and other good arts and sciences." 
 
 As a matter of fact studies related to law and 
 politics were more prominent from the start 
 than theology, and the college produced a few 
 learned divines of the Episcopal Church and an 
 unusual number of men of prominence in the 
 state. Three Presidents of the United States — 
 Jefferson, Monroe, and Tyler — ^were educated 
 there. So were five of the signers of the Decla- 
 ration of Independence from Virginia, a large 
 proportion of the Virginia Representatives in 
 
 ithe Continental Congress and other Revolu- 
 tionary bodies, and the great Chief Justice of 
 the United States, John Marshall; these date 
 back their enthusiasm and training to this 
 centre of patriotic sentiment, the little college 
 at Williamsburg. 
 
lo The American College 
 
 By charter and legislation it received consid- 
 erable money directly, including the fees of the 
 surveyor-general's office and one penny per 
 pound on all tobacco exported from Virginia 
 and Maryland. It therefore during its early 
 history went through none of the financial suf- 
 fering of the Massachusetts college. Through 
 the eighteenth century it was easily the leading 
 Institution of Virginia. But endowments did 
 not flow into it as they did to the northern 
 colleges. Until the Civil War it had, however, 
 an important place, though rival competitors 
 took some of its patronage. When in this conflict 
 its buildings were burned and its constituency 
 impoverished, its resources were almost wholly 
 cut off*. Its little endowment of less than 
 $150,000 was insufficient to sustain it, and it 
 sank relatively in importance. The state has 
 subsidized it rather as a normal school, how- 
 ever, than a college. 
 
 YALE 
 
 Yale College owed its origin to the same im- 
 pulse that founded Harvard, now tempered 
 and liberalized by sixty-five years of develop- 
 ment. Two Harvard men in 1701 decided that 
 the time had come for a second New England 
 
History of the American College ii 
 
 college, and invited a meeting in New Haven. 
 Each brought a bundle of books, and on this 
 endowment a charter was secured. For a num- 
 ber of years the Collegiate Institute, as it was 
 called, had a precarious existence. The number 
 of students was small and they appear to have 
 waited on the convenience of the rector where 
 it pleased him to reside. There was no money 
 endowment and no building, the main resource 
 being the fees of students. Several towns 
 sought to have the college within their borders, 
 and it was not till 1717 that it permanently 
 went to New Haven. About this time EUhu 
 Yale began his benefactions. He was not a 
 college man nor a clergyman, but was interested 
 in the general cause of education. He sent 
 over from England valuable goods to be sold 
 for the college which yielded some £ 600. About 
 the same time the first building was erected — a 
 wooden structure which was library, chapel, 
 schoolroom, and dormitory for some forty stu- 
 dents. 
 
 It was chartered as Yale College in 1745. 
 Through all the colonial days it worked along 
 as a small college with very close paternal rela- 
 tions between the teachers and students. In 
 1770 there were about 100 students, and in 
 
12 The American College 
 
 i8cx), 217. Rigid rules governing student con- 
 duct, especially on the part of the freshman, 
 were enforced. By the end of the century 
 there were four teachers besides the President. 
 Its students were being trained in the studies of 
 the day, the ancient languages being of course 
 the mainstay of the curriculum. 
 
 The War of the Revolution again scattered 
 the college. Like most of the Congregational 
 leaders of New England, its officials warmly 
 sympathized with the American cause, though 
 they stuck to their post of duty as instructors 
 in the different towns into which the students 
 could be collected. It was about the year 
 i8cx) that Yale College entered upon the great 
 development in resources and numbers which 
 made it a national institution. The depart- 
 ments of medicine, theology, and law were 
 established early in the century, though it was 
 not till 1886 that it took the title of Yale 
 University. 
 
 PRINCETON 
 
 Harvard and Yale were established under 
 Congregational influence, and William and 
 Mary under Episcopal. The Presbyterians 
 felt the same desire for learned ministers of the 
 
History of the American College . 13 
 
 Gospel, and needed them even more; for a 
 large number of emigrants from the north of 
 Ireland, commonly called Scotch-Irish, leaving 
 behind them the settled portions of the eastern 
 seaboard, had pressed for the frontier, and by 
 their militant aggressiveness were becoming a 
 strong factor in the colonial Hfe. Many of 
 them were uneducated, though in general they 
 felt a strong respect for education, and almost 
 always estabHshed a little school in the woods 
 alongside their church. Their numbers were 
 great and they had not as the Puritans any 
 large supply of university men coming from the 
 English universities. 
 
 This need was attempted to be in part sup- 
 plied by William Tennent, who was the pastor 
 of a Presbyterian Church in eastern Pennsyl- 
 vania. He had sons worthy of following their 
 father's career, and by his influence had drawn 
 around him a few other young men to whom he 
 was earnest to give instruction in divinity and 
 languages. He started about 1730 the "Log 
 College" in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and 
 himself was the only teacher. After a decade 
 or more Tennent died and the Log College 
 disappeared, but it had developed in the minds 
 of his church a desire for a supply of learned 
 
14 . The American College 
 
 ministers. The fruition came in 1748 in a 
 college in New Jersey to carry on the work. 
 Latin, Greek, and mathematics, logic and 
 rhetoric, a little astronomy and mental phi- 
 losophy, with a profound study of the Bible, in 
 its original languages, constituted the curricu- 
 lum, and Princeton College started on its benefi- 
 cent career. 
 
 After the usual dispute about the site, the 
 town of Princeton succeeded in outbidding 
 New Brunswick, and in 1754 Nassau Hall, still 
 standing, was commenced, and occupied two 
 years later. It was the most extensive college 
 building at that time in the colonies. During 
 the campaigns of 1776 and 1777 it was occupied 
 alternately by the British and American armies, 
 and suffered greatly. The students were scat- 
 tered, the books and physical apparatus were 
 seriously damaged, and some of the funds dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 The college had, about 1750, some seventy 
 students. By the end of the century this had 
 increased to 200. Afterward the numbers 
 receded, and it was not till about 1830 that its 
 memorable growth in resources, numbers, and 
 national reputation, which still continues, was 
 inaugurated. 
 
History of the American College 15 
 
 Much attention during colonial days was 
 given to political and historical subjects. James 
 Madison there drew in the inspiration which 
 made him the able champion of the new Con- 
 stitution, and made possible the distinguished 
 political career which ended in the Presidency 
 of the United States. Up to the Civil War 
 Princeton was the favorite Northern college 
 for Southern people, and has been always promi- 
 nent in political and economic studies. 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 
 
 An institution whose foundation was largely 
 due to Benjamin Franklin was not Hkely to be 
 ecclesiastical in its nature. The province of 
 Pennsylvania from its earliest days was strik- 
 ingly free from denominational preferences and 
 control. The Friends in 1689 had founded a 
 school in Philadelphia for the general education 
 of the city. In time branches were estabhshed 
 for boys and for girls, some free for the poorer 
 children, some with varying grades of charges, 
 and all feeding into the Central Latin School. 
 When in 1749 a new institution was considered 
 by Franklin, Logan, and their associates, it 
 naturally followed the model already in ex- 
 istence, and the "Academy and Charitable 
 
1 6 The American College 
 
 School" was founded. Money was raised by 
 subscriptions from all sects, and Franklin in 
 1750 wrote a paper stating the objects of the 
 school. There was to be an academy for the 
 well-to-do and a free school for the poor. The 
 youth were to be kept at home rather than seek 
 their educational facilities in England or the 
 other colonies. Men competent to act as pub- 
 lic leaders were to be trained here. School 
 teachers were also to be educated, and trade 
 drawn to the city by the tendency of population 
 to gather around a good school. The Latin 
 language was to be taught, but schools of 
 mathematics and of English were to be equally 
 prominent. 
 
 To these departments a college was added 
 in 1755, which rapidly grew in numbers and in- 
 fluence. In two years there were 300 students, 
 of whom 100 were in the college. A number of 
 lotteries gave large returns. Men came from 
 the West Indies and red men from the interior. 
 The first great Provost, WilHam Smith, an 
 Episcopal minister, was a man of large ideas. 
 **No such comprehensive scheme of education 
 as the plan he laid out then existed in the Amer- 
 ican colonies." He went to England and 
 brought back £6,000. He quarrelled with the 
 
History of the American College 17 
 
 Quaker legislature and heard his classes in the 
 jail. He was a potent factor in the troubled 
 times before and during the Revolutionary War, 
 siding with the Proprietors against the people, 
 and during the war with the British interests. 
 His probity, learning, and character made him 
 generally respected. After a rival institution 
 had been set up, and the resources of the uni- 
 versity had been scattered by the war. Dr. 
 Smith came into possession again in 1791. The 
 succeeding years for nearly a century did not 
 show much growth in the college, and until 
 the Civil War it never recovered relatively the 
 high position it had before the Revolutionary 
 War. The first medical school and the first 
 law school of the country were associated with 
 it, and these have always had a high reputation. 
 
 COLUMBIA 
 
 In 1754, ^^ ^^^ basis of a lottery. King's 
 College in New York was founded. For several 
 years the President and one or two tutors did all 
 the teaching. Like the similar institution in 
 Philadelphia, it was to be unsectarian, though 
 certain religious exercises as presented by the 
 Church of England were adopted for daily 
 worship, and each student on Sunday was al- 
 
1 8 The American College 
 
 lowed to attend such place of worship as his 
 parents directed. The curriculum was not 
 different from that of the other colonial colleges 
 and was to contain "the learned languages and 
 the liberal arts and sciences." Men who were 
 afterward distinguished — John Jay, Alexander 
 Hamilton, Gouvernor Morris, and others — 
 found here their early training. 
 
 During the war the college was suspended 
 and the building used as a hospital. Imme- 
 diately afterward a new charter was sought, 
 and in response to the changed conditions the 
 old name was dropped and Columbia was sub- 
 stituted. The state appropriated money for 
 its support, and new standards and increased 
 numbers followed. The course continued to be 
 largely classical, with higher mathematics and 
 philosophy, rhetoric, and logic. In recent times 
 there has been great expansion, with the addi- 
 tion of professional courses, until it has become 
 the largest and richest of the American univer- 
 sities. 
 
 BROWN 
 
 An institution especially for Baptists was 
 chartered in Providence, R. I., in 1764. The 
 President must always be a Baptist and so 
 
History of the American College 19 
 
 must a majority of the Board of Trustees. The 
 minority was composed of members of other 
 bodies in definite numbers, and so it remains. 
 These charter limitations, intended to secure 
 it against denominationalism, have prevented 
 it from coming within the scope of the provi- 
 sions of the pension plans of the Carnegie 
 Foundation. In accordance with the spirit 
 of Roger WilHams, it was enacted: "That into 
 this liberal and catholic institution shall never 
 be admitted any religious tests. But on the 
 contrary all members hereof shall forever enjoy 
 full, free, absolute, and uninterrupted liberty of 
 conscience." As with the other colonial col- 
 leges, the movement was on a small scale. A 
 very few learned men constituted the teaching 
 force, and the first graduating class, in 1769, 
 was composed of seven men. The initial im- 
 pulse for the university came from Rev. Mor- 
 gan Edwards of Philadelphia, who afterward 
 collected money for it in England, but the name 
 was a shrewd bid for other support. Originally 
 it was "The College or University in the Eng- 
 Hsh Colony of Rhode Island," and liberty was 
 given to the trustees to give "such more par- 
 ticular name to the college in honor of the great- 
 est and most distinguished benefactor." This 
 
20 The American College 
 
 suggestion brought fruit in 1802, when Nicholas 
 Brown by a large donation made himself eligible 
 for the honor. 
 
 As with the other colleges, the Revolutionary 
 War temporarily closed its operations. The 
 building was used as barracks for the American 
 soldiers. 
 
 Brown, while developing its general courses 
 greatly in recent years so as to pass out of the 
 list of "small colleges," has never added much 
 in the way of professional schools. A medical 
 school existed for a few years, but was discon- 
 tinued. 
 
 RUTGERS 
 
 The charter for Queen's College was granted 
 in 1766 to members of the Dutch Reformed 
 Church. After a contest New Brunswick, N. 
 J., secured the location. It was originally in- 
 tended to fit ministers of the denomination for 
 their duties, but has since become a college for 
 general higher education, the neighboring theo- 
 logical seminary being afterward established as 
 an independent institution. As the result of a 
 gift of ^5,000 after the Revolution by Colonel 
 Henry Rutgers of New York the name was 
 changed in his honor. 
 
 The college is now associated with the govern- 
 
History of the American College 21 
 
 ment of the State of New Jersey in scientific 
 work, but has no professional schools of law or 
 medicine. Its charter still requires that its 
 President and two thirds of its trustees shall be 
 members of the Dutch Reformed Church. 
 
 DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 
 
 The only other colonial college had an en- 
 tirely different origin from those which pre- 
 ceded it. Rev. Eleazar Wheelock in 1754 
 started a school in Connecticut to educate and 
 Christianize Indian boys. The number seek- 
 ing its opportunities increased on his hands, the 
 assembhes of Massachusetts and New Hamp- 
 shire made appropriations, and a number of 
 sympathetic friends added their donations. 
 He finally concluded that in order to succeed 
 he must be nearer the frontier, and after at- 
 tempts to secure a site in Virginia and numer- 
 ous suggestions from New England towns, he 
 selected Hanover, New Hampshire, as on the 
 Hne of travel between the settled parts and the 
 Indian country and in the midst of beautiful 
 surroundings. In the year 1769 he secured a 
 charter from George III, and in recognition of 
 the aid Lord Dartmouth had given him in rais- 
 ing funds, the institution was named Dartmouth 
 
22 The American College 
 
 College. The Revolutionary War put an end to 
 the Indian patronage, and the college, freed 
 from the demand for any special or denomi- 
 national purposes, developed into an institution 
 for higher general learning. 
 
 The great trial which came in 1815 when 
 Daniel Webster, a graduate, defended the old 
 charter against an attack by the New Hamp- 
 shire Legislature, a contest which was carried 
 to the United States Supreme Court and which 
 resulted in a final victory for the college, is 
 important in its general significance as well as for 
 Dartmouth College. The New Hampshire Legis- 
 lature had sought to change its name and make 
 It a state institution. The decision rested on a 
 clause in the Constitution of the United States 
 forbidding a state to impair the obligation of 
 contracts. The question of the rights of states 
 was involved and also the sacredness of a con- 
 tract however secured. The decision has been 
 greatly criticised, and undoubtedly has produced 
 some undesirable results, but for Dartmouth 
 College and its able advocate it brought much 
 cause for congratulation and secured the conti- 
 nuity of its history. 
 
 After the Revolutionary War, John Wheelock, 
 the son of the founder, who was President for 
 
History of the American College 23 
 
 thirty-six years, went to England with letters 
 from Washington, Frankhn, and John Adams, 
 and obtained large donations of money and 
 philosophical instruments, WilHam Prince of 
 Orange being a donor. Nevertheless, it had a 
 difficult time with its finances for many years. 
 At one time it was announced that all its 
 property if sold would not produce enough to 
 pay its debts. 
 
 Its recent history has placed it on a par with 
 other New England colleges in its resources and 
 curriculum. Its medical school dates back to 
 1798, and a school of science gives technical 
 instruction in engineering and other practical 
 arts. Its growth in numbers in recent years 
 has been unusually rapid. 
 
 These nine colonial colleges gathered to- 
 gether their resources after the demoralizing 
 results of the Revolutionary War and set the 
 standard for the development of the American 
 college of after years. They were all small 
 colleges, none of them probably exceeding about 
 100 collegiate students at any time before the 
 war. They had fixed courses of study which did 
 not vary much from each other and which all 
 students were required to follow. Each gave 
 its own degrees without much regard to others. 
 
24 The American College 
 
 except that they would recognize the bachelor's 
 degree given by others, and confer on the basis 
 of it the higher degree of master. Their fresh- 
 men were boys from twelve years of age upward 
 and needed and received much personal supervi- 
 sion and control. The rules of conduct were rigid 
 and rigidly enforced. The program of the day 
 was laid out in great detail from rising to bedtime, 
 and strenuous work was expected and probably 
 in the main obtained. Their degrees stood for 
 the liberal education of the times, much ancient 
 language and history, considerable mathematics, 
 a severe course in logic, some philosophy, and a 
 touch of physical science with side excursions 
 into rhetoric and oratory. This line of studies 
 faithfully pursued made well-trained, straight- 
 thinking, mentally honest men, the statesmen 
 and the divines who laid the foundations of our 
 Government and shaped the policy upon which 
 our political, social, and religious development 
 has been carried on. The attention drawn to 
 America as the result of the Revolutionary War 
 and the estabHshment of a stable repubhcan 
 government was largely the tribute the world 
 paid to the work of our leaders as produced by 
 the mental and moral training of the college 
 graduates of the day. Adams of Harvard, 
 
History of the American College 25 
 
 Jefferson of William and Mary, Hamilton of 
 Kings, and Madison of Princeton were but a 
 few of the great men who fearlessly met the 
 problems of the day, and on the basis of an 
 available knowledge of past history and the 
 capacity to think and plan wisely and bravely 
 for the future, gave us intelligent and lasting 
 solutions. But for these struggHng institutions, 
 where a very few great teachers met boys in 
 their teens and trained them in the ways of 
 Christian virtue and sound learning, the history 
 of America would have been greatly different. 
 In many details we have departed from the 
 methods of these institutions in their early days, 
 but in general our present colleges are what 
 they are as a result of a legitimate inheritance 
 from the past, and we cannot appreciate them 
 except in the light of history. 
 
 For years after the Revolution there was 
 little change in the character of collegiate 
 education. The old colleges continued their 
 methods and ideals except that they grew larger 
 and richer. The new ones, of which there were 
 hundreds, followed sometimes rather slavishly 
 in the beaten paths. The most of them knew 
 no other form of higher education than that 
 they had inherited from the past, uniform in 
 
26 The American College 
 
 scope for all students, based on ancient lan- 
 guages, mathematics, and philosophy, paternal in 
 government, independent of each other in degree- 
 giving and internal arrangements. 
 
 In the quarter century just prior to 1800 
 some dozen colleges were started. Some of 
 these, and this is true of all periods, were not 
 colleges but academies for years after their 
 foundation. Thus Washington and Lee, which 
 claims an origin in 1749, was hardly a college 
 during colonial days. The most important of 
 these were Bowdoin in Maine, Williams in Mas- 
 sachusetts, Union in New York, Dickinson 
 and Washington and Jefferson in Pennsylvania, 
 St. Johns in Maryland, Hampton Sidney in 
 Virginia, and the University of North Carolina. 
 
 In the sixty years following 1800, 187 colleges 
 for men and for both sexes were added to the 
 list, the number of new ones increasing in each 
 decade after 1820. In the '50's alone there were 
 eighty-two new foundations. 
 
 All this time, however, there was a small but 
 increasing tendency to get away from the old 
 curriculum, of which divinity was an important 
 feature and the ancient classics the essential 
 pabulum. 
 
 In **New England's First Fruits" we have 
 
History of the American College 27 
 
 the first published college curriculum for Har- 
 vard given for each day of the week for three 
 years. Thus Mondays and Tuesdays it was to 
 be philosophy — embracing logic, physics, ethics, 
 and geometry — in the morning, theory; in the 
 afternoon, disputations; Wednesdays, Greek; 
 Thursdays, Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac; 
 Fridays, rhetoric; Saturdays, divinity and 
 scholastic disputations, and so on. Yale and 
 Princeton followed Harvard, and the other 
 colleges were largely influenced by the same 
 tendencies; Pennsylvania and Kings probably 
 the least so. 
 
 About the year 1756, when he entered upon 
 his duties as first Provost of the College of 
 Philadelphia, WiUiam Smith pubHshed his 
 "General Idea of the College of Mirania," 
 which was the first attempt to draw up a logical 
 course of study directly adapted to the work 
 which the students would have to do. Besides 
 classics and mathematics, this included survey- 
 ing and navigation, chemistry and agriculture, 
 government and commerce. Of course there 
 were too many subjects for the time allotted, 
 and when Dr. Smith came to apply something 
 Hke this paper scheme to his college he had 
 to adopt a sort of modern elective system. 
 
28 The American College 
 
 Taking the more important as necessary, he 
 allowed the others to occupy what he called 
 "private hours," that is he made them volun- 
 tary, to be taken when the student had the 
 time. He claimed for this that such young 
 men would have formed the habit of acqui- 
 sition, which they would continue in after life. 
 
 Other men were working at the same general 
 idea. Thomas Jefferson became "Visitor" to 
 the College of William and Mary in 1799, and 
 takes evident satisfaction in telHng how he 
 aboHshed the professorships of divinity and 
 Oriental languages and substituted for them a 
 "Professorship of Law and Police, one of 
 Anatomy, Medicine, and Chemistry, and one of 
 Modern Languages." But the old order was 
 too strong for even Jefferson, and leaving WiUiam 
 and Mary to its ancient curriculum he founded 
 the University of Virginia on modern lines. 
 
 About 1820 there were signs of further 
 adaptation to practical demands among the 
 colleges, such subjects as chemistry and po- 
 litical economy being introduced into the courses. 
 A chair of history was estabHshed in WilHam and 
 Mary about this time, an example which Yale 
 did not follow till after the Civil War. 
 
 But the strongest single influence in favor of 
 
History of the American College 29 
 
 the modernization of the course of study was 
 Thomas Jefferson. In his old age, in 181 8, he 
 persuaded the Legislature of Virginia to make 
 an annual appropriation of ^15,000 to a new 
 university. He was chosen as President of the 
 Governing Board and had large powers in 
 shaping its policy. Not only did he plan its 
 architecture and supervise its physical con- 
 struction, but he devoted equal time and study 
 to its organization and scheme of study. Prob- 
 ably he derived his ideas largely from Edin- 
 burgh. At any rate, the plan was the most 
 fundamental break with the past as yet known 
 in America. He planned for ten main groups of 
 studies to be under the care of ten professors. 
 These headings were ancient languages, modern 
 languages, pure mathematics, applied mathe- 
 matics, natural philosophy, botany, anatomy, 
 government, law, and idealogy (ethics, rhetoric, 
 etc.). 
 
 But as it was impossible for one student to 
 take all these subjects, it was decreed that they 
 should be given at different hours, and "Every 
 student shall be free to attend the schools of his 
 choice, and no other than he chooses." Here 
 was the first elective system of America. 
 
 The University of Virginia opened its doors 
 
 \ 
 
30 The American College 
 
 in 1825. About the same time George Ticknor, 
 who was in frequent correspondence with Jeffer- 
 son and who had brought back from Gottingen 
 many German ideas, began to advocate changes 
 in the same direction at Harvard. He was more 
 cautious than the Virginian. "The majority 
 of the young men who come to Cambridge should 
 not be left entirely to themselves to choose 
 what they will study, because they are not com- 
 petent to judge what will be most important 
 for them.'' 
 
 About the same time the faculty of Amherst 
 College in Massachusetts sent to the governing 
 board a cogent letter demanding the enlarge- 
 ment of the curriculum by the inclusion of the 
 new studies. "Why such reluctance to admit 
 modern improvement and modern literature.? 
 Why so little attention to the natural, civil, 
 and political history of our country and to the 
 genius of our government .? . . . Why should 
 the student be compelled to spend nearly four 
 years out of six in the study of the dead lan- 
 guages, for which he has no taste, from which he 
 expects to derive no material advantage, and for 
 which he will in fact have very little use after 
 his senior examination?" 
 
 But this little flurry in the '20's did not seem 
 
History of the American College 31 
 
 to have much eflFect upon the New England 
 colleges. The old curriculum and the old meth- 
 ods of teaching by recitation had too much 
 hold, and the board never allowed the Amherst 
 plan to go into operation. It is of interest to 
 note that this college of western Massachu- 
 setts, which pleaded so forcibly for breaking 
 away from the dominance of Latin and Greek, is 
 now (1914) leading a movement to restore them 
 to a more important place in the courses of 
 study, and to make at least one of them a neces- 
 sary condition of entrance and graduation. 
 
 While one must recognize the dreary waste 
 of time in this mediaeval period for the young 
 man to whom classical studies were uncongenial, 
 it is not at all clear that, judging by the charac- 
 ter of the graduates, the sons of Virginia were 
 any more efficient in performing the duties of life, 
 under the free system of Charlottesville, than 
 were the New Englanders trained in the rigid 
 school in Cambridge. Perhaps the future will 
 show us that two types of colleges are necessary 
 and that neither one can satisfy all the demands 
 of an education in a country where all citizens 
 may claim the privileges of the higher learning. 
 
 Thus at the opening of the Civil War there 
 were something over 200 colleges dispensing 
 
32 The American College 
 
 higher educadon to American youth. This 
 education in the main was of a sort which, except 
 for the training and culture received, had com- 
 paratively little to do directly with the practical 
 problems of after Hfe. The classics, though 
 weakening with the years, still maintained their 
 hold as the necessary basis of a sound intel- 
 lectual training. 
 
 Comparatively little of election was per- 
 mitted. The New England model was in most 
 cases rather closely followed. Harvard and 
 Yale set the standard for the country, and their 
 position was an evolution, and a shght one at 
 that, of the colonial college. They contained 
 about 5CXD undergraduate students each, and 
 retained many of the qualities of the small 
 college, though they were in the process of 
 emergence from this type. 
 
 Nevertheless, the college men still held their 
 preeminence in public Hfe. The high officers 
 of the Federal government, the leading men in 
 the professions, the men of influence in most 
 communities were in large proportion college 
 men. Even admitting that the criticisms levelled 
 at the college course that it was unadapted 
 to and unconnected with the problems of Ameri- 
 can civilization were partly correct, its advo- 
 
History of the American College 33 
 
 cates could still point to the results with reason- 
 able satisfaction. 
 
 The decade of the Civil War was the be- 
 ginning of the new era. The progressive forces 
 had become so strong that the new men inducted 
 into the presidencies were their representatives. 
 Charles W. EHot was made President of Har- ' 
 vard in 1869, and changes came thick and fast. 
 In time the whole required system of studies, 
 venerable by 230 years of use, was to pass away 
 and unrestricted electives take its place. This 
 meant a legitimate bidding for students and 
 stimulated every teacher to his best work. 
 Uninterested and uninteresting teachers fell out 
 of the race and a new spirit pervaded the college. | 
 Many other colleges accustomed to look to \ 
 this oldest institution followed at greater or less \ 
 distance, and the elective system became the j 
 byword for modern progress. 
 
 Cornell University was opened in 1869. 
 Here, in the words of its founder, "any person 
 may find instruction in any subject." Liberty 
 in the choice of studies had become fundamental. 
 The old subjects were taught, but a host of new , 
 ones have been introduced, upon which the old 
 English university school of educators would 
 have looked with scorn. 
 
34 The American College 
 
 In this decade also came into prominence the 
 state universities. Their history does not come 
 within our scope except insofar as they have 
 affected the life of the college. 
 
 The colonial colleges nearly all received state 
 aid by appropriations of money or land. This, 
 however, did not bring with it state control, and 
 in most cases there arose so much jealousy be- 
 tween the Government and the denominational 
 boards that the appropriations ceased. The 
 sectarian or factional management could hardly 
 give what was wanted for public purposes, and 
 yet they so possessed the field that a purely 
 state institution was unnecessary and often 
 impossible. In the cases of Columbia and the 
 University of Pennsylvania, less denomina- 
 tional than the others, state control was for a 
 time assumed, and, as we have seen, Dart- 
 mouth was a state school until released by the 
 decision of the Supreme Court. In the states 
 where there were no colleges, and in the new 
 states to the west, as they were created, be- 
 ginning with North Carolina in 1795, state 
 universities were located, either by assuming 
 the management of some existing college, or by 
 establishing a new one. 
 
 In no case, however, prior to the Civil War, 
 
History of the American College 35 
 
 were these other than second-class colleges. 
 The state aid was not liberal enough to secure 
 efficiency, and private donations were not forth- 
 coming. In the states of the West the oppor- 
 tunity was the greatest, and yet up to 1862 
 there was nothing whose rivalry would give the 
 old established colleges any concern. The new 
 institutions were inferior in numbers, in prestige, 
 and in material and scholarly equipment. 
 
 This was all changed by the passage of the 
 Morrill Act by the United States Congress in 
 1862. This decreed a grant of 30,000 acres for 
 each Senator and Representative in land — if 
 the state possessed so much unappropriated — 
 otherwise in scrip. The states with varying 
 efficiency converted the land or scrip into cash 
 and appropriated the proceeds to higher educa- 
 tion. The purpose as stated in the Act was 
 mainly to teach agriculture and the mechanic 
 arts, and military training was required. The 
 amount varied with the wisdom of the state in 
 deahngwith the appropriation as well as with the 
 number of its legislators. The smallest amount 
 realized was probably ^5,000, the largest perhaps 
 $750,000. In some cases it went to existing 
 institutions, or those about forming, as in New 
 York, where Cornell received it. In others 
 
36 The American College 
 
 new institutions were created, and these were 
 afterward aided by Hberal appropriations from 
 the state legislatures. 
 
 Thus there has arisen the most efficient and 
 varied state provision for higher education the 
 world has ever seen. In the Western States 
 where growth of population was rapid, en- 
 thusiasm intense, and values doubling with 
 each decade, universities of the highest efficiency 
 and most closely connected with popular needs 
 have developed with unheard-of rapidity. In 
 one decade there would be treeless plains, in the 
 next a struggling institution, in one or two more 
 a seat of learning rivalling in numbers the 
 ancient foundations of the east, with ample 
 resources at its command, where every boy and 
 girl could have every legitimate intellectual im- 
 pulse, except in theology, satisfied, and which, 
 by direct appropriation or the permanent res- 
 ervation of a special proportion of the taxes 
 willingly given, could have every opportunity 
 for future development. 
 
 For several years after the founding, and ex- 
 tending in some cases to the present time, there 
 was one marked distinction between the older 
 and the newer universities. The former were 
 for the education of a cultured class. They 
 
History of the American College 37 
 
 made entrance somewhat difficult by exami- 
 nation. Their courses were largely intellectual, 
 whether in language or science. Their special 
 schools prepared for the "learned professions." 
 In their undergraduate department there was 
 comparatively little direct relation with the spe- 
 cial future needs of the individual student. The 
 classical languages, if not exclusively required, 
 were felt to convey some dignity and quahty 
 of scholarship denied to others. The importance 
 of mental discipline and scholarly qualities was 
 emphasized, while knowledge which had simply 
 a bread-and-butter value was depreciated. 
 
 In the newer universities all this was reversed. 
 It was not the cultured, well-to-do families that 
 were considered, but the great mass of the citi- 
 zens. Charges were low. The price of tuition 
 was small or nothing. Efforts were made to 
 keep down the cost of board by student clubs and 
 other wholesale arrangements. Entrance was ob- 
 tained by presenting the certificate of a high 
 school with which they were closely articulated. 
 Their courses were practical and fed directly the 
 after life of the student, whether professional, 
 business, or farming. While the old courses were 
 offered they were taken but slightly by the men, 
 more generally by the women, but no special im- 
 
38 The American College 
 
 portance attached to them. They were strictly 
 coordinate with such as were exclusively "prac- 
 tical." Mental discipline, an intangible thing, 
 was but slightly considered, or assumed to attach 
 to all study; and courses exclusively ** utilitarian" 
 were freely recognized. The duty to shape legis- 
 lation intelHgently and hence to study the state 
 problems which affected the common citizen 
 was kept in the foreground. In time many of 
 the lawmakers were taken from the graduate 
 ranks and naturally turned to their state uni- 
 versities for light and leading which were freely 
 given. They willingly voted more and ever 
 more money to the institution. It thus became 
 a part of the state machinery, ever watchful of 
 human interests, whether individual, economic, 
 or moral. 
 
 All this reacted upon the colleges. They 
 could not duplicate the expensive equipment of 
 the state universities, and the most of them did 
 not make any pretence to it. But the nation 
 was filled with new ideas as to the meaning and 
 purpose of higher education. It was no longer 
 to be the heritage of the "well-born" alone. It 
 was something to which the poorest might 
 properly aspire, and when local or denomi- 
 national reasons dictated the choice of some 
 
History of the American College 39 
 
 other college than the state university, to the 
 student came ideas of which the father never 
 thought. He wanted to learn things which 
 would be of most worth. He was often an in- 
 competent judge of the matter, but the college 
 needed his patronage and went part way to meet 
 his ideas. So the basis of college education, 
 especially in the west, underwent a change. The 
 courses became more elective and more in touch 
 with common needs, without abandoning the 
 culture studies. Indeed in some parts the only 
 hope of these studies was the small college. 
 
 Another factor which wrought to change the 
 methods and ideals of the American college 
 through the last third of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury was the influence of the German univer- 
 sity. Between 181 2 and 1820 Edward Everett 
 and George Ticknor were students at Gottingen. 
 They appear to have recognized the superiority 
 of the German student to the American in age 
 and maturity, but to have come back to Har- 
 vard College with no very well-defined tendency 
 toward foreign methods. Everett in later years 
 as President was a reactionist, but Ticknor, 
 probably as the result of correspondence with 
 Thomas Jefferson, adopted wide election in his 
 Harvard courses in French and Spanish, to the 
 
40 The American College 
 
 manifest advantage, as he thought, of the inter- 
 est and proficiency of the students. 
 
 Following these pioneers a steady stream of 
 American graduates set toward the German 
 universities. This was small at first, but later 
 in the century assumed very large proportions. 
 The man who aspired to a good teaching po- 
 sition in the best colleges and the board which 
 has such appointments to make alike came to 
 the conclusion that the degree of Doctor of 
 Philosophy from Germany was almost essential. 
 From 1 815 to 1850 some 225 Americans were 
 students at the German universities, and 137 of 
 these went into college teaching when they came 
 back to America. 
 
 With the return of these doctors to their 
 work in the colleges came to the front the ef- 
 fect of the German influence. The extent and 
 popularity of the elective system received a 
 new impetus. Lectures were substituted for 
 recitations. Some of these were dry enough, 
 but, being the German method, were received as 
 the latest thing in education. Research became 
 a word of great significance. There was to be a 
 certain productivity of scholarship, which more 
 than teaching was the test of fitness to hold a 
 collegiate chair. Monographs and books were 
 
History of the American College 41 
 
 the outward and visible signs of this inward 
 and scholarly accompHshment. 
 
 The small colleges followed at a distance. 
 If one of them could fortunately secure a Ger- 
 man Ph. D. it was a step forward. He tried to 
 lecture often with unfortunate consequences. 
 At the end of the year the examination revealed 
 very superficial and inaccurate results. If he 
 could not do much in the way of research him- 
 self, he held it up to his students, however 
 immature, as the road to the best in education, 
 in some cases to the manifest growth in en- 
 thusiasm of the boy. 
 
 Of late years this admiration for Teutonic 
 methods has waned. But it has left its benefi- 
 cent influence, after its place and power in 
 America have become more clearly manifest. 
 It led the way to the establishment of Graduate 
 Schools in our better endowed universities, in 
 which movement Johns Hopkins in 1876 led the 
 way. Here was the real counterpart of the 
 German university, and here its procedure was 
 largely in place; though here also individual 
 and unceremonious instruction counted for more 
 than the formal lecture. The German inspi- 
 ration broke the bonds in the colleges of the 
 dry recitation and spirit of the taskmaster and 
 
42 The American College 
 
 substituted more of a living and personal con- 
 tact with the great teachers and great books. 
 
 The American university is neither English 
 nor German. At first the former was its model, 
 but in no case has it become an aggregation of 
 coordinate colleges. It has felt the German 
 touch but has responded to the different de- 
 mands of American life. 
 
 Such is an outhne of the history of the devel- 
 opment of the American college to its present 
 estate. Whether organically associated with a 
 university, or detached from it, the college, by 
 some adaptation to changing needs, has been 
 able to retain its hold upon the pubHc. It gives 
 an education of which the first two years in 
 subject matter may correspond with the last 
 two of the French Lycee, the German Gym- 
 nasium or Realschiile, or the English PubHc 
 School, and in the last two the students have 
 the same general maturity as those of the 
 European university. It is the product in 
 many cases of a denominational demand for 
 strengthening a special theology or educating 
 pastors or workers for certain ecclesiastical pur- 
 poses. Sometimes it is simply the effort of 
 a town to **boom" itself by advertising the 
 opportunities for education. Sometimes it grat- 
 
History of the American College 43 
 
 ifies the vanity of a donor by accepting his 
 name in its charter or publications. There are 
 many weaknesses and much to criticise in some 
 of its members, but on the whole it has had a 
 very large influence for good upon American 
 development. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 
 
 The words "University" and "College" have 
 no very well-defined meaning in the United 
 States. Any definition which one could give 
 would omit a number of institutions which bear 
 the titles. Those universities which may be 
 considered as most njearly representing the type 
 were as we have seen originally based on the 
 English as models, modified sHghtly by French 
 thought just after the Revolution, then trans- 
 formed by German influences in the latter part 
 of the nineteenth century, and continuously 
 varied by American demands. They contain 
 a college for undergraduate work, a graduate 
 department for general scholarship, and one or 
 more professional schools, which make diflFer- 
 ent demands for entrance, varying from a high 
 school diploma to a college degree. The Har- 
 vard professional schools mostly require the 
 bachelor's degree from a recognized college, 
 the University of Pennsylvania Medical School 
 
College Administration 45 
 
 requires two college years prior to entering, and 
 the state law demands one. Many others will 
 accept a course in a four years' high school as 
 the only necessary prerequisite. In general, the 
 standards of entrance to law and medical 
 schools are being pressed upward either by the 
 force of public or professional sentiment or the 
 requirements of state laws. 
 
 The American university is therefore mainly 
 a group of schools for scholarly or special work 
 with a college as its basis. Not all institutions, 
 however, which bear the title can be included in 
 this definition. There seems to be no effective 
 remedy for the adoption of the name by a school 
 even when it does not conform to any reputable 
 scholastic standards. It is one of our American 
 faults to assume names simply for effect. Thus 
 "to graduate" was originally to furnish with a 
 degree; now it means to complete a course in a 
 school of any grade. A ** Professor" was a 
 teacher in college or university; now any peda- 
 gogue who desires it, and some who do not, are 
 supplied with the title. So common has it be- 
 come that in some reputable universities those 
 who have right to it prefer to have it omitted. 
 In the same way it has seemed good to certain 
 founders of colleges or even academies to attempt 
 
46 The American College 
 
 to honor them with the appellation which has 
 been for centuries borne by the greatest educa- 
 tional institutions of Europe and America. 
 
 There are ** universities" with twenty students 
 of low college grade and a considerable pre- 
 paratory department. Others are simply fraud- 
 ulent institutions formed for the purpose of 
 seUing degrees, and with their announcements 
 filled with false or exaggerated statements of 
 their physical and intellectual equipment. Thus 
 an institution which in response to state re- 
 quirements certified that its cash assets were 
 
 $450 advertises itself as " University." 
 
 Another, which issues a statement which would 
 not seem overdrawn if made by Berlin or 
 Oxford, has no resources, except on paper. 
 All of these have charters to grant any degrees, 
 and many of them do grant them, even those 
 reserved by the best universities for graduate 
 work of several years with stringent examina- 
 tions and a thesis showing some evidence of 
 capacity for research. 
 
 The word "College" has been similarly 
 abused and means but little in itself. The 
 degradation does not seem so great because the 
 title has never been so distinguished in history. 
 But there are " Colleges " which are simply low- 
 
College Administration 47 
 
 grade schools, and they vary in significance all 
 the way along the line up to such honorable 
 institutions as Dartmouth and Williams. 
 
 It would make but little difference as to the 
 assumption of names, if the name in many cases 
 did not carry the right to grant degrees. Such 
 charters have been liberally scattered by our 
 legislatures and courts in the past. As a result 
 there is quite as much difference in the value of 
 a degree from different sources as in the merits 
 of the universities themselves. A degree really 
 signifies little if the knowledge of the origin 
 of the degree is withheld. Some degrees are 
 P obtained by purchase, so that it is a common 
 witticism that certain colleges are getting rich 
 *'by degrees"; some as the result of no residence 
 and very slight examinations. 
 
 The main influences brought into use to check 
 this evil are publicity and legislative action. 
 There is among reputable universities an under- 
 standing that certain degrees, notably Doctor 
 of Philosophy (Ph. D.) and Doctor of Science 
 (Sc. D.) shall be sparingly given as the reward 
 of high attainments severely tested and only on 
 examination. There is nothing, however, to 
 hinder any cheap college giving them as hono- 
 rary degrees to unworthy recipients. Holding 
 
48 The American College 
 
 the practice up to reprobation and publishing 
 the lists are, however, discouraging the practice, 
 and men who have received them in this easy 
 way are usually slow to state the circumstances. 
 A few states, as New York, New Jersey, and 
 Pennsylvania, have enacted laws governing the 
 use of the title "College" or "University," and 
 checking the right to grant degrees by inferior 
 institutions. In New York an institution to be 
 ranked as a college must have at least six pro- 
 fessors engaged in teaching college studies, must 
 have a course of four years in Hberal arts and 
 sciences, based on a high school course of four 
 years, and also have a productive endowment 
 of not less than $200,000. The Pennsylvania 
 requirements are even more rigid. They can 
 apply only to institutions chartered after the 
 passage of the act. 
 
 "No institution shall be chartered, with the 
 power to confer degrees, unless it has assets 
 amounting to five hundred thousand dollars 
 invested in buildings, apparatus, and endow- 
 ments, for the exclusive purpose of promoting 
 instruction, and unless the faculty consists of at 
 least six regular professors, who devote all their 
 time to the instruction of its college or univer- 
 sity classes; nor shall any baccalaureate degree 
 
College Administration 49 
 
 in arts, science, philosophy, or literature be con- 
 ferred upon any student who has not completed 
 a college or university course covering four 
 years. The standard of admission to these 
 four-year courses or to advanced classes in these 
 courses shall be subject to the approval of the 
 said council." 
 
 In Michigan an endowment of ^100,000 is 
 required. In New Jersey the State Board of 
 Education is authorized to fix the terms on 
 which institutions less than twenty-five years old 
 may grant degrees. Something like this also 
 exists in Maryland and in Massachusetts. Had 
 such laws been on the statute books of all the 
 states for the past century, our educational his- 
 tory would have been in this respect less discred- 
 itable. 
 
 By court decisions these regulations cannot 
 apply to institutions already in existence, as it 
 is held that a charter is a contract to be annulled 
 only by the consent of both parties. 
 
 In a number of other states, as Iowa and 
 Kansas, either by legislative action or agree- 
 ment among the colleges themselves, the same 
 result has been partially accomplished by 
 classifying the colleges. Class one would in 
 general satisfy the requirements of New York 
 
50 The American College 
 
 mentioned above. As the lists are public prop- 
 erty, it becomes greatly to the advantage of a 
 college in prestige and patronage to be placed 
 in the first class. 
 
 The North Central Association of Colleges 
 and Secondary Schools, whose membership em- 
 braces institutions in sixteen states, has defined 
 the conditions which will accredit universities 
 and colleges. They must require fourteen units 
 even of conditioned students. Four years will 
 be required, of which the first two will continue 
 the work of a high school. College teachers 
 shall have as a minimum a college degree. The 
 endowment shall not be less than $200,000, or, if 
 state aided, its income shall not be less than 
 $100,000. Eight departments shall be sus- 
 tained, with at least one professor each. The 
 building conditions shall be hygienic, the equip- 
 ment ample, and the classes Hmited to thirty 
 students. The teacher shall not have over 
 eighteen hours per week (preferably not over 
 fifteen) and the graduates shall be competent 
 to enter graduate schools of good standing. 
 
 But omitting the sham and feeble schools, of 
 whatever name, there is a distinction gradually 
 becoming more definite between a college and a 
 university. The purpose of a college is to 
 
College Administration 51 
 
 train men in a broad way to assume the duties \ 
 of life. It should train them for service, and in 
 order to accomplish this it must influence their 
 character as well as their intellect. Its standard 
 product is the man with a moral purpose who 
 can also think right. If he has one quality 
 without the other he will be either an inefFec- , 
 tive disturber of existing conditions or an ef- 
 fective, disorganizing force for evil. It prepares 
 for all vocations and for every sphere. It may 
 have its students direct their studies into special 
 lines, but it will see that their knowledge covers 
 things that are worth knowing in many fields. 
 It will give them the physical training upon 
 which they may base their life work, and sur- 
 round them with the religious influences which 
 will give spirit and purpose to their eflPorts. Its 
 ideal is the well-rounded, fully developed man 
 or woman. The university has a different 
 purpose. Its objects are (i) to take the college 
 products at some stage of their development 
 and give them professional training in prepa- 
 ration for a definite vocation, and (2) to engage 
 in scholarly research, and to prepare men for it 
 in the graduate school. 
 
 All the universities maintain colleges as de- 
 partments, but many colleges are detached 
 
52 The American College 
 
 from universities. Johns Hopkins started with 
 the idea of being simply a graduate school with- 
 out a college and without professional schools. 
 It added, however, first, a medical school, then a 
 college. Its original impulse started the move- 
 ment for high-grade instruction in the United 
 States. Harvard, Columbia, and other strong 
 universities, and some not so strong, added 
 graduate departments. Some colleges with no 
 very distinct idea of essential differences between 
 the two classes of institutions tried to do the 
 same, usually to their own loss and that of their 
 students. 
 
 The approximate age of admission to college 
 is 18.5 years, and of graduation 22.5 years. If 
 on top of this is placed three or four years of 
 professional study, and also the necessary hospi- 
 tal or office work, a young person is nearly 
 thirty before he can engage in remunerative 
 practice. He probably makes up the loss by bet- 
 ter preparation and larger returns in after years, 
 but many cannot afford the time or money nec- 
 essary for this extended course of study. 
 
 The remedy for this may lie partly in the 
 secondary schools. It is a well-established fact 
 that the boys of the best schools of Europe have 
 at sixteen the educational standing of the Ameri- 
 
College Administration 53 
 
 can boys at eighteen. This is due to longer 
 terms, longer hours per day, more exacting de- 
 mands, less outside distraction, and probably 
 also to teaching better adapted to encourage the 
 brighter and better students. If this could 
 be brought about here, two years of time could 
 be saved. 
 
 This also explains the fact that many pro- 
 fessional schools of high grade require less than 
 the four college years for matriculation. Some 
 of them claim, especially in medicine, that 
 greater deftness of hand and brain result from 
 beginning their special study at a younger age 
 than twenty-three. Engineering study is not 
 usually based on previous college work, but is 
 carried on as a coordinate hne, with only a 
 high school course as a prerequisite. Divinity 
 students are very generally college graduates, as 
 are also many law students. 
 
 It will be seen, therefore, that the exact re- 
 lations of the college to the university are not 
 well determined in America. The independence 
 of institutions, the slow growth of educational 
 sentiment, the indifference to the best standards 
 in the case of schools which are strugghng with 
 poverty or non-patronage, prevent any very 
 definite limitation of the work done respectively 
 
54 The American College 
 
 by college and university. The forces of de- 
 velopment are, however, having their influence, 
 and an approach to system is beginning to 
 exist in our best institutions. 
 
 The administrative factors concerned in the 
 management of a college are (i) the Governing 
 Board, (2) the President, (3) the faculty, (4) 
 the alumni body, and (5) the undergraduates. 
 
 The Governing Board. This board is usually 
 called the Board of Regents in state institu- 
 tions, and the Board of Trustees in endowed 
 institutions. In the former case they are 
 either elected by the people or appointed by the 
 Governor and confirmed by the Senate of the 
 state. The universities of Illinois and Ne- 
 braska are illustrations of the former method, 
 and Wisconsin, Minnesota, and CaHfornia of 
 the latter. They usually serve a given term, 
 part of them retiring at one time, so that no 
 complete change can be made in any one year. 
 The opportunity is open for bringing in political 
 influences, and in some states the nomination 
 is a party nomination. This sometimes works 
 unfortunately, but as a rule the state univer- 
 sities have been free from the disturbing eflfects 
 of partisanship. 
 
I 
 
 College Administration 55 
 
 The Board of Trustees of an endowed college 
 or university is usually self-perpetuating, some- 
 times chosen for life, sometimes for a term of 
 years. There is an increasing tendency to give 
 the alumni of a college the opportunity to nomi- 
 nate and sometimes appoint a certain propor- 
 tion of the trustees. At Yale there is a board 
 of nineteen, consisting of the President, ten suc- 
 cessors of the original trustees, who form a self- 
 perpetuating body, six alumni members, and 
 the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of the 
 state ex officio. The alumni members are chosen 
 by the graduates for six years, one going out of 
 office each year. Something like this exists 
 at WilHams except that the term is five years. 
 At Dartmouth one half the members, not ex 
 officio^ are nominated by the alumni. At 
 Harvard there are two boards, one of them, 
 however, with mainly advisory powers. The 
 real governing body is **the President and 
 fellows of Harvard College, consisting of seven 
 men who still act under the Charter of 1650, in 
 which no line or word has ever been changed."* 
 
 The board is the final authority in all admin- 
 istrative measures. Acting through a treasurer 
 usually salaried, it cares for the endowment 
 
 *C. W. EUot. 
 
56 The American College 
 
 of the colleges. It regulates the expenditures, 
 appoints all officers and teachers, and, gen- 
 erally through the faculty, may make all rules 
 for the management of the college, its curricu- 
 lum, its discipline, and its policy. In times 
 past this control was very definite and detailed. 
 The professors were often considered simply as 
 employees, hired to perform certain duties to be 
 discharged at the will or whim of the board 
 without other reason given than that "it was 
 for the best interests of the college.'' Of late, 
 however, there is a greatly increased tendency to 
 pass over to the President and the faculty many 
 functions of management, and to consider them 
 partners rather than subordinates in the admin- 
 istration of the college affairs. The board no 
 longer considers or determines directly or in- 
 directly special cases of discipline, minor changes 
 in the curriculum, or the derailed policy of the 
 college in internal arrangements. It determines 
 the salary list, the distribution of the annual 
 income among the teachers and departments, 
 and the establishment of new departments affect- 
 ing fundamentally the character or purposes of 
 the college. 
 
 This change has resulted in more sense of 
 responsibility and more freedom of thinking 
 
College Administration 57 
 
 and speaking on the part of the professors. To 
 what extent a Board of Trustees should permit 
 such freedom is one of the questions of the day. 
 Many colleges have been founded by denomi- 
 nations. In good faith the trustees have ac- 
 cepted the conditions imposed by the founders 
 or donors of funds and have agreed to conduct 
 the institution in such a way as to build these 
 conditions into the life of the college. In this 
 connection it is fair to recognize that changes 
 in theory and purpose are sure to come with 
 the years, and the wishes of an ancient donor 
 should not control in all respects the responsi- 
 bihty of present trustees. The founder him- 
 self would have changed with the times had he 
 lived, and it is not untrue to his trust to make 
 such modifications as his fair judgment would 
 have permitted. But the professor who posi- 
 tively is out of sympathy with the well-under- 
 stood and necessary policy of a college, and who 
 publishes the divergence in a way to interfere 
 with the success of the policy, should not expect 
 to be retained. A board may feel bound in 
 honor to discharge him should there be no 
 easier way. 
 
 But the freedom of speech of professors has 
 been limited in ways that have far less justifi- 
 
58 The American College 
 
 cation than this. There have been cases where 
 one or more competent men have been removed 
 because their political views differed from those 
 of a controlling faction of the board, which 
 wished the places for its own adherents. There 
 have been cases where professors have pub- 
 lished economic or social theories which certain 
 members of the Governing Board considered 
 unsound and dangerous to have instilled into 
 the thought of students. There have been 
 cases where some hoped-for donor demanded to 
 be propitiated by the sacrifice of an offending 
 teacher. There have been cases where a tried 
 and faithful professor has been dismissed in old 
 age purely because a young, unmarried man 
 would do his work more efficiently and for less 
 money. 
 
 The duty of the board in some of these cases 
 may be difficult to perform. As a rule, how- 
 ever, it is safer to err on the side of large freedom 
 for an efficient and experienced member of the 
 teaching force. If a young man with more 
 enthusiasm than judgment, and with views which 
 most sensible people consider morally or so- 
 cially dangerous, unnecessarily and publicly ad- 
 vertises them, it may be quite proper to drop 
 him from the corps. Indeed, such a man should 
 
I 
 
 College Administration 59 
 
 be engaged only for one year or a short term, so 
 that the severance of relations would come natu- 
 rally, and no obligations for retention should rest 
 with either party. 
 
 Then certain men with intellectual or moral 
 weaknesses, which make their teaching or 
 their influence greatly undesirable, when dis- 
 missed have announced themselves martyrs 
 to the cause of "academic freedom." There 
 must be some way to part with an inefficient 
 teacher, and trustees must fairly face the ques- 
 tion, remembering that their duty to the trust 
 is the first consideration, and, while doing no in- 
 justice to any one, they must insure the integ- 
 rity of the college against preventable maladies. 
 
 The best sort of men to constitute a Board 
 of Trustees are business and professional men 
 of good judgment, themselves fairly educated, 
 interested in education, and students of its prob- 
 lems. A board composed of teachers would 
 be unable to handle the financial duties of 
 investment and expenditure, and would prob- 
 ably not meet the administrative questions 
 at the college with open and practical minds. 
 A board of uninterested men of wealth, as too 
 many boards are, is no support to the President, 
 except insofar as they supply him with money. 
 
6o The American College 
 
 Men are often selected for such positions not 
 because they are expected to be efficient in man- 
 aging the college affairs but because their names 
 may advertise the college, or their coffers be at 
 its service. Presidents and faculties are glad to 
 have back of them an inteUigent and judicious 
 body which will understand their policies and 
 their difficulties and is willing to listen to their 
 plans for improvement and expansion. Too 
 often a meeting of the board, which in some 
 cases occurs but once or twice a year, is oc- 
 cupied by routine business only without illumi- 
 nating discussion or a real comprehension of the 
 problems to be solved. 
 
 A small board of from seven to fifteen men of 
 the right sort is usually more effective than a 
 larger one. There is more freedom of discussion 
 and more efficient action. A large board must 
 usually act through an executive committee, 
 and the members not on this committee often 
 lose interest. Much work is involved in the 
 proper performance of such functions. The cor- 
 responding progress of other institutions should 
 be known, as well as the peculiar questions 
 which belong to the patronage, the history, and 
 the personnel of the college. The men should 
 believe in education not simply abstractly, but 
 
I 
 
 College Administration 6l 
 
 because they have either experienced it in large 
 degree or forcibly felt its want and know what 
 it brings to its possessor. They should be gener- 
 ous with their means to meet the financial de- 
 mands of their college, and aid the executive 
 officers in bringing other capital into its service. 
 They should give to it the same intelHgent and 
 sacrificing care that they extend to their own 
 business, and not come to a meeting with a 
 vacant mind or a closed heart. 
 
 The President. The president of a college 
 sustains varying relations and duties to the 
 students, the faculty, the trustees, the alumni, 
 the patrons, and the neighboring pubHc. To 
 these may be added his duties to the college 
 itself insofar as these are not included in any 
 of the above. 
 
 The ideal President will be to the student 
 a paternal adviser and a strict disciplinarian. 
 He will seek and possess their confidence and 
 will win their support for the important meas- 
 ures relating to the welfare of the college. He 
 will quietly and persistently preach his doc- 
 trines, till some day he will probably see, per- 
 haps rather suddenly, pubHc opinion change 
 and accept his views. If this does not come 
 about he had better reconsider his position for 
 
62 The American College 
 
 he is likely to be wrong. The settled, per- 
 manent opinion of the mature and thoughtful 
 members of his undergraduate body is usually 
 right, for the time at least. He will seek to 
 guide rather than force this opinion and will 
 carry it along with him by gentle steps and 
 frank presentations of practical conditions. He 
 will seldom be dogmatic or arbitrary. He 
 may sometimes, until he gets well estabHshed, 
 have to take a firm stand in opposition to a 
 temporary false sentiment or a bad custom. 
 But he will do this in such a way that returning 
 reason will justify his poHcy, and he will be 
 stronger and more respected for his firmness. 
 He will be shrewd enough to meet and often 
 defeat an objectionable student enterprise, and 
 discover oflFenders not by spying or through 
 detective agencies but by open knowledge of 
 student character, collective or individual. He 
 will play the game, if it be so considered, ac- 
 cording to the rules, and win. If he has to 
 face immoral conditions which are playing havoc 
 in his college, he will strive first to remedy 
 them by influence and reason, and will not 
 hesitate to enlist the moral elements in the col- 
 lege to his support. He will not seek infor- 
 mation from the students against an associate. 
 
t 
 
 College Administration 63 
 
 If it comes he will not use it in a discipli- 
 nary way, but he will, with them as allies, fight 
 the battle of decency, withdrawing from the 
 other side the neutral students who have been 
 innocently drawn into wrong associations, and 
 reclaiming such as can be reached by fair in- 
 fluence. But when he finds that there are some 
 who are permanently vicious and irreclaimable, 
 he will not hesitate to insist on their with- 
 drawal, nor can appeals from associates or 
 family move him from this position. His final 
 attitude will be more of sorrow than of anger 
 or triumph, and there will be no bravado or 
 public announcements of future penalties, for col- 
 lege students cannot be frightened into good mo- 
 rality. 
 
 These disturbances will, however, be only 
 temporary and will become less frequent as he 
 remains at his post. His usual attitude will be 
 rather as a wise leader of student opinion into 
 right paths than as an opponent of evil or in- 
 flicter of penalties. He will see dangers as they 
 come, and when inadvertently he receives a boy 
 whose influence is likely to be demoralizing he 
 will reform him or quietly remove him. But he 
 will always have more faith in building up the 
 good than in attacking the evil. He will in time 
 
64 The American College 
 
 create such a healthy college sentiment that, like 
 a healthy body, it will throw ofF diseases itself, 
 even when exposed to them. As his old students 
 return and as their matured thoughts justify 
 his past treatment to them, their influence will 
 be great with the undergraduates, and thus his 
 power and policy will prevail among a company 
 of wilUng followers. 
 
 He will know how to talk to his college as a 
 whole, not too frequently, for much talking is a 
 weariness to hearers and a weakness to himself, 
 but wisely, tactfully, and, if he has it in him, 
 humorously and interestingly. His talks will be 
 based on current events in the college near to the 
 students' hearts or of general interest. He will 
 use these in such a way that the moral will be 
 evident and need not be expressed. He will also 
 talk to them informally in groups or alone, on 
 all sorts of questions, studies, games, politics, 
 great men whom he knows by reputation or ac- 
 quaintance — whatever interests an acquisitive 
 youth. His character will shine through it all, 
 and he will not need to preach to have his influ- 
 ence. 
 
 But sometimes he will preach. When his 
 heart fills with a desire for the good of the Hves 
 for which he has assumed a responsibility and 
 
College Administration 65 
 
 words come often unbidden as he faces them as 
 a group of his friends, he will give them the 
 results of his best thoughts and feelings in a 
 way which will convince them that he is not 
 primarily a taskmaster or disciplinarian, but a 
 man who is giving his life for a cause, and not 
 only for an abstract cause, but for them as 
 individuals; that he has a message for them 
 which he must deHver, and that he feels that 
 the very future of one or more of them lies 
 in the proper use of that hour. When he thus 
 feels he will preach, and his sermon will not be 
 forgotten by some of them. 
 
 The ideal President in his relation to his 
 faculty will be a leader rather than an employer. 
 He or his predecessors will have nominated them 
 to their positions and will have had something 
 to do with fixing their titles, their duties, and 
 their salaries. But he will work with them as 
 an associate for a common end. He will preside 
 at their faculty meetings and he will encourage 
 absolute freedom of honest; opinion on any 
 subject which pertains to the welfare of the 
 college. Their ability to grasp the varied ar- 
 guments and see the viewpoints of each other, 
 to detect fallacies and unworthy motives will 
 be an excellent guide to him in forming opinions 
 
66 The American College 
 
 of their habits of mind and capacity to fill out 
 the full measure of his ideals as to their duties 
 and influences. 
 
 The feeling farthest removed from his mind 
 will be that of jealousy. He would only rejoice 
 if every one were a greater and better man than 
 himself, though this is improbable with the 
 ideal President. But every triumph of theirs 
 in teaching and healthy influence and in re- 
 search and publication will be an occasion for 
 his sincere congratulation. The more and the 
 better their accomplishments the more satis- 
 faction will he take, and perhaps there may 
 creep into his mind a measure of self-satis- 
 faction that he has been able to make such good 
 selections. He will give them every aid possible 
 to secure equipment for their work, and will 
 strive to keep every dollar from less worthy 
 appropriation, that it may increase their salaries. 
 The younger members he will aid by his coun- 
 sel and advice, curbing their freshness, their 
 tendency to make too exacting demands upon 
 their classes, their tendency to beheve that 
 everything needs renovation and that they are 
 to be the renovators. At the same time he will 
 strive to retain their enthusiasm and willing- 
 ness to do hard work. The older men he will 
 
College Administration (y'j 
 
 treat as partners and friends, deferring to their 
 judgment upon all matters relating to their 
 departments, asking freely their advice upon 
 subjects of general concern. If he can secure 
 in return confidence and full cooperation he will 
 be satisfied. But he will never put any pressure 
 upon any one to conceal his honest views by 
 withholding promotion in title or salary. Criti- 
 cism of his policies or methods, if well-meant 
 and well-expressed, will always be welcome. 
 
 The President, no matter how ideal, is in one 
 sense an employee of the Board of Trustees. 
 They have selected him, fixed his salary, some- 
 what defined his duties and powers, and may 
 discharge him. It is better, however, all around 
 that this relation should be kept in the back- 
 ground. Whatever he owes to the board as a 
 whole he does not owe to its individual members, 
 and will not be at their beck and call. His 
 main relation to them will be as a member of 
 their board himself, which he should always be 
 ex officio. He will in time, by his superior 
 knowledge of the situation and its problems, 
 with which he is in daily contact, become the 
 most influential member and can usually direct 
 their policies. They are busy men, with many 
 other duties, and their relation to the college 
 
68 The American College 
 
 does not take precedence of all other relations. 
 They are willing not to interfere with details, 
 and are glad to have the questions upon which 
 they are to legislate brought up to them fully 
 digested, and backed by the authority of one 
 who can give all needed information. Our Pres- 
 ident will have all this at his command, and 
 without him a meeting will be largely pointless. 
 He will thus be able to impress his ideas upon 
 his board and lead them as he does his students 
 and faculty by more exact and extended knowl- 
 edge and more wise suggestions. 
 
 To the graduate body our President usually 
 has no organic relation. Nevertheless, the 
 alumni are so important to the college, so in- 
 terested in its welfare, if he has been there for 
 some years so associated with him in the past, 
 that his relations with them are of the highest 
 consequence. These will be individually the 
 relations of friendship, and as an organization 
 the relations of workers for a common cause. 
 He will act with them and through them. He 
 will meet them at their alumni and class dinners 
 as a welcome guest, and will tell them freely his 
 plans for the future, as well as the present con- 
 ditions. He will ask their aid in money con- 
 tributions and in influence over prospective 
 
College Administration 69 
 
 students of the right sort. He will bring their 
 weight to bear in furthering reforms, or oppos- 
 ing dangerous tendencies, and few boards or 
 students can stand against it. He will make 
 them see that it is possible to have better 
 customs and conditions than those of their own 
 days which they are wont to idealize, as their 
 memories go back to the happy years of under- 
 graduate life. He will carry them along with 
 him in the dangerous days of revolution when 
 it seems necessary somewhat to break with 
 the past and introduce changes to which their 
 thoughts have not been accustomed. He will 
 respond to an invitation and travel far to meet 
 any little group which desires his presence, and 
 cordially cooperate with any movement to erect 
 class or fraternity memorials, and in general 
 stimulate any practical form which their senti- 
 ment of loyalty to the college may take. 
 
 To the patrons our President will be frankly 
 cooperative in all that affects the welfare of 
 their children. Vicious home training is often 
 responsible for college troubles. It is said that 
 Jerry McAuley has stated that in his work 
 among the lower classes of New York City he 
 never knew a man to be permanently reclaimed 
 who did not have a good mother. A college 
 
70 The American College 
 
 may succeed in this, but it is a difficult task. 
 It is only hopeful where President and parent 
 will work together. Fullest information should 
 be sent home of the doings of the students; so 
 frequently that a message will not be assumed 
 to mean an approaching suspension. A plain 
 letter asking parental advice to the boy is often 
 the most effective penalty for a misdemeanor. 
 The boy is lazy or drifting into bad company, 
 or has chosen his studies unwisely, or is too 
 active in athletics or other recreation. A letter 
 or interview asking the parent to sustain the 
 college discipline will often avert trouble and 
 open a new career. Of course the President 
 must know the situation well. It is easy to 
 give wrong impressions. A parent says casu- 
 ally, "How is my boy doing?" It is easiest to 
 say a pleasant word and pass the matter by. 
 But if he can speak intelligently and in detail it 
 is better, and he will never for politeness sake 
 say words of praise unless they are deserved. 
 
 To the community in which he lives our Pres- 
 ident may have no necessary obligations as 
 President. But as a citizen, and one personally 
 better informed and with more of the qualities 
 of leadership than the average citizen, he has 
 large responsibilities. It is much to his college 
 
College Administration 71 
 
 to have around it good sanitary and moral con- 
 ditions, and the President may belong to and, 
 if need be, head associations having these ends 
 in view. He should give to them the wisest aid 
 based on personal knowledge of neighboring con- 
 ditions and what has been elsewhere done under 
 similar circumstances. Such work is now so 
 well organized and studied that there is no 
 need to go at it blindly, and if he has not time 
 to know it as a specialist he should know where 
 to get the specialist advice adapted to the occa- 
 sion. 
 
 Hence he will always have something of 
 community spirit for the sake of the community 
 of which his college is a part. If he can root 
 out a drinking or dissipating resort, if he can 
 influence the creation of proper housing or 
 street conditions, if he can aid poor neighbors 
 in finding employment or otherwise improving 
 their lots he will aid his college and perform a 
 citizen's duty in his locality where it may count 
 for more than if he were in a hall of legislature 
 or the pulpit of a church. Our ideal President 
 will be active and intelligent in the reform 
 work of his neighborhood. 
 
 It may be admitted that such men as we 
 have described our ideal President to be are 
 
72 The American College 
 
 rare in America, indeed non-existent. The 
 possession of all these qualities, the combination 
 of the man and the place, may be ideal only. 
 But there are some that approach it in some 
 points if not in all, and there is by a process of 
 natural selection a reasonable measure of success 
 in coming up to the standard in many of the 
 colleges of the country. 
 
 There is no such official in connection with 
 European schools of any grade as the American 
 college President. The head of an English 
 college has but little authority over his fellows, 
 and his main distinction is to appear on public 
 occasions most impressively. The head of a 
 university is even more a figurehead. The same 
 is true with some modifications in Germany. 
 But in America he may be an autocrat, a wise 
 and benevolent one, it is true, if he means to 
 hold his position, but with powers most ex- 
 tensive and conclusive. His board can dis- 
 place him, but while the college prospers they 
 very seldom do. He selects his associates of the 
 faculty, may fix their salaries and discontinue 
 them. The college life of his students is often 
 in his hands, and the ultimate decision of college 
 policies frequently resides with him. To the 
 public he represents the institution, and some- 
 
College Administration y^ 
 
 times in his own eyes the prosperity of the 
 college is somewhat dependent on his occupation 
 of the post. 
 
 It is a position which possesses many ad- 
 vantages for the fit man. There are not the 
 great financial rewards of the high places in 
 other professions. The average salary of the 
 American college President is perhaps equal to 
 that of a third-rate doctor or lawyer, while the 
 best situations yield only a moderate income. 
 Against this may be placed a life not devoid of 
 distractions and disquietude but full of solid 
 satisfaction and opportunities for service. It 
 brings him into contact with scholarly men 
 who are well worth knowing. Its vacations, 
 while not so free as those of his professors, are a 
 welcome and well-earned relief which come 
 frequently and last long. The recognition of 
 his value by many an old student is often un- 
 stintingly given, and he lives in the grateful 
 memory of many a man whose youth he has 
 shaped. He is able to build his life into the life 
 of an institution, sure that however long it may 
 live and whatever changes may occur much that 
 he has done will be lasting. Is there any better 
 career for a man than to modify for good the 
 life of a college, large or small ? to see it grow in 
 
74 The American College 
 
 his hands from chaos to efficiency, from poverty 
 to wealth, from low ideals to high ? to note the 
 changes as they, unconsciously to most of the 
 students, shape themselves through his quiet 
 influence into accord with his hopes and plans? 
 to feel the increased confidence of patrons and 
 the community and to know that it has an 
 honest and reliable basis of character which 
 fears no revelations of weakness or shams ? to 
 watch the growth of a cooperative, harmonious 
 spirit in all the elements of college interests — 
 is not this joy enough for any one's life? Such 
 a life of serviceableness may well excite the 
 ambitions of a young man conscious of his 
 powers, willing to do a man's work in the world, 
 and to leave behind him an enduring, if modest, 
 monument. 
 
 Perhaps the popular conception of the main 
 presidential duty is to raise money for the 
 college. It is assumed that he is often in the 
 offices of rich men seeking contributions, or 
 attending the bedsides of wealthy women of 
 means dictating bequests in the wills. It is un- 
 doubtedly the duty of most college presidents 
 to add to the financial resources of their insti- 
 tutions. That many have been selected with 
 this object mainly in view is also true. But 
 
College Administration 75 
 
 there are various ways to accomplish this end. 
 Direct solicitation is not always the most pro- 
 ductive. One distinguished President has said 
 that his duty was "to create a vacuum" into 
 which money would naturally flow. To build 
 up an institution worthy of support with certain 
 distinguishing features which commend them- 
 selves to solid men of means is often the surest 
 road to financial aid. To create a scholarly 
 atmosphere, a high standard of morals, a 
 modest, useful body of graduates, will in time 
 secure the approbation of the public and often- 
 times its pecuniary contributions. Endow- 
 ments for colleges, like happiness for individuals, 
 come oftenest as by-products. The man may 
 best succeed who stays most at home and directs 
 his energies to the solution of internal problems. 
 
 The successful President will have a body of 
 alumni who will respond to requests for money. 
 At Yale and some other places they are organ- 
 ized and many of them pledge themselves to 
 give sums, often small but in the aggregate 
 quite large, yearly to the college. 
 
 There have been certain liberal givers to col- 
 leges out of their millions. These have usually 
 coupled their gifts with conditions that others 
 should give larger amounts before making their 
 
y6 The American College 
 
 own available. Two of these — ^Andrew Carnegie 
 and John D. Rockefeller — to save themselves 
 the task of examining all cases have created 
 trusts from which such appropriations may be 
 made, and vast sums have gone into the treas- 
 uries of colleges directly and indirectly as the 
 result of these investigations. The total pri- 
 vate benefactions to the colleges of the United 
 States for 191 2-1 3 was about ^25,cxx),ooo. And 
 this amount, not unusually large of recent years, 
 is largely due to the energy, tact, and efforts of 
 the presidents of the colleges. 
 
 The Faculty. President Hyde of Bowdoin 
 College is reported to have expressed the opinion 
 that if a President should be able to select 
 yearly three or four men for his teaching force 
 of just the right sort he would have earned his 
 salary if he did nothing else. The trustees and 
 President attend to the machinery of the in- 
 stitution, but the teachers do the work for which 
 it exists. They meet the students daily in the 
 lecture rooms. It is their influence and eflFort 
 which determine whether the life of the college 
 is worth while. To bring a class of young 
 people into effective contact with men of learn- 
 ing and character is the whole object of the 
 accumulated endowment, of the buildings and 
 
College Administration 77 
 
 equipment, of the labors of the Board of 
 Trustees, and of the management of the Presi- 
 dent. These agencies are useful insofar as they 
 select strong men for teachers, and supply them 
 with the means to do their work. 
 
 When a young man just fresh from his studies 
 is given a place in a college it is usually with the 
 title of instructor. He is while in this grade 
 appointed a year at a time, and his tenure may 
 terminate at the close of the year. If he re- 
 tains his place he is advanced through the 
 grades usually of assistant professor, associate 
 professor, and professor. The first of these is 
 for a term of years with gradually increasing 
 salary. The professor in the best colleges is 
 assumed to be a permanent official with a fixed 
 maximum compensation for his services. There 
 are, however, in some places, even in the ranks of 
 professors, variations of salary dependent on 
 the qualities of the men who hold the positions. 
 There is something to be said both for and 
 against the plan of making separate arrange- 
 ments with every man. Some professors, by 
 virtue of their teaching or influencing or schol- 
 arly values, are worth more than others. The 
 best of these will often have opportunities 
 to better their conditions at other places. A 
 
yS The American College 
 
 college with a moderate endowment may not be 
 able to afford to raise all professors' salaries to a 
 point which would ward off such competition, 
 but may for a few. One really good man is 
 worth several second-rate ones, and to retain 
 even one or two of large and deserved repu- 
 tation will add to the standing and efficiency of 
 the college. On the other hand, there is a ten- 
 dency to create jealousy and disunion if one man 
 is advanced above another of the same rank. 
 
 The value of a professor is made up of various 
 factors. Capacity to be a good teacher is one 
 of them. Boys often complain, and sometimes 
 justly, that the college teaching is inferior to that 
 which they have found in their schools. Es- 
 pecially in the large colleges it is not infrequently 
 the custom to fill the instructorships with in- 
 experienced young graduates, presumably well- 
 informed as to the subject matter, but quite 
 unable to present it effectively, and to these 
 untried youths is given the freshman class to 
 practise upon. The student never meets the 
 great men whose names and degrees adorn the 
 first pages of the catalogue until he reaches the 
 upper classes. Here the small college, if a good 
 college, has a great advantage. For the full 
 professors teach their subjects usually from the 
 
College Administration 79 
 
 bottom up, and the first contact of the beginner 
 is with the best men of the faculty. A vertical 
 rather than a horizontal division of the cur- 
 riculum is arranged. 
 
 It is also somewhat fashionable among college 
 teachers to look with scorn upon any professional 
 training in the art of teaching. The normal 
 schools of the country are given up to the train- 
 ing of teachers of lower grades, and the college 
 man never gets into them. He does not know 
 the literature of the profession, nor the common 
 methods by which the trained teacher eases the 
 strain of the first years. If he has taught in a 
 secondary school he has learned many things to 
 avoid, and how to do it, and his experience will 
 count for much in the college. If not he 
 naturally tries the methods of his own pro- 
 fessors, from whom he feels that he has received 
 the most, and happy is the young teacher who 
 has been blessed with samples of good teaching 
 in his undergraduate days, though it may be 
 that he will not use them because, like Saul's 
 armor, they have not been proved. 
 
 But in time, if the faculty is in him, he learns 
 to teach. He finds himself in sympathy with 
 his class, and by a method of his own he speaks 
 to their conditions. 
 
8o The American College 
 
 But more than ability to handle his material 
 successfully is demanded of the college professor. 
 He must be something of a scholar. The time 
 when a teacher can study the lesson of his class 
 the day before or the month before and face 
 the young people with an easy mind has passed. 
 He must be prepared for many searching 
 questions, and must have at his command a 
 large amount of literature of the subject and the 
 thoughts of its best exponents. The degree 
 coveted by most college teachers, Doctor of 
 Philosophy, is supposed to give its possessor the 
 necessary knowledge of this sort to start him in 
 his work. From the best institutions it is the 
 result of from three to four years* graduate 
 work, capped by a searching oral examination 
 and a thesis which is supposed to show some 
 original research. Much of the knowledge 
 gained is not available in the classroom, which 
 is indeed the case with much knowledge in any 
 field, but the degree is an assurance of respect- 
 able attainments which will justify its possessor 
 in admitting his ignorance of many things with- 
 out loss of prestige. 
 
 The degree is not, however, an assurance of 
 success in every case. Many men who have 
 more or less failed in teaching as the result of 
 
College Administration 8i 
 
 natural defects hope to remedy their errors by 
 obtaining the Ph. D. of a university, and start- 
 ing again with new eclat. They may often gain 
 the degree, for their deficiencies are not of the 
 sort which prevent them from acquiring the 
 knowledge and experience which will satisfy their 
 examiners. But their old difficulties in manner 
 or method in the classroom still remain, and 
 a poor teacher cannot lift himself into the ranks 
 of the first-rate by the acquisition of knowl- 
 edge and the training of study. To know the early 
 history of the possessor of a doctor's degree, 
 however brilliant his university course may 
 have been, is important in making the selection. 
 His teachers, however honest they may be, are 
 often unable to judge as to his fitness to meet 
 the exigencies of college demands in some in- 
 stitutions. Natural inability to control a class 
 or to be acceptable to it are not always over- 
 come by further study. 
 
 The unfortunate French professor who would 
 vigorously threaten a class to their great merri- 
 ment, "I will kill you," "I will hang you up by 
 the heels," and many another poor fellow whose 
 remarks and actions were equally unwise, ought 
 not to try the hazardous experiment of class 
 teaching. How the old students gloat over 
 
82 The American College 
 
 such weak men and the traps they have fallen 
 into, how they enjoy their efforts to extricate 
 themselves from an unfortunate situation largely 
 of their own making, and how finally they 
 become unpopular and contemned for a rash 
 effort to break the mesh into which they have 
 fallen, would be interesting if it were not so fatal 
 to all usefulness and efficiency. Such men are 
 often excellent scholars and worthy men, but 
 they are in the wrong place. 
 
 !For besides being a teacher and scholar, the 
 ideal college professor must be very much of a 
 man. He will need to possess the manners and 
 feelings of a gentleman, the instincts of a man of 
 the world, the personality of a strong character, 
 and the sympathies and sense of duty of a 
 devotee. He will look on his students not as so 
 much material into whom he will instil the 
 subject-matter of his language or science, but as 
 pieces of humanity with many-sided interests 
 and possibilities for whose best development he 
 is somewhat responsible. His teaching from 
 the narrow point of view of his subject will be 
 more effective if he touch the springs of human 
 nature which lie back of the intellectual oper- 
 ations of his students. Sometimes he may do 
 this by a real interest in their problems which 
 
College Administration 83 
 
 shows itself by social intercourse and intellectual 
 sympathy outside the lecture room. Some- 
 times he will gain the hearing of his class by a 
 ready sense of humor in meeting a difficult 
 situation. Thus a new teacher conquered his 
 way, when the class bombarded his room with 
 coal, by remarking: "I have been asked my 
 salary. I will now tell inquiring friends that it 
 is one thousand dollars, and the coal thrown in." 
 Another man, whose disciplinary duties covered 
 the case of students stealing ("ragging** they 
 called it) shop signs with which to decorate 
 their rooms, suggested to them as a Biblical 
 motto: "An evil and adulterous generation 
 seeketh after a sign.'* Again the story is told 
 of John Stuart Blackie of Edinburgh that having 
 written on his board, "Professor Blackie will 
 meet his classes to-day,'* when he came into the 
 room he found that some ingenious student had 
 rubbed out the first letter of ''classes.*' He 
 immediately went to the board and rubbed out 
 the second letter. 
 
 Then if a man is really worthy of respect from 
 his learning and character his very oddities will 
 aid him. Almost every college has some strong 
 original character whose pecuHarities are talked 
 about whenever his old students get together. 
 
84 The American College 
 
 and whose lessons are the better remembered 
 and himself the more popular for his quaint 
 manner or his abrupt or even arbitrary dis- 
 cipline. 
 
 The small college of all institutions in America 
 is the place where a man of strong character and 
 winning personality will have influence. He 
 can mould not only the mental habits but the 
 aspirations and conduct of the young people 
 under his care in a way which the university 
 cannot or will not do. **The ideals and spirit 
 of this place," said in effect a professor in one 
 of our large universities, "are represented by 
 research. It is unfortunate that we have to do 
 any teaching, for the research professorships 
 are not endowed." 
 
 While the capacity for research is valuable 
 even in a small college, no one worthy of the 
 place would openly confess that his students 
 were a nuisance from which he would like to be 
 delivered. This diflFerence is what sometimes 
 disappoints the student upon his entrance into 
 a large institution. A young man from a small 
 and poorly equipped college in the far West by 
 dint of long saving had secured enough capi- 
 tal to justify his migration to a large eastern 
 university. He came with enthusiastic hopes 
 
College Administration 85 
 
 and dreams which he was sure would be realized. 
 But he happened to meet a group of unam- 
 bitious students, and some professors whose 
 lectures seemed to him to be purely technical 
 and whose attitude was unsympathetic, and at 
 the first Christmas vacation he was met on the 
 way home to his little Dakota college, lest all 
 his high enthusiasms and ideals should be de- 
 stroyed. 
 
 This case is unusual, for there are all sorts of 
 students and all sorts of professors in a large 
 university, and no one need make a mistake in 
 his associates. 
 
 On the other hand, when the small college is 
 manned by self-sufficient, opinionated teachers 
 who claim to be the equal of the best, and 
 deceive their students by the idea that there is 
 nothing in the large associations and vast oppor- 
 tunities of the great higher school, it is the worst 
 place possible for a youth with any ambition. 
 
 Many small colleges do excellent work, often- 
 times the very best, for the four undergraduate 
 years. But here their usefulness usually ends, 
 and in an attempt to retain their students as 
 graduates they sacrifice them to their own mis- 
 placed ambition. It is generally better after a 
 youth has spent four years in the atmosphere 
 
86 The American College 
 
 even of a good small college that he should 
 have the company of the many fellow students 
 in the same line of intellectual endeavor, the 
 inspiration of different lecturers and scholars, 
 and the enlarged opportunities in library and 
 laboratories which he will find in a great uni- 
 versity. 
 
 To the well-prepared man or woman the life 
 of a professor in a small college with reasonable 
 financial resources and a broad-minded head 
 ought to be interesting and satisfying. If he 
 have the spirit of a teacher and control of the 
 situation his contact with the classes should be 
 unalloyed pleasure. For there is nothing much 
 more satisfactory than to feel the response of in- 
 terested students who are anxious to learn and 
 who respect attainments and character. He 
 has also a duty in moulding the general methods 
 and spirit of the college and the type of man- 
 hood therein developed. He builds himself 
 into the life of the place in a way hardly possi- 
 ble elsewhere. Thus a great literary character 
 can have all of his students keen to copy him 
 in his literary spirit and studies, and they may 
 never lose their interest in after life. A mag- 
 netic personality devoted to science will find 
 eager followers who will retain the scientific tem- 
 
College Administration 87 
 
 per and influence of their master. And more 
 than either the manly virtues of the teacher will 
 be reproduced in generations of students who will 
 keep sweet and strong the character of the col- 
 lege and make it known in many communities 
 whither they may go. 
 
 On the other side his associations will be with 
 men of culture and scholarship. He will find 
 some in different fields as associates in the 
 faculty, he will meet with his own colaborers 
 at the annual meetings of literary or scientific 
 men of the learned societies. He will have long 
 vacations free from care and responsibility which 
 he can spend in study and writing. Sometimes 
 he can add to his income by lectures or written 
 papers or books, and money made in this way 
 will seem to him to have a double value. If 
 his college is on the Carnegie Foundation list 
 he can look with some unconcern at his small 
 savings, for he will be sure of something for 
 himself and wife in the days when he becomes 
 superannuated. When he was so unfortunate 
 as to have hoarded a little he probably lost it in 
 an ill-judged speculation, and he finds at last 
 that he is not a financier, and if he ever has more 
 to invest he puts it into trust funds which yield 
 4 per cent, and cause him no concern. 
 
88 The American College 
 
 But the professor has larger duties than to 
 his classes and himself. He is one of the govern- 
 ing forces of his college in dictating its policy 
 and methods. As a member of the faculty he 
 will attend its meetings and take his part in a 
 discussion of the problems which come before 
 this body and in service on the committees. 
 Some professors are almost useless in this sort 
 of work. Their judgment is unreliable and 
 their executive capacity quite limited though 
 they may succeed in the classroom. It usu- 
 ally happens that this general work, by a process 
 of natural selection, drops into the hands of 
 a comparatively small number of men whose 
 personal qualifications make them efficient, and 
 this efficiency should count something in deter- 
 mining their remuneration. In large and com- 
 plicated institutions the labors thus thrown 
 on a few men, especially when the President is 
 of the sort which demands many changes, im- 
 provements, or adjustments, is a serious matter. 
 It is a frequent complaint that certain pro- 
 fessors have to give a large amount of time to 
 general work, yet this is quite as much a part of 
 their necessary duties as carrying a class through 
 the intricacies of a language. 
 
 Faculties usually meet weekly, fortnightly, 
 
College Administration 89 
 
 or monthly to discuss college affairs. The 
 attitude of a professor should show a willing- 
 ness to listen with open mind to the views of 
 others, to take part in the deliberations, and to 
 accept and carry out the decisions of the ma- 
 jority. There was once an old professor who if 
 the discussion was not to his liking would turn 
 his chair toward the wall, to indicate his non- 
 responsibility for the results. He may have 
 been right, but this position can hardly be de- 
 fended in an effective governing body. 
 
 It is usually unfortunate to bring individual 
 matters of discipline before faculty meetings. 
 Perfect justice and consistency of action will not 
 always result. A disposition to leniency will 
 often follow one of severity, dependent on the 
 temper of the body or the effect of an influ- 
 ential speech. Such questions need the bal- 
 anced judgment and impartial hand of a skilled 
 disciplinarian, who will accept the responsibility 
 and is willing to take the consequences. 
 
 The Alumni. It is one of the most pleasant 
 features of the American college that the alumni 
 retain such affectionate loyalty and spirit of 
 cooperation with their alma mater. They re- 
 joice in its success and aid in its development. 
 To have been a member of its student body is 
 
9© The American College 
 
 often sufficient introduction to its members in a 
 strange city. Local as well as general organi- 
 zations are formed for social and helpful pur- 
 poses, and dinners are eaten indefinitely where 
 toasts to its prosperity are freely responded to 
 and plans for its growth are discussed and 
 arranged. Much of this is purely sentimental, 
 but it is rather fine sentiment in many cases. 
 It is not nearly so strong in the case of a second- 
 ary school or a professional school. In the latter 
 case there is something of the feeling that as its 
 purposes are confessedly mercenary, to prepare 
 the man for earning money, there is not the 
 same room for sentiment as when the object of 
 the institution is to build up the man to per- 
 form all the duties of life. 
 
 The faculty usually in the person of the Presi- 
 dent is invited to attend these gatherings, to 
 explain the progress of the college during the 
 preceding year, and stimulate and direct the 
 sentiment into channels profitable to the college. 
 The graduates may be urged to increase the 
 attendance of the college by direct effort, to aid 
 athletics in reputable ways, or to subscribe to 
 any current effort to improve its equipment. 
 Some of these suggestions are usually acceptable 
 and responded to cordially. 
 
College Administration 91 
 
 It is, however, more often in sentimental or 
 recreational lines that alumni aid is secured than 
 in serious discussions regarding the fundamental 
 policy and improvement of the college. The 
 dinners are social occasions where old days are 
 relived, old comradeships reviewed, old jokes 
 revamped, and attempts at witty speeches, often 
 successful, indulged in. If a serious attempt is 
 made to aid the finances, the argument is put 
 forth that "the college" ought to provide for 
 its own intellectual and spiritual needs and that 
 alumni loyalty should show itself in furnishing 
 facilities for games, fraternities, and other enter- 
 prises which affect the fringes of college life. 
 
 This program need not be objected to insofar 
 as the positive side is concerned. These out- 
 side activities need encouragement, and the 
 funds of the college are to this extent relieved. 
 Itoftenhappens, however, that the more serious 
 and scholarly members of the alumni are not 
 interested. The dinners are left to those who 
 enjoy the fellowship and whose undergraduate 
 career may not have been the most successful. 
 If the alumni members as a whole are to become 
 important factors in college management, they 
 must as educated men thoughtfully and im- 
 partially study its more profound and important 
 
92 The American College 
 
 problems as bearing on the higher life of its 
 students, and render their contributions toward 
 their solution. It should be that men with a 
 broad education to start with and with large 
 experience in professional, business, or public 
 life should be able effectively to give to trustees 
 and faculty suggestions which would be highly 
 illuminating. 
 
 Sometimes they have confused the situation. 
 In not a few colleges, by the unsportsmanlike 
 purchase of "ringers" and the encouragement 
 of doubtful methods of play, with the watch- 
 word "anything to win," certain alumni have 
 brought discredit on their college and thwarted 
 the efforts of the faculty to secure honest games 
 and the exaltation of scholarly ideals. They 
 do this on the plea of loyalty, but in the long 
 run it is serious disloyalty. 
 
 Notwithstanding these blemishes the alumni 
 association is capable of much good, and in many 
 cases has a most beneficefit influence. Whether 
 it is wise to introduce into the governing boards 
 any large elements whose responsibility is mainly 
 to the alumni as now organized and conducted, 
 and whose duty may be construed by themselves 
 to consist in being agents for the extra class- 
 room activities of the students may be doubt- 
 
College Administration 93 
 
 ful. But that boards should seek among their 
 alumni many members to fill vacancies is not 
 open to question. 
 
 The function of the students in aiding in the 
 management of the college by self-governing 
 associations and otherwise will be discussed in 
 a following chapter. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE COURSES OF STUDY 
 
 The curriculum of the college is based on the 
 work done in the preparatory schools. How 
 to test this preparation in a way satisfactory 
 to both school and college is one of the un- 
 solved problems of education in the United 
 States. 
 
 Prior to the Civil War, when the conditions 
 of admission to college embraced certain Greek 
 and Latin authors and some arithmetic, and 
 not much else, it was a comparatively simple 
 matter. The instruction was in the hands of 
 private tutors and academies whose obHgations 
 to fulfil the function were so fully acknowledged 
 that no confusion resulted. They prepared for 
 a set of examinations, nearly the same for all 
 colleges, and had no distracting duties. Two 
 elements combined to change these conditions: 
 One was the great increase in the subjects of 
 study which were variously selected by differ- 
 ent colleges and consequently required special 
 
 94 
 
The Courses of Study 95 
 
 classes in any school which prepared for more 
 than one college. The other was the growth 
 of the public high school, which had to meet the 
 circumstances of its patrons and would not be 
 satisfied simply with the college demands. In 
 time the first of these elements became so 
 serious even in schools that made college prep- 
 aration their principal or exclusive task that 
 relief had to be sought. The variations were 
 slight, but the colleges each insistently de- 
 manded its own authors and sometimes text- 
 books, and separate classes had to be formed 
 in the upper school years for each. 
 
 This has been largely remedied by coopera- 
 tion among the colleges. The requirements 
 for admission in English are now by joint action 
 made the same for all high-grade colleges, and 
 the schools can keep their classes intact in this 
 subject. Nor are the variations, while still some- 
 what perplexing, nearly so great as formerly in 
 other subjects. Moreover, by a system of elec- 
 tives, it is possible to satisfy varying demands. 
 Thus it is usually possible to choose one of the 
 several sciences, and while the list is not the 
 same in all colleges, the same science can usually 
 be found on several lists and taught to the 
 whole class. The colleges owe to the schools to 
 
gS The American College 
 
 remove whatever just causes of complaint still 
 exist, and unify their requirements. 
 
 The high school problem is more difficult 
 of solution. The college complains that the 
 education here is superficial, covering many 
 subjects lightly, and not adapted as a basis 
 for serious after study. They generally also 
 insist on more language attainments than many 
 schools wish to give, and refuse to accept sub- 
 jects like bookkeeping, manual training, and 
 domestic science as satisfactory for their pur- 
 poses. These are, however, loudly called for 
 by the patrons of the public school, and with 
 increasing emphasis as time goes on, and the 
 demand is becoming insistent that they shall be 
 admitted to some extent as making up the 
 necessary units required for admission to college. 
 Many youths do not decide to enter college un- 
 til some time during the secondary school course, 
 and their plans are delayed by the omission of 
 languages and the substitution of other subjects 
 which are not on the college lists. The request 
 in its baldest form amounts to this: that any 
 subject seriously taken in school should be ac- 
 cepted at its proper valuation by the college, and 
 that simple graduation from a good high school 
 should be the only prerequisite for entrance. 
 
The Courses of Study 97 
 
 To this the colleges reply that many of these 
 subjects, useful though they are and perfectly 
 proper in their place, have no relation to college 
 subjects, do not prepare for them, and hence 
 cannot be continued. This is claimed not only 
 as to content, but also as to the sort of discipline 
 needed to fit the college student for his work. 
 Especially they say that foreign languages, 
 which are essential to higher education, cannot 
 be so satisfactorily mastered in mature life and 
 should at least have their elements obtained 
 during school days. The knowledge of these 
 languages is not only practically useful, but gives 
 a mastery of words and ideas essential to the 
 scholar, and students of college age have neither 
 the time nor the facile mind to begin them. 
 
 The difference will probably be settled by 
 having two sorts of college or of courses within 
 the large colleges. One sort will adhere to the 
 old idea of education of a general and cultural 
 sort, the other will accept the products of the 
 vocational work of the schools and add to it. 
 Evidently there is need for both in our system, 
 but it should not be expected that all institu- 
 tions of higher learning should strive to satisfy 
 both sets of demands. 
 
 The minimum amount of knowledge pre- 
 
98 The American College 
 
 scribed by the Carnegie Foundation for the 
 colleges which it places on its accepted list is 
 fourteen and one half units, and a unit is de- 
 fined as **A year's study of any subject in a 
 secondary school constituting approximately a 
 quarter of a full year's work." It is assumed 
 that there will be daily recitations four or five 
 times a week for from thirty-six to forty weeks. 
 
 The four years of high school work might 
 therefore cover sixteen units, but one or one and 
 a half are allowed for necessary reviews and 
 examinations. This definition and the result- 
 ing practice have been adopted by many of 
 the educational associations of the country and 
 by nearly all the better colleges, and may be 
 said to express the standard of development of 
 the college beginner. 
 
 The tendency among the colleges is to allow 
 more latitude for the schools in the subjects 
 required for admission. In Stanford Univer- 
 sity and Clark and Reed Colleges nothing is 
 stated, but candidates are given full freedom. 
 Many others allow freedom for a fraction of 
 the list. Still more after requiring certain stud- 
 ies present a list of electives from which se- 
 lections may be made. English, mathematics, 
 a foreign language, and something in history or 
 
The Courses of Study 99 
 
 science are most often prescribed. The High 
 School Association has asked that only two 
 units of modern languages be insisted on, but 
 most good colleges now demand from three to 
 six. The association has also asked that in 
 special cases no foreign language or no mathe- 
 matics be required, but this has been conceded 
 by very few colleges. 
 
 Even in the colleges which are the most rigid, 
 however, there is an increasing tendency to 
 weigh the general preparation of the student as 
 indicated by principals' reports and general im- 
 pressions rather than to insist on every detail of 
 the announced subjects. 
 
 Various methods are in use to test the pro- 
 ficiency of candidates who wish to enter college. 
 
 One is by accepting school certificates and 
 relying on the statements of principals as to the 
 quality of the preparation. This would seem to 
 be the natural way. Education should go on 
 naturally from one grade to another, as it does 
 in Germany, and the school tests at the end of 
 the course should be sufficient to satisfy the col- 
 lege. In Germany, where there is a rigid organ- 
 ization, all those who finish the course in the 
 secondary schools have a nearly similar prepara- 
 tion, and the state supervises the whole system. 
 
lOO The American College 
 
 In America there are state systems of varying 
 efficiency, private and denominational schools 
 held to no responsibility, and in most states no 
 efficient examinations of the schools to test their 
 ability to do the work they profess to do. Hence 
 the indiscriminate acceptance of certificates 
 from all sorts of schools is sure to launch upon 
 college work a host of unprepared freshmen. 
 So anxious, too, are many colleges to increase 
 their numbers that they encourage, rather than 
 otherwise, the reception of such students, and if 
 too weak to do the work they are called special 
 or partial or conditioned students. This re- 
 duces the value of the college teaching to those 
 well prepared and necessitates doing elementary 
 or otherwise inferior work. 
 
 To do away with these disadvantages the most 
 of the states with state universities make a 
 periodic investigation of the high schools, and 
 accept certificates only from the fit ones. Many 
 New England colleges make up from the college 
 records a list of schools from which satisfactory 
 candidates have been received, which list is 
 revised from year to year, and refuse certificates 
 from others. A similar movement is in con- 
 templation in the Middle States. Some colleges 
 which would not claim allegiance to any of 
 
The Coursies of Stu«iy \. ,. > JQJ. 
 
 these groups profess to make their own inquiries 
 and form a list of accredited schools. But with 
 all these safeguards there is no doubt that the 
 certificate system is greatly abused in many 
 places, and is prized as a means of increasing 
 numbers rather than selecting proper material. 
 The fault lies mainly with the colleges for this 
 perversion of a theoretically reasonable plan. 
 
 Both school and college suffer. The school, 
 because one great stimulus to hard work is re- 
 moved when every weakling is readily promoted ; 
 the college, because the classes have such large 
 groups of poor students that the instruction has 
 to be modified to meet their needs. Another year 
 of preparation would be better for both, but this 
 would risk the loss of numbers to some colleges 
 and a competitor might reap the benefit, and so 
 the colleges in this as in other ways underbid 
 each other.* 
 
 Varying certificates are demanded by dif- 
 ferent colleges, and this is a matter which needs 
 
 *"It is still true that the majority of institutions of the United 
 States bearing the name of university or college take every student 
 that they can get, quite regardless of their academic qualifica- 
 tions." — Dr. Pritchett in Carnegie Foundation Report, 1913. 
 
 "A principal declined to certify a boy in a single subject, but 
 added that he was *a good boy' and had spent four years in the 
 school. The boy was accepted by the college without examina- 
 tion and the college was accepted by the Carnegie Foundation." — 
 W. T. Foster, "Administration of the College Curriculum," p. 315. 
 
i^^ lf> v'^l : The Aoierican College 
 
 unifying. But they generally require the grades 
 in each subject, the amount of time given to 
 recitations in each, and an estimate of the can- 
 didate's worth intellectually and morally. Some- 
 times only a diploma of the school is asked for. 
 The other method of admission is by exami- 
 nations conducted by the college. This is 
 applied to such students as cannot bring the 
 proper certificates, and by a few colleges to all 
 applicants. So far as known the only colleges 
 requiring collegiate entrance examinations of all 
 candidates are Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Prince- 
 ton, Bryn Mawr, and Haverford, and two or 
 three technical schools. This method is well 
 organized by the College Entrance Examination 
 Board which has its headquarters in New York. 
 The questions are prepared by committees in 
 the various subjects, composed of teachers, 
 some from the colleges and some from the sec- 
 ondary schools. The answers are inspected by 
 several examiners and are marked according 
 to merit. The results are given to the candidate 
 and also to the college which he aspires to enter. 
 The college can then make its own standard of 
 admission and reject as it thinks proper. Practi- 
 cally all colleges will accept the results in lieu of 
 their own systems of admission. Each candidate 
 
The Courses of Study 103 
 
 must pay $5, which covers the expense. In 
 191 3 there were 4,159 persons examined and 
 examinations were held in 170 places scattered 
 over the United States and 25 in foreign coun- 
 tries. Three fourths of the whole number of 
 candidates came from the New England and the 
 Middle States. The questions being checked by 
 several specialists on each subject are supposed 
 to be free from the peculiar ideas of certain 
 teachers, and to contain only such matter as 
 every boy or girl who had satisfactorily studied 
 the subject should be expected to know. 
 
 There are several weaknesses of the exami- 
 nation system by individual colleges frequently 
 urged. An examiner has distorted or peculiar 
 ideas of the relative importance of special parts 
 of his subject, and these peculiarities are re- 
 flected in his papers. Or if made by different 
 teachers they vary from year to year in diffi- 
 culty. Or an account of special nervousness or 
 temporary ill health of some applicants they do 
 not constitute a fair test of actual knowledge 
 and mental power. Certain experiments cover- 
 ing a number of years seem to indicate that there 
 is not much force in these objections, but that 
 the relative standing of boys at entrance in a 
 college which gives proper consideration to the 
 
I04 The American College 
 
 preparation of its papers agrees very closely with 
 their relative standing at the end of their fresh- 
 men year. With girls there is probably more vari- 
 ation, due to excessive nervousness in some cases. 
 
 But by whatever system the tests are applied, 
 it is within the province of the college to accept 
 unprepared students, and many of them do it. 
 In many recent years the students conditioned 
 on one or more subjects in Harvard, Yale, and 
 Columbia have constituted one half or more of 
 all the freshmen. These conditioned men are 
 expected to carry on their regular work, and, as 
 best they may, also bring up their deficiencies. 
 That is, the students least well-prepared are 
 given extra duties to perform. The result in 
 many cases is slovenly work. 
 
 The fact is that there are many indications 
 that our school system in general has been con- 
 tent to cover much ground without the reason- 
 able thoroughness which a really good education 
 would demand. If one would judge from the 
 results in one college or university, the cause 
 might be assumed to be local or perhaps tem- 
 porary. But all over the country and for many 
 years the same story is told, and it applies to 
 primary, secondary, and collegiate education. 
 
 At West Point and Annapolis boys come up 
 
The Courses of Study 105 
 
 for admission from every congressional district 
 in the United States, and are examined on ele- 
 mentary subjects. Colonel Larned, in the North 
 American Review for September, 1908, tells the 
 story: "The examinations are written and 
 abundant time is given for their completion, 
 even for those of inferior capacity and prepa- 
 ration. Out of 314 candidates who attempted 
 the entrance papers in March, 1908, 265 failed: 
 56 in one subject, 209 in two or more subjects. 
 The average attendance at high schools was 
 three years and eight months. One hundred and 
 thirty-five had college education of one year or 
 more." Of 219 examined at Annapolis in 191 3, 
 46 passed. 
 
 Reports of another test now come to us from 
 England, which tells the same story of lack of 
 thoroughness and capacity for the hard work on 
 uninteresting subjects needed for the higher 
 triumphs of scholarship. 
 
 Every year two students from each state may 
 be at Oxford University as Rhodes scholars. 
 They are selected by something of a competitive 
 test, and if not the best are usually among the 
 better scholars of the colleges. Most of them 
 are graduates. The Oxford tutors in large num- 
 bers have given testimony as to the quality of 
 
lo6 The American College 
 
 the education received by the Afilericans in com- 
 parison with that of their comrades from Eng- 
 land and elsewhere. 
 
 While they do not all agree, a few quotations 
 will show the trend of many of them : 
 
 "A has done well in athletics and is a dis- 
 tinctly popular man in college. Reports about 
 his work are fairly satisfactory. But he is like 
 most of these Americans, rather a dilettante, 
 and does not care very much for the grind." 
 
 **Our American scholars seem inclined to 
 drift from one subject to another, taking a bird's- 
 eye view of each and resting content with that." 
 
 **E is an intelligent man and had no difficulty 
 with the ordinary examinations; but his knowl- 
 edge was vague and he had great difficulty in 
 expressing himself fully or clearly or precisely. 
 That is the general impression I have gathered 
 about the American scholars — that they have a 
 general knowledge, but have been taught noth- 
 ing very precisely." 
 
 "I think that their training in America has 
 encouraged smattering in a large number of sub- 
 jects." 
 
 "They at first find the Oxford system diffi- 
 cult, for the double reason that they are ex- 
 pected to get up a subject thoroughly, and are 
 
The Courses of Study 107 
 
 tested by an examination much longer and more 
 severe than that which they have been accus- 
 tomed to and on an extensive rangeof worksome 
 of which has necessarily been done a considerable 
 time before the examination takes place.'* / 
 
 Making due allowance for any English preju- 
 dices which may exist, these men put their , 
 finger on a weak spot in our schools and colleges 
 alike — the tendency to superficial interest in a\ 
 variety of subjects and to avoid the thorough 
 work and hard grind necessary to know essen- 
 tials well, from the multiplication table to the , 
 grammar of a language or the severe analysis of 
 a science. They lose not only a solid basis of 
 knowledge upon which to build, but they lose 
 also the ability to concentrate for days together 
 upon the heavy details of any study, and so 
 become in the best sense scholars. 
 
 It is with this material undrilled that the 
 college professor finds himself confronted when 
 he first meets his freshman class. Especially 
 in the effective use of the mother tongue in 
 speaking and writing is there gross deficiency, 
 and when a youth grows up in an illiterate 
 family and the school instruction is not very 
 good, all the college efforts to secure a respect- 
 able, not to say elegant, English style are often 
 
io8 The American College 
 
 unsuccessful. English, therefore, constitutes a 
 considerable part of the requirements of a 
 college course. It is often a required subject in 
 some form through all four years, nearly always 
 through one or two. Some colleges which accept 
 certificates in other subjects demand examina- 
 tions in English, thinking thus to bring more 
 pressure on the schools for thorough work. 
 Much of this weakness is due to the peculiar 
 opportunities which America offers to any 
 boy, however lowly in birth or fortune, to find 
 his way into a higher institution of learning. 
 
 The old system of Greek, Latin, and mathe- 
 matics, with a sprinkling of science, philosophy, 
 and literature, made the problem of the college 
 curriculum very simple. But few teachers were 
 needed. With the method of hearing recita- 
 tions to test the fidelity of the study of a text- 
 book a professor could work many hours a week. 
 No expensive laboratories were required. A 
 modest library sufficed. Classrooms were bar- 
 ren of superfluous furniture or decoration. The 
 main machinery was a man, a book, and a boy, 
 with enough of a house to keep out the storms. 
 
 But the enlarging field of knowledge could 
 not be satisfied with these simple conditions. 
 Laboratory science demanded great expendi- 
 
The Courses of Study 109 
 
 tures. Specialists who could keep up with 
 rapidly developing subjects could not teach all 
 day and in a great variety of fields. Settees 
 gave place to chairs, and the honor of a pro- 
 fessorship and the sense of duty performed were 
 no longer sufficient compensation for scholar- 
 ship gained with much expenditure of time and 
 effort. The text-book and a few cyclopedias 
 and dictionaries no longer sufficed to meet the 
 demands of inquiring students and exacting 
 teachers. The lecture system needed many 
 authorities to supplement the notes taken by 
 the hearers, and with the development in the 
 community of the artistic sense the plain build- 
 ings and bare equipment of earlier times gave 
 place to more elaboration and adornment. 
 
 But the most striking change was in the cur- 
 riculum. Every student could not study every- 
 thing which clamored to be admitted into the 
 college course. All were not benefited by the 
 same subjects, nor did their work in life seem to 
 be advanced by the same regimen. Some adap- 
 tation was necessary to satisfy the individual 
 requirements, real or supposed. 
 
 Harvard was probably predisposed toward 
 the free elective system by the pioneer work of 
 George Ticknor and others early in the nine- 
 
no The American College 
 
 teenth century. But reactionary movements 
 were also active, and it was not till the advent 
 of President EHot, in 1869, that real progress in 
 this line was made. His inaugural address 
 strongly recommended it. "The college pro- 
 poses to persevere in its efforts to establish, im- 
 prove, and extend the elective system." This 
 pledge was so fully carried out that in a few 
 years any student any year could select from an 
 extensive list any subject he preferred, limited 
 only by the conflicting positions of subjects on 
 the daily program. 
 
 But Yale was conservative. She could not 
 keep the new subjects out of the catalogue, but 
 she insisted on a large proportion of the tried 
 trio of Greek, Latin, and mathematics in the 
 earlier years, with a limited choice later. The 
 smaller colleges, dependent on whether radi- 
 calism of the Harvard type or conservatism as 
 voiced by Yale was in the ascendant, became 
 divided along the lines of elective or partially 
 non-elective courses. The most of them, partly 
 from the trained conservatism of the faculties, 
 were in accord with the Yale leadership. 
 
 In the discussion which followed, it was said 
 against student election that it produced a 
 desultory choice, from which no real education 
 
The Courses of Study iii 
 
 was obtained, and no available knowledge of 
 any topic was secured; that the ease of exami- 
 nation, or the time of day assigned for the class 
 to meet, or other equally unworthy motives, 
 determined the selection in the case of many 
 aspirants for comfortable lives. For it, it was 
 claimed that it gave the opportunity for each 
 student to have the work best fitted for his 
 temperament or peculiar needs in after life: 
 that the classes composed of those specially 
 drawn to the subject were far more effective and 
 inspiring; and that the necessity to make a 
 study attractive and useful, in order to obtain 
 a good list of the better students, put the profes- 
 sor on his metal and weeded out the dry and in- 
 competent men from the faculty. 
 
 These arguments on both sides had a large 
 share of truth. To obviate the difficulties and 
 retain the advantages the "group system" was 
 designed. The most effective early advocate 
 of this system was Johns Hopkins University. 
 The theory of it was that work should be con- 
 centrated along certain lines leading to definite 
 ends. The election should be of courses rather 
 than single studies. The curriculum was di- 
 vided into courses in classics, in literature, in 
 history, and economics, in preparatory medical 
 
112 The American College 
 
 studies, and so on. Once a course was chosen, 
 there was an obligation to continue it through 
 the years, though some time was allowed for 
 free electives outside the course. The following 
 representative group system is taken from the 
 catalogue of Bryn Mawr College: 
 
 REQUIRED STUDIES 
 
 Greek or French or German, five hours a week for 
 one year, when this subject has not been included 
 in the examination for matriculation. Those stu- 
 dents, however, who wish to omit Greek may sub- 
 stitute for the required course in Greek the minor 
 course in Latin. 
 
 English, five hours a week for two years. 
 
 Philosophy and Psychology, five hours a week for 
 one year. 
 
 Science, five hours a week for one year. 
 
 Science, or History, or Economics and Politics, or 
 Philosophy, or Psychology, or Mathematics, five hours 
 a week for one year. 
 
 Two Major Courses, of five hours a week for two 
 years each, constituting one of the following Groups: 
 any Language with any Language; Latin or Greek 
 with Ancient History; Comparative Literature with 
 English, or German, or Italian, or Spanish; Ancient 
 History with Classical Archaeology; History with 
 Economics and Politics; Modern History with 
 German, or French, or History of Art; Philosophy 
 or Psychology, or Philosophy and Psychology with 
 Greek, or English, or Economics and Politics, or 
 
The Courses of Study 113 
 
 Mathematics, or Physics; Philosophy with Latin 
 or Psychology; Psychology with Biology; Classical 
 Archaeology with Greek, or Latin; History of Art 
 with French, or German, or Italian, or Spanish; 
 Mathematics with Greek, or Latin, or Physics, or 
 Chemistry, or Geology, or Biology; any Science 
 with any Science. 
 
 Free Elective CourseSy amounting to ten hours a 
 week for one year, to be chosen by the student. 
 It should be noted that a single study may be taken 
 as a free elective, without electing the group that 
 includes it, and any courses open as free electives 
 may be chosen without taking the remainder of the 
 minor course of which they may form a part. 
 
 Against the group system it is urged that in 
 many cases it is too inelastic: that there maybe 
 certain students who are compelled by the con- 
 ditions to load themselves with subjects, and 
 omit others, which militate against well-consid- 
 ered and reasonable choices. It is not always 
 found satisfactory in meeting such demands. 
 
 But there seems to be developing out of the 
 chaos of existing curricula certain general prin- 
 ciples. The main one is that a college course 
 of study should have some central feature or 
 features carried on for three or four years, 
 which should leave the student fairly well in- 
 formed and interested in some line of work; 
 
114 The American College 
 
 and subsidiary to this that other more or less 
 related studies in varied departments should 
 broaden his view of the intellectual field in 
 general. "Everything about something, and 
 something about everything," is an exaggerated 
 expression of the idea. Harvard has recently 
 modified its elective system to require both con- 
 centration and distribution in this sense, to avoid 
 narrow specialists on the one hand and discur- 
 sive superficiaHsts on the other. 
 
 Probably more colleges have adopted a plan 
 perhaps not very logical but which seems to 
 meet the requirements of the situation. A large 
 part of the freshmen year is compulsory and 
 consists of English, two foreign languages, and 
 mathematics, with probably a choice within a 
 small group of other studies. As the student 
 advances he finds less requirement and more 
 of election until the senior year, in which the 
 field of election is almost entirely unrestricted. 
 But It is required that in making his election 
 one or more subjects shall be required through 
 two or three upper years of the course. While 
 this is neither the group system nor the system 
 of free electives, it seems to combine certain 
 good features of both and to adapt itself to 
 varying needs without the sacrifice of consist- 
 
The Courses of Study 
 
 115 
 
 ency. The Haverford curriculum may be used 
 as illustrative: 
 
 HOURS 
 PER WEEK 
 
 Freshman Year 
 
 English 3 
 
 fLatin ^ 
 
 3 Greek ( 8 
 
 j French ( 
 
 v-German J 
 Mathematics 
 
 rChemistry 
 
 O-f- Efcing 
 
 v.Government and History 
 Physical Training 2 
 
 Two from 
 
 I 
 
 4 
 
 3 or 4 
 
 Sophomore Year 
 
 English 2 
 
 History and Economics 3 
 
 One of the languages taken in Freshman year . . 4 
 
 Greek 
 
 Latin 
 
 French 
 
 German 
 Two from J Biology L 8 
 
 Physics 
 
 Chemistry 
 
 Mathematics 
 
 Engineering 
 
 Biblical Literature 
 Physical Training 2 
 
 Junior Year 
 
 Psychology and Biblical Literature 3 
 
 Elective courses 12 
 
 Senior Year 
 
 Ethics and Sociology 3 
 
 Elective courses 12 
 
 It is required that for the A. B. degree Latin or Greek shall 
 be studied for two years after entrance, that one three-year 
 sequence and two two-year sequences shall be taken after the 
 freshman year, and that certain other limitations to free choice 
 shall be observed. 
 
ii6 The American College 
 
 It is largely conceded that the boy just from 
 school is often unable to choose wisely. The 
 results are haphazard. It is also probably true 
 that the years of his secondary school life are 
 not sufficient to give him that broad train- 
 ing on which specialization may be profitably 
 based. After he has found his bearings and his 
 bias, has learned something of the professors 
 with whom he is to work, and the subjects 
 which will interest him, and is more near to a 
 determination of the work of his after life, he 
 may well exercise his own judgment, if he is 
 earnest and ambitious, in his choice of courses. 
 Hence the early requirements and the later lib- 
 erty. 
 
 It is a great pleasure and profit to both 
 teacher and student to have no one in the class 
 but such as have chosen the subject as the 
 result of interest in it. If all students could 
 wisely select and were governed by reasonably 
 good motives, such as the character of the sub- 
 ject or the professor, their own interests and 
 qualifications, and preparation for serious duties 
 in after life, the free elective system would be 
 admirable. But some in every college have 
 lower motives and some have not the experi- 
 ence or wisdom necessary to attain the ends 
 
The Courses of Study 117 
 
 for which they strive. Hence some limitations 
 or advice is desirable, and many colleges have 
 advisers in the faculty to whom the schedule 
 must be submitted before it becomes valid. 
 These advisers are also expected to keep in touch 
 with the student's progress and lend him such 
 general encouragement and instruction as may 
 be best for him. 
 
 This has been elaborated more fully than 
 elsewhere in the "Preceptorial System" of 
 Princeton College. 
 
 The preceptors are a body of scholarly men 
 who meet the students in little groups to give 
 advice and test the faithfulness and accuracy 
 of their work. They assist more especially in 
 the "Reading departments, history and poli- 
 tics, art and archaeology, and the languages." 
 Lectures are given in these subjects by the 
 professor, but the main work is a course of read- 
 ing prescribed by him. The preceptor must 
 see that this is done. The student reports to 
 him one or more times a week. These con- 
 ferences are composed of from three to six men, 
 who meet informally. The preceptor ascertains 
 how intelligently the reading of the student has 
 been done, and the student asks the questions 
 which have been suggested by his studies. In 
 
Ii8 The American College 
 
 this free conference a better understanding 
 results with both parties. Unless the preceptor 
 certifies to the character of the student's work 
 he is not permitted to enter the examination. 
 The main purpose of the system is to substi- 
 tute for the tasklike recitation and examination 
 system one which will draw out the spontane- 
 ous and continued interest of the student, and 
 insure his intelligent comprehension of the topic 
 which he professes to consider. Bowdoin College 
 in Maine has adopted a similar system. Its 
 President describes the result. It has been in- 
 troduced in the teaching of "ancient, modern 
 European, and American history; European 
 and American government, and English litera- 
 ture. In these courses the class is divided for 
 the third hour, not into quiz sections of twenty or 
 twenty-five, but into conference sections of five 
 or six. A quiz section is merely a small class, 
 and its aim is to show the instructor what the 
 student does and does not know. A conference 
 is a group of individuals: its aim is to show the 
 students how the instructor thinks and feels 
 about those aspects of the subject in which the 
 individual student can be induced to take a 
 personal interest. It costs double in money, 
 time, and labor; but bears fruit fourfold in 
 
The Courses of Study 119 
 
 vitality, responsibility, and scholarly ambi- 
 tion." 
 
 In the large colleges the subjects most chosen 
 by the students are English, history, economics, 
 modern languages, and philosophy. In the 
 smaller ones, due probably to the influences of 
 the stronger professors, a larger proportion of 
 classics and mathematics is elected. There is a 
 wider field of choice open in the former case, 
 and more required work in the latter. The 
 reading subjects which are most popular may be 
 of highest value if pursued with an earnest 
 desire to probe the matters to the bottom. 
 But they are also susceptible of very super- 
 ficial work. A class may be lectured to, may 
 cursorily read many authorities, and may pass 
 an examination by the aid of general intelli- 
 gence and some imagination without having 
 received much but information from the proc- 
 ess. The students may not have learned to 
 think or reason accurately or to do hard work, 
 except for a little time just before the exami- 
 nations, or to have secured any real training 
 or power. Yet their deficiencies may not be 
 sufficiently serious to justify a failure to be 
 passed. 
 
 The mathematical and linguistic training is 
 
120 The American College 
 
 more definite. A problem in calculus is either 
 solved or not solved, a translation of Tacitus is 
 right or it is wrong, or if there is a mixture of 
 the two the proportion of right or wrong is 
 pretty easily determined. It is not a matter of 
 bluflF on the part of the student or of difficult 
 judgment on the part of the professor. It 
 cannot be gotten except by labor, often long- 
 continued and severe labor. The successful 
 man must reason and think, otherwise he cheats 
 or fails. 
 
 It is not necessary to assume that the subjects 
 are chosen by most college students because they 
 are capable of being handled without serious 
 eflFort. Most students are earnestly desirous 
 to secure from college life the greatest possible 
 benefit for their future duties. The connection 
 between English and success in life is much 
 more direct and obvious than with astronomy 
 or Plato substituted for it. The problems sug- 
 gested by history and government or econom- 
 ics have much closer relation to the interests 
 of the community in which the young man will 
 live than the problems of higher mathematics. 
 He thinks about these things from the environ- 
 ment of his daily life and is drawn to them by 
 the talk of his friends and associates. It is 
 
The Courses of Study 121 
 
 quite proper in many cases that he should 
 make them his major studies. 
 
 Moreover, these subjects involve the sort of 
 judgments one has to make in the problems of 
 everyday living. In mathematics one thinks 
 along in a straight line. The conclusion comes 
 from the premise without a shadow of doubt. 
 There is only one right result under the circum- 
 stances. In the questions that arise in the 
 study of economics or history or government, 
 different minds will' fairly come to different 
 conclusions. There is judgment to be exer- 
 cised, not the inevitable Q. E. D. Life is not 
 all right or all wrong, but it is such a mixture 
 that only a wise man can generally do the best 
 thing. The sort of training which develops 
 this capacity is greatly valuable. 
 
 Then the choices are determined by the fut- 
 ure career intended to be followed. A few 
 men will encourage the idea that the college 
 subjects should be selected as far as possible 
 out of the line of the profession. By this means 
 a broader outlook upon life will be secured. The 
 specialty will come later and the lawyer or 
 doctor will be more of a man because of the 
 solid general training he has received before he 
 narrows himself to the vocational habit and 
 
122 The American College 
 
 limitations. The spirit of the professional 
 school is intense but not broad. The osten- 
 sible purpose is to prepare to make a living, and 
 nothing interests a young man more than this. 
 He talks of its questions at meals and leisure 
 moments to the exclusion of all else. It is a 
 notorious fact that the work of such schools is 
 more severe and purposeful than the average 
 work of an academic college. But the atmos- 
 phere of a college for a reasonably earnest 
 student will develop qualities, both intellectual 
 and social, which he will not find elsewhere. 
 
 The great majority of our college students do 
 not take this view when they choose their 
 electives. With some it is a question of finance, 
 for the schools of medicine and law make such 
 serious demands in the way of preparation that 
 the college time must be utilized. So the med- 
 ical student will elect biology and chemistry 
 and physics; the intending lawyer will want 
 history, economics, and such law as he can find 
 in the curriculum; the minister will want phi- 
 losophy and sociology; the business man will 
 find, as does the lawyer, something which will 
 bear upon his future life in economics and 
 commercial law, and the teacher will follow the 
 studies which he proposes to teach; while all can 
 
The Courses of Study 123 
 
 find in the modern languages material which he 
 may profitably use afterward. 
 
 In such considerations the classics except for 
 a few teachers will find little place, nor will 
 mathematics except for the engineers, and they 
 are usually not in the academic college. Hence 
 the loss in numbers of the devotees of the old 
 studies. As the tendencies of American life 
 have become more utilitarian and less cultural, 
 the sustenance which made the college graduate 
 of a century ago is having its effect upon a small 
 minority only. 
 
 An investigation made in 191 3 in about fif- 
 teen of the better colleges indicates that, roughly 
 speaking, mathematics and science occupy one 
 fourth of the time of students, languages one 
 fourth, and English history, philosophy, econom- 
 ics, sociology, and kindred subjects about one 
 half. 
 
 But more important than the studies cho- 
 sen are the men who teach. There are those 
 whose personality is worth feeling whether they 
 talk of economics or Greek, chemistry or art. 
 They cannot hide it under a mass of scholarly 
 detail, and the student comes from their in- 
 fluence inspired and enriched either intellectu- 
 ally or morally or both by the power of the 
 
124 '^^^ American College 
 
 man behind the subject. It is quite worth 
 while to know the teacher before making an 
 election. In the small colleges there is often 
 one man, and sometimes more, who by virtue 
 of his quality dominates the thinking of the 
 college. His classes are large, whatever the 
 subject. He influences the lives of the young 
 people in a way that is permanent. He be- 
 comes an incarnation of culture or character 
 among generations of graduates, and stories are 
 told and retold, growing better through the 
 years, of his characteristic sayings or doings. 
 Such men are less likely to become heroes in the 
 large colleges, partly because no one man stands 
 out from the others, partly because it is not 
 good form to recognize hero worship. 
 
 The traditional college course is one of four 
 years. In earlier days when boys entered at 
 fifteen or sixteen and the requirements were of 
 the grade of the present high school (except as to 
 subject-matter) the four years' course was quite 
 reasonable. But since the age of entrance has 
 been raised by three years, there have been many 
 demands for shortening the required residence 
 to conform to the three years of the English 
 and German universities. Those students who 
 wish to take a professional course after gradu- 
 
The Courses of Study 125 
 
 ation must wait till they are nearly thirty be- 
 fore much remuneration can be expected. 
 
 There is no doubt that if our secondary schools 
 would make the demands of those of Continen- 
 tal Europe of hours per day and days per year 
 spent at study, had skilled teachers, and some 
 elasticity in rules of promotion for good students, 
 that from one to two years could be saved from 
 the course. Whether the social and athletic 
 education of our boys is worth the loss of time 
 from study will be differently judged. But it 
 would seem quite possible to admit to college 
 at seventeen without lowering the standard. 
 Again it may be possible for the college courses 
 themselves to allow more elasticity, and permit 
 the better students to finish in three years. 
 This has been done in a few colleges. More often 
 a combination with the professional school has 
 been effected by which the first year in medicine 
 counts for the last year in college. This is 
 only possible in universities, and to substitute 
 for the senior year in college with all its glori- 
 ous possibilities a course in elementary medi- 
 cine would require great financial necessity to 
 balance up the loss. 
 
 Hence the colleges are holding to the four 
 years' course, partly because they do not wish 
 
126 The American College 
 
 to lose one fourth of their students, partly be- 
 cause it is the custom, and partly because it 
 ensures to at least a small portion of our people 
 the broadening training of scholarship as a prep- 
 aration for life's duties. 
 
 Is the present college course of study pro- 
 ducing the sort of men America needs ? A de- 
 mocracy needs leadership, and leadership of a 
 peculiar sort. That the graduates fill the high 
 places of government and the professions and 
 all scholarly pursuits far out of proportion to 
 their numbers is proven by many statistics. 
 At the last presidential election the three lead- 
 ing candidates were graduates of Harvard, Yale, 
 and Princeton respectively, and while they do 
 not always monopoHze the high offices in this 
 way, three fourths of the holders of them, since 
 the government was formed, have been taken 
 from the meagre 2 per cent, of college alumni. 
 A man's chance of high preferment in public 
 life is fifty times better if he has back of him a 
 college degree and a college training. By an in- 
 vestigation of the little biographical dictionary 
 of hving American's, "Who's Who in America," 
 it appears that the sort of distinction needed 
 to have one's name printed there is vastly 
 increased by the college experience. College 
 
The Courses of Study 127 
 
 men appear greatly out of proportion to their 
 numbers as compared with others. 
 
 The benefit of such training for doctors, law- 
 yers, and for all intellectual occupations may be 
 easily shown by a similar analysis. But there is 
 some feeling against college graduates in the 
 minds of many business men who have never 
 had the training themselves. It is said that they 
 are too old to learn, and too wise in their own 
 eyes to take advice and be good subordinates at 
 the start. On the other hand, many bankers and 
 business men seek them, and grant them rapid 
 promotion. They show, according to these men, 
 stronger powers to grasp the real meaning of the 
 problems, are more progressive, more gentle- 
 manly, and more able to meet competition and 
 steady the lines of development. There are no 
 large statistics to prove either point, but one 
 gets the idea from many conferences on the sub- 
 ject that in any business where trained mental 
 powers are useful the college man has the same 
 advantage that he has in law or medicine. 
 
 But the simple fact of going through college 
 and receiving a degree will not produce this 
 result in every case. There are plenty of gradu- 
 ates who have found a low level in some small 
 job, who are unfitted for promotion and will 
 
128 The American College 
 
 never receive it. These are they who have 
 either very Hmited intelligence or have wasted 
 their time and depended on coaches to put them 
 through the examinations. It is a just reflection 
 upon the methods of some of our large colleges 
 that such a career is possible. 
 
 A set of statistics gathered with some care at 
 Harvard indicates that success in earning high 
 marks in college and success in after life are 
 closely associated. The class of 1 894 was taken 
 for examination fifteen years after graduation. 
 Three unprejudiced judges were asked to select 
 the "successful" men. They found twenty- 
 three, and these were compared with twenty- 
 three others taken at random from the same 
 class. The former had 196 A's, the highest 
 mark in college, against 56 of the latter. They 
 had 33 D's, the lowest mark for passing, against 
 75 of the latter. 
 
 Another test made by President Lowell 
 showed that the honor men in college also led 
 in the law and medical schools. From these 
 and other indications it is pretty certain that 
 the popular notion that high marks are no in- 
 dication of promise of after success is not correct. 
 The same qualities which bring one bring the 
 other. 
 
I 
 
 The Courses of Study 129 
 
 Insofar as the statistics have a bearing on 
 the sort of studies which precede success, the 
 advantage Hes with the classics. In the case of 
 the class of 1894 test, there were forty-nine of 
 the "successful" men against thirty of the 
 others who had elected Latin, and forty-three 
 against eighteen who had elected Greek. In 
 English and in German there was a slight pre- 
 ponderance, while in the sciences and history 
 the random men outnumbered the others. 
 
 It goes without saying that "success" would 
 not always or usually be measured by a mer- 
 cenary standard. To attain high rank in a 
 profession, or an honorable prominence in pub- 
 lic life, to have written treatises of worth and 
 usefulness, would be some of the elements in the 
 selection. Even here there might be much room 
 for judgment. Many men of private worth and 
 inconspicuous usefulness who had not held office 
 or published books might never find a place in 
 "Who's Who," or receive serious consideration 
 by the judges. But with all the limitations 
 proper to be considered it still remains evi- 
 dent that colleges are making leaders, and that 
 in general good students do better afterward 
 than poor. 
 
 But the question recurs whether the course 
 
130 The American College 
 
 through which our college students pass is the 
 best for those who are to be the leaders in a 
 democracy — whether the leadership is as posi- 
 tive and courageous and intelligent as the time 
 demands. This is partly a moral question and 
 partly an intellectual one. It is amatterin which 
 the course of study is only one of the factors. 
 
 Among the common people of America there 
 have been varying definitions of a democracy. 
 To many it has meant a sort of equality gained 
 by repressing those whose abilities were above 
 the average as well as elevating those who were 
 below. It has been the idea to create intel- 
 lectual, as well as social and financial, equality. 
 In the days of the excessive "democracy" of the 
 JefFersonian era it meant equality of wages. 
 The judge or the senator needing only good 
 common sense should have his dollar a day as 
 the laborer had. Sometimes it meant shabby 
 clothing for those who could afford better, or 
 doing work which cheaper labor might better 
 do. In our schools it has often, we might say 
 generally, meant paying special attention to 
 the lower end of the class, on the assumption 
 that the upper end could take care of itself — 
 and so it could if the passing of examinations 
 were the chief object of education. How many 
 
The Courses of Study 131 
 
 uncommon men have had their ambitions 
 stifled and their aspirations dulled by a strictly 
 graded system in school or college which tied 
 them to the dead weight of mediocrity or 
 stupidity, no one can estimate. They have 
 needed direction and stimulus, but the teacher 
 has been so busy getting the tail end through the 
 tests that there has been no time to enter into 
 the problems of the bright youth. American 
 education succeeds as that of no other nation 
 perhaps has done in creating a strong, self-re- 
 specting, well-informed, independent, common 
 man, with all the virtues and limitations 
 which the common man in mass has. He 
 is urgent to right wrongs by the most di- 
 rect, if not always the wisest, methods. He has 
 prejudices against the unusual which are hard 
 to remove. He fights his battles bravely by 
 methods which are sometimes suggestive of the 
 man "who was so furious against monarchy that 
 he would not wear a crown even to his hat." 
 He is slow to accept the experience of others 
 and tries out problems by means which have 
 often failed in the past, and which more knowl- 
 edge would induce him to discard. Yet because 
 he is sincere and honest and brave and intelli- 
 gent he accomplishes real progress even if some- 
 
132 The American College 
 
 times blundering and spasmodic. If with this 
 prevailing intelligence could be combined a 
 hearty respect for well-trained leadership and 
 the development of systems which would create 
 such leadership the efficiency of American edu- 
 cation could not be questioned. This is the 
 problem of the American college. 
 
 One of the qualities necessary for influence in 
 a democracy is the ability to think effectively 
 and to reason accurately. A college which does 
 not secure this result with its best students is a 
 failure. But the way to learn to think is to 
 think, and a study which does not encourage 
 thinking, but simply memorizing or pleasant 
 reading or intelligent listening, will not make 
 thinkers. They are to be trained by the severe 
 application of their own mental powers to some 
 worthy subject, and not otherwise, and a test of 
 the value of any course will be its efficiency in 
 this way. Interest may come, indeed will come 
 in time, and the value of the study will be in- 
 creased if the student is so absorbed with its con- 
 tent that he gives to it with enthusiasm his most 
 strenuous mental effort. Its value will not be 
 lost, however, even if he has to force his mind to 
 work against strong temptations to the contrary. 
 
 All studies will yield this discipline if prop- 
 
The Courses of Study 133 
 
 erly pursued. With some, however, it may be 
 evaded and still the conditions of the college as 
 to marks satisfied. It is quite possible in any 
 of the reading subjects for an intelligent youth 
 to listen to the lectures, read the authorities, 
 and write somewhat luminously for three hours 
 on the examination questions without any serious 
 thinking, and the temptation to do this and 
 nothing more is even for a creditable student 
 often too strong to be resisted. It is more diffi- 
 cult in mathematics and classics with their more 
 definite requirements and more individual reci- 
 tation tests to have even moderate success in 
 this way. Of course coaching on a text-book 
 or a pony in translation will go some distance, 
 but these fall to the ground in the face of original 
 problems and sight translation. This may be 
 an explanation of the greater "success'' of the 
 classical men in the Harvard test. 
 
 It is of course quite possible for one to think 
 most seriously and effectively over the questions 
 of history, of literature, or of economics. In- 
 deed these subjects when in the hands of a master 
 are distinctly thought-provoking, and dealing as 
 they often do with questions which the man 
 meets very practically in daily Hfe, the thinking 
 is right to the point. They ought always to yield 
 
134 The American College 
 
 this result, and, if it were so, it is probable that 
 the leadership of their students would be more 
 certain and less desultory and experimental. 
 
 The presence in a class of any considerable num- 
 ber of indifferent men is damaging to the disci- 
 pline for leadership. A little group of thoroughly 
 interested and thoughtful men of high intellectual 
 qualities is the best condition for mental develop- 
 ment. The atmosphere will compel right think- 
 ing. Add to this a teacher of accurate knowledge 
 and strong personality, himself a thinker, and 
 the ideal circumstances exist. Perhaps colleges 
 should more than they do group the students 
 according to their abilities and earnestness. The 
 discipline needed for the heavy or careless men 
 is a burden to the others. And the freedom 
 and direction which give spirit and purpose to the 
 bright men are wasted upon those who kre in- 
 competent or unwilling to follow other than the 
 line of least resistance. 
 
 In an effort wholly praiseworthy to aid the 
 common man, the American college forgets 
 the sustenance needed by the uncommon. Yet 
 with the greater elasticity of the elective system 
 and the opportunity to take more, and some- 
 times less, than the normal amount the mis- 
 fortune is lessening with the years. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 STUDENT LIFE 
 
 The question of discipline has always occu- 
 pied a large, and not infrequently the largest, 
 place in college Hfe. It has been the alternate 
 joy and confusion of the student body, a valu- 
 able means of sifting out unfit instructors, and 
 the bane of many a worthy and scholarly man 
 who should not have been sifted out. It has 
 become less and less a problem as the years go 
 by. The colonial colleges, which numbered 
 their students by the scores, had more to trouble 
 them than do the same institutions in these 
 days when they count by the thousands. The 
 change has resulted largely from the abolition 
 of unnecessary rules and the consequent in- 
 crease of community interests between teachers 
 and students. 
 
 The first colleges, being mainly theological, 
 were subjected to the strict regime which in 
 family and school alike was supposed to be nec- 
 essary to the proper development of youth. 
 
 135 
 
136 The American College 
 
 The manner of life assumed to be right by the 
 wise governors was imposed on the young men 
 with the assurance that it was essential to their 
 highest good. Their own view of the matter 
 was the last consideration. Obey or take the 
 penalty was the challenge, and in many cases it 
 was accepted. They were often only boys with 
 the sense of independence and fraternity which 
 a group of boys will always develop when ap- 
 proached in this way. Again and again they 
 would organize and rebel. Almost every form 
 of amusement was forbidden. Every act of the 
 day was strictly prescribed. Harvard prohib- 
 ited 83 different offences.* Yale varied the 
 list somewhat, but was not less rigorous. The 
 professors were clergymen, pious and learned, 
 but often unsympathetic. When the pressure 
 was too great, or when a bold leader appeared, 
 there would be an organized rebellion, ulti- 
 mately stamped out by imprisonments and 
 expulsions. But ordinary life was a series of 
 sporadic attempts to violate rules without detec- 
 tion, and score on the opposite side by mak- 
 ing miserable the life of some poor teacher. On 
 his part he was to be detective and police- 
 man, with the odds against him. Woe be to 
 
 *Josiah Quincy, " History of Harvard University," Vol. I, p. 515. 
 
Student Life 137 
 
 him if he were caught ** sneaking." He had 
 violated the rules of the game and deserved no 
 mercy. The same rules would not, however, 
 prevent the boys from any amount of under- 
 hand actions. 
 
 This tendency took away the influence of the 
 professor. To be on confidential terms with 
 him was a mark of treachery to the class. It 
 was an offer to seek favor from the enemy for 
 an unworthy purpose, called at Harvard "fish- 
 ing" and elsewhere at a later date "boot-Hck- 
 ing." If a youth with a zeal for learning which 
 the teacher was anxious to stimulate would ask 
 questions in private, or even too frequently in 
 the class exercise, he was soon shamed out of it. 
 
 All sorts of disorders were created for the joy 
 of seeing the trouble caused for the professor in 
 charge. It is said that one of the famous inter- 
 national lawyers of the day from Germany was 
 with strange unwisdom put in charge of the 
 campus of a large eastern college at night. His 
 students led him a chase over a pile of bricks, 
 and were overjoyed to hear him as he got up, 
 rubbing his shins, exclaim: "All dis for zwei 
 tausend a year." Fires, cannon balls rolled 
 along the corridors, animals introduced into the 
 residence halls, wagons taken apart at great 
 
138 The American College 
 
 effort and put together again on tops of build- 
 ings, thousands of schemes which the wit of 
 youth could devise, were employed to draw out 
 the unhappy governor and give zest to life as 
 his ofttimes futile efforts to detect the offender 
 were watched with glee. 
 
 This condition in its extreme forms was not 
 chronic in all colleges. A wise and gracious per- 
 sonality would in spite of untoward conditions 
 win the esteem of the students, and a sentiment 
 would grow up that it was mean to take ad- 
 vantage of him. But even this tolerance was 
 not always wholesome. It meant that it would 
 last only so long as he behaved so as to win 
 approval. 
 
 The class was the unit in all matters of dis- 
 cipline. Though not organized as at present, 
 its members were expected to stand together 
 against the authorities and other classes when- 
 ever its rights were threatened. To give in- 
 formation on a fellow was an unforgivable 
 crime; to sustain him by any effective means, 
 even falsehood, a very venial one, lapsing into 
 a virtue. Hence a strong class spirit was de- 
 veloped which often lasted through life. And 
 when its members, grown wise through decades 
 of life in the world at large, grave men holding 
 
Student Life 139 
 
 positions of trust and honor, would get to- 
 gether to talk over their college days, it was 
 more often the exciting struggles against author- 
 ity, successful or otherwise, that excited their 
 enthusiasm than any intellectual efforts or tri- 
 umphs. 
 
 Yet among these old graduates the just 
 governor received his deserts; the weak one was 
 laughed at and forgiven. As Gladstone said of 
 his old Eton master. Dr. Keate, on the occa- 
 sion of a dinner given in his honor years after 
 school-boy days: *'I suppose it to be beyond 
 doubt that of the assembled company the vastly 
 preponderating majority had been under his 
 sway at Eton; and if, when in that condition, 
 any one of them had been asked how he liked 
 Dr. Keate, he would beyond question have 
 answered, 'Keate? Oh, I hate him!' It is 
 equally beyond doubt that to the persons of 
 the whole of them, with the rarest exceptions, it 
 had been the case of Dr. Keate to adminis- 
 ter the salutary correction of the birch. But 
 upon this occasion, when his name had been 
 announced, the scene was indescribable. Queen 
 and Queen Dowager alike vanished into in- 
 significance. The roar of cheering had a begin- 
 ning but never knew satiety nor end. Like 
 
140 The American College 
 
 the huge waves at Biarritz, the floods of cheer- 
 ing continually recommenced; the whole proc- 
 ess was such that we seemed all to have lost 
 our self-possession and to be hardly able to keep 
 our seats. When at length it became pos- 
 sible, Keate rose: that is to say, his head was 
 projected sHghtly over the heads of his two 
 neighbors. He struggled to speak; I will not 
 say I heard every syllable, for there were no 
 syllables; speak he could not. He tried in vain 
 to mumble a word or two, but wholly failed, 
 recommenced the vain struggle, and sat down. 
 It was certainly one of the most moving spec- 
 tacles that in my whole life I have witnessed." 
 
 Unsympathetic conditions, while gradually 
 ameliorating with the years, do not belong to 
 colonial days alone. Even to the present time 
 something of the spirit of antagonism exists in 
 some colleges. Many a man now living can 
 tell stories more vivid than any mentioned here 
 of boyish attempts to get the better of the 
 teachers. 
 
 Several factors have entered into the problem 
 to produce the improvement. One is the rec- 
 ognition by college authorities that all good 
 things are not and cannot be produced by 
 regulations, however plausibly wise these may 
 
Student Life 141 
 
 be. The 83 rules of Harvard and the corre- 
 sponding rules of other colleges regulating 
 student conduct have been practically abolished. 
 As fast as the abolition has taken place there 
 has been a corresponding increase of good feel- 
 ing. Another factor is athletics and other 
 activities which are outlets for student energies 
 and destroy the incentive to rowdy disorder. 
 Another is the elective system, which by en- 
 abling the men to take studies in subjects they 
 enjoy, or under men they appreciate, has drawn 
 the elements of college life into more friendly 
 relations. Another is the increasing age of 
 college students and a consequent more manly 
 view of the sensible student attitude. 
 
 In place of government by rule and penalty 
 has grown up, more or less organized, govern- 
 ment by the students themselves. In many 
 cases a student "Council" or "Senate has 
 been created with elected representatives from 
 the different classes, which takes in hand in- 
 fractions of good order, and applies the nec- 
 essary correctives. The college has passed 
 through the stages of the modern state, first, a 
 despotic, then a Hmited, monarchy, then a re- 
 public. As with the state, the rule of the 
 governed is often spasmodic, sometimes unwise 
 
142 The American College 
 
 and unequal in details, but placing responsibility 
 upon the students themselves. It is therefore 
 highly educative and enlists all parties in a 
 common effort to promote the efficiency of the 
 college and its good name. Under its in- 
 fluence the extremes of folly and rowdyism 
 have largely passed away and a common interest 
 in intellectual and moral problems, shared by 
 officers and students in sensible manly relations 
 to each other, has been created. 
 
 Many such experiments have been failures, 
 due to the hesitation of the faculty to allow 
 sufficient authority, or to the lack of efficient 
 leadership among the students, or to the ex- 
 istence of traditions fanned by alumni influence 
 created by ancient conditions and exaggerated 
 by time. It requires almost if not quite as much 
 wisdom and effort on the part of a President 
 or dean to advise and direct a self-government 
 association as to manage the college without 
 one. The governing board is usually anxious to 
 do right, but is inexperienced and influenced by 
 temporary fluctuations of student opinion. It 
 i§ quite as likely to err on the side of severity as 
 of leniency. Without interfering with its au- 
 tonomy, a wise head will often out of his own 
 experience and judgment extend some welcome 
 
Student Life 143 
 
 words of counsel which will smooth the way and 
 make the decisions practical and acceptable. 
 The system is not intended mainly to ease the 
 burden of executive officers, though it often has 
 this effect, and substitutes for the grind of 
 fighting students the joy of leading them. But 
 the creation of right standards of thinking and 
 Hving and the growth of right relations through- 
 out the college are its sufficient justification. 
 
 The *' honor system" in examinations is 
 one phase of self-government. In many cases 
 it has failed ingloriously. In many it has been 
 a partial success in reducing cheating and creat- 
 ing a standard against it. In some it has been 
 an effective guard against all forms of false- 
 hood and deception. That dishonesty in ex- 
 aminations has been of frequent occurrence, and 
 that it has been condoned by public opinion in 
 the college, are unfortunately true. So strenu- 
 ous has been the proctoring, so open have been 
 the arrangements to outwit the intentional 
 fraud, that it has seemed to some a battle in 
 which all means are fair. In some colleges the 
 ** honor ''was not to cheat to the disadvantage 
 of a fellow. Hence in a contest for a prize or 
 rank where the success of one would involve 
 the loss of another it is easy to create a senti- 
 
144 The American College 
 
 ment for fairness. But to save a poor un- 
 fortunate from failure, to get him above that 
 magic line which makes the difference between 
 promotion and dropping, it often seems rather 
 a kindly act to pass a friendly paper or to look 
 with easy tolerance upon the use of a skilfully 
 prepared abstract containing in compact form 
 the essentials of the subject. 
 
 The simplest form of the honor system is 
 not a "system" at all. There exists between 
 some men and the class such a sympathetic 
 feeling that the room may be left unguarded 
 with perfect safety. Next in order is the trust 
 in the individual honor of the student ex- 
 pressed by a pledge. This may work with 
 some teachers at all times and in a few insti- 
 tutions. But in general there are always a few 
 who, if they can deceive with safety, will not 
 be restrained by honor alone. If they cheat 
 with impunity the number will increase and the 
 plan ultimately break down; and nothing is 
 worse than an "honor system'* which does not 
 work. To the original guilt of deceit is added 
 the feeUng that honor is also a part of the game 
 of fooling the professor. 
 
 The honor systems that have succeeded with 
 some degree of permanence have involved the 
 
Student Life 145 
 
 sure detection and punishment of offenders. 
 The pledge given has usually been that the in- 
 dividual will not receive or furnish ilHcit aid, and 
 will report doubtful cases to a duly organized 
 student committee. If the student body is not 
 willing in good faith to carry out such a pledge, 
 the system usually fails in time. Something 
 more than 100 colleges in the United States 
 have such systems in operation. In a few, as in 
 the University of Virginia, the sentiment is so 
 strong that an offender leaves as soon as detected, 
 for he is adjudged an unfit person to associate 
 with gentlemen. This creates a standard of 
 honesty which associates all forms of lying with 
 vulgarity and easily perpetuates itself. In 
 others, as Princeton, the plan works well, but 
 occasional trials of criminals have to be held by 
 the student court and a penalty adjudged. 
 This penalty may be carried out by the court 
 itself even to the extent of expulsion, or it may 
 be recommended to the dean or faculty. In 
 many other colleges the experiment is too new 
 to determine its final success. It is likely to 
 succeed in the smaller institutions of high-grade, 
 homogeneous students, where public opinion 
 will bring itself to bear effectively and spon- 
 taneously upon the few who bring wrong ideas 
 
146 The American College 
 
 into the college; or in the larger places when 
 firmly established. Any system, honor or proc- 
 toring, which permits cheating not only de- 
 feats its object but demoralizes the college and 
 sends out graduates who will condone fraud in 
 business and politics. The first condition is 
 that it shall be effective. 
 
 The personal morals of college students is 
 a subject difficult to investigate. Wherever 
 young men of college age are associated to- 
 gether, apart from good home influences, there 
 is immorality, probably less in colleges than 
 elsewhere. It is the opinion of those who have 
 rather widely studied the subject that drinking 
 to excess is decreasing, and that the orgies of 
 past generations, which left a considerable por- 
 tion of the participants under the table, have 
 disappeared entirely from most colleges and 
 been reduced in frequency and excess in others. 
 There is enough, however, to make them the 
 proper objects of criticism by the public, and 
 of responsible action by officials. 
 
 In the matter of social vice, more dangerous 
 and more difficult to determine the facts, there 
 is not the same encouraging impression. In 
 many colleges student standards and faculty 
 efforts have largely eradicated it. In others, due 
 
Student Life 147 
 
 to numbers and surroundings, conditions exist 
 which would have been impossible a century 
 ago. 
 
 Size alone will not determine the morality of 
 a college. The worst place is the debauched 
 small college, where vicious standards prevail 
 and where the forces of virtue are not strong 
 enough to organize against them. The best 
 place for a young man to be introduced into is 
 the good small college, where external con- 
 ditions and internal sentiment combine to 
 reduce temptation and to start the new fresh- 
 man from a good home into the habit of re- 
 sponsible right living. The neutral boy is the 
 one by whom to test the goodness of a college 
 in this respect. There are some strong enough 
 to resist everything. There are some bad by 
 antecedent influences whom it is difficult to 
 change. But the great majority of young 
 men respond rather readily to public opinion 
 and the influence of associates. If they find 
 a healthy dislike for dissipation in all forms 
 they naturally in these early days away from 
 home, with the enthusiasm they bring to enter 
 fully into the best of college life, easily ac- 
 cept the prevailing tendencies and never know 
 serious lapses. If on the other hand vice seems 
 
148 The American College 
 
 to be "the thing," and the moral and physi- 
 cal degradation resulting from it is touched 
 upon lightly and as a matter of common oc- 
 currence, many will fall more or less readily 
 into the ways which seem to be sanctioned by 
 prevailing custom, and be injured before they 
 know it. 
 
 Colleges in large cities, or in factory towns 
 where saloons and other dangerous influences 
 exist, have a harder struggle with the agents of 
 vice than when located in country districts. 
 In the large universities there is always a con- 
 siderable number of vicious students. But 
 there are also many others, and the new boy is 
 not bound by the necessities of his surroundings 
 to group himself with any class which he does 
 not choose. If he goes wrong it will be less 
 likely to be known than in the small country 
 college, and if he has a strong inclination toward 
 the right he will find many fellows with whom 
 he will wish to associate, to strengthen his own 
 inclination and influence others for good. 
 
 But as in the matter of ordinary discipline, 
 the remedy for profligacy lies largely in the 
 hands of the students themselves, fortified by 
 the sympathetic advice of wise ofl&cers. This 
 is being brought about largely by the Young 
 
Student Life 149 
 
 Men's Christian Association and kindred so- 
 cieties. The first college Y. M. C. A.'s were 
 started at the University of Michigan and the 
 University of Virginia in 1858. In 1877 the 
 student division of the association was formed. 
 Since then the growth has been rapid, until there 
 are at the present time 773 student associations 
 in schools and colleges, with a total membership 
 of about 80,000. Relatively they are the strong- 
 est and most potent in the smaller denomi- 
 national colleges, where they frequently include 
 a majority of the students. 
 
 During the college year 191 3-14 the total 
 weekly attendance was 31,958; nearly $100,000 
 was raised for missions, and $280,000 for cur- 
 rent expenses. 
 
 They often take up honestly the practical 
 problems of student morals. If they see a 
 freshman starting wrong he does not go without 
 warning. Gambling and other vices are often 
 overcome by private effort before the faculty 
 knows of their existence. Weekly meetings are 
 held for devotional purposes, sometimes ad- 
 dressed by outside speakers, sometimes having 
 free discussions affecting the moral and religious 
 conditions with which they are so well acquainted. 
 They conduct Bible classes within the college 
 
150 The American College 
 
 and in the neighborhood, teach foreigners the 
 English language, and take active part in 
 settlement work and other social activities. 
 In many colleges they own buildings which 
 serve as clubhouses for their membership as 
 well as offices and halls for their lines of work. 
 They usually belong to the International Y. M. 
 
 C. A., though in some cases the clause in this 
 association making a distinction between mem- 
 bers of "evangelical" churches and others is 
 objected to. 
 
 In many places they contribute the main 
 factor in maintaining the religious life of the 
 college. In earlier days this life was considered 
 a matter of imposition. Attendance at church 
 services twice or thrice on Sunday and on 
 chapel exercises on week days was obligatory. 
 This is now often relaxed and the religious 
 work, as the student government, is placed upon 
 the responsible action of the students themselves. 
 The result is scantier attendance on religious 
 exercises but the creation of a certain number 
 of more sincere and earnest Christians. The 
 stimulation of personal religious life and effort 
 finds a great impetus in the summer conferences. 
 
 D. L. Moody in 1886 established the first one at 
 Northfield, when nearly one half the 250 dele- 
 
Student Life 151 
 
 gates volunteered to go out as missionaries. 
 Within ten years the number offering themselves 
 to mission boards had increased fivefold. Since 
 then the ranks of Christian workers in foreign 
 lands have been largely recruited from the 
 colleges, and the work of Christianization has 
 gone on with unprecedented rapidity. Besides, 
 the attenders often came back from these con- 
 ferences to their colleges with a quickening of 
 their own religious spirit and a desire to de- 
 velop the religious interests of their fellows. 
 These intercollegiate gatherings of the Y. M. C. 
 A. and Student Volunteers are one of the strong- 
 est agencies for promoting the best and most 
 sincere interior life. Men have cared so little 
 for adverse opinion in the face of the feeling of 
 the supreme importance of the growth of re- 
 ligious life and character that they have not 
 hesitated to become open and urgent advocates. 
 The college circles have responded and the 
 militant activities of all Christians at home and 
 abroad have been greatly increased. If the 
 colleges are the headquarters of some tendencies 
 which seem antagonistic to religion they are also 
 the homes of its most intelligent and effective 
 advocates. This result comes from direct stu- 
 dent effort, with or without faculty assistance. 
 
152 The American College 
 
 The formation of voluntary literary societies 
 by the students began just before the Revolu- 
 tion. There is not much doubt that some of the 
 fathers of our nation received their impetus in 
 these societies, for we find them about 1770 dis- 
 cussing such subjects as the drinking of tea. 
 They soon came to hold an important part in 
 all colleges. They were literary, debating, and 
 forensic organizations, holding weekly meet- 
 ings, which were largely attended, and often 
 collecting hbraries which sometimes contained 
 as many as 10,000 volumes. All those fortunate 
 enough to obtain membership felt them to be of 
 the highest value in educating the interest in 
 literary and political affairs and in training 
 in speaking and writing. They bloomed for 
 a century, until the time that the task of teach- 
 ing English to all the students was assumed by 
 the college authorities. This instruction, more 
 general but in some cases less efficient, seemed to 
 take away one of the great incentives for the 
 private organizations. 
 
 They were succeeded by the fraternities. 
 The first of these was the Phi Beta Kappa, 
 founded at WilHam and Mary in 1776. A 
 group of patriotic Virginians met together to 
 discuss subjects of current interest both liter- 
 
Student Life 153 
 
 ary and political. Harvard, Yale, and Dart- 
 mouth formed branches before the end of the 
 century, and the intercollegiate idea became 
 established. There are now some eighty colleges 
 having chapters, in the main being graduate 
 rather than undergraduate associations. To 
 form a chapter a college must have high aca- 
 demic standing, and not more that 25 per cent, 
 of the graduating class, to be determined mainly 
 by college rank in studies, is permitted to be 
 elected. Thus it becomes distinctly a scholarly 
 rather than a social organization. 
 
 Other Greek letter societies were not estab- 
 lished till about 1825. These were and are so- 
 cial in their purposes. They flourished greatly as 
 a result of the decay of the literary societies, 
 and now constitute a factor of great consequence 
 in college life. Princeton under the leadership 
 of President McCosh prohibited them, and a 
 number of smaller colleges, objecting to their 
 promises of secrecy and the tendency to form 
 permanent factions, has opposed their entrance. 
 But these are few compared with those who 
 have them. 
 
 For a time they were only social organizations, 
 meeting where they could. But as the members 
 went out into the world and made money, 
 
154 '^^^ American College 
 
 fraternity houses were erected, and they came 
 to be recognized as necessary and often valu- 
 able factors in college life. Where there are 
 not dormitories sufficient to house all the 
 students they supply homes, which are usually 
 better than the boarding-houses of the town, to 
 a limited number. Some of these fraternity 
 houses are expensive and elaborately furnished 
 buildings where the members live in considerable 
 luxury. Others are simple in equipment and 
 standards of living. Where a small college sup- 
 plies halls of residence of satisfactory character 
 for all its students there seems very little excuse 
 for the existence of fraternities, except as social 
 features, and in such instances the nuisance of 
 them probably outweighs the good. 
 
 The fraternities differ greatly in their utility. 
 A few of them are centres of drinking and 
 dissipation. Some are recognized as the head- 
 quarters of the sporting interests, with but little 
 intellectual stimulation. Some take care of 
 their delinquent members, are proud of their 
 scholastic record, and are used by the faculty 
 to maintain college standards. One of their 
 main utilities is to form connecting links with 
 their alumni members, and to act as hosts when 
 these return to the college. Like every other 
 
Student Life 155 
 
 institution not inherently bad, they are useful 
 or the reverse in proportion as they are managed 
 wisely by the college officials. 
 
 Dto McCosh said: "Nearly every professor 
 acknowledges them to be an evil, but is afraid 
 of them." In some cases they have opposed 
 authority, determined college elections, created 
 unhealthy rivalry, and placed the control of 
 influence in the wrong hands. In a few they 
 have succeeded in driving out a President or 
 other officer who has opposed them. But these 
 are usually incidents of bad management, and 
 while it probably is unwise to introduce societies 
 into small colleges where they have not existed, 
 they can be made important agencies for good 
 where college homes are needed and where a con- 
 troUing and sympathetic management uses them 
 for good ends. 
 
 In colleges for women sororities take the 
 place of fraternities, without their objection- 
 able tendencies. 
 
 There are many proofs that fraternity men 
 stand lower in their scholastic rank than non- 
 fraternity men. Whether the fraternity influ- 
 ences produce the result, or whether the sort of 
 men that are elected into the fraternities are the 
 non-studious sort, may be a matter for dispute. 
 
156 The American College 
 
 The University of Michigan for 191 2-1 3 
 published statistics which placed the average 
 marks for the general fraternities at the foot of 
 the list, preceded in order by the athletes, pro- 
 fessional fraternities, men's clubs, entire uni- 
 versity, unorganized students, general sororities, 
 and women's clubs. In the University of Kansas 
 the same general order prevailed, except that 
 the athletes stood lower than fraternity men. 
 Similar stories come from Stanford University, 
 Cornell, and Chicago. A writer* commenting 
 on these figures says: "I have often speculated 
 as to what the Greek letters stand for, but now 
 I know: they stand for poor scholarship." 
 
 But the supreme interest of the college student 
 outside his regular work (and to be candid in 
 many instances this exception cannot be made) 
 is in athletics. This is a matter of recent growth . 
 Of course all young animals have some form of 
 play, but like other young animals the college 
 boy in past years had for his play some game 
 of low organization spontaneously evolved. 
 It was something with which the college au- 
 thorities need have no concern except to prevent 
 it from trenching on the regular duties, an 
 attitude expressed in the motto on the wall of 
 
 * Edwin E. Slosson in The Independent, August 3, 1914. 
 
Student Life 157 
 
 the room of a sporting student, "Study must 
 not be allowed to interfere with the main 
 occupation of this room." There was some 
 recognition that exercise was necessary to 
 health, and the early New England collegian 
 was encouraged to take walks daily. About 
 1825 gymnasiums began to be provided, work in 
 which being of course voluntary. 
 
 But from their English ancestors the Ameri- 
 can youth had inherited not only an inextin- 
 guishable love for sport but also the capacity 
 to organize effectively. He added to these 
 qualities an intense desire to win. And when 
 about the middle of last century he began to be 
 somewhat released from the trammels of official 
 restriction, interest in intercollegiate athletics 
 grew by leaps and bounds. There were many 
 attempts to limit it, some wise and some not. 
 It is still recognized as being subject to many 
 excesses and bad tendencies, which need much 
 curbing and legislation, but it is approached 
 rather on the side of sympathetic direction than 
 of repression. Its function as a means of ex- 
 ercise is often swallowed up in the more exciting 
 spectacle of watching the champion team trying 
 to win a game over a beloved rival. In a college 
 of a thousand students, by this means a few 
 
158 The American College 
 
 score procure physical training as proxies for 
 the rest. 
 
 Football goes back for hundreds of years in 
 English history. It has always been a strenu- 
 ous, sometimes a bloody and bone-breaking, 
 game. At first unorganized, a set of rules 
 gradually emerged, and in England these have 
 bifurcated and two games, Rugby and Asso- 
 ciation, the one with a scrimmage, the other 
 more open, have been developed. The Ameri- | 
 can football game, as played in the fall by 
 nearly all American colleges for men, is an 
 evolution of the Rugby with some national 
 characteristics added. It does not lack vigor 
 or vitality, and recent changes by a central in- 
 tercollegiate board have removed some of the 
 more dangerous features and greatly civilized it. 
 
 President Eliot in his reports made very 
 severe attacks upon the game. It contained 
 ** sources of grave evils: first, the immoderate 
 desire to win intercollegiate games; second, the 
 frequent coUision in masses which makes foul 
 play invisible; third, the profit from violation 
 of the rules; fourth, the misleading assimi- 
 lation of the game to war as regards its strategy 
 and its ethics.*' There is no doubt that the 
 vigorous blows have led to a reduction of these 
 
Student Life 159 
 
 evils, and have placed some of them in a manage- 
 able condition, though they are not by any 
 means all eliminated. 
 
 Nothing will make football a game of good 
 collegiate character except the highest standard 
 of sportsmanship on the part of the players, 
 and these conditions which President Eliot has 
 outlined stand in the way of creating such a 
 standard. The intense desire to win makes too 
 many students indifferent to the means. The 
 paid coach, who is usually employed by the foot- 
 ball association and not by the college, finds his 
 future to depend on winning. The game is 
 something of a melee and the chances of damag- 
 ing an opponent without detection are great. 
 Players are taught how to disobey the rules 
 when the officials of the game are not on hand. 
 Fellow collegians and alumni will often applaud 
 a piece of trickery which succeeds. In some 
 colleges the absence of any high standard is 
 a matter of notoriety. 
 
 When the President has tried to interfere it 
 has sometimes been a question whether he or 
 the coach, who may have as large a salary, is the 
 more influential. College officials are not always 
 free from blame. Besides sympathizing with 
 their students, which is a proper feeling, they 
 
i6o The American College 
 
 allow their intellectual requirements to be 
 varied in the interest of athletics. Great foot- 
 ball players have boasted that their colleges 
 could not afford to spare them, no matter how 
 low their student rank, and the result has seemed 
 to justify their position. 
 
 These extreme conditions are mending, but 
 there remain other evils. The payment of 
 players, usually by the alumni, sometimes 
 from the great funds which the gate receipts 
 produce, goes on in various veiled ways, so that 
 teams have been sometimes hired gladiators. 
 So much light has been thrown on this matter 
 of late that the better colleges are not now using 
 their scholarships in this way. But it is nearly 
 always the case that a promising school athlete 
 has no difficulty in reducing his college expenses 
 to zero or better by shrewdly taking advantage 
 of competitive oflFers. 
 
 Other counts can be urged against these foot- 
 ball games — the distraction from study by many 
 in the college lasting for days or weeks, the 
 betting, the celebrations, often resulting in 
 dissipation after the game is over, the possibility 
 of serious injury which, however, is less than 
 formerly. 
 
 After making this serious catalogue one 
 
Student Life i6i 
 
 wonders whether anything can be said on the 
 other side, and whether the verdict should not be 
 immediately rendered against permitting the 
 game. The fact that only one college of first 
 rank (Columbia) has taken this position seems 
 to indicate some belief in the utility of the inter- 
 collegiate game of football in spite of its in- 
 herent evils. 
 
 No other game arouses such a spirit of college 
 unity and loyalty. To have every under- 
 graduate excitedly interested in the success of 
 his team is worth something for the rest of 
 the year. If the faculty is properly sympa- 
 thetic with the students it creates a feeUng 
 among the elements of the institutional life 
 which makes all sorts of wholesome influences 
 possible. The game itself teaches in the highest 
 degree the sacrifice of self to the general cause. 
 "The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the 
 strength of the wolf is the pack." The player 
 who strives to show his own prowess at the 
 expense of the team is soon cast off. It teaches 
 quick decisions, brave actions, and subordina- 
 tion to authority. On the whole, it inculcates 
 not only in the players, but also in the college at 
 large the importance of physical fitness and 
 vigor and the method of producing them, and is 
 
i62 The American College 
 
 a strong argument against weakening sensual 
 habits. If played in the proper spirit, it induces 
 reciprocal methods in an opposing team and 
 strengthens character by resisting temptation. 
 There are colleges which even a rough profes- 
 sional team will not take advantage of for very 
 shame's sake. 
 
 A few more years of vigorous striving for 
 gentlemanly sport, without partiality and with- 
 out hypocrisy, will make of our American game 
 a strong agency for good in college life. 
 
 Baseball is the great spring game. As a game 
 it possesses many advantages. It is open, fraud 
 is easily detected, it is active while it lasts, and 
 can be completed in an hour or two. The same 
 spirit of professionalism often invades it, the 
 same improper inducements to players, and 
 something of the same elements of betting and 
 rowdyism as in football. Some colleges permit 
 long tours of a week or more during term time, 
 playing each day. The benefit of this is more 
 than questionable. The habit, too, of ** rattling" 
 the players by remarks on the side lines at criti- 
 cal moments can hardly be considered sports- 
 manlike. 
 
 Track and field athletics constitute the third 
 most common intercollegiate event. These are 
 
Student Life 163 
 
 open competitions of individual strength and 
 agility in running, jumping, and throwing heavy 
 weights, each event being independent of the 
 others. Team work is reduced to a minimum, 
 but severe training is necessary to the best re- 
 sults. 
 
 The American Athletic Association is en- 
 deavoring to cut professionalism out of com- 
 petitive college athletics. It is very easy to 
 rule that no professional shall be eligible, but 
 the difficulty consists, first, in the definition of 
 professional, and, secondly, in enforcing the 
 rule. At one time it was decided that any 
 youth who had ever contended for a money 
 reward should be forever ineligible. But when 
 a small boy who ran a race with a fellow for a 
 prize in a private contest was adjudged to be 
 permanently disqualified for any college ath- 
 letics, the folly of the rule became evident. 
 Now there is a contest as to whether a man who 
 to earn money plays summer baseball should be 
 eligible, and the association has decided ad- 
 versely. The decision is said to be evaded by 
 many colleges. Some advocate a certain high 
 standing in class as the only necessary con- 
 dition of eligibility, and this would certainly 
 greatly reduce the difficulty. 
 
164 The American College 
 
 All these eligibility rules are really reflections 
 on the honesty and good faith of the colleges. 
 If they were really sincere in their effort, each 
 one to keep itself perfectly clean, no such con- 
 certed effort would be necessary. Each one 
 would see to it that no one entered as a student 
 who came primarily to play ball and who did not 
 maintain a creditable standing. There would 
 be no payments, open or secret, to athletes as 
 athletes, and if a college practised a lower stand- 
 ard, the refusal to treat it as a fair competitor 
 would be sufficient penalty. 
 
 There are a number of minor games which do 
 not usually aspire to be intercollegiate. Asso- 
 ciation football (soccer) has many merits and can 
 be played through the winter months. Hockey 
 is a popular game with both sexes. Many a 
 student finds in tennis the sort of exercise and 
 recreation he needs. Golf has a few devotees. 
 Cricket is a college game around Philadelphia, 
 and all colleges have their gymnasiums. • 
 
 The effort is increasingly made to have every 
 man and woman interested in some form of 
 physical exercise. This is more important 
 than cultivating the powers of a few to their 
 highest development. The college which can 
 accomplish this result will establish an era in 
 
Student Life 165 
 
 physical education; for the stress of modern 
 business and the professions makes it highly 
 important that every man as he leaves college 
 should have the habit and the spirit of sport 
 well ingrained in his being. It is well, therefore, 
 that some sport which can be continued in after 
 life should be taken up in college. If one gets 
 to feel the thrill of outdoor exercise he will find it 
 difficult to forget it, and in some form, golf, 
 tennis, fishing, shooting, camping, the leaven 
 will work. To create this and to build a good 
 basis of health are the great objects of college 
 athletics. 
 
 There is lacking the element of enjoyment in 
 the most strenuous college games. Very few 
 men during the football season play except to 
 aid the team to victory. They do not go out 
 in the field and form impromptu games for 
 pure pleasure. They do for tennis and some of 
 the so-called ** minor sports," but play is now 
 generally such serious work that the demands of 
 real recreation are hardly met as in the less- 
 organized and more spontaneous sports of the 
 past. 
 
 College journalism is another extra-class 
 activity which from the necessities of the case 
 embraces but a small number of students. 
 
i66 The American College 
 
 While one detachment suppHes the literary 
 matter, another by various devices persuades 
 tradesmen to support the effort financially by 
 their advertisements. They probably promise 
 patronage which they cannot control, and hold 
 out inducements which are never realized. 
 Like many another journahstic eflFort, these ad- 
 vertisements sustain the paper and the enter- 
 prising student secures his commission. 
 
 The practice of issuing student papers began 
 early in the last century. At first the contents 
 were literary efforts of the students both in 
 prose and verse. A few of the latter, those of 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes for instance, have 
 achieved some permanent fame. The literary 
 magazine still exists, cultivating the powers of 
 the student by printing serious essays, verse, 
 and short stories. Such efforts usually appear 
 monthly . Of recent years weekly, and in some 
 of the large colleges daily, publications, mainly 
 of news, have been plentiful. A few years ago 
 these often contained much advice as to the way 
 the officials should conduct the college, coupled 
 with rather ill-considered faultfinding. In 
 such cases they were of doubtful benefit, but 
 of late the spirit of loyalty, existing in all really 
 honest colleges, and a greater unity of feeling 
 
Student Life 167 
 
 between officers and students have developed 
 a better style of journalism, and our best stu- 
 dent papers. are creditable and helpful records 
 of public opinion and events. 
 
 There are also musical and dramatic clubs, 
 intercollegiate debates and orations, and many 
 minor forms of activities which would seem to 
 provide all necessary outlet for student in- 
 itiation and enterprise. Many colleges have 
 too many. If the numbers are small, those 
 students with considerable executive or literary 
 abihty find themselves overcrowded with work 
 which does not count toward a degree, and 
 studies suffer. Though sometimes educative 
 in a sense, outside work is also distractive and 
 scrappy in its nature and often needs to be 
 curbed by faculty action. 
 
 The class, notwithstanding the invasion of its 
 unity by the elective system in some places, 
 still remains the most potent and interesting 
 organization within the college. Its members 
 enter the college together, submit together to 
 the same process of adjustment to the new Hfe, 
 feel together the growing sense of responsibility 
 for college conditions and the maintenance of 
 ancient customs, and leave with a warm feeling 
 of affection for each other and their alma mater. 
 
i68 The American College 
 
 The excuse given for hazing has often been 
 that it creates this sentiment of class loyalty 
 and fraternity. It is also assumed that it brings 
 the self-important boy into such relations with 
 his fellows that it is possible comfortably to live 
 with him. That these results follow it would be 
 idle to deny. That they could not be brought 
 about by decent means cannot be maintained. 
 Indeed since hazing has been abolished at the 
 most reputable colleges there seems to be no 
 lack of class fraternity or of proper freshmen 
 modesty. The objections to the custom are 
 that it is Hkely to lapse into barbarity, and that 
 it is even worse for the persecuting sophomores 
 than for the persecuted freshmen. While tricks 
 on unacclimated freshmen are always likely, 
 hazing, as understood a score of years ago, has 
 no leg to stand upon and is sure to disappear. 
 Already its existence in serious forms writes 
 down a college in public estimation. 
 
 It is a very old custom, perhaps a survival of 
 the EngHsh fagging. In the colonial colleges it 
 was an organized and recognized system. The 
 freshmen were required to go on errands for all 
 the older classes and were subjected to a state 
 almost of servility. When the officials of the 
 colleges abolished the rules the sophomores 
 
Student Life 169 
 
 remade them, and tradition exaggerated them. 
 Had they remained in charge of the senior class, 
 many of their evils would have disappeared. 
 But in the hands of irresponsible youths only 
 one year older than their victims, the custom 
 degenerated into rebeUious abuse by a group of 
 sophomores, with or without cause, of individ- 
 ual freshmen. The "rushes" and other open- 
 class contests, however objectionable from other 
 points of view, can hardly be considered haz- 
 ing. 
 
 These voluntary student efforts constitute no 
 small part of the valuable training which college 
 life brings. The college is a world in minia- 
 ture. Especially the dormitory college de- 
 velops the qualities which the successful man 
 needs. Our youth fresh from the restrictions 
 and triumphs of school, or from the guarded 
 care of home, finds himself launched upon new 
 conditions with Hberties to which he has been 
 unused and with problems which he has never 
 attempted to solve. He tries the experiment 
 of housekeeping either alone or with one com- 
 panion, with other experiments of similar 
 character going on around him. He must 
 learn the valuable art of getting along with his 
 fellows or suffer. He is plunged immediately 
 
170 The American College 
 
 into the politics of his class. The President 
 and other officers are to be elected. The choice 
 often falls upon some important looking member 
 whose scholastic or athletic reputation has pre- 
 ceded him. In a little time he may find that this 
 reputation is illusory, and that the quahties of 
 real leadership reside with some modest boy 
 hitherto unknown. This is but the beginning of 
 the poHtical career upon which he is entering. 
 As he advances from one grade to another 
 many matters have to be decided. His vote is 
 solicited in many directions, for or against 
 new issues connected with hazing, with faculty 
 relations individually or as a whole, with re- 
 lations 'to bad tendencies growing up in the 
 student body, with athletic questions collegiate 
 and intercollegiate, with the problems of self- 
 government, with problems of the dormitory or 
 dining-hall. He may decide either because of 
 greater interest in his regular studies or because 
 he is not an inbred politician to take no part in 
 these matters, and to go on his quiet way without 
 responsibility. If so, he is following the ex- 
 ample of hundreds of his seniors in the larger 
 world of politics outside the college. But more 
 likely he takes a place as follower, or, if the 
 qualities develop, as leader. He may become 
 
Student Life 171 
 
 intensely interested in carrying through his 
 plans. He finds how best to win adherents, 
 what arguments appeal, how much and what 
 kind of a demagogue he must be to succeed. 
 He takes office when he has the chance, and the 
 problems become more real and definite. He 
 is conscious when he is through college that the 
 whole process has brought to light and efficiency 
 certain qualities, not scholastic, which will be 
 a great aid to him when adapted to the questions 
 of after Hfe. 
 
 Besides, he has formed friendships. Four 
 years of such intimacy, especially with his own 
 class in a small college, has created relations 
 such as are rarely formed outside one's own 
 family. He knows his felfows, their strength 
 and weaknesses, as it is given few others to 
 know. He learns to appreciate the qualities 
 that are solid, has no mercy for show or boast- 
 fulness, and selects a few men that he wishes to 
 stand by through life. Confidences are ex- 
 changed which are held sacred, and when the 
 end of it comes at commencement there is, with 
 something of a sense of triumph at being enrolled 
 as a graduate, a very real sadness when the 
 cessation of these close intimacies is looked 
 forward to. But the friendships do not all end 
 
172 The American College 
 
 with graduation. "He was in my class at 
 college'' is the all-sufficient explanation for the 
 very near relations which two men often feel 
 when their ways have greatly diverged in their 
 professions or business. 
 
 One hears many instances of the utihty of 
 these college relationships. A man found a mem- 
 ber of his class in desperate financial straits in 
 a mining camp in the far West. A telegram 
 to the class secretary relieved the situation. 
 Another was about to lose a situation due to 
 false charges against him which he could not 
 explain. His class had sufficient influence to 
 clear up the question. For another honest but 
 financially inefficient man was found a busi- 
 ness suited to his needs. Others have been 
 tided through the stress of business emergencies. 
 Many have been estabhshed socially by class- 
 mates, and not a few have found wives or hus- 
 bands following college acquaintanceship. 
 
 Thus sentiment and interest alike cause most 
 men and women to look back to college days as 
 the most happy and the most profitable of their 
 Hves. Those who will confess a regret that they 
 have been to college are very few, and usually 
 speak their own condemnation. 
 
 But these by-products come not always by 
 
Student Life 173 
 
 direct seeking. They come most often without 
 premeditation, as the result of living out a true 
 and honest Hfe in the daily performance of duty, 
 duty to studies, to classmates, to officers, to the 
 college. 
 
 The boy who secures them enters as a modest 
 freshman, keeping himself in the background, 
 but wilHng to take his share in the doing and 
 suffering belonging to his position. He re- 
 spects the customs which tradition has enacted 
 as proper for his observance. He studies hard 
 and regularly. He plays the games as best he 
 can, and when he cannot play he cheers on 
 college players. As soon as possible he strives 
 to make himself a loyal collegian, faithful to the 
 best type he sees around him. He keeps him- 
 self out of drinking and dissipation, and has a 
 conscience to do his duty and resist temptation. 
 
 As he gets older he takes without seeking 
 responsibihty. When offices come to him he 
 accepts them. He helps a fellow that is going 
 astray, and when evil tendencies seem to be 
 getting a foothold he does not pass by on the 
 other side. He stands out against them and 
 risks his popularity, though he may not know 
 that, if he is wise, not only popularity but re- 
 spect will come to him afterward. He finds 
 
174 The American College 
 
 among his instructors men whose advice and aid 
 he needs and is not afraid to seek them. He 
 finds among his fellows quahties which he can 
 trust and to these gives of his best. Growing 
 all the time in morals, scholarship, and influence, 
 taking a part, and a wise and strong part, in every 
 college movement for which he is fitted, enjoy- 
 ing all that is best in college sports and asso- 
 ciations, he comes to his graduation day a manly, 
 loyal, sensible supporter of his college and its 
 members, with a store of mental and social 
 training which will always serve him well. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE FUNCTION OF THE COLLEGE 
 
 There are in the United States about i,ocx) 
 institutions calling themselves universities or 
 colleges. Many of these are trifling affairs 
 with no serious claim to either title. In 191 3 
 the Commissioner of Education in Washington 
 reported 596 corporations from which he re- 
 ceived reports. This list doubtless is large 
 enough, for he excluded only those which had 
 fewer than twenty students of college grade, and 
 not all of these, for about thirty of this sort 
 previously listed are retained. He also ex- 
 cluded those not authorized to give degrees, 
 those without definite standards of admission, 
 those giving less than two years of college work. 
 The lack of the significance of the term College 
 or University is shown by the faCt that a number 
 of "universities** have been transferred to the 
 list of secondary schools. 
 
 A still further reduction in the number is 
 made in a pamphlet issued by the Commissioner 
 
 ^7S 
 
176 The American College 
 
 in 191 1 classifying the colleges and universities 
 with reference to the value of their Ao B. de- 
 grees. Here 340 institutions are listed. Of 
 these, 50 belong to Class I, which stands for 
 those whose graduates are accepted in first- 
 class universities in full standing for the degree 
 of Master of Arts in one year; about 160 to 
 Class II, whose graduates must take some 
 additional work to qualify them for this stand- 
 ing; 84 of Class III, which are one year behind 
 Class I; and 40 to Class IV, which are two years 
 behind. Omitting Class IV, we may assume 
 that there are about 300 institutions calling 
 themselves variously Colleges and Universities 
 which are doing creditable collegiate work. In 
 Class I, 30 of the 50 are the large universites, 
 endowed or state, leaving but 20 colleges proper 
 in the list. 
 
 The Carnegie Foundation, in conjunction 
 with the Association of American Universities, 
 has had drawn up for the information of the 
 German Government a list of colleges whose 
 degrees are recommended as the practical 
 equivalent of the bachelor's degree of the higher 
 universities of the country, and will be accepted 
 as such in Germany as a basis for university 
 work. The list includes 118 names. 
 
The Function of the College 177 
 
 The U. S. Commissioner has suggested that of 
 the 596 colleges reporting to him about 250 
 would be better as "Junior Colleges" — that is, 
 as colleges carrying their students only through 
 the sophomore year and then encouraging their 
 transfer to a university of large resources. 
 "The universities," he says, "are overcrowded 
 with young men and women, many of them 
 boys and girls, unable to do satisfactory work 
 under the conditions which they find. They 
 are taught by instructors and assistants of less 
 ability and experience than those who instruct 
 the higher classes. Many lose their inspiration, 
 become discouraged, and quit. The records 
 show that about 60 per cent, of those who enter 
 the freshman class fall out before the beginning 
 of the junior year." 
 
 The suggestion is therefore based on the two 
 ideas that the small college is the best place for 
 immature youth, and that the first years in the 
 university are often poorly taught. There is 
 truth in both of these statements, but there is 
 no power to require the small colleges to cut off 
 their upper years, and very few will do it volun- 
 tarily. 
 
 In 191 3 there were in the collegiate depart- 
 ments of the 596 institutions recognized by the 
 
178 The American College 
 
 Commissioner about 200,000 students. The in- 
 come of these institutions, including all depart- 
 ments, from tuition fees amounted to about 
 $20,000,000, from productive funds, $ 1 6,500,000, 
 from United States, state or city appropria- 
 tions, $30,000,000, from private benefactions, 
 $24,000,000; in all, $109,590,855. They had 
 in their libraries 17,000,000 volumes worth 
 over $25,000,000, and their productive funds 
 aggregated nearly $400,000,000. These figures 
 inadequately show the large proportions which 
 higher education has assumed in the life of the 
 nation. But how inchoate is its condition! 
 
 The colonial colleges and state institutions 
 have developed into universities with many 
 departments. Their colleges do not differ in 
 rank from the detached colleges, though they 
 often have more variety in their courses of 
 study. Their student life is subjected to no 
 restrictions or limitations which do not apply to 
 students of the other departments, and the 
 spirit is that of the university rather than of the 
 college. The typical American college is one 
 where from 100 to 500 students meet together 
 without preparatory, graduate, or professional 
 departments, to pursue the four years' course 
 leading to the bachelor's degree. Its purpose 
 
The Function of the College 179 
 
 is cultural and disciplinary rather than techni- 
 cal, and it interests itself in the moral and social 
 development of its students as well as their in- 
 tellectual. It is usually more or less loosely 
 associated with some religious denomination, 
 though this is weakening with the years, and it 
 willingly admits among its influences direct 
 teaching of Christian morals and spirit. 
 
 Of the 596 institutions recognized by the 
 Bureau of Education, 74 are underthe control of 
 the states; 144 classify themselves as non-sec- 
 tarian; 56 are under the management of the 
 Roman Catholic Church; and the remainder, a 
 little over 300, are affiliated with the vari- 
 ous Protestant denominations. Some of those 
 now mentioned as non-sectarian have a church 
 connection, though not of such an organic 
 nature as to disqualify them from being recipi- 
 ents of the bounty of the Carnegie Founda- 
 tion. It will thus be seen how important is 
 the influence and serious the responsibility of 
 the Christian Church for higher education in 
 America. The above figures considered alone 
 would, however, seem to exaggerate this feature, 
 for the most of the larger universities of the 
 country are either state or non-sectarian in- 
 stitutions. 
 
i8o The American College 
 
 Andrew D. White gives in his "Autobiog- 
 raphy" interesting ghmpses of college Hfe 
 about the year 1850. He was sent first to a 
 small college. "Of discipline there was none; 
 there were about forty students, the majority of 
 them sons of wealthy churchmen, showing no 
 inclination to work and much tendency to dissi- 
 pation. Only about a dozen of our number 
 studied at all/' The college could not aflPord to 
 expel any one on account of its small endow- 
 ment and need of patronage, and the students 
 took advantage of the situation. He gives 
 accounts of how they jeered the President, 
 worried the professors, hazed the freshmen, and 
 engaged in the general "roystering" not un- 
 common among college youths of that day. 
 At the end of one year he decided he could 
 better his condition elsewhere. 
 
 This picture is probably not an unusual one 
 of other small colleges at certain periods of 
 their development. Every student counted one 
 in the catalogue, and his fees were an appreciable 
 part of the revenue of the college. His friends 
 were urgent and influential, and the poor officers 
 worried along through the year hoping for a turn 
 of the tide. Woe to the tactless man in such a 
 place ! He makes a Httle error and all the vials 
 
The Function of the College i8i 
 
 of the unrestrained wrath of unreasoning youth 
 who do not wish to make any allowances are 
 turned upon him. No effective discipline is 
 possible. Freed from the danger of being 
 "dropped," study is a matter of choice, and all 
 neutral boys naturally gravitate to the side of 
 disorder and waste of time. Teachers of high 
 grade shun such a place, and there are many 
 changes. The unwisdom of starting colleges 
 with insufficient endowment, and the positive 
 harm done to many of their students, are not 
 Hkely to be overemphasized. 
 
 Andrew D. White then went to Yale. Here 
 he found better conditions. "The discipline, 
 though at times harsh, was on the whole just. 
 But as to the education given, never was a man 
 more disappointed at first." The teachers in 
 the lower classes were divinity students with- 
 out experience and with no intention of con- 
 tinuingin the profession. They "heard lessons" 
 without explanation or advice. There was no 
 stimulus to work for other rewards than marks. 
 
 In the junior year it was better, and when 
 the influence of the personality of such men as 
 President Woolsey and Professor Porter was 
 brought to bear on the students, in such sub- 
 jects as history and philosophy in the last year, 
 
1 82 The American College 
 
 some real scholarship was developed, though 
 even here, to recite the words of the text-book, 
 was often the extent of the demand upon them. 
 
 The same faults, though in a much reduced 
 degree, exist in many of the larger universities 
 of to-day in connection with their undergradu- 
 ate instruction. The great names which excite 
 the enthusiasm of boys with intellectual am- 
 bitions when seen in the catalogue are not 
 usually available for their use until they reach 
 the advanced stages of some specialty. The 
 real instruction to freshmen is often given by 
 young men, recently graduated, who know but 
 little of the technique of teaching and have 
 only a store of recently acquired knowledge to 
 communicate. They are men oftentimes who 
 would not be employed in the best schools or 
 the best small colleges. When a small college 
 has great men in its faculty their influence is 
 vastly more pervasive. 
 
 Henry Cabot Lodge gives his impressions of 
 Harvard about twenty years later. His college 
 life, 1867-71, covered the end of President Hill's 
 administration and the beginning of President 
 Eliot's. It was therefore a time of revolution. 
 **I entered the college, which had remained in 
 essence unchanged from the days of its Puritan 
 
The Function of the College 183 
 
 founders . . . the college with the narrow 
 classical curriculum of its English exemplars, 
 and I came out a graduate of a modern uni- 
 versity." It would now be called almost a 
 small college. His own class, the largest up to 
 that date and for several years following, num- 
 bered 156. His judgment on the new system 
 of electives is not altogether favorable : " Under 
 the old compulsory system a certain amount of 
 knowledge no more useless than any other and a 
 still larger amount of discipline in learning were 
 forced upon all alike. Under the new system it 
 was possible to escape without learning any- 
 thing at all by a judicious system of unrelated 
 studies in subjects taken up only because they 
 were easy or the burden imposed by those who 
 taught them was Hght." 
 
 His mental faculties were really awakened in 
 his senior year by a course in history under 
 Henry Adams. He regrets that he was not 
 required to continue his Greek, which might 
 have been a source of pleasure to him in after 
 years had he known enough of it. His greatest 
 gain, however, was from the friendships formed, 
 and from the voluntary activities, intellectual 
 and athletic, social and dramatic, in which he 
 was engaged. Unlike most students who have 
 
184 The American College 
 
 wasted their opportunities at college, he seems 
 to have little regret, and speaks of it with care- 
 less indifference. As, however, he never had 
 any conditions, and graduated above the middle 
 of his class, his neglect may have been some- 
 what exaggerated in his own narrative: **I 
 achieved one main purpose of a liberal education 
 — a respect for the work of other men in other 
 fields of which I knew nothing. ... I 
 was imbued with a realizing sense of my own 
 abounding ignorance, which is the first rung of 
 the ladder of learning and the best education 
 that any college or university can give." 
 
 These criticisms on college conditions, made 
 nearly a half century after graduation, and 
 when a life experience in large public labors 
 had removed sentiment and clarified judg- 
 ment, may be accepted as fair and trustworthy. 
 That much harm is done by admitting and re- 
 taining unfit students for the sake of numbers, 
 that there is a great weakness in the teaching 
 abilities of many members of the faculties of 
 the universities, that unrestricted election opens 
 the way for weak scholarship and low motives, 
 are well recognized. The institutions men- 
 tioned have in themselves partly remedied these 
 abuses, but they exist, if not in them to the ex- 
 
 i 
 
The Function of the College 185 
 
 tent they did 50 years ago, to some extent else- 
 where. 
 
 The primary purpose of the colleges may be 
 said to be to furnish a liberal education. There 
 may be difficulty in defining accurately this 
 term, but in general we understand what it 
 means. Whether we accept the definition of 
 Professor Huxley: "That man, I think, has had 
 a liberal education who has been so trained in 
 youth that his body is the ready servant of his 
 will and does with ease and pleasure all the 
 work that as a mechanism it is capable of; 
 whose intellect is a clear, cold logic engine with 
 all its parts of equal strength and in smooth 
 working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be 
 turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossa- 
 mers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; 
 whose mind is stored with the great and funda- 
 mental truths of nature and the laws of her 
 operations; one who,no stunted ascetic, is full of 
 life and fire but whose passions are trained to 
 come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a 
 tender conscience; who has learned to love all 
 beauty, to hate all vileness, and to respect others 
 as himself"; or the simpler one of Matthew 
 Arnold that its aim is "to enable a man to know 
 himself and the world," the meaning and appli- 
 
1 86 The American College 
 
 cation are reasonably clear. It is true that 
 there is a tendency, probably growing, to add 
 technical courses even in the smaller colleges. 
 It is also true that the liberal courses in most 
 colleges would not have been called liberal a 
 half century ago. The old studies which seemed 
 to our fathers essential for this purpose have 
 been partly crowded out by new knowledge and 
 new methods once deemed PhiHstine. And yet 
 the hope of higher learning of a broad and cul- 
 tural sort rests with the colleges and nowhere 
 else, and the more closely they satisfy this hope 
 the more sure they will be to perform a benefi- 
 cent work for the nation. 
 
 The first half of the college course may be said 
 to belong to the field of secondary education. 
 It is so classified in Europe. Secondary edu- 
 cation which has for its object to prepare for 
 higher scholarship ought not to be exclusively 
 or largely technical. It must furnish a broad 
 foundation for the more specialized erudition to 
 follow. The last half is university work, the 
 making of real scholars. 
 
 This division is a peculiarly American arrange- 
 ment. Nowhere else do we find these functions 
 combined in a closely related manner in one 
 institution. The youth may be gently led from 
 
The Function of the College 187 
 
 one into the other by increasing his personal 
 Hberties of choice as to conduct and studies, and 
 by an adaptation of methods to his developing 
 powers. Wisely done, with none of the break 
 which comes to a boy when he passes from the 
 German gymnasium to the university, there is a 
 chance to create that product most needed in 
 America, the pubHc-spirited scholar, the broad- 
 minded and welcome leader of a democracy 
 
 In many coeducational institutions in the 
 Western States it is the women who are most 
 true to this ideal. The men take technical 
 courses and specialize early. The work in 
 EngHsh, history, philosophy, and language is 
 largely appropriated by the sex whose early 
 earning capacity is less. It is also true in many 
 high schools that the boys drop out during the 
 years to find money-making occupations, while 
 the girls stay and complete the course. If 
 these tendencies increase, it will not be many 
 years before the general scholarship of the 
 country, with the exception of a comparatively 
 small number of highly educated men, will be in 
 the brains of the women. 
 
 The education of women has taken tremen- 
 dous strides in the last quarter of a century. 
 Of the 596 institutions reporting at Washington, 
 
 1 
 
 A 
 
1 88 The American College 
 
 109 were for women alone, 143 for men alone, 
 and the remainder were coeducational. 
 
 In 191 3 there were in the collegiate depart- 
 ments of all the universities, colleges, and tech- 
 nological schools of the United States 128,644 
 men and 73,587 women, and the proportion of 
 the latter is rapidly increasing. As the schools 
 of technology are made up mostly of men, the 
 numbers in the liberal courses are not far from 
 equal. The separate institutions for women, 
 mostly in the East, are overcrowded with appli- 
 cants. Colleges like Wellesley, Mt. Holyoke, 
 Smith, Vassar, and Bryn Mawr, which main- 
 tain a high standard, find their greatest problem 
 to be to limit their numbers and provide for the 
 best of the applicants, and such colleges are 
 strictly liberal rather than vocational in their 
 intentions. Another class of colleges of equal 
 standing are attached to, but separate from, the 
 large Eastern universities, as Radcliffe at Har- 
 vard and Barnard at Columbia. 
 
 But the great numbers of women are receiv- 
 ing their higher education in the coeducational 
 colleges and universities principally west of the 
 Allegheny Mountains. Thus the University of 
 Michigan is recently reported to have 2,712 
 men and 733 women in its collegiate depart- 
 
The Function of the College 189 
 
 ment; in Wisconsin the numbers were 2,533 
 and 966; in Washington, 932 and 976; in 
 Texas, 876 and 614; in Oregon, 360 and 296; in 
 Nebraska, 1,274 and 1,179; i^ Minnesota, 1,441 
 and 1,304; in Kansas, 995 and 553; in Caljt^- 
 fornia, 2,539 and 1,573; in Chicago University, 
 1,555 ^"^ 2,004. 
 
 These figures may be considered to be typical 
 of Western institutions. While in the aggregate 
 the men outnumber the women, in the non- 
 technical courses the majority is the other way. 
 A professor of English literature in a Western 
 state university has reported that the women 
 so filled his room that the few men who desired 
 to attend were too timid to venture, and that 
 the only way to give them his instruction was to 
 appoint a late hour in the evening when the regu- 
 lations required the women to remain in the 
 dormitories. 
 
 Somewhat similar conditions exist in the 
 smaller detached colleges of the West. Co- 
 education is practically universal, and the 
 women maintain their standing in numbers 
 and quality of scholarship. In the graduate 
 schools of our universities the men are in ex- 
 cess, and the highest ranks of scholars include 
 but a small proportion of women; thus there 
 
190 The American College 
 
 were in 191 3 in the whole country as resident 
 graduates 8,264 men and 3,820 women. In 
 productive scholarship after college days the 
 men lead by a still larger margin. Hence, look- 
 ing at education in its broadest sense, apart 
 from technical and professional training, there 
 are probably in the country a larger number of 
 poorly educated men than women, a larger 
 number of highly educated men than women, 
 but in the ranks of those who have a reasonably 
 high and good general education a continually 
 growing proportion of women to men, possibly 
 now amounting to equality or more. 
 
 The advocates of the old-fashioned courses 
 have had to yield much in recent years. It is 
 now largely conceded, though not universally, 
 that Greek and Latin are not essential to a 
 liberal education as above defined, and the in- 
 sistence on these studies as a necessary part of 
 the course for the Bachelor of Arts degree has 
 partly passed away. Some good universities 
 will give it without either, many with Latin 
 only. The improvement in the teaching in 
 modern languages has seemed to make it possi- 
 ble to produce somewhat of the same qualities 
 in the minds of students that the ancient 
 languages gave, while their increased value for 
 
The Function of the College 191 
 
 use in after life has made them desirable. Many 
 classicists have yielded this much in response to 
 public demand, but to ask them to give up 
 wholly to the vocationalists, and to assume that 
 all subjects are of equal value for a liberal edu- 
 cation is too much to expect. 
 
 Even among the technical men the broadest 
 minded would not claim this. The chief en- 
 gineer of one of our great industrial plants has 
 recently criticised severely the graduates of the 
 highly specialized schools because they do not 
 know enough English to write a good business 
 letter, or of economics to deal with the labor 
 problems sure to arise, while their lack of 
 general education which shows in their daily 
 intercourse makes them less efficient as sales- 
 men or men of the world. Presidents of schools 
 of technology have lamented the same fact but 
 excused themselves on the ground that each 
 professor of a specialty demanded so much time 
 for his ever-developing subject that the non- 
 specialties were crowded out. 
 
 If, therefore, we are not to have a nation of 
 men, each one devoted to one subject and not 
 capable of taking a general view of the prob- 
 lems of life, and if education is not to be only a 
 preparation for making a Hving, the remedy 
 
192 The American College 
 
 must lie very largely in the hands of the col- 
 leges. The gospel of broad thinking and of high 
 motives other than mercenary must be kept to 
 the front, and the studies which most tend to 
 the furtherance of this gospel must maintain a 
 large place in the course. The teachers must be 
 men whose scholarship and character recom- 
 mend such standards to their students, and the 
 college must be permeated with customs which 
 make general culture of mind and spirit an ideal 
 worthy and possible of attainment. 
 
 "Steeped in sentiment as she Hes, spreading 
 her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering 
 from her towers the last enchantment of the 
 Middle Ages, who will deny that Oxford, by her 
 ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us nearer to 
 the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to per- 
 fection, to beauty, in a word, which is only 
 truth seen from another side.^"* 
 
 ** Glorious to most are the days of life in a 
 great school, but it is at college that inspiring 
 talent first enters on its inheritance."! 
 
 These sentimental considerations will have 
 small acceptance in many corners of our 
 triumphant democracy, but they express a 
 
 * Matthew Arnold. 
 
 tjohn Morley, "Life of Gladstone/' Vol, i, p. 48. 
 
 I 
 
The Function of the College 193 
 
 worthy and continuing feeling which is now 
 more closely associated with our colleges than 
 elsewhere. The thoughts of ancient, medieval, 
 and later times, the thoughts which belong to 
 humanity of all ages, have been and are kept 
 vital by the universities and colleges of every 
 land. Bologna, Paris, and Oxford insured 
 their endurance through the otherwise Dark 
 Ages of Europe. In the dawn of all things in 
 our colonies, when the stress of frontier living 
 seemed likely to crowd out all else, Harvard 
 and William and Mary and Yale kept alive 
 classical culture and historical sentiment among 
 the commonwealth builders, continuing the in- 
 tellectual ideals of the past amid the inau- 
 spicious surroundings. 
 
 Dangers of another sort now beset this 
 scholarly life. Materialism and democracy 
 have joined hands and are building a civili- 
 zation which takes small account and seems to 
 have small need of anything which has pre- 
 ceded it. 
 
 This civilization has produced most benefi- 
 cent results in making Hfe worth while. It has 
 cured many of the ills which itself has created. 
 It has ministered to the industrial growth, 
 which has so much to do with all our comforts 
 
194 The American College 
 
 and utilities, and now it is proceeding to solve 
 the problems of great cities and poor conditions 
 of living produced by its own exigencies. It 
 has reacted upon the intellectual life of the 
 schools and has built up institutions which rival 
 in numbers and excel in equipment the colleges 
 which profess to have received the torch of 
 learning from the universities of the past. The 
 aspiring young American sees in this a great 
 hope for himself and a prospect of indefinite 
 usefulness for humanity. He groups himself 
 with his own sort, and is made enthusiastic 
 by a continued succession of new possibilities 
 and the contagion of sympathetic association. 
 Nothing that we can say ought to reduce by a 
 single atom this enthusiasm. It is essential to 
 all worthy progress in all fields. 
 
 But essential as this scientific development 
 is to our democracy it is not correct to say 
 that it is all-inclusive. The learning of the 
 ages will still have a place. The results of 
 the old discipline must still be gained. It was 
 no mere accident that out of the colonial colleges, 
 meagre as the contents of their curricula were, 
 came so largely the men of practical wisdom 
 who framed the constitution and shaped the in- 
 stitutions which have made America. It is 
 
The Function of the College 195 
 
 not so much the schools of technology and of 
 professional training as the colleges of general 
 learning that, produce the great leaders of our 
 nation to-day. They develop the two elements 
 commonly known as discipline and culture, the 
 one a power to do, the other a possession at- 
 tained. He who has them both is likely to 
 succeed in whatever direction he works. They 
 come in their best estate as the result of no 
 narrow, specialized course with a mercenary 
 object continually in view, but rather as the 
 result of a generous training in the broad field of 
 higher learning which is the exclusive possession 
 of no nation and no age. 
 
 Here again it is not necessary to assume that 
 the Greek and Latin languages are essential to 
 this result. They had no large place from the 
 decay of Roman civilization to the Renaissance. 
 Erasmus and Thomas More and their friends 
 brought them to light as the new learning of 
 their day. By the transformation of thought 
 they have now become the refuge of the ex- 
 treme conservatives. It is the spirit and the 
 power of intellectual effort pursued for their 
 own sakes rather than their value as wage- 
 earners that determines the worth of scholar- 
 ship from this point of view. The content of 
 
196 The American College 
 
 the study changes somewhat from age to age, 
 but the appreciation of scholarly character and 
 good literature may be permanent. This ap- 
 preciation often comes through the classics. At 
 present they probably constitute the surest road 
 to it, though not the only one. The marvellous 
 modern insight that physical science, psychol- 
 ogy, and sociology have given to true devel- 
 opment demands large recognition in general 
 college courses, as also does the worth of the 
 study of European languages. With the opening 
 of new intellectual vistas the subjects of student 
 effort will vary, but the spirit of Hebrew and 
 Grecian scholarship should remain. 
 
 We have seen that the colonial colleges owed 
 their origin to a denominational want, and that 
 the great majority of separate colleges of the 
 present day, mostly small in numbers, are still 
 connected, in name at least, with some branch 
 of the Christian Church. As the pubHc schools, 
 including the state universities, are largely 
 prohibited from giving any religious instruc- 
 tion, the independent colleges constitute the 
 main educational opportunities for this work. 
 As such they have a large field to occupy. In 
 early times piety was enjoined by rule. The 
 first colonial colleges, mainly theological institu- 
 
The Function of the College 197 
 
 tions as they were, required semi-daily prayers 
 and private Bible reading. After the Revolu- 
 tion, when French influence became prevalent, 
 the student demanded hberty, and this meant 
 in many cases scepticism and indifference. At 
 the end of the eighteenth century not more 
 than 5 per cent, of the college students would 
 own themselves Christians. As far as they dared 
 they absented themselves from all religious exer- 
 cises. 
 
 Enforced religion could not be made to 
 succeed, and during the following century there 
 was a gradual relaxation of rules, and a con- 
 sequent increase of sincerity and piety. Volun- 
 tary association largely took the place of the 
 prescribed formula of the past. The Y. M. 
 C. A. during the latter part of last century has 
 developed in a marked degree in the colleges a 
 sane and serious sense of the student's responsi- 
 bilities to God and man. Though not organi- 
 cally connected with the governing boards, as 
 individuals many of the officials have taken 
 part with cordial welcome from the student. 
 But the responsibihty of managenient and direc- 
 tion rests with the students themselves, and 
 produces results more natural, more human, and 
 more serviceable. 
 
198 The American College 
 
 But the college still has an influence over 
 student religious life. She supplies in her chapel 
 and Sunday exercises opportunities for worship 
 and for religious instruction of great potency. 
 In many the chapel constitutes the one occasion 
 of the week when the whole body of the students 
 is brought together. It tends to create a sense 
 of unity and also affords an opportunity for 
 needed announcements and instructions. But 
 primarily it is successful from the religious point 
 of view, as these uses are made subsidiary to its 
 main purpose; as there is an atmosphere of 
 quietness and reverence about the meeting, and 
 as the vocal exercises are brief and impressive. 
 
 In the large majority of colleges attendance 
 at collections of students is required, with an 
 allowance of "cuts." A hymn, a Bible reading, 
 a prayer, and sometimes a short address con- 
 stitute the program, occupying twenty minutes 
 or less. They were originally always held at 
 the beginning of the daily exercises, but in many 
 colleges are now placed later in the day, to 
 accommodate students from a distance. The 
 personality of the men who conduct them has 
 everything to do with their effectiveness. One 
 toward whom on account of his life or character 
 no respect is felt will make a religious occasion 
 
The Function of the College 199 
 
 only a travesty, no matter how profound and 
 well-expressed his utterances may be. Toward 
 a simple-minded, sincere man of weight and 
 power there will always be accorded attention 
 and influence. Many a man's future has been 
 indelibly stamped by the chapel exercises of his 
 college, and not a few can remember some im- 
 pressive sentence from an honored preacher or 
 teacher which has stayed with them as a guide 
 through life. 
 
 The Sunday college exercises are more formal 
 and extensive. In the large universities the ten- 
 dency is to make attendance voluntary. Indeed 
 the most of them possess no hall large enough to 
 seat all their members. At Yale the academic 
 students attend, the scientific students do not. 
 In some places attendance at some place of wor- 
 ship, to be determined by each student, is re- 
 quired. But it is usually preferred to bring 
 them together in one hall where a service adapted 
 to their needs may be provided. 
 
 In many colleges a program of preachers is 
 arranged at the beginning of the year. The 
 students thus have the chance to hear many 
 noted men who successively occupy the pulpit. 
 Many a preacher who has large success in a 
 general congregation is quite unable to hold the 
 
200 The American College 
 
 attention of a student audience on account of 
 some misdirection of thought or affectation or 
 crudity of manner. Any touch of insincerity, 
 or vagueness of idea, or commonplace, is quickly 
 detected and weighed in the balance. 
 
 Courses in the Bible are now frequently in- 
 cluded in the curricula of colleges. Freshmen 
 often come with a very inaccurate knowledge of 
 Biblical facts. In many cases they are quite 
 Ignorant. If they are from pubHc schools, no 
 instruction has there been given them. What 
 they have picked up has come from their homes, 
 their church services, and their Sunday-schools. 
 The first of these greatly varies in efficiency, is 
 usually superficial, or non-existent. The church 
 services do not reach nearly all and h^ve their 
 effect only by the reading of isolated passages. 
 The Sunday-school, with voluntary attendance, 
 absence of rigid tests demanding preparation and 
 often inexperienced teachers, is desultory and un- 
 satisfactory as a means of instruction however 
 valuable it may be for its general influence. The 
 ideas gained are often indefinite and confused as 
 illustrated by the story of the little boy who said 
 that "Paul stood on Mars Hill crying out for the 
 space of two hours, 'Great is Diana of the Ephe- 
 sians,* " or multitudes of similar instances. If it 
 
The Function of the College 201 
 
 were proposed to teach arithmetic or geography 
 by such methods they would immediately be pro- 
 nounced inadequate and the results disastrous. 
 
 If therefore the intelligent leaders of our 
 democracy are to receive a solid training in 
 Christian foundations and a knowledge of 
 Christian principle and Hterature, it must come 
 very largely from the colleges not under state 
 control. 
 
 It is probable that in many cases they have 
 not embraced this opportunity very efficiently. 
 Courses in the Bible have often not ranked in 
 importance and in the scholarly quality of the 
 teachers with languages and science. But there 
 is of late a strong tendency to make them more 
 influential. Whether required or optional they 
 are taken more seriously, and the content and 
 spirit of the Bible are more firmly grasped. 
 
 Some such courses have failed because too 
 much stress has been laid upon a dogmatic in- 
 terpretation dear to the heart of the teacher; or 
 because of an insistence on too great literalism, 
 the emphasis being laid upon special texts apart 
 from their context; or because of an exclusively 
 destructive import by a fresh graduate which 
 leaves the student with no ideas except that the 
 book is a bundle of errors. It is of course a 
 
202 The American College 
 
 difficult matter to find a scholarly, devout, and 
 progressive man who will handle the questions 
 certain to arise in such a way as to disarm 
 criticism and promote an intelligent compre- 
 hension of the real worth and power of the book. 
 But the alternative is a generation of scholars 
 unable to appreciate the thousands of Biblical 
 references in our hterature, the multitudes of 
 ways in which Biblical ideas have interwoven 
 themselves with our civilization, and without 
 the ethical and spiritual standards which have 
 characterized our nation and other advanced 
 nations in the past. 
 
 These considerations are being increasingly felt 
 by our colleges. Great associations are formed 
 to promote religious education. New courses 
 are being introduced into the colleges, and the 
 Y. M. C. A. study of the Bible is becoming 
 more efficient. With the tendency to crowd 
 out of all public institutions all such instruction 
 its last refuge seems to be the denominational and 
 endowed colleges of the country, and they are 
 more and more preparing to meet the demand. 
 
 From figures recently procured it appears 
 that out of 92,000 students in over 400 of the 
 better colleges, 16,000 are in curriculum Bible 
 work; 183 of these colleges offer Biblical in- 
 
The Function of the College 203 
 
 struction, and in 112 this instruction is obhga- 
 tory. There were 32,880 young men in the 
 Bible classes of the Y. M. C. A; 257 fraternities 
 have introduced Bible study, and 1,277 members 
 of the faculty have cooperated. 
 
 We have already considered the question of 
 students' morals. How far the formal teach- 
 ing of ethics has an effect on this is doubtful. 
 Courses on philosophical and practical ethics 
 are given in most colleges. The latter more 
 often deal with the duties which the graduate 
 may have to perform in the world than with 
 conditions in the college itself. It is well that 
 they should. There is no more potent incentive 
 to a good life than the growth of a desire to 
 make that life worth while to some good effort. 
 Interest in the social, moral, and religious con- 
 ditions of the community ought to insure a 
 course of conduct which will best prepare the 
 student for meeting effectively those condi- 
 tions. Some unselfish aspirations are a better 
 tonic than formal rules or repressive advice. A 
 professor of well-known high ideals of living, and 
 a tactful personality in dealing fearlessly and 
 sanely with moral habits and causes, is the indis- 
 pensable agent in the teaching of practical ethics. 
 
 With our beneficent, democratic idea of giving 
 
204 The American College 
 
 every one a chance at the best in education, it 
 often happens that a youth of slender patrimony 
 and meagre antecedents finds himself as the 
 result of some reading or lecture or other in- 
 fluence seized with a desire for a college education. 
 It is said that in certain sections of the country, 
 when the boys arrive at a given age, the farmer 
 father gives them the choice between a horse 
 and buggy and an "education," the latter 
 meaning a year at a local academy. The most 
 of them choose the tangible evidence of material 
 prosperity. Occasionally one will ask for the 
 education. The year does not usually stand 
 alone. The youth begins to see the possibilities 
 of a life to which his father and his associates 
 have been strangers. It does not take much to 
 gratify this desire. Some hard work in the 
 summer time, another year or two at a high 
 school, and he is intellectually ready for college. 
 A college scholarship rather easily won, remuner- 
 ative work in vacations and during term time, 
 and the way is paved for a degree. Ameri- 
 can boys do this by the thousands, and their 
 early conquest of difficulties brings out the best 
 that is in them. Many a strong man has had 
 this early history. 
 
 The possibilities which may lie in the path of 
 
The Function of the College 205 
 
 a young man of energy and resources may be 
 seen in the Autobiography of S. S. McClure.* 
 As he entered upon his work at Knox College, 
 Illinois, with 15 cents in his pocket, with one 
 home-made suit of clothes, and seven years 
 of preparatory and college education and board 
 to pay for by his own exertions, there would be 
 needed enthusiasm, courage, and some ignor- 
 ance of difficulties ahead of him to carry him 
 through. "There are few feelings any deeper 
 than those with which a country boy gazes for 
 the first time upon the college that he feels is 
 going to supply all the deficiencies he feels in 
 himself and fit him to struggle in the world," he 
 writes. The seven years stretched out to 
 eight, for he had to absent himself to work for 
 money. He endured all sorts of privations of 
 hunger and cold, and felt somewhat disappointed 
 on graduation that he could recognize himself 
 as the same boy who had entered. But he 
 triumphed, as many another young American 
 has triumphed, and learned later in Hfe that the 
 college opportunity had placed the means of 
 success within his grasp. It is interesting to 
 note his retrospect of his studies: 
 
 *"My Autobiography," by S. S. McCIure. (Frederick A. 
 Stokes Co., New York.) 
 
2o6 The American College 
 
 "A word about the college curriculum. Four 
 fifths of the students at Knox then took the old- 
 fashioned classical course, in which Greek was 
 obligatory. This course still seems to me the 
 soundest preparation a young man can have, 
 and I still feel that Greek was the most im- 
 portant of my studies. During the years that 
 he reads and studies Greek a boy gets certain 
 standards that he uses all the rest of his life, 
 long after he has forgotten grammar and vocab- 
 ulary." 
 
 Yet it may have been the conquest of diffi- 
 culties, intellectual and physical, rather than 
 the special studies, which developed the charac- 
 ter and qualities of his later success. 
 
 But such a youth has come to college crude and 
 socially uneducated. He will manage to take care 
 of himself intellectually and morally. But it will 
 be a new social atmosphere into which he will 
 come. The young man from a cultured home 
 will be a revelation to him. He may con- 
 sider this well-to-do brother soft and inefficient 
 in some ways, but he will acknowledge that he 
 possesses some graces and powers to be coveted. 
 He sets himself to procure them and often 
 succeeds. Thus the American college becomes 
 a social educator and unifier. In no place is 
 
The Function of the College 207 
 
 there a fairer recognition of merit apart from ex- 
 ternals. In no other sphere is a man of an un- 
 promising past more sure of being a hero if he 
 possess heroic qualities. 
 
 The spectre which often haunts the Presi- 
 dent and Trustees of the small college is poverty. 
 They see their best and most promising men 
 drawn off by larger offers of salary. They con- 
 template with sadness the paucity of their 
 library whenever they read a publisher's an- 
 nouncement of forthcoming books of value. 
 They see perhaps with envy the large equip- 
 ment for science of the great universities. They 
 have in their minds or on paper fine buildings 
 which they feel must be built, and the money is 
 not forthcoming. 
 
 The matter of salaries* will, if they are right- 
 minded, distress the most. For while salaries 
 of all teachers are small compared with the im- 
 portance of their work and the time demanded 
 for preparation, they are on an advancing scale 
 
 *There are about 200 full professors in the United States with 
 salaries of ^5,000 or over; about as many from $4,000 to $5,000; 
 about 500 from $3,000 to $4,000. Salaries of all grades are 
 rising of late. Williams, a typical college, expects to pay all 
 full professors $4,000, 
 
 "Of 1,500 representative full professors, one fourth receive 
 $2,250 or less; one fourth, $3,750 or more, and one tenth, $5,000 
 or more. All salaries have increased durmg the last five years." 
 — Dr. Pritchett in "Carnegie Foundation Report, 1913." 
 
2o8 The American College 
 
 in the more wealthy institutions. In the large 
 endowed universities the salary of a full pro- 
 fessor may be from ^4,000 to $5,000, with the 
 lower ranks proportionally paid. In many 
 smaller colleges the salary of a full professor 
 would be $2,500 or less, running down in some 
 cases to three figures. In the long run the 
 service will be as the salary. For while some 
 strong men in a true spirit of devotion will 
 spend their lives for the college of their love 
 they may not have successors of the same mind. 
 And while some men who have $1,000 will do 
 better work than others at $2,000, it will not 
 be so in general. 
 
 The residents of the large universities, both 
 state and endowed, often speak rather slight- 
 ingly of the small ** fresh-water " colleges. Some 
 of them are undoubtedly inefficient and a few 
 dishonest. Someof them make impossible claims 
 for themselves either through self-deception 
 or with the intent to deceive others. But 
 many are the results of great self-sacrifice and 
 are struggling for better things with the heroism 
 that comes from an assurance that their aims 
 are worthy. Some need every fee and the pres- 
 tige of every name to insure growth into pros- 
 perity, and unduly strain their pretensions to 
 
The Function of the College 209 
 
 capability. Some act as if numbers were the 
 only test of worth, and exalt them at the ex- 
 pense of quality. Some give degrees to un- 
 worthy recipients to receive in return patronage 
 or money, and some have grown through one or 
 all of these stages into assured soHdity and effi- 
 ciency which need no dubious methods. 
 
 One cannot say too much for the men who 
 have founded, and the men who have worked in, 
 many of our smaller denominational colleges. 
 Their motives have been the purest and their 
 sacrifices the most real. Giving of their little 
 year after year, and stinting themselves of the 
 comforts of life for the institution to which they 
 had pledged their support, they have often seen 
 the success of their hopes. Sometimes it has 
 seemed to be worry and effort thrown away. 
 But on the whole they have dotted the land 
 with many, too many in some sections, colleges 
 which have had a large and beneficent influence 
 upon American life. In Ohio over one hundred 
 colleges and universities have been chartered, 
 more than sixty of which no longer survive, 
 and of the forty, twenty-three are still organi- 
 cally connected with a denomination. Some- 
 thing like this condition exists over the country. 
 It would doubtless be better for the cause of 
 
210 The American College 
 
 education if denominational feeling would per- 
 mit the merging of many of the resources of 
 neighboring colleges into a few strong institu- 
 tions. 
 
 "The widest variation exists in the institu- 
 tions caHing themselves universities or colleges. 
 It is possible thus to trace the course of effi- 
 ciency through uncounted gradations from these 
 pathetic embryo colleges up to admirably suc- 
 cessful and solid institutions, not to mention 
 the great state-supported institutions the tide 
 of whose annual resources have passed the two- 
 million-dollar mark. 
 
 "More and more each church has in recent 
 years worked wisely and fruitfully for improv- 
 ing the standards of its denominational institu- 
 tions. One may count with admiration the 
 steps upward which have been made by [many] 
 colleges.'** 
 
 Many of these small colleges have had one or 
 two men in each who have been really great 
 in their character, scholarship, and influence. 
 They may not have been of the "productive'* 
 sort which the large universities value so highly. 
 They may not have been offered more lucrative 
 
 * Dr. Kendric C. Babcock, late specialist in higher education 
 with theU. S. Bureau of Education, in "Proceedings of Board of 
 Education of the United Presbyterian Church, Chicago, 1914.'* 
 
The Function of the College 211 
 
 places elsewhere, or if so may have declined 
 them. But they have felt a real satisfaction 
 in their modest sphere and in their permanent 
 power over a small number of young people who 
 have learned to come very close to them in spirit 
 and in truth. 
 
 Not a few of these detached colleges gather 
 students who would not go elsewhere. The 
 college of their own town or of their own sect will 
 receive their patronage when they would not 
 think of going to a distant or alien university. 
 They get into the college atmosphere. They 
 become acquainted with the professors or the 
 students. They attend the public lectures, 
 their educational zeal becomes fired, and before 
 they know it almost, they are in college them- 
 selves. Once there, anything is possible. If 
 they have the spirit of the scholar, they will 
 later seek larger opportunities elsewhere, always, 
 if their first alma mater has been honest with 
 them, looking back to her work for them with 
 gratitude and affection. How many such there 
 are no statistics have ever told, but many a man 
 and woman have had such a school history and in 
 the aggregate their influence in the country for 
 scholarship and progress has been very large. 
 These small colleges have carried the desire 
 
212 The American College 
 
 for higher education into every corner of our 
 land. 
 
 More emphatically, too, than the universities, 
 the best of them have stood for rehgious charac- 
 ter and for correct morals; for a certain sim- 
 plicity and honesty of purpose; for a respect 
 for learning and what it may bring with it; for 
 a great feeling of responsibility to make of their 
 students in all directions all that they are 
 capable of being; and for a strong sense of 
 democracy and fraternity. 
 
 THE END 
 
BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Reports of the Commissioners of Education of 
 the United States, 1867 to date. 
 
 Reports of the President of the Carnegie Founda- 
 tion for the Advancement of Teaching, 1906 to date. 
 
 Reports of the Secretary of the College Entrance 
 Examination Board, 1900 to date. 
 
 Proceedings of the National Educational Asso- 
 ciation. 
 
 Reports of Presidents of Various Colleges, notably 
 of President C. W. Eliot. 
 
 Catalogues of Colleges, past and present. 
 
 Josiah Quincy, The History of Harvard Uni- 
 versity, 2 vols., Cambridge, 1840. 
 
 Herbert B. Adams, The College of William and 
 Mary, Bureau of Education, Washington, 1888. 
 
 F. B. Dexter, Sketch of the History of Yale 
 University, Holt, New York, 1887. 
 
 V. Lansing Collins, Princeton, Oxford University 
 Press, New York, 1914. 
 
 T. H. Montgomery, History of the University of 
 Pennsylvania, 2 vols., Philadelphia, 1900. 
 
 A History of Columbia University, 1 754-1904 
 New York, 1904. 
 
 Bronson's, History of Brown University. 
 
 Rutgers College, 1766-1911, New Brunswick. 
 \ 313 
 
214 The American College 
 
 Chase's, History of Dartmouth College, Vol. I, 
 I 769-1 815. 
 
 W. Smith, Discourses on Public Occasions in 
 America, Appendix, second edition, London, 1762. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson and J. C. Cabell, Early History 
 of the University of Virginia, Richmond, 1856. 
 
 Herbert B. Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the 
 University of Virginia, U. S. Bureau of Education, 
 1888. 
 
 E. G. Dexter, History of Education in the United 
 States, Macmillan, 1904. 
 
 C. F. Thwing, History of Higher Education in 
 America, Appleton, 1906. 
 
 C. W. Eliot, University Administration, Hough- 
 ton, Mifflin & Co., 1908. 
 
 C. F. Thwing, College Administration, Century 
 Company, 1900. 
 
 W. T. Foster, Administration of the College 
 Curriculum, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 191 1. 
 
 C. F. Thwing, The American College, New York, 
 1914. 
 
 Henry D. Sheldon, Student Life and Customs, 
 Appleton, 1901. 
 
 J. H. Canfield, The College Student and His 
 Problems, Macmillan, 1902. 
 
 C. F. Birdseye, The Reorganization of Our Col- 
 leges, New York, 1909. 
 
 C. M. Gayley, Idols of Education, Doubleday, 
 Page & Co., 1 910. 
 
 Noah Porter, The American Colleges and the 
 American Public, New York, 1883. 
 
Brief Bibliography 215 
 
 Charles Francis Adams, A College Fetich, Boston, 
 1893. 
 
 James McCosh, The New Departure in College 
 Education, New York, 1885. 
 
 Oberlin College, Reports of the Committee on 
 Tests of College Efficiency, 1910. 
 
 Various periodicals, especially Educational Re- 
 view^ Science, and Popular Science Monthly, 
 
INDEX 
 
 . PAGE 
 
 Academic freedom 57 
 
 Administration 44 
 
 Age of admission to college 52 
 
 Alumni 89 
 
 American Athletic Association 163 
 
 Amherst College 30 
 
 Athletics 156 
 
 Baptists 18 
 
 Baseball 162 
 
 Bible study 200 
 
 Bibliography 213 
 
 Brown, Nicholas 20 
 
 Brown University 18 
 
 Bowdoin College 26, 118 
 
 Bryn Mawr College 112 
 
 Calvinism 6 
 
 Cambridge University, England 6 
 
 Carnegie, Andrew 76 
 
 Chapel exercises 198 
 
 College, Definition of 46 
 
 College entrance examination board .... 102 
 
 Columbia University 17 
 
 Cornell University 33 
 
 Courses of study 27, 94 
 
 Curriculum, see Courses of study. 
 217 
 
2i8 Ind 
 
 ex 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Dartmouth College 21 
 
 Degrees 8, 23, 47, 176 
 
 Denominationalism 19, 179 
 
 Dickinson College 26 
 
 Discipline 135 
 
 Dutch Reformed Church 20 
 
 Edwards, Morgan 19 
 
 Elective system 29, 33, 40, 109 
 
 Eligibility rules for athletics 163 
 
 Eliot, Charles W 33j no 
 
 Endowment 48, 49, 50 
 
 Entrance examinations . 102 \ 
 
 Entrance requirements 94 
 
 Examinations, see Honor system in examinations. 
 
 Faculty 45» 57> 76 
 
 Field sports 162 
 
 Financial aid to colleges 74 
 
 Football 158 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin 15 
 
 Fraternities 152 
 
 "Fresh-water" colleges 208 
 
 Function of the college 175 
 
 German universities 39 
 
 Governing boards of colleges 45 
 
 Graduate schools 41 
 
 Greek letter societies, see Fraternities. 
 
 Group system iii 
 
 Hamilton, Alexander 18 
 
 Hampton Sidney College 26 
 
 Harvard, John 4, 6 
 
Index 219 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Harvard University 4, 109 
 
 Haverford College ." 115 
 
 Hazing 168 
 
 Honor system in examinations 143 
 
 Indians 21 
 
 Jay, John 18 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas 9> 28 
 
 Johns Hopkins University 41, 52, iii 
 
 Journalism, see Student papers 
 
 King's College, New York, see Columbia University. 
 
 Liberal education. Definition of 185 
 
 Literary societies 152 
 
 Lodge, Henry Cabot 182 
 
 **Log College" 13 
 
 McClure, S. S 205 
 
 Madison, James 15 
 
 Marshall, John 9 
 
 Ministers .1, 5, 9 
 
 Monroe, James 9 
 
 Moral life of college students .... 146, 203 
 
 Morrill act 35 
 
 Morris, Gouvernor 18 
 
 Nassau Hall 14 
 
 New England's First Fruits 26 
 
 North Carolina, University of 26 
 
 North Central Association of Colleges and Second- 
 ary Schools 50 
 
 Northfield conferences 150 
 
220 Index 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Patrons of the college 69 
 
 Pennsylvania, University of 15 
 
 Ph. D 47, 80 
 
 Phi Beta Kappa 152 
 
 Preceptorial system 117 
 
 Presbyterians 12 
 
 President 61 
 
 Princeton University . 12 
 
 Professional schools 23, 44, 53 
 
 Professors, see Faculty. 
 
 Queen's College, New Jersey, see Rutgers College. 
 
 Regents, see Governing boards. 
 
 Religion in the colleges 196 
 
 Research 40 
 
 Rhodes scholars 105 
 
 Rockefeller, John D 76 
 
 Rutgers College 20 
 
 St. John's College 26 
 
 Salaries of professors 207 
 
 Sc.D 47 
 
 Scholarship 105, 175 
 
 Scotch-Irish 13 
 
 Self-government, see Student government. 
 Smith, William, Provost of University of Pennsyl- 
 vania 16, 27 
 
 Sports, see Athletics. 
 
 State aid to colleges . 34 
 
 Student government 141 
 
 Student hfe 135 
 
 Student papers 166 
 
Index 221 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Tennent, William 13 
 
 Ticknor, George 30 
 
 Track athletics 162 
 
 Trustees, see Governing boards. 
 
 Tyler, John 9 
 
 Union College 26 
 
 University, Definition of 44 
 
 Virginia, University of 28 
 
 Washington and Jefferson College 26 
 
 Washington and Lee College 26 
 
 Webster, Daniel 22 
 
 Wheelock, Eleazar 21 
 
 White, Andrew D 180 
 
 William and Mary College 8, 152 
 
 Williams College 26 
 
 Women's colleges 187 
 
 Yale, Elihu . 11 
 
 Yale University 10, no 
 
 Young Men's Christian Association . . 149, 197 
 
A WORD ABOUT 
 THE AMERICAN BOOKS 
 
The American Books 
 
 A Library of Good Citizenship 
 
 TO vote regularly and conscientiously and 
 never to have been arrested for disorder 
 is not the be-all and end-all of good citi- 
 zenship. The good citizen is he or she who bears 
 an active hand in cleansing and making merry 
 the black spots of the neighborhood; who cher- 
 ishes a home however small; who takes an 
 increasingly intelligent interest in all that con- 
 tributes to the country's welfare, and feels a 
 keenly patriotic hope for the future of the nation. 
 
 For such citizens the American books are 
 designed — a series of small volumes on current 
 American problems. The keynote of the series 
 will be the discussion of distinctively American 
 movements and questions connected with the 
 future prosperity of the United States. 
 
 The series was planned long before the great 
 war, but it has derived added importance from 
 the position which that great struggle has given 
 America on the face of the globe. The United 
 States, standing aloof from the suicidal blood- 
 shed of the Old World, has necessarily become 
 the peaceful arbiter of the earth's destinies and 
 the flywheel to keep the world's industry re- 
 volving. 
 
An inquiry into the meaning and tendency of 
 American civilization to-day is thus not only a 
 matter of interest but of patriotic duty. The 
 pubHshers wish the American books to be a 
 series of brief, authoritative manuals which will 
 attempt to lay bare some of the problems that 
 confront us to-day; written in popular terms that 
 will inspire rather than discourage the casual 
 reader. The series should prove not only of 
 great interest to all American citizens who wish 
 to aid in solving their country's pressing prob- 
 lems, but to every foreigner visiting this country 
 who seeks an interpretation of the American 
 point of view. 
 
 The publishers wish the American books to 
 be written by the best men, and to this end they 
 seek the widest publicity for the plan. They 
 will be glad to receive suggestions as to appro- 
 priate titles for inclusion in the series and will 
 welcome authoritative MSS submitted from any 
 quarter. In particular they submit the plan to 
 the consideration of the American colleges where 
 the problems of the country are being studied. 
 In science, literature, business, politics, in the 
 arts of war and the arts of peace, the publishers 
 will seek writers who have stood for fearless 
 achievement or equally fearless failure, who will 
 build up A Library of Good Citizenship. 
 
 {For complete list of volumes in 
 this series see opposite title page,) 
 
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
 GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 
 
I 
 
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 YB 0A4H 
 
 306823 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY