raa&s m UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY AN AUSTRALIAN VIEW BY E. R. HOLME PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY SYDNEY ANGUS & ROBERTSON LTD. f abltsfrers to t&e 1920 Printed by W. C. Penfold & Co. Ltd., 88 Pitt Street, Sydney, Australia Obtainable in Great Britain from The British Australasian Book-store, 51 High Holborn, London, W.C. 1., and all other Booksellers ; and (wholesale only) from The Australian Book Company, 16 Farringdon Avenue, London, E.G. 4. tion library CONTENTS INTRODUCTION -_____. 1 I. THE GENERAL SITUATION ----- 8 II. UNIVERSITY GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION - 29 III. FEDERAL AID TO UNIVERSITY EDUCATION - - 52 IV. STATE SUPPORT OF UNIVERSITIES 64 n V. DIFFERENTIATION OF STATE AND ENDOWED UNI- VERSITIES ._.__-_ 76 VI. MATRICULATION REQUIREMENTS 85 VII. GRADUATE WORK * 117 VIII. THE DORMITORY - .... 143 IX. UNIVERSITY EXTENSION - - - - - 150 X. UNIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY - 184 XI. SOME PRECEDENTS 207 7- Co 187738 INTRODUCTION THE document that follows is a book only in appear- ance. It began as an individual private report, supplementary to a series whose authors were a Committee ; and it was mainly written, as such, during a sea-voyage, without aid from a library and without thought of publication. The writer's intention was to furnish the Australian Universities with general answers to certain questions concerning American Universities; and to attach, in an appendix, much detailed information about particular courses of study, methods of administration and discipline, and the like. A change of plan has been necessitated, however, by two considerations : first, the University of Sydney wishes to publish the discursive general part; and second, the writer has been too fully occupied with teaching duty, in an overcrowded department, to recast what has already been written. This seeming book is, therefore, mainly a section of a Report which was to present a preliminary survey of a very wide field. Large tracts of that field are not viewed at all ; the rest is seen only in those aspects which are of im- mediate and general interest to Australians. Technical detail has, for the most part, been deliberately ex- cluded : there is no room for it in a short exposition intended for University people generally, and for that 2 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY small fraction of the Australian people which has acquired an interest in Universities. Another oppor- tunity may be found for satisfying the experts. The form adopted needs this further explanation. It is that of an enquiry under certain prescribed heads not quoted in full. The prescribing was done in London during 1919 by the "Administrative Committee of the Australian Universities," which was a section of the Education Service of the A.I.F. 1 attending to the continued education of University men who had been on active service. This Committee, of which the writer was Chairman (the other members were Captain H. W. Allen, Vice-Master of Ormond College in the University of Melbourne, and Captain E. V. Clark, Lecturer in Electrical Engineering in the University of Adelaide), was appointed by the Government of the Commonwealth, upon the nomina- tion of the Australian Universities, and accredited to the Universities of the United Kingdom and her Allies. Australia was thereby represented in that unprecedented co-operation of Universities which marked the end of the war ; and the difficulties of demobilization were partly solved by the general ad- vantage taken of this educational opportunity by men of the A.I.F. All the Universities of the Empire were associated in the "Imperial Education Committee of the War Office and Dominion Forces." This led to an important Conference in London, at which it was unanimously decided that a permanent Imperial Education Bureau should be established to continue and extend the co-operative work begun by the Imperial Education Committee. iAustralian Imperial Force. INTRODUCTION 3 Australia was also represented by the Administra- tive Committee, as well as otherwise, at a Conference called by the Universities Bureau of the British Empire to consider International University co- operation. It was represented, again through the Administrative Committee, on the British Universities Mission which went to France to discuss arrangements for co-operative action. The official representatives of the Universities of the United States, in Britain and in France, generously allowed the Australian Committee to utilize for Australian soldiers some of the provision made for University men in the American army. The Universities of the United Kingdom and of France gave the Administrative Committee all the help that it asked of them individ- ually, and showed much interest in the discussion of methods whereby a larger intercourse between them- selves and the Australian Universities might be brought about in after years. The Administrative Committee therefore felt that an era of greatly extended and improved relationship between the Universities of the world had begun, and that, if Australia were to keep its place among them, it must know more of the highly important American group. Proper study could be made of that group, and effective consultation held with it, only by a Universities Mission to the United States and Canada, for which precedent had been given by the British Universities Mission which visited those countries in 1918. The Committee, therefore, decided to suggest a programme of enquiry for the consideration of the Australian Universities ; but, as it would take many months to effect the necessary arrangements for such 4 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY a Mission, it also decided meanwhile to ask the Minister for Defence (Senator the Honourable G. F. Pearce) to permit one of its members to return by way of the United States and Canada in order to make a preliminary survey. This plan was referred to the Hon. H. Y. Braddon (lately Australian Commissioner in the United States), who happened to be in London, and received his emphatic approval. The Minister for Defence then gave the required authority to the Chairman of the Committee, who spent from December, 1919, to the end of February, 1920, in North America on the investigation from which proceeds this general sketch. In May, 1920, a Conference of the Australian Universities, held in Sydney, recommended the appointment of a Standing Advisory Committee, one of whose duties will be to decide whether a Mission of experts should be sent to the United States. A list of fifteen questions, indicating what the Committee believed should be the more definite objects of enquiry by a Mission, has now been sub- mitted to many American University authorities, and has been almost universally accepted as adequate from the American point of view. A tentative answer to the majority of the questions is given in the chapters that follow, and a great deal of information is ready for communication to particular Universities or departments or specialists, as required. Perhaps this very imperfect study may contribute, in a preliminary way, to the proper examination of American Univer- sities for the benefit of Australia which has much to learn from them, if little or nothing to copy. Similar interpretative work has been done extremely INTRODUCTION 5 well for France by Professor Maurice Caullery, of the Sorbonne, in his book "Les Universites et la Vie scientifique aux Etats-Unis." It has also been excellently begun for England in Miss Sara Burstall's "Impressions of American Education in 1908," which, however, includes secondary as well as University education in its scope. Good books by Americans about their Universities such as President C. W. Eliot's "University Adminis- tration," Dr. C. F. Thwing's "History of Higher Education in America," and Dr. E. E. Slosson's series of lively descriptive and critical essays entitled "Great American Universities" interpret their subject for America itself, and therefore do not afford quite the interpretation we need, though they contain much essential matter. The writings of the severer critics of the American system e.g., of Dr. J. McK. Cattell and various contributors to his "University Control," Mr. T. Veblen in his "Higher Learning in America," or Mr. Abraham Flexner in his "American College" are profitable reading for only those foreigners who suspend judgment while still unfamiliar with the facts, and who remember that, notwithstanding all their keen and ironic criticism, the reformers have a hearty conviction that the American University is one of America's greatest achievements. An interesting manifestation of the growing appre- ciation of America in Australia has appeared in "American Impressions," by the Hon. H. Y. Braddon. This and other books and articles, together with a mass of official publications, have been useful to the writer though while travelling he was shut off from most of them, and he has not felt entitled to parade 6 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY authorities. He hopes to be forgiven for any lack of detailed acknowledgment of passages in quotation marks. A traveller's note-book has such deficiencies. The right Australian study of the American Uni- versity has still to be made. This is but a first impression of a very great subject. To name each of the Universities which have con- tributed to this impression of the American University, as a type, does not seem necessary. The selection was representative, and the number as large as could be comprehended in the time. Nothing is said of Canadian Universities, though three of them were taken into the survey. They conform much to the American type; but they are British, too. and to include them here, except by some brief reference or implication, would not be fair to them ; for they differ from both national types, and exhibit marked diver- sities among themselves. It is to be hoped that the Universities of the British Dominions will soon be properly interpreted to one another by their own efforts, and, with the aid of a reconstructed Uni- versities Bureau of the British Empire, properly equipped for this and other tasks of Imperial significance. To mention all the individuals in the United States and Canada who helped the writer in his quest would require the compilation of a long list. The American returns frankness for frankness. His hospitality is boundless, and his patience equal to any demand that implies an intelligent interest in his national institu- tions or customs; but of ignorant and presumptuous foreign criticism he is justly intolerant. The writer will always remember with heartfelt gratitude the INTRODUCTION 7 kindness he received from all sorts of Americans Publicists, Editors and "Doughboys," officials and members of Universities from President to Kitchen- hand, from Dean and Professor to the newest Fresh- man. He renders special thanks to all that "solempne and greet fraternitee" of American University men whose privileges he was allowed to share, in free communion of ideas, during the brief but strenuous time that he spent trying to understand, and to learn from, the American University. The writer has to thank many of his colleagues here for helpful criticism and suggestions. The Warden and Registrar. Mr. H. E. Barff; the Challis Professor of Anatomy and Professor-Elect of Anatomy at Cambridge, Dr. J. T. Wilson ; the Acting- Professor of Latin, Dr. F. A. Todd; and the writer's own chief. Professor M. W. MacCallum of the Challis Chair of Modern Literature, have read manuscript or proofs with useful results. The help of the Vice- Principal of the Teachers' Training College and Lecturer in the History of Education, Dr. P. R. Cote, has been of special value, because to his educational scholarship is added the knowledge derived from long post-graduate study in a great American University. For errors of omission and commission the writer himself is responsible. CHAPTER I THE GENERAL SITUATION THE present is a particularly interesting time at which to visit the greater American Universities. Some of the experiences that they had after the Civil War are being repeated. There is a considerable in- crease in the number of students. Enlarged ideas of development for national service are being dis- cussed. The history of a few years ago shows that, even then, they were shaking themselves free of their exaggerated respect for the German University. The World War has finally relieved them of it; and the superstition of German superiority in education, science, and learning, has been dispelled, leaving only the real merit of German scholarship to continue as one among various examples to be emulated. It is of special interest to find that many of the American scholars who are dissatisfied with the present condition of their Universities consider that in making vital changes British precedents should be followed. An American effort to obtain the opinion of all the "leading men of science who hold, or have held, academic positions" in the United States showed that even before the war a large proportion of such men representing nearly half the whole professoriate in THE GENERAL SITUATION 9 scientific subjects favoured a re-construction of the American University on a model that is partly British, though exempt from mere imitation. This fact is significant to an Australian who has sometimes heard the American model recommended for the imitation of his own University. There is no reason to believe that the American University will suffer the particular re-constitution proposed. It may be assumed, however, that the University typical of the United States is in a period of transition to an improved method of government and administration perhaps also to a more limited scope in respect of its lower kinds of work. Some of the most experienced and responsible University teachers and administra- tors applied the term "critical" to the situation as they explained it to me. The rush to the Universities, since the war came to an end, has severely tried their resources. But it has not brought to them, as it did to those of Great Britain, so very many more students than they would normally have had. There is no American parallel to the University of Liverpool in England, which is now said to have nearly four times as many students as it had in the year before the war. To some extent, and in some places, the numbers in America are abnormal ; but attendance records (care- ful statistics of which are generally compiled and shown in graphs) prove that the normal increase due for this year the first normal year since the war has not in most cases been greatly exceeded. The United States has one University which is now anticipating 15,000 students, and in a few years must make ready for 20,000. Some are approaching the 10,000 mark, and must prepare themselves for 15,000. 10 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY Quite a number are on or over an attendance of 5,000, and growing. It is evident that great problems of finance and control and staffing are implied by these figures. It is known that University students cost more than they ever contribute towards their education. But in the United States it was estimated, some years ago, that the annual loss per student on this account was as- much as 42 at Stanford, 26 at Columbia, 35 at Johns Hopkins, 31 at Wisconsin and 27 at Cali- fornia. Yet the student was debited only with the expense incurred for his instruction. It must be admitted that some State Universities charge no tuition fees. This, however, does not mean that they are quite free ; the experienced eye of President Eliot has detected that "the State institutions have estab- lished the custom of charging various fees for en- trance, incidentals, graduation and laboratory courses," while some "make a distinction between the College and the school of agriculture on the one hand and the law school and medical school on the other, charging no tuition fee in the first group but an ample tuition fee in the second." The rate of loss in all the Uni- versities must now be higher still on account of in- creased cost of commodities and of teaching. Unsub- sidized Universities, like Columbia, are finding it necessary to increase their fees and to ask for further outside help as well. One item of expenditure that was overdue for in- crease, and is increasing fast, is that for salaries. Wages for all manual workers on University staffs have long since gone up. Now, those of teachers are also rising. The supply is very short : numbers have resigned to go into better paid occupations, and THE GENERAL SITUATION n many young men have given up their intention of following an academic career. This was largely the case before the war, when the Carnegie Foundation reported that "the possibility of teaching (i.e. College teaching) seldom presents itself seriously nowadays to the best of students in a large graduating class." It has been more pronounced since the war when, in the extraordinary prosperity brought to the United States, the subject of poverty in the teaching pro- fession, from school to University inclusive, has been a common source of satirical jesting in the comic papers, and of earnest remonstrance in the more res- ponsible public journals. The financial self-sacrifice that an able American must practise if he elects to teach in a University is necessarily observed when the demand for University teachers is unprecedented. This is forcing an improvement in salaries which have been always much too low for American conditions. Some years ago the Carnegie Foundation discovered that "the average salary of a professor in the hundred strongest Colleges and Universities of America may be safely taken to be close to $2,500." There were "only eight institutions giving an average salary of $3,500 or over." In only five institutions could a professor receive over $5,500. Despite some improve- ment since made, I met professors of distinction whose salaries did not exceed $4,000. These salaries date from a time when the dollar had, according to statisticians, about double its present purchasing power. All American academic salaries must be raised, but how to find the money is the great problem, especially for the Endowed Universities. A resolute attempt at its solution is now being made, though 12 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY the State Universities, for which it is easier, are less active in the matter. Upon the result, more than upon anything else, depends the future of the American University, whose expansion hitherto has been largely at the cost of its Teaching Staff. Similar problems in finance result from the need of increased accommodation, equipment and service for the huge and growing numbers of students. The question is whether indefinite expansion is necessary, desirable, or even possible at least on present lines. Paradoxical as it may seem, there is not much probability of an increase in the number of Uni- versities. In 1914 there were said to be "about six hundred institutions which bear the name of College, or University, in the United States and Canada." According to the Secretary of the Carnegie Founda- tion there were in 1915 about 150 Universities in the United States alone. He added : "how many of these institutions deserve the name of University, it is difficult to say," and he noted the number of institu- tions then admitted to the Association of American Universities as twenty-two only. But there were no fewer than forty State Universities, all presumably capable of something like the great development there has been in the leading State Universities within the Association. It is therefore not likely that much foundation of new Universities will take place. To make and main- tain even 150, so that they will all be truly entitled to the name of University, is quite sufficient task even for a nation approaching a (white) population of one hundred million. The question facing the United States is not how to finance more Universities to THE GENERAL SITUATION 13 hold the present and coming overflow of students, but how to give the mass-education that is required with- out over-taxing and hindering the sound development of the Universities that already exist, whether they indubitably deserve the name, or are only on the way to deserving it. Satirical Americans speak of their Universities as "educational factories." There is not justice but only a beginning of criticism in the term. The University carries too large a share of the whole burden of education in America; the secondary school carries too little. An adjustment is needed. Expan- sion of the scope of secondary education, outside the Universities, must surely come first. The situation in the United States is quite mis- understood by Australians who suppose that the American University has a history more or less the same as the British University, and stands in much the same relation to the secondary schools of its country. The first thing to observe is that, histori- cally, the American University is not a university at all but a College. It began, in 1636, with Harvard, which was founded, directly but humbly, on the model of Emmanuel Coll-ege, Cambridge, to secure for promising boys a good religious education in order that they might one day take the place of the English- trained ministers of religion among the original colonists. When Yale College was established, in 1701, the model of Harvard College was followed. For about a hundred years the American College was above all a school for clergy. Even up to the time immediately following the War of Independence it mainly produced ministers of religion. In the meanwhile, lacking the sort of basis given 14 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY to Oxford and Cambridge Colleges by the English Public Schools that traditionally prepared for the University, the American College tended to do the work rather of the English Public School than of an Oxford or Cambridge College. This inheritance of school work and school method has persisted in the American College since it ceased to be a professional training-place for clergy, and American academic authorities admit that the American College is now, and always has been, doing a great deal of secondary school work. That is the fundamental fact in the American University system. The American College has not developed clear of secondary school work, like its original the Oxford and Cambridge College or like the Scottish and modern English and Australian Universities. It has carried the function of secondary school into its vast and admirable development of University grades of study. The higher it has attempted to range, the more it has felt the drag of its secondary school operations, until to-day the "College" part of an American University's work is sometimes being described as an intolerable impedi- ment to the rest; and there are academic people who want to cut oft" the '"College" altogether and make its degree (of B.A., etc.) a mere matriculation qualifi- cation, somewhat after the French method with the B.-es-L. Even without objection to the "College," American educationalists freely speak of the "Uni- versity" as that which begins where the "College" leaves off. and has no concern with "undergraduate" work but only with the "graduate" kind. Among the less radical there is a movement to get rid of the THE GENERAL SITUATION 15 lower half of the "College" course, and relegate it to a "Junior College" outside the University. This movement will probably succeed, and will bring the American University more into line with those, out- side America, which have developed from the European model and base themselves upon a fuller growth of the independent secondary school system. Burdens which no regular British University need bear are necessarily accepted by the American University which must often be prepared, no matter what the expense, to do over again much work that in most other countries would have been done in the secondary school. This important fact can best be given upon direct American authority. I therefore accept its presentation by Dr. C. H. Judd, Professor of Education and Director of the School of Edu- cation at the University of Chicago ; and I shall quote from him only what he has written and published, though he went over some of the ground with me again in private discussion. Dr. Judd's admirable little book on "The Evolution of a Democratic School System" is my main authority. The American College course is divided into four years, called "freshman," "sophomore," "junior," and "senior." Terms like "first year French" often mean the first year of any kind of scholastic instruction in French, or any other subject named. Professor Judd says: "There has never been a time when American Colleges have not done a great deal of secondary work. In recent years this has been the more obvious because much of the work of freshman and sophomore years has been carried on without high-school pre-requisites. It has long been possible in every American college for the student to elect first-year French and first-year German. He can also begin history and science. The question has been 16 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY asked: Why not let a college freshman begin Latin? If he wants Greek these days, he usually has to postpone the subject to college, and often to the divinity school. These questions and conditions grew out of the fact that the present high school cannot do all that is required to complete a secondary education." It must be admitted that "to do all that is required to complete a secondary education" is an ideal of which all nations come short. But this authoritative American educationalist records his own nation as having a secondary school system that does not yet meet all reasonable requirements. By that fact the American University is conditioned. The explanation that the Professor gives of his judgment which I found generally well supported is that the secondary school course of four years is too short for all the subjects it has been forced to include; and that there is a very serious breach of continuity between the elementary and the secondary school. Theoretically, American education has a fine and full continuity. All the children work together in the elementary school from the age of six to the age of fourteen. Then those who wish for higher instruction go into the secondary (or "high") school for another four years. At the age of eighteen they are ripe for College (i.e. Undergraduate University) ; and at the end of another four years, having reached the age of twenty-two, they are properly equipped for the true (or "Graduate") University in any of its scholarly or professional branches. It is obvious that there is an inherent reasonable- ness and yet a serious waste of time somewhere in this scheme, which is, of course, a great deal modified by diversities of practice. The Americans are cer- THE GENERAL SITUATION 17 tainly right in deciding that school-days should be over when the pupil is about eighteen years of age, and that the normal undergraduate age should be between eighteen and twenty-two; also that, for a selection of its students, a University should provide advanced studies after they have reached the higher age and finished their general training. But educa- tional opinion seems about to combine on the revised decision that the secondary school age must begin before fourteen, and the secondary school period must extend over at least six years. There are already in existence "Junior High Schools," which are to relieve the elementary schools of some of their upper-class work (much of it being, for brighter pupils, unnecessary repetition), and to relieve the "High Schools" of some of their lower range of study. This will enable the "High School" to extend its higher range of work into that which may anticipate or comprise the lower two years of College work, and perhaps be classified, at its top, under the departmental name of "Junior College." These peculiarities of the American situation are, like English grammar, very remarkable and only to be explained historically. That is why such fallacious inferences appear in some British notions of the American educational system. It is, of course, true that extraordinarily good schools exist in the United States, in the form of ordinary "High Schools," private "Academies," and institutional schools under various names. These send to the Universities a considerable number of their best trained matriculants. There are also Universities that will bear strict com- parison, as regards matriculation requirements, with iS THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY the most exacting in the British Empire. But it still seems true that the general educational foundations upon which the British University, as a rule, is building are sounder as well as more economical of time; that its essential specific work generally begins at a rightly higher level of general attainment in the under- graduate; and that it rightly finishes his course at a somewhat lower average age, thereby proving more economical even in money. It is not implied that in range of studies, or in thoroughness of training, the good American University is at any disadvantage. To imitate the existing general system of either the American school or the American University would be a mistake for Australia, so far as it is in possession of school organizations adapted from British models, and reasonably well co-ordinated with Universities that are themselves inheritors of a British tradition and doing all they can to live up to it. while serving the particular needs of Australia. The Australian system needs improvement everywhere. But direct American imitation (as, for example, of the four years High School) would throw it into disorder and spoil what systematic development it has. It is significant that two borrowings from Germany account for no small part of the present unsatisfactory situation in America : first, the copying of the Prussian elementary school system ; and, secondly, the copying of the German University "electives" system. It was conscious imitation of Prussia that fixed the form of the American elementary school. The American colonists began with Colleges for theological training, and these caused preparatory schools for such colleges to come into being. Then common THE GENERAL SITUATION 19 schools were set up to teach reading and writing, as a means to religious instruction for people who did not need education of any advanced kind. Settlement being mostly sparse, almost all children learnt in the common school. Some went on to the preparatory school. A few, mostly those who were to have their chance of being ministers of religion, went on again to College. To-day there are still Colleges that have their own "preps," and there are any number of independent "preps." But the local common school is still underlying them and, but for having been Prussianized, might have become a sound basis for all later education. It is, anyhow, by American inspira- tion, a great school of citizenship. About the middle of last century the German "Common People's School" (Volkschule} was taken as the model of the American common (or elementary) school. The Americans believed they were getting a definite scheme of elementary work which would carry practically their whole body of children through a graduated course of study, from six to fourteen years of age. This indeed they got, but not in a form appropriate to a truly "common" school that is, a "universal" school. The Prussian elementary school was a "Common People's School," a school for child- ren who were not merely not encouraged to go on to higher forms of intellectual training, but were also intended to remain no more educated than they could become in a school of rudiments only. The allowance of eight years for instruction in rudiments, upon a very limited curriculum, was made in Prussia strictly for the "common people," who were to be taught enough to make them well-behaved, intelligently 20 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY industrious and useful to the State. Middle and upper class elements of the population were not taught in the "Common People's Schools," but in others just as specially devised for them, and of much greater range and speed of operation. Hence the United States got a curriculum and organization suited to a repressed common people, but essentially unsuited to the needs of American democracy, which include provision for every social class and every kind of purpose in edu- cation. The result has been waste of time for the pupils who were destined to go through all the educational stages above the "common school," and even for those whose natural abilities enabled them to complete an elementary training in less than average time, which itself was less than full school time. The Chicago Professor and Director of Education summarizes this aspect of American education by saying that : "For three-quarters of a century American boys and girls have been compelled to spend the first years of their school lives within the artificial walls fnat the traditions of mediaevalism and the will of aristocracy have thrown around the common people of Germany .... The upper grades of the elementary school are the points where reform must begin, and where it must be most radical." The typical secondary school of the United States was not an imitation but a national growth. It was first called the "Academy," and developed in the eighteenth century as a school to which children could go for a while when they had outgrown the original common school. It was mostly co-educational, and very free in its curriculum. Its model was the traditional grammar-school imported from Great 21 Britain; but it had to adapt the old classical culture of that type to the education, often very limited or one-sided, which its own teachers had received, as well as to the very uneven training given to its pupils while they were in the still rudimentary and unorganized common school. The "Academy" flourished; and, after the Revolution, the old colonial "Grammar School" tended to merge into the newer independent American kind of school. But this meant increase in the cost of secondary education. So about the middle of last century a new beginning was made, and the present prevailing type of American secondary school (termed "High School") came into being. It continued the fusion of types. But it was a State institution for free education, admitting only those who had passed through the "grammar grades" (the higher classes in the public elementary school), or who could give evidence of similar training. Its course was four years in length, but pupils were not under any obligation to stay so long; nor was it intended to prepare them for College, though the development of American education has since made that an important purpose. If the High School had been borrowed directly from abroad, it would have ignored the existence of the common school and done its own elementary as well as secondary work, so far as required. But it took the good American course of accepting the common school as its basis, and general preparation for a citizen's life as its function ; so it could do nothing to avoid the evil effect of that Prussianizing of the common school. The "High School," therefore, had not even a secure foundation on which to do its own teaching, and could not give 22 one to the College, or to the University. But it has formed a definite part of a public system of education leading directly, if slowly and confusedly, from elementary school to University. The "electives" system is not exclusively a copying of Germany. Increase of knowledge has widened all curricula in the last fifty years. No traditional limited curriculum has been able to stand against the constant intrusion of new subjects. No method of selecting a few subjects as absolute requisites in any and every curriculum has been possible, except in a very limited way. Increase of subjects has everywhere meant increase of the student's right to choose among sub- jects. In the United States, the University of Virginia was founded, near the beginning of the nineteenth century, on an "elective" policy of "uncontrolled choice (for the students) in the lectures they shall attend." But this principle was not largely operative till the last third of that century, and is mainly associated, in its application, with Harvard University and the name of President C. W. Eliot, though President Wayland, of Brown University, had made himself its exponent as early as 1850. Undoubtedly the main precedent followed was that of Germany. Again an essential difference between German and American conditions was overlooked. The United States had evolved no national secondary school like the German "gymnasium," that prepared, both quickly and efficiently, the young people of whole sections of the community, and made them fit for a University career if they cared to use their opportunity. If the German youth was allowed Virginian freedom in the choice of his academic studies, he was twenty years THE GENERAL SITUATION 23 (or more) of age, theoretically at the end of his general education, and far more solidly grounded, as a rule, in the preliminary studies desirable before the free choice was made. In addition to that, his way through life was mostly mapped out for him in ad- vance, and this, very frequently, limited his choice rather narrowly. Under German influence the "electives" system went too far in America. Harvard has seen good reason, under President Lowell, to retreat a great deal from the widest liberty of choice allowed under President Eliot. And this more conservative policy has spread among the great American Universities which at least warn their students against "a course of study covering many electives" because it "must necessarily give a superficial knowledge," and because it allows the individual "to make for himself a curriculum through which he is not obliged to run, but may dawdle and amble." The complaint of superficiality, of neglect to lay solid foundations for a thorough knowledge of any particular branch of science or scholarship, is very common in American references to the effect of the system of almost unlimited election. A further complaint is that the students, who are simply the novices of the higher learning, are given too decisive a voice as to the directions in which the University shall mainly spend its teaching efforts. "The elective system," says Mr. Flexner, summarising a thorough indictment, "impoverishes and isolates by excessive and premature specialism where it does not waste by aimless dispersion." But if there is strong objection to allowing the College student or undergraduate to specialize quite 24 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY at his own discretion when he is but eighteen years of age, it cannot be carried very far, because the "electives" system was firmly established in the "High School" also during the same period. And this was a period in which the whole of American secondary education lost ground. The German "Common People's School" did not prepare its pupils for any secondary school having, as part of its function, the further preparation of some of them for a University; it was based on the intention that none of them ever should go to any secondary school or University. The American common school, there- fore, set its pupils free without all the kind and amount of preparation they should and might have had if it had properly recognized its universal function as preliminary training ground for young people, including those who would need secondary training. Up to fifty years ago this raised no special problems; for the secondary school course still con- tained few subjects, and led on to a College course which held comparatively few more. But since then there has come the great and necessary increase even in "High School" subjects. A further increase of "vocational" subjects whose necessity is sometimes apparent, sometimes not so has followed. The full number of subjects that a secondary school boy or girl could take was soon reached. It has risen to about six. Human endurance is easily overtaxed, and the Americans do not allow their children to be driven hard. Only the "electives" system, under American conditions, could relieve the situation caused by waste of time in the elementary school, the addition of preparation for College to the work of the High THE GENERAL SITUATION 25 School, and the crowding-in of new subjects. But it has had two disadvantages : "secondary" subjects that ought to have been begun earlier than the theoretical secondary school age are handicapped in competition for the pupil's favour with others not requiring to be so begun ; and the choice of subjects may be so large that pupils and parents are perplexed by it, and easily exercise it either to the detriment of a later College course or inconveniently for the school only a small minority of whose pupils will ever go on to College, or perhaps even complete its own course. In any case the congestion of subjects had to grow again. So it is definitely admitted now, by Professor Judd : "The fact is that what we have tried to work out as a High School curriculum in American schools cannot be contained in four years." It is also recog- nized that "our pupils are behind those trained in the better European schools." It is further estimated that, for one example, a well-trained American arrives at graduation in medicine two years later than a well- trained European, "because he has spent so much time and effort on rudiments in the elementary school" ; and that "Those two years are of the greatest signifi- cance in a professional career. They supply the margin that makes of the average physician abroad a scientist as well as a practitioner." The problem of the number of students, now over- whelming many good American Universities, is partly a consequence of these special features of American education. The High School does not carry the general education of the citizen sufficiently far. He wants more, and he goes to the College for it. His tastes and needs may easily demand more than four 26 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY years of secondary schooling can give him. The College, then, is forced to occupy itself with a good deal of secondary school work. It constitutes whole classes for students who, except in point of age, should be at school for the work they are doing. It teaches them at enormous expense. They also impose upon it enormous burdens of administration. In par- ticular, class-records of a school-like character have to be kept; and the teachers must be responsible for each pupil's progress and for his stimulation and correction, greatly after the methods used in schools. For this duty a large number of teachers will be required. At one University I visited, I found that no less than seventy-two "Instructors" apart from Professors were engaged in teaching English to the "freshman" year. Each Instructor had a class of twenty-five. The instruction was partly such as no Australian University would attempt, the sort of com- position work and general literary training which is supposed to be tested once for all at Matriculation. There was even a "sub-freshman" division, in which study of a still more elementary kind, and not counting for graduation, was carried on. When this happens in English, the basic subject in all American education, it can easily be understood how school-like and elementary other classes in the "freshman" year may be. Under the "electives" system in the High Schools, pupils may enter a University with very diverse qualifications some inappropriate because they were "elected" without proper regard to an ultimate University course ; some even more seriously defective, because the High School from which the pupil ^came THE GENERAL SITUATION 27^ had not upon its list a particular subject essential to a fair commencement of academic studies. Uni- versity entrance requirements are a guide to correct preparation. In the old days of free election within the Universities, they were thought too arbitrary a limitation of secondary work to subjects not neces- sarily continued in College. But this applied specially to schools most occupied in preparing candidates for public examinations that gave entrance to Uni- versities. The requirements are more flexible now, and diversity of school training is wider. The University that bases itself at all broadly on the High Schools must offer students, as part of their "fresh- man" course, the very rudiments of most subjects. In such conditions, there must be a large number of students in American Universities for whose like an Australian University is not now called upon to pro- vide and never should be called upon to provide, so long as Australia manages to maintain a fair co- ordination between its elementary, secondary and academic forms of education. The American school system may have many valuable precedents for our use. But it is not apt for our copying. We cannot bend our educational history to correspond with that of the United States. We are direct inheritors of the quite differently developed British tradition, and, for us, it is a good sound basis of our own development. The Americans themselves warn us against enthusiastic but undis- criminating imitation; for they now admit their mistakes in copying Germany, speak of their problems as "American problems," and draw a clear lesson from their past. "We must not seek an easy solution 28 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY of our problem by borrowing a European institution," says Professor Judd. The attitude of Australia should be equally independent, but with this further American caution: "We have been wasteful in our neglect of educational experience elsewhere than on our own trying ground." There is much to be gained by study, from the Australian point of view, of "educational experience" in America ; especially by the kind of study that bears upon the educational glory of America, its many great and vigorous Universities, whose record is full of noble traits which its future is certain to maintain and increase. CHAPTER II UNIVERSITY GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION THE present system of University government in the United States has the great merit of making the Universities conspicuous among the institutions which legislators and wealthy persons should endow ; of providing the readiest means whereby to inform both types of benefactor how academic financial needs should be met; of keeping rich or influential men active both in University management and among possible benefactors or before legislatures ; of securing financial advice from experts ; of giving the widest public scope to the talents of some academic personage of distinction, chosen as President worthily and ex- pertly to represent the University before the world, and of setting him apart to think sedulously about the systematic development of the University, upon the understanding that he shall be responsible, above all others, for its right administration. I believe such merits to be quite real, in American conditions. Despite frequent gibes at "tainted money," or "the cent that is clapped on each gallon of oil after the millions have been given," or the fears that "they are cornering our education, like everything else," the 30 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY American people sincerely admires generous gifts to Universities. The money is there, and not unlawfully obtained. It represents material success, national as well as personal. Its purely personal use is despised. Its hoarding is abominated. Its employment in some ideally-motived way is held to be very honourable. To found or endow a University is the form of social distinction that has not only the most outspoken but also the most heartfelt and most enduring approval of Americans. The cause of the higher learning has everyone's support, so far as it is understood. That is the greatest American idealism which has any fixed form. In a play which I saw in New York the hero, who was sorely tempted to fail in his patriotic duty during the war, was straightened partly by the reminder that his grandfather had founded a Uni- versity. The vast audience knew then that the ideal, selfless, patriotic motive must triumph as it duly did in the young American. Such an appeal to common sentiment would probably be unintelligible or ridiculous outside America. The men who can afford to dream of themselves putting such ideals into practice may have to satisfy their ambition by making minor gifts and by serving on University governing bodies. In the course of their work as University "Trustees" or "Regents" they often subscribe to make up, among members of the governing body itself, deficits they have risked to maintain or expand the work of their University. They collect large sums by personal application to others of their class or to those richer still. One such man told me how he had raised $1,500,000 for his small University in this way. What he gave himself in UNIVERSITY GOVERNMENT 31 addition I did not like to ask. But, as he was rich, the amount was probably large. In the State Universities the obtaining of gifts is more than ever the President's task. Yet the principle that other members of governing bodies must get as well as spend money for their Universities is valid in the support of all Universities, State as well as Endowed. One President of a State University recently received a private benefaction of about $1,000,000, for the benefit of women-students. He reminded the giver that there were men-students also, and is presently to receive as much for them. The Governing Body of a State University may not be able to draw on the wealth of its individual members to any great extent. But it represents the fixed idealism in the people of the United States, and can thus secure very large legislative endowments. A State's honourable position among its fellow-States is generally felt to depend upon the scope and efficiency of its University. Public opinion is continually being led in this direction by the authorized spokesman of the University the President. The title "President" is almost universal. But "Provost" or even "Chancellor" may be used instead. It represents a universal system, and an academic type of which Australia has no experience. In theory and in practice, subject to rare exceptions the occupant of the office is as eminent for scholarship as for executive ability, and fitted for leadership as much by the largeness of his mind as by the strength of his character. No other gift or grace could be amiss in him; but his faculty of self-expression in words must be strong, because he is to embody some- 32 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY how in his own person all that the University ought to stand for in public consciousness. Once dedicated to this high duty, he is to live in and for the Uni- versity as a whole; and he may exercise a practically supreme authority over all whom it contains. In some of the best Universities, both State and En- dowed, he is fully a member of the governing body, but in all cases he attends its deliberations. He may take part in the teaching of the University, but very often is solely occupied in its general control, inspira- tion and representation. Ideally, he should combine the qualities of the administrative and the educational expert with those of the statesman and leader of men. Considering the rare balance of qualities which such an office demands, it is remarkable how many great Presidents there already are in American academic history, and what fine combinations of head, heart and practical abilities an observer of the greater American Universities will remark in the men now attempting to realize in their practice the Ameri- can ideal. It is probable that the wonderfully large and original development of the American University system has owed much of its possibility to the American form of academic government, which has grown up very independently of British or other European precedents. It may be that that form will have to continue because it still best suits American conditions. The University of Virginia, not very long ago, found reason for adopting it after experience of another that lasted for the better part of a century. But, in recent years, it has been fiercely attacked in the United States itself. There is almost revolutionary zeal against the Presidency through much of the 33 American academic body. "Presidency," said one of the best of Presidents, "is an example now of oppro- brium without power." There are times when one feels that an office in which some good men do not appear happy and against which so very much is now being alleged both on principle and as regards prac- tice cannot be far off some important modification of its character. Here again a right judgment, for a foreigner, depends upon knowledge of history. The term "President" has become the commonest in the United States to indicate, in a dignified way, any delegated but revocable supreme authority. It stands for a national idea of organization for business efficiency. This has passed on into the Universities, which have suffered the influence of modern competitive methods in business. So far as such methods are practised, an American University President may be essential to academic management. But in a wider view, President Eliot wrote : "Common experience! during the last fifty years teaches with certainty that the efficiency of any corporation financial, manufacturing or commercial depends on its having one responsible head .... A university cannot be an exception to this rule for securing efficiency." Against that business analogy, with its autocratic bias and its confusion of unlike organizations for unlike purposes, much of the academic world in America is now in revolt. Yet all other forms of University government have disappeared before this one in the United States. The original of the modern University President was the first "College President," who began by being 34 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY a copy of an Oxford or Cambridge College head and then became, very largely, a secondary school Head- master after the English Public School kind. This the University President still essentially remains. He alone of all the masters sits with the governing body in its deliberations ; he settles the educational policy of the whole institution after consultation, such as he may think profitable, with his assistants ; he engages and dismisses the staff (subject, of course, to confirmation by the governing body) ; he is paid a good deal more than any other member of the staff; he gets the credit for the institution's success and, ultimately, must pay with his position for its failure ; in the meantime he is the institution, to the outside world, as neither governing body nor any other man or body of men can be. A really great and good man of some quite rare type can, on these terms, do valuable work and make his whole institution happy. But even in Public Schools with the English tradition, under the best of Headmasters, the assistant-master pays in loss of prestige, and stinting of salary, for the pre-eminence of the Headmaster upon whose favour he depends so largely, and in whose shadow he is too much obscured. And the Headmaster occasionally comes to sad ruin which might have been avoided if he had been called less to regard himself as the one pillar of his world. Something similar occurs with the American University President and the American University Professor ; but, the scale being larger and the system more diversely tried, the results may be more serious. American University history is strewn with wrecks of Presidents whom their burden broke. A success- UNIVERSITY GOVERNMENT 35 ful one has written: "The biography of American College Presidents has, on the whole, been a history of burdened hearts, often breaking." I was told that the average life of a President, as such, is but eight years, though it is a satiric saying among University men that, whatever virtues a President may possess, resignation is not among them. Some of the best- esteemed University professors of to-day cannot be induced to take Presidencies. But the wrecks of presidential careers are accom- panied by others that are professorial. A President mostly has the power, if he has the will, to remove a professor whom he does not like, or whom his governing body thinks to have objectionable opinions or, even, whom students, parents, benefactors, or public demand as their victim. To what extent cases of unjust dismissal occur cannot be safely estimated. To what extent dismissals are unjust will depend on the principles of tenure concerned. A President, for example, has been known to maintain that for every professorship there should be an initial competition, and thereafter a continuous competition; so that, if the President sees a man whom he thinks able to fill it better than its present occupant, he may decide the competition again in favour of the outside competitor. For one cause and another, an Association of American University Professors has been formed. It investigates and publishes the facts about all cases of dismissal, and is generally regarded as exercising a good influence. But, however the situation is modified by good Presidents, good governing bodies, good University traditions and outside influences, it is not good in 36 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY itself: the very idea of a University is obscured and may be falsified by it. The heart of a University is its teachers and their students. Between them takes place all that the University does for the increase of knowledge in the world, and for its diffusion among long-trained and otherwise qualified learners. The teachers are the leaders in all the work of search, evaluation and exposition. They must bear the whole responsibility of this kind. Much more, too, is inevitably added. Upon them depends, greatly, the conduct of students, the organization of studies, the selection of apparatus and other equipment, the for- mation of the whole higher teaching profession, much of the recruiting of their own body most, indeed, of what is vital to the good name and development of the University. Even in America, a very large share in University administration must be taken by the professors, though the American system allows them to avoid it more than does the British. University teachers cannot be reduced to the status of employees of an administration without losing, to a great extent, the sense of their responsibility for the University itself. A University is not a business concern em- ploying certain experts, called professors, like a public company or (as the Americans term it) a corporation. University government is not, in principle, that of a Board of Directors and a Manager or Managing Director or, in American phrase, a President. The false analogy with business has done much harm among Universities. Modern America, with a kind of national passion for "big business," has a Uni- versity system in which it has prevailed to an unusually dangerous extent. But it is well known UNIVERSITY GOVERNMENT 37 among British Universities. A writer in the Educa- tional Supplement of The Times, for April 4, 1911, discussing "Modern Universities and their Govern- ment," dealt very ably with this aspect of his subject, as seen from the strictly English point of view : "The directorial view of University government is not only a novel view, it is also highly misleading. For there is no real analogy between the board of directors of a trading company and the governing body of a University. Since the trading company exists for the sake of the financial interest of the shareholders, which the directors represent, and not for the sake of the scientific interests which the company's experts represent, it is natural and right that the board should have the determining voice. But a University does exist primarily for the sake of the interests which the experts represent namely, the cultivation and the diffusion of knowledge; it does not exist primarily for the sake of the interests which the Council represents namely, the economical administration of public and trust funds. In the one case the experts exist for the sake of finance, and in the other the finance exists for the sake of the experts." From the British (including the Australian) point of view, the American University presidential system is historically interesting, and perhaps warranted by its results, in American conditions ; but is otherwise to be condemned as improper for a University, because its principles are those of autocracy (though its practice need not be and often is not), and its effect mostly is to set one learned and thoughtful man an impossible task while exempting nearly all the others on the staff (which ought to contain none but such men) from any comparable responsibility. I know that these generalizations need to be quali- fied in many ways as regards particular institutions ; and that the American professor has, by custom of 187738 38 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY the best Universities, a position of more security and more academic authority than is legally his. But he has not and he cannot have, though he want it ever so badly the same security, and the same authority, and the same power to take part in Uni- versity government, as he would possess under the British University tradition. To that tradition the American University Presidency is now alien. So far as it is educational, it belongs rather to the tradition of the secondary school, where one directive mind can cover, more or less, the whole field of studies, and where an autocratic method carries less danger of hindrance to learning. The rest of it is, in great part, derived from the cult of business efficiency. The Vice-Chancellorship in Great Britain is always very different from an American Presidency, and does not always mean the same thing in any two institutions. In Scotland, the Vice-Chancellor is merely the deputy for the Chancellor. For convenience sake, the Vice- Chancellorship may be combined with the "Principal- ship" the real chief executive office. The term "Provost" may be used instead of "Principal." as at Trinity College, Dublin. Queen's University, Belfast, has a President but he is called "Vice-Chancellor" too. London University has a "Principal" as well as a "Vice-Chancellor," and, though the two offices might be combined in the Scottish manner, they are not, and the executive function resides in the "Principal." At Oxford and Cambridge heads of colleges become "Vice-Chancellor" in rotation. There has been talk of making some radical change as, even, by appointing someone permanently to that office which is rather UNIVERSITY GOVERNMENT 39 a burden on the college head and perhaps needs more consistently effective exercise than it can have under the present system. It is not capable of being used for any sort of domination. A man of autocratic temper might dominate and act the Headmaster for a while in a Scottish Principal- ship possibly even in a modern English University Vice-Chancellorship. But he would raise such Opposition among the rest of the staff that in the long run he would be forced out. He could not force others out, except by irritating them into resignation. The British University Head is but primus inter pares as regards the professorial staff or most of the teaching body. He has one sort of effective share in the government of the University, and the staff has another. Their co-operation is practically compulsory ; and domination by him is practically impossible. So jealously is any presumption on his part regarded, that complaints are to be heard against the present business committee of the Universities Bureau of the British Empire (a Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals) because it contains no representatives of teaching staffs as such. The British system, therefore, has no office at all identical with that of the American President ; and it is, for its own conditions, clearly the better for that. It does not risk the lapse of the University's head into the position of an executive clothed with the delegated powers of the governing body, and , insensibly attracted to the attitude of the employer. But British University Government is of diverse types, and always different from the American. The only comparable English kind is that generally ex- 40 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY emplified by the provincial Universities of England. It is complicated and clumsy, but the English people understand how to make that kind of machine work, though an American would have less patience with it. The English writer already quoted gives its full analysis, which I follow. The supreme authority "nominally resides in a very large body known as the Court, or Court of Governors," usually including "all large benefactors and representatives from very numerous public bodies," and its possible "hundreds of members" are "necessarily ignorant of the matter they theoretically control." Hence its proceedings are only formal. "The real governing authority rests in every case with a smaller body known as the Council," composed partly of certain representatives of the Teaching Staff, and perhaps also of some endowing public body, but mainly elected by the Court. The election is only nominal, and "normally means" that the elected members are "annually nominated by the Council itself or by the few leading spirits who draw up the list of names to be submitted to the Court." So this effective governing Council is largely "a self- electing or self-renewing body." Below the Council comes the Senate, consisting of all the professors of the University. It is the chief academic authority. The Guild or Convocation of graduates has no real power. There are "certain orders of academic business reserved for the initiation of Senate and not to be dealt with by Council except on the recommendation of Senate." But the ultimate effective control rests with Council. Such a system of government "can be defended only on the assump- tion that the lay Council will always recognize the UNIVERSITY GOVERNMENT 41 limits of its own knowledge." Everything depends on the relations of the Council and Senate, whose links are the Vice-Chancellor and the professorial repre- sentatives on the Council. The American Endowed University is governed by what may generally be classified as a "Board of Trustees"; the State University by a "Board of Regents." The method at once suggests, but wrongly, the British Council. The "Board of Trustees" used generally to be a close corporation: its members sat for life, or until resignation, and it perpetuated itself by co-opting the new members it required. But the general practice is changing to that of election by the graduates for vacancies as they occur. The "Board of Regents" has ex officio members e.g., the State Governor and other members who may be appointed by the Governor, or elected by the legis- lature, or elected by the people like other legislators, or like judges. But the professors have traditionally no representation on these "Boards," except through the President, who always attends them. The theory is that the President is the link between the "Faculty" (in the sense of teaching-staff) and the Board. This he might be, if he were elected by the teaching- staff, responsible to it and removable by it. But he is not. Indeed, he is responsible to none but the Board. The Board is generally large and quite miscellaneous. Its members may live widely scattered. Frequent general meetings may be impossible. An executive committee only will enable it to attend regularly and often to urgent business. So long as the President holds its confidence and favour, he practically can exercise, if he will, almost all the 42 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY absolute powers which it possesses. A wise man does not do this ; and often to do it is practically impossible, because certain schools (such as Medicine and Engineering and Law) are entwined with powerful professions, and have asserted a kind of autonomy. But the inevitable result is to bind the President far closer to the Board than to the staff, and to give the University too much the feeling of being ruled monarchically by the delegate of a rather remote and absolute authority. Sometimes the effect produced is expressed by the American metaphor of the "department store" ("a department store President" or "a department store University"). In any case the tendency of the system, to separate President from Teaching Staff and prevent their full and equal co-operation, is regrettable. So the most respected President of Cornell University, Dr. J. G. Schurman, has declared "The only ultimately satisfactory solution of the problem of the government of American Universities is the concession to the professoriate of representation in the board of trustees or regents;" and he shaped the policy of his own University in this direction. The representation has been granted. The defects of the American system are historical. Harvard's first governing body was "a large group of the leading persons in the little colony" and the President. Its effective government now is a Cor- poration consisting of the President, Treasurer, and five Fellows elected for life. Vacancies are filled by co-optation approved by the Board of Overseers, which now represents the original governing body. It consists of thirty members, with the President and UNIVERSITY GOVERNMENT 43 Treasurer. The members are elected by the graduates, and hold office for six years. A traditional Harvard jest is that they "overlook things and their actions are oversights." The Board is too large and too in- frequent in its meetings to exercise detailed control. But it has a certain reviewing power, and it could force the retirement of a bad President. This bi- cameral system has worked sufficiently well, judged by results. The Harvard model has been largely used in America. Yet it is not typical. Yale, which followed it closely at first, has developed a different form and one outwardly much more democratic. But the general tendency has been towards reduction of the size of governing bodies, or restriction of the active management to a small executive committee; again, towards diminution of the official and political ele- ments, and towards the election by graduates of at least a part of the membership in some cases even the whole. The example of Cornell has created a new tendency to associate the teaching staff also with the general control. Many local and temporary devices for giving the staff some informal but effective voice with Trustees or Regents are being invented and tried. But the old bad tradition of its exclusion from the supreme authority is not yet broken. Hence the American University professor cannot sufficiently feel himself a free citizen of a republic of learning which a University ought to be but has too much reason to believe himself regarded as the servant of a lay oligarchy whose expert representative is, or can be at any moment, an autocrat. The modern English system, despite its gross defect of excluding graduates 44 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY from all share in University government, and its risky conventional balance of power between Senate and Council, is far preferable at least for Universities of the British tradition. The Australian University has known members of governing bodies who tried to defeat the object of the more liberal Australian constitutions by demanding that professors be treated merely as employees. But their effort to import the American principle, now widely condemned in America, happily failed. It will surely not be made again. The example of America cries loudly against it. The American presidential system, in a University of any size, demands a considerable force of adminis- trative assistants for the President. This, together with the American love of system in business and the American esteem for the work of the organizer and administrator, has produced a whole academic army of administration, and has altered the character of certain traditional academic offices. For example, there are Deans of Faculties who once were pro- fessors, and may still keep a more or less uncertain hold on teaching, but who are mainly sub-presidents of large academic departments. One of them will be acting-President if the President is away. All of them will be very busy in administration. They will be paid more than professors sometimes a good deal more. If successful, they have a certain chance of becoming Presidents somewhere. Then there are Deans of Women and Deans of Men to look after the morals and manners and habits and plans of students. There are Deans of Extension and Sub- Deans and Junior Deans, and Student Advisers, and UNIVERSITY GOVERNMENT 45 Secretaries of Faculties, and Registrars, and Business Managers and Comptrollers ; Directors of Physical Culture, Recorders, and many more. In comparison of all this the primitive Australian administration seems like some relic out of prehistoric times. Perhaps there is too much administrative machinery in America. Certainly some of it appears over-valued. To pay a professional Dean more than a Professor is to weaken the vital principle that teaching and the increase of knowledge are what a University exists for. To tempt good scholars out of professorships into administrative work, by means of apparently higher positions and actually higher salary, is surely bad policy. American academic critics are right when they claim that all Deans should be elected by the teaching staff, and not merely appointed on the nomination of the President, as is now the case. And at least some of the work done in supervision of undergraduates is again part of the secondary school operations of the American University a burden that might well be avoided, if it could be; a burden, any- how, that the Australian University does not assume. The typical American system of University govern- ment is open to vital objections from the Australian point of view, and could be adopted in Australia only as a largely undemocratic and wholly foreign method, forcibly imposed upon the comparatively democratic British method which we inherited in the ordinary course of our history, and have developed freely to suit our own conditions. The addition of a Presidency of the American type to the machinery of an Australian University might be the cause of temporary progress, even in the learning and teaching 46 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY values of the University. The "Committee System," on which Australian Universities are still being managed, has its own grave disadvantages. In par- ticular, it limits initiative. Busy men on a governing body of a more or less miscellaneous character and of unwieldy size, snatching an hour or two once a month or so in which to consider the affairs of the University, cannot safely initiate much, or be other than rather abstracted and spasmodic in their thought for the University. Members of Professorial Boards and Faculties look at University development with great interest so far as it concerns their own or collateral departments, but have a somewhat sus- picious reserve as regards the claims of other depart- ments. The professorial representatives on the governing body are necessarily often drawn from among those who teach utilitarian subjects, so that pure scholarship and science run great risk of in- sufficient regard and support, such as a good President would know they must have. At any time a com- mittee of professors, or of University teachers generally, is very keen and critical in its discussion of new ideas but slow and tentative in applying them. Where rapid decision and action produce the best results, an American President may easily surpass, in effective enterprise, an Australian professorial or other academic committee. Yet I am quite satisfied that the American Presidency ought not to be imported into any Australian University, however unsatis- factory the system now in operation. As for the British (or, more specifically, English) Vice-Chancellorship, it is an office of much value, not dangerous to academic freedom, not in the least UNIVERSITY GOVERNMENT 47 foreign to Australian University tradition or method, and already promisingly (although too tentatively) approximated in two of our Universities. There is no need to copy either the name or the schedule of duties of an English Vice-Chancellor. The thing to achieve is the separation of a qualified officer of the University from all routine work, in order that he may think far more disinterestedly and compre- hensively for the University than any departmental Head can do ; also, in order that he may be free to study it in the detail of its parts and in the relations of its parts to one another; again, in order that he may have time and opportunity to read the now very extensive literature of University development, to visit other Universities and compare them with his own, and to become familiar with the ideas of every leader in scholarship and science and administration that the Universities of Australia contain; finally, in order that the governing-body of his University may be assured that its chief executive officer is what I may term a scholar of comparative University systematiza- tion as well as an expert in its own system, able valuably to supplement the skilled counsel of the professorial representatives. Such an officer would be the properly authorized representative of the governing body in the business relations of the University, and in those of a social or ceremonial kind which did not require the personal attention of the Chancellor or his deputy. The University would thus be more continuously and effectively represented, as an institution of innumer- able relationships, both public and private, than it can be now by any Chancellor or Dean or Professor for 48 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY whom such representation cannot be a duty of first obligation. I have found it of the utmost advantage to go straight to the President in an American University, or to the Principal, or Vice-Chancellor, or Provost, or President in a British University. There, in one person, I found the mind of the Uni- versity, at least in some of its essentials; the lore of the University, in far greater sum than I could have collected from many departmental sources; and the general authority which, whatever its deficiency in detail, was greater than resided in any other paid officer of the University. I felt that, if I had been an intending benefactor of one of the Universities, I should have been just as glad of the existence of this kind of University head as I was when I had for my only object to learn a great deal in short time and accurately. The creation of Australian offices of this kind should be considered. The term "Principal" is not appropriate except under the special Scottish tradition. At London, it is part of an academic constitution un- fit for imitation almost anywhere. Birmingham gives the only applicable precedent for its use, outside Scotland. The term "Provost" (pronounced as English, not French) is traditionally suitable. "Warden" and "Rector" are too ecclesiastical for Australian conditions. The term "Warden" has also been applied in some Australian Universities to the presiding officer of certain graduate bodies. Outside the Universities it is used to designate the magistrate of a Mining Court, and the heads of certain religious or philanthropic institutions. "President" is too American and misleading. Undoubtedly, UNIVERSITY GOVERNMENT 49 the best course would be so to alter existing Australian academic nomenclature as to substitute "Deputy-Chancellor" for "Vice-Chancellor" in its present uses, and release the term "Vice-Chan- cellor" for employment in a manner that accords with English University tradition. Our Universities, like the modern English Universities, owe a great deal to the Scottish model, but they are just as much historically a part of the modern English University growth as Manchester or Liverpool or Sheffield, all of which have Vice-Chancellors of a kind which is essentially the kind we need. If we use the regular English term, we shall be better understood in all the British Isles. At the present time pur adminis- tration is supposed to be even more primitive than it really is. From this point of view the University of Western Australia, with its useful administrative office of Vice-Chancellor, appears to English University men, better (or, at least, more normally) organized than any other Australian University. Any such Australian "Vice-Chancellorship" ought perhaps to be definitely limited in status so that it may rank on an equality with, and not higher than, an elective Faculty Deanship or Chairmanship of the Professorial Board. The salary, or perhaps the salary with allowances (for hospitality and other such duty), should be higher by, at least, fifty per cent, than is normally paid for a professorship on the declared ground that the Vice-Chancellorship should be financially the more onerous position. In Australia the best way for a governing body to appoint a Vice- Chancellor would probably be on the nomination of the Faculties, voting together not as bodies but as co THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY individuals. Like a Dean and a Chairman of the Professorial Board, the Vice-Chancellor might be subject to re-election or replacement from time to time. The new office should neither carry with it the Registrarship nor cause any loss of range or status in that. The American system of Deanships has some attraction from the Australian point of view. The Australian Dean is democratically elected by his Faculty, and is charged with its representation in various ways. He adds this work to his regular duty as professor. It is often very burdensome. To be a good Dean, a professor may have for the time being to sacrifice his ambition as a scholar or man of science. Permanent Deanship has been connived at for some such reason and with some such result. Overwork among Deans of large Faculties is the rule, especially since curricula have extended, options have become numerous, and the Dean has been compelled to act largely as an adviser of students upon the courses they should take. Yet the Australian Dean- ship is an honorary office. Its occupant gets only his salary as professor. Australian practice could be improved by utilizing American precedents. The Dean should always be elected by the Faculty, as now. But in a large Faculty he might be given either an honorarium or the assistance of a Junior Dean or, at least, the assistance of a secretary. In some special case it might be desirable to release a professor from teaching-work so that he might act as Dean and director of his department, on his normal salary ; and provision should be made to render this possible. No harm can come from an administrative Dean so UNIVERSITY GOVERNMENT 51 long as he is elected by his colleagues, for a limited term, and does not cease to be a professor. There is no such thing in an American University as a Dean without a secretary, stenographer and typist; though sometimes one person combines the three functions. It is doubtful whether any Australian Dean has such necessary assistance, except at his own expense. My impression is that in no respect is the Australian University system more undeveloped than in the lack of sufficient clerical assistance for its officers engaged in any kind (even the honorary kind) of administra- tion. The loss of time and waste of labour at present endured would nowhere be tolerated under the more businesslike American University system. There are student "advisers" now, in name as well as in fact, in practically all Universities except those of Australia. It appears to me that some Australian Universities require them, if only in the form of an occasional "Junior Dean." Their principal function should be to advise upon curricula ; but some of them might have the wider scope of employment agents for graduating students. CHAPTER III FEDERAL AID TO UNIVERSITY EDUCATION THE general impression among Australians is that the Constitution of the Commonwealth follows that of the United States in leaving education wholly to the care of the individual States, and that for this reason neither of the Federations has done or need do any- thing through its Government for any educational institution. Happily for the United States, this im- pression is wrong. Among the Federal Powers there should have been included, when the United States Constitution was made, some share in the vitally important work of education. The exclusion has to be explained by the history of the time. Elementary schools were then still in the rudimentary stage small, cheap, short- time local affairs. Colleges and their preparatory grammar schools needed help out of the public wealth, and got a certain amount ; but they were, as yet, no great public responsibility. The coming increase of knowledge, and the unexampled expansion in the sub- jects of education, could not have been foreseen by the framers of the American Constitution. They therefore shirked some possible difficulties, and left education to the control of the individual States. But FEDERAL AID 53 they pledged the whole United States to its support, and gave it national endowments that greatly stimu- lated and helped the work of the constituent States. In 1785 the Continental Congress, shortly before the adoption of the Constitution, passed an Ordinance providing that in the sale of townships one section should be reserved for the maintenance of schools. In 1787 another such ordinance was passed. A declaration made in it is still a household word among the American people and a living principle in all their politics : "Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall for ever be encouraged." The method which the Federation then adopted to encourage education had been devised in the old Colonial days upon certain English precedents. It was endowment by land grants. By this means the typical "Common School" of the United States not only obtained a great Federal endowment, but also had to be made a public institution, under control of its State, a long while before it would normally have attained, through its worth alone, sufficient importance for such treatment. Once the State took hold of it, the State could not let it die, as private or local control might have done. This method, therefore, gave the American Common School a firm foundation, while also interesting individual States, particularly the new ones, in edu- cation of all kinds as a community affair. The system of land grants was, of course, very easily adopted at the close of the War cvf Indepen- dence, because the boundaries of the new nation were pushed far beyond existing colonial frontiers in the 54 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY West. Hence a vast new territory became available for settlement; and this was owned by the Federa- tion, whose principle was to dedicate to educational uses a substantial portion of each new subdivision. After 1850 the single section originally so reserved was made two sections at least, and the national school endowments received by each new State became almost magnificent. The original land-grant provisions were also in- tended directly to benefit religion. But the practice in this respect was soon abandoned. Universities, too, shared in the kindness of Congress, which agreed that "two townships near the centre and of good land be also given for the support of a literary institution, to be applied to the intended object by the legislature of the State." It was this land-grant system that ultimately was, in the main, responsible for the large growth of State Universities in America. The first grants went mostly for schools; but since 1800 only three States have not received their "two townships" upon their admission to the Union, and so found means, if they had the will, to constitute a University. It is estimated that during the last century these grants amounted to over a million acres ; but those given for the benefit of the common school comprised not less than 67.000,000 acres. After the middle of the nineteenth century, the needs of higher technical education were met in a similar fashion. The Civil War, like the recent war, gave a great impetus to applied science. It was in 1862, when the cause of the Union seemed most precarious, that Congress adopted the first of a new series of Land-Grant Acts known familiarly as the FEDERAL AID 55 "Morrill Acts." These were the means of founding colleges, known familiarly as "A. and M. Colleges," for the benefit of "agriculture and the mechanic arts." The Acts proved admirable in operation, most of all by the opportunity of development in the applied sciences which they offered to State Universities already existing, and by the means given for the founding of a State University where none yet existed. Their main provisions are few and effective. (a) Act of 1862. I. Each State to receive a quantity equal to 30,000 acres for each Senator and Representative in Congress by appointment under the census of 1860. II. If in a State there be public lands open to purchase at $1.25 per acre, the State to select its quantity from those lands; but if there be no such lands, or an insufficient quantity of them, in its own limits, the State to accept land-scrip instead, sell the scrip, and use the proceeds. Only the purchaser of the scrip actually to take up the land it represents, and then not to the extent of more than a million acres in any one State. III. The entire proceeds of sale of such lands to be applied, without any diminution whatever, to the purposes of the Act. IV. The money to constitute a perpetual fund yielding not less than five per cent, and to be used for the support of at least one college where the object shall be "with- out excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe." V. The State to be responsible for maintaining the capital intact and undiminished, except that it may spend ten per cent, of the total upon the purchase of lands for sites or experimental farms. Nothing whatever may be spent on buildings, and at least one college must be built within five years from acceptance of benefit. An Annual Report must be made, and a copy sent to the Secretary of the Interior (Federal). Acceptance of benefit under the Act to be expressed by a State within two years from passing of Act. 56 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY (b) Act of 1866. This extended the time for the establishment of land- grant (A. & M.) Colleges from the original maximum seven years from passage of the Act of 1862 to eight years from passage of the Act of 1866. (c) Act of 1883. This extended the scope of investment for the land- grant funds, but repeated the compulsion upon each State to make them yield not less than five per cent, and remain for ever unimpaired. (d) Act of l8pO. This appropriated annually to each State and Territory, out of the sale of public lands, for the better endowment of colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts, $15,000, rising, in ten years, to $25,000. The money to be spent only for instruction in agriculture, the mechanic arts, the English language and the various branches of mathe- matical, physical, natural and economic science. Payment to be made on the warrant of the Secretary of the Interior. The money to be replaced by the State if lost or misapplied, and never to be used for building. A report of the College to be made to the Secretary of Agriculture as well as the Secretary of the Interior. The certificate of the Secretary of the Interior to be necessary before the annual payments might be made to the State; and that Secretary to report to Congress all disburse- ments made or withheld, with the reasons for any with- holding. (e) "Nelson Amendment" of 1907. This gradually raised the annual money grant under the previous Act to a final sum of $50,000, which became the regular yearly subsidy, over and above land-grant endowment, after 1912. A portion of this money was available to provide "courses for the special preparation of instructors for teaching the elements of agriculture and the mechanic arts." It is estimated that the legislation comprised under the name of Senator Morrill, of Vermont, has "resulted directly or indirectly in the foundation of at least a score of Universities in the principal States FEDERAL AID 57 of the middle or farther West" ; also that the land- grants made for "agricultural and mechanical colleges" have reached ten million acres. Here again it must be remembered that the term "College" in America suggests, above all, the under- graduate part of a University. So State Universities founded before the Morrill Act had their "College of Liberal Arts and Sciences," or a somewhat similarly named body of undergraduate studies, which we should call Faculties of Arts and Science. The Morrill Act gave each State that already had a Uni- versity the chance to get another land-grant, and either establish a "College of Agriculture" (as we should say, a Faculty of Agriculture), or strengthen one already existing; and similarly with Engineering ("Mechanic Arts") work. Sometimes the oppor- tunity was lost, as by great Universities like Michigan and Iowa. Both those States have excellent A. and M. Colleges apart from the State University. The Iowa College, at Ames, is particularly distinguished for agriculture. But this separate existence of Uni- versity and College seems to be rather a tragic circum- stance, and a cause of trouble between two heartily admired institutions. In other States the chance of beginning with a strong technical specialty, appropri- ate to the State, was a leading cause of the Uni- versity's foundation. One way and another, the Morrill Act has had great and abiding effects. In the United States, whose people are so little limited by European tradition, it is sometimes difficult to say how an institution, even a self-styled University, should be classified. The State of Wisconsin, for example, 58 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY provided in its constitution, for a University and immediately got to work on one even before it had any secondary schools. This method of putting the cart before the horse is perhaps dangerous as well as clumsy. Yet Wisconsin has "made good," with the help of all the national land-grants and subsidies but also, and mainly, by the liberal support of its own State. A nation as numerous and enterprising as the American may be unconventional, but it will be effective, at least in the long run, when it is working out a national idea. Its Federation has done much to assist and stimulate the educational efforts of the individual States. The Federal Bureau of Education, at Washington, is a section of the Department of the Interior, and as such exercises a general supervision over the use to which the land-grant appropriations are being put. Otherwise it is just a body of experts with rather ill- defined functions and no wide authority. In the opinion of many educationalists it ought to be a regular Department of State. Before I left the United States I was shown a new Bill under which further help would be offered to the States for edu- cation tending towards so-called "Americanization," which means in the main the removal of illiteracy and the spread of knowledge of the English language and of American institutions among people of foreign stock. If the whole Bill passed, it would constitute at last a Federal Department of Education with its own Secretary of State. The year 1922-23 will see the full realization of another large Federal scheme for the promotion of agricultural education and the betterment of the farm- FEDERAL AID 59 ing class. It is under joint control of the State agri- cultural colleges and the United States Department of Agriculture. The Act by which it was established, called the "Smith-Lever Act," was passed in 1914. This provides for what is termed agricultural co- operative extension work, to include "practical instruction and demonstrations in agriculture and home economics given to persons not attending or resident in colleges . . . and the imparting of in- formation through field demonstrations, publications and otherwise." Under the financial clauses of the Act, the State University that has an agricultural department will receive its proportionate share (based on the ratio of the rural population of each State to the total rural population of all the States) of a subsidy which is already large, but which will reach its maximum in about two years' time. The States will then collectively contribute $4,100,000 and the Federation $4,580,000. Thus a total sum of nearly $9,000,000 a year will have been partly given by the Federal Government and partly elicited by it from the individual States, for a kind of education that will reach the most remote and solitary agri- cultural worker, greatly by means of the Universities. Although the Federal Government thus makes use of Universities and pays for their help in national education there is no University in the United States that is a Federal institution and therefore "national" in the specific sense. This is rather remarkable, because George Washington urged the foundation of such a University and left a bequest towards its en- dowment. Other Presidents after him, to the number of about five, supported his idea ; but nothing came of E 6o the agitation, though it went on for a generation. The last thirty years of the nineteenth century saw a revival of interest in the subject. Again nothing happened. It is probable that the Americans have found, for their Federal Government, a better function in the sphere of education than would be represented by a National University at Washington which, unless strictly limited, would do just the same as any other University. There has, perhaps, been no need to increase the number of Universities in the United States; but it is very necessary to go on im- proving and specializing the host of complete and in- complete ones already created sometimes in rather headlong haste or in forced or speculative disregard of the world's traditions. Yet there is one more novel kind of University that might easily suggest itself at Washington. It would be a Research Institution. It might have few students of any kind, and no ordinary "college" students at all. Its staff might be all research workers, perhaps allowed but never compelled to teach, and pro- hibited from ever sacrificing research to teaching. No great expense for buildings would be required. The National Government has now large scientific staffs in Washington, with a corresponding amount of laboratory equipment. The student-roll could be kept down to any proportion desired, and ordinary degree courses could be dispensed with, because ordinary students would not be taken, only those of proved competence in research. Practically all the money spent on such a Uni- versity would go into the first-class intelligence engaged and the provision of material for its use. FEDERAL AID 61 Whether first-rate scientific work and important dis- coveries would increase, nobody can say. This attempt to smooth the way for them might still be a national duty. Yet American private enterprise has taken the initiative here and possibly has a better plan. A "National Research Council" has been formed on a private endowment of $6,000,000, by the co-operation of all the great scientific societies, numbering some 75,000 people. Its headquarters will be in a house specially built and equipped at Washington. Each year a leading scholar or man of science will be elected as Chairman (or chief execu- tive) of the Council. Its most important function will be to bring the most gifted men, especially young men, into scientific research as a career. They will be paid from $1500 to $3000 a year, and may go any- where they like to do their work. Thus a kind of research University has been constituted. It has been estimated that over ten per cent, of the most eminent scientific men in the United States are resident in Washington. The Federal Government, before the war, spent nearly $23,000,000 on its Ministry of Agriculture alone; and nearly a million of that money was allotted to the Bureau of Ento- mology, which treats the science especially in its appli- cation to Agriculture. There are also Bureaux of Animal Husbandry, of Chemistry, of Biological Sur- vey, of Plant Industry, and of Soils, with the Forest Service; these have drawn scientific staffs from the Universities, and have co-operated with them and re- acted upon them in a number of ways to their advan- tage. The enormous economic importance of agri- culture in the United States to-day is greatly due to 62 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY the scientific study which that subject has received in a country whose Federal Government has lavished means for its steady progress in Universities and special colleges. There is no other country in which agricultural science is so profusely endowed. Among the services maintained by the United States Federal Government, which directly affect Uni- versities, are some of special interest, such as the marine biological stations (especially the station at Wood's Hole, Massachusetts) under the Fisheries Bureau; and the Library of Congress, which is one of the most important libraries in the world, and reputed to be the most fully and conveniently catalogued. Its cards go into all good University Libraries, and it facilitates all scholarly and scientific investigations. National sentiment is growing stronger in Aus- tralia. But there is, as yet, no evident effect upon its Universities. They are too much regarded as institu- tions whose service is limited to a particular State or even a particular city. It is right that they should be an element in local and State patriotism. But their work is national. They ought to be diverse, and yet constitute a type. To work out their destiny they need such national aid as the American Universities have had and still receive. Co-operation between themselves, and between Federal and State Govern- ments, for the common Australian cause ought to be possible. Private benefactions ought to flow to them, according to their need, from anywhere in Aus- tralia. Their number is not excessive. They do their work as well as their means permit. But they are neither solidifying nor expanding as fast as they FEDERAL AID 63 should. The number of their students is far beyond the number for which they are equipped. It would be possible and an interesting experiment for the Commonwealth to establish a wholly residential Uni- versity on Federal Territory; but that would be too costly and too slow a method, for strengthening and expansion are instantly needed. The cheapest, quickest and (probably) the most effective way is parallel to that taken by the Government of the United States to help in the development of the Universi- ties scattered through the States. CHAPTER IV STATE SUPPORT OF UNIVERSITIES THE original New England Colleges are best typified by Harvard (Massachusetts), founded in 1636 and Yale (Connecticut), founded sixty-five years later. The spread of higher education through the central colonies is indicated by the foundation of Princeton (New Jersey), Pennsylvania (at Philadelphia) and Columbia (at New York) between 1735 and 1754. The motive was generally the same the provision, for the colonists, of educated ministers of religion. But Pennsylvania was the idea of Benjamin Franklin, and so implied less interest in forms of religious be- lief. Franklin had also a wider conception of a Uni- versity as a place where any sort of young man may accumulate a basis of knowledge, on some part of which his mature mind can develop through private study and meditation as well as through his applica- tion of science or learning to practical affairs. In their early struggle to exist, all these colleges were ready sometimes to admit that, whatever their ideals, their actual work was "not so much to aim at any high improvement in Knowledge, as to guard against total Ignorance." As one grasps their lack of STATE SUPPORT 65 organized lower education to build on; their scant monetary resources, and too great dependence on inter- mittent voluntary subscriptions ; their limited purposes and unequal material ; one understands better some of the onerous legacy they left to their gigantic modern representatives for example, the inadequate payment of professors, who are the victims of tradition in a system in which the originals of their type were so frequently colonial ministers of religion, paid scantily as such to train other men for an unworldly occupa- tion like their own. One also imagines what an enormous difference might be wrought if the State were effectively to enter this field of education. In a sense the State had already co-operated. Massachusetts had a State religion, and Harvard regularly received grants from the General Court. Land in new townships was also set aside by Massachusetts for Harvard. The Con- stitution of the early College regularly imposed State representation upon the governing body. Columbia, for example, had on its Board of Trustees only three members who were not public officials like the Counsellor and the Treasurer of the Colony, the Mayor of the city, and so on. But this was an ex- treme case. The fact is that, in British Colonial America, the University was forced to begin with more or less of monetary support from public authority and with more or less of the supervision of public officials ; but the public authority felt no great responsibility in the matter. After the Revolution, the new nation found itself with nine Colleges distributed through eight States, 66 one in each except New Jersey, which had two. The States which had none were mostly uneasy about the omission. They were ready to make it good as an act of duty to their new nationhood, and as a guarantee of proper intellectual development for their people. In 1789, a few days after the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, North Carolina chartered a University; and established it, with a preparatory school, during 1795. South Carolina founded a College in 1801. Georgia chartered its University in 1785, and endowed it with 40,000 acres of then practically worthless land; but as late as 1819 it is recorded as having "neither funds, professors nor students." Political irresponsibility had its part even in the State University movement. Other fail- ures were made. But in 1825, after some twenty years of preparation of the popular mind, Thomas Jefferson secured the establishment of the University of Virginia upon a plan that was very liberal for that time. It entirely abandoned the traditional American religious connection for a University. It allowed the student to chose the studies he would follow. It aimed at architectural beauty in all its buildings. For its choice of teachers it would not be restricted to America, but imported some from abroad, while drawing on Harvard for its main sources of academic prestige. The chief influence on the whole founda- tion was that of France. To this day, Virginia pre- serves its distinction, and has still an exotic strain in its character. It appears to lack something typical of the normal great American University. Perhaps that is why the University of Michigan, STATE SUPPORT 67 which was founded only in 1837, is now the "Mother of the State Universities" in American consciousness, notwithstanding that Virginia is not overlooked. Michigan underwent the same French influence, but subdued it more. Michigan might well be hailed, in the modern journalistic and political phrase, as "one hundred per cent. American" from the first. It made a practice of not going outside its own country for anything that was obtainable inside. It was not the child of a great man's eclectic fancy in foreign culture, but a well-led movement of educational enthusiasm throughout the State. Harvard and Yale were drawn into consultation as it was taking shape. The American model of a University was always before its eyes. It grew fast into a genuine American institution all made by Americans. It had a State of only 212,000 people behind it when it began; but those few people were putting a definite share of their wealth into its support, and expected it to do far more than train a particular kind of man for them. It had three departments one of literature, science and art, one of law, and one of medicine, with liberal interpretations of what they might teach. It began work only in 1841, accepted no women students, and had only two professors. But it was to prove that the wealth of a State, added to the educational idealism of the United States, could build and would have to build fresh Harvards and Yales (with some differences, perhaps) all over the Federation. The reasons were not wholly financial. As time went on and the religious varieties increased in number, while religious motives in the common life 68 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY became less strong, the original type of college was not so unitedly supported as it had been by religious people, or so clearly advantaged by a definite religious profession. Thus in Illinois the beginning of college education was religious ; but sectarian rivalries set in, and caused so much dissension and weakness that one of the religious leaders has sorrowfully recorded how they spoilt the chance of sustaining a college "above the competition of all non-Christian institu- tions," and caused "intelligent and patriotic men . . . to turn towards the State as the only hope for great and well-equipped seats of learning." And with the making of State Universities has coincided a loosening of the ties between religious denominations and the older private or institutional foundations. For example, Columbia which was Anglican in religion during colonial days, and was detested for that in later times has nothing left now of its religious affiliation but a fine Georgian brick chapel, in which "Episcopal" services are held for the small fraction of University members who can crowd in. Princeton was Presbyterian perhaps is still that rather than anything else. But it has every kind of cleric or layman to conduct its services, and is cer- tainly not very denominational now. Nor are most other great independent Universities. The activity of the States in founding secular Universities has provoked extra effort on the part of religious bodies, which have gone on establishing colleges of less ambitious scope in order to maintain a definite religious basis for American higher edu- cation. Of the 150 institutions now styling them- STATE SUPPORT 69 selves Universities, forty are State Universities; but no fewer than seventy are supported and controlled by Churches. At the same time the self-constituted elite of the whole number, the twenty-four members of the Association of American Universities which demands that all its members shall do graduate as well as under-graduate work will not include more than two Church institutions, while admitting twelve that belong to States. On the following membership list of the Associa- tion of American Universities for 1918-19, the State Universities are in italics : University of California, Berkeley, California Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts. Columbia University, New York, New York. Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois. Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. State University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas. Leland Stanford Junior University, Palo Alto, California. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri. University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska. 70 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY North Western University, Evanston, Illinois. Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Penn- sylvania. Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. University of Virginia, Charlottes ville, Virginia. University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin. Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. By some authorities Cornell is accounted a State University ; but its connection with the State is slight, and proceeds merely from its having taken advantage of the original Morrill land-grant to establish itself not only as a College of the "Agricultural and Mechanic Arts" but also as a University. It owes its being to the devotion of the great man, Ezra Cornell, whose name it bears, and of whose personal liberality, and judgment in the use of its early opportunity to build up an endowment fund, it has been enjoying the fruit for about forty years. The State of New York has for some thirty years been liberally helping in its development on the sides of Agriculture and Veterinary Science in particular and, in considera- tion of that, has been given representation on its governing body. As a University, it is not a State institution. The importance of the definite State University leaps to the eye in the above list. The following table shows the frequent magnitude of its operations. The table is compiled from statistics of the Bureau of Education for the year ended June 3Oth, 1916, the last normal vear recorded: STATE SUPPORT l-fe e s ro o s 10 :"H ^ o oo ON r>. ^J to lO OJ O_ OJ_ OO \O *-T of irf trf . to oj _ K ON o. O M O 00 o g- o m --H rx o 3- 5 tO -H Tf ^ -H to NO ^3" ^" ON OJ v.S to ~2 OJ NO ^H OJ OO ON CO r" to~ .-T f g co o 3 S3 - So CQ^-'Tl- o ON to NO tx NO *~ ' to Tt^ o i> oj^ r>. o, ^ i-i co" co* -T of oi "S ^ *" Si o -c B VT H u o * . TJ- Ss oj to \d VCP oj -H ^ S3 S 2 '-H ^-1 r-, tO to OO OO Ol to oj~ of co" -<" co" C^J OJ OJ v~) 10 OJ OJ H OJ tO ^ 01 Op - we - ^ ^ *rf W 42 3 c 4^ > n P *C S O i>* *O Cfl U3 OS H T? w *j *J i> o w L c o v> i; y i; o 2 ^ w ^1 ^J 0; ~ NO ^- to CO oo to TT CO '-H ^H OJ OJ t-< S n 3 cs jn ^ 'c rt rfj to to 00 rx to ! , tx. CO OJ oo W Ch " ^ c/1 CO oc CO 1 4- 04 OJ tx O oo to o ON ON OJ H NO ^ tx O CO CO CO | ? | C OJ aj *j rt 12 oi 10 OJ OJ T-H OJ 01 CO ~H "* OJ OJ M t/T .^ C > yn tfi S *^ C/} o 1 i vw --- u s J5 ^ ^ 72 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY The scope of State support to Universities in America might be further indicated by making a couple of comparisons between conditions in Australia and in the United States. Sydney and Melbourne Universities serve States comparable, in population and prosperity, with California and Wisconsin. But the American States evidently have a different standard upon which to calculate the financial support they owe to the work of teaching and research in their Universities. State Subsidy to Income in sterling (approximate) for Name of University. last year before Federation entered the War. Sydney (N.S.W.) .. .. 44,966 Melbourne (Vic.) .. .. 33,648 Wisconsin . . . . . . 333,000 California . . . . . . 390,000 If it be assumed that no Australian University is in a less adverse financial situation than Sydney, the comparison may be re-stated thus : Percentage of Income received in last year before entrance to War, from : Name of University. Federal ^ Invest . Govt. Govt. Fees. ment, &c. Sydney (N.S.W.) .. 49.16 23.84 27 Wisconsin .. .. 4.05 63.57 17.11 15.27 California .. .. 2.89 55.41 7.36 34.34 It is clear that the generosity of the American States does not necessarily limit the support given to their Universities by private benefactions. More than twenty per cent, of California's total enormous income of nearly $3.500,000 was derived from the investment of private benefactions. Yet comparisons of State support to Australian and American Universities must not be made too un- STATE SUPPORT 73 favourable to the Australian States. The American figures contain "appropriations for experiment stations, farmers' institutes, and extension work," which are mostly unrepresented in an Australian University's budget. Similar allowance must follow for the cost of repeating in an American University what we consider secondary school work. It still remains true that the American people cheerfully spends upon its Universities sums that the Australian people never distantly approaches in due proportion; also that, as a rule, the American State University is not less liberally supported than the endowed kind. Yet the great development of the State Universities has not been uniform throughout the United States. They have reached their zenith chiefly in the old North-West and in the West. The South has not yet been able to come again generally into the leading division. The progress of the "Endowed" Universities has been from participation of the State in their control to a practically complete emancipation. But the State Universities are, not unnaturally, still under close State supervision. The organization of all kinds of public education in America is not very systematic. To become so, it would now have to be federalized. The fact that a University could be established by a State before secondary schools indicates how incom- plete has been the consideration given to State Educa- tion as a whole. Some States were more careful than others to treat their University as the climax of the public educational system. The first tendency was to make close corporations of the governing bodies of State Universities, as of private or "Endowed" ones. 74 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY But already in 1802 the Legislature of the North-West Territory, in discussing the constitution of the Uni- versity now known as Ohio, determined that the Corporation of Trustees should be always elected by the Legislature itself. This method is still one of the most favoured. Roughly speaking, it may be said that there are three ways of appointing Regents to the Board of Regents (or Trustees) of a State University election by the Legislature, election by the people of the State, and nomination by the Governor of the State. The principle that graduates of a University should have at least a share in electing its governing body, and perhaps the main responsibility in the matter, may yet be generally conceded among the States. University graduates of course become governors, occupy many seats in Legislatures, and are regularly active on behalf of the University among the people of the State. So even the governing bodies of State Universities tend to fill up with their own graduates. No doubt all such Universities are ex- posed to various risks arising out of their political connections. Their security is in the public concern for their prestige. It is by no means an absolute security. State Universities may live somewhat anxious lives. But the good ones, for the most part, not only live but also flourish. It is probable that they will pass gradually beyond all political influence. Their graduates will be able to bring this about, if they think fit. A most important factor in all American University development and control is the interest retained by the graduate in his University. Nothing so great appears to exist even in the United Kingdom. In Australia, it is practically restricted to STATE SUPPORT 75 casting an occasional vote for some members of a governing body. But in America it is among the keenest of all the interests of a graduate's life, and leads him very often to give systematically of his money, time and thought to the service of his University. Even political effects can flow from University patriotism. This fact alone makes it necessary not to think of any American State Uni- versity situation as if it were what it probably would be in Australia. CHAPTER V DIFFERENTIATION OF STATE AND ENDOWED UNIVERSITIES IT is, on the whole, not profitable to think much of American Universities as "State" and "Independent" (or "Endowed"). Historically, they can be differ- entiated; and that necessarily means the existence of some difference in their special traditions. The great Endowed Universities often belong by tradition to the seventeenth and eighteenth, the colonial, centuries ; the State are almost wholly the creation of the nine- teenth century ; and, besides being of more modern origin, mostly owe their first importance to the fortuitous combination of great and increasing wealth throughout the independent American Union with the rapid expansion of population, its swift spread over areas remote from the original colonies, and the vast growth of knowledge and of the spirit of scientific enquiry after the middle of the century. But Endowed Universities have been founded all the time. Apart from all the smaller "College" type, there are the fine "graduate" institutions called "Johns Hopkins" (established in 1876 at Baltimore, Mary- land), and "Clark" (established in 1889 at Worcester, Massachusetts) ; the Middle-West University of DIFFERENTIATION OF UNIVERSITIES 77 Chicago, Illinois, and the Far-West "Stanford" Uni- versity, in California, both established in 1891. The Endowed Universities have the honour of having been the first to set the scholarly ideal before the American people and of being (as a class) pre-eminent to-day in its maintenance, especially as regards the classical form. No State has attempted to devote a University almost altogether to the more advanced studies, as was done in the private foundations of "Johns Hopkins" and "Clark" which have not been fully successful in the original high enterprise, and yet are honoured for the lead they gave, perhaps a little too soon, perhaps a little too much above the capacity of mere private wealth even of the American magnitude. The Endowed Universities to-day are offering the little resistance that is being offered to the overcrowding of the "College" departments; the most definite policy appears to be that of Stanford, which has limited its undergraduate members to 2,500, of whom 500 may be women. The Endowed Universities have been leading again in the specialization of "graduate" work, which has provided the nation with a few specialist schools, such as those of Johns Hopkins and Harvard in Medicine. As exponents of community life for students the Endowed Universities, as a class, are far in advance of the State institutions. Harvard, Yale and Prince- ton are doing nobly in this regard. But Pennsylvania too has a good record, for a crowded city University, and Stanford worthily keeps up the old tradition. Occasionally a State University of the best, like Michigan or Wisconsin, does something effective in 78 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY the same direction. But the community life of the State Universities is comparatively quite imperfect. They are even now only beginning to face the problem of building "dormitories" for their men students. Whatever value or disability may attach to keeping undergraduate community life all masculine, or all feminine, will be claimed by the oldest Endowed Universities Harvard, Yale and Princeton with certain Endowed Colleges for Women, such as "Vassar," "Smith," "Wellesley" and "Bryn Mawr." Co-education unlimited is the badge of State Universities, except that of Virginia. I had no time to visit Women's Colleges, though I met a number of their graduates and students. It appears to me that the separate "undergraduate" University (or College) for Women is one of the most valuable American contributions to higher education ; and that the undergraduate University for men is at least a harmless and delightful survival of ancient European academic conditions now obsolete. It is interesting to hear voices from both Oxford and Cambridge raised in prayer for at least one Women's University and at least one for men only, in England, upon the American precedent. Harvard has taken a middle course, by co-operating with Radcliffe College in the training of women students who would like to do Harvard work. It is opening now a graduate department of education, in which women will be accepted for the Harvard (not Radcliffe) degree. Yale already gives degrees to women "graduate" students. Princeton alone is un- changed, so far. The principle of co-education is in no danger. Its stronghold is the American school DIFFERENTIATION OF UNIVERSITIES 79 system, as well as the American State University. New Endowed Universities also are co-educational. Stanford may limit its women students to one-fifth of the total attendance, but Chicago has let it rise unrestrained to two-fifths. The public schools, both elementary and secondary, do not usually separate girls and boys into different classes, still less into different buildings. Their teachers are mostly women in the elementary grades, and still very largely women in the secondary grades. The State University is only continuing, in its particular grade, the general educational policy of the State. The problem, however, does not end there. The "College of Liberal Arts and Sciences" (Faculty of Arts, and Faculty of Science), so far as it gives a general higher education suitable for teachers in public schools, is attended mostly by women, who are now out-numbering the men in the whole College. Yet these colleges are mostly staffed by men. The State University is therefore to be particularly involved in the coming struggle to determine whether all public education that is not "professional" in the narrow sense of relating directly to the professions of medicine, law, engineering, business, or agriculture is to pass mainly into the care of women. The States can, of course, keep men on their "College" staffs by raising salaries, and increase the number of men in their secondary and even elementary schools by the same method. But they show little sign of willingness so to add to their expense. They have already done all too much to classify school education as not men's work; and they are doing all too little, as yet, to secure even for the man who devotes himself 8o THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY to University teaching a rate of pay that will keep it, for Americans, in the classification of men's work. The State Universities are becoming the most generously supported of all, and the future of the American University should be predominantly in their hands. It is said that they differ again from the Endowed Universities by being more utilitarian in their motives. But this seems to me not a sound differentiation. All Universities, everywhere, are now greatly concerned with utilitarian purposes; and through the ages Universities have given professional training. The progressiveness of modern medical science has made it occupy more University attention than ever before. Yet it is a very old academic study. There are other reasons, in the changed conditions of modern society, which make Law an even more populous faculty than it was in times past. The expansion of Commerce, and the strengthening desire to understand the social mechanism and trade relations in and between the communities of the world, have raised economic and social studies to the rank of a modern science in which Universities must lead. Some countries, like the United States, depend so much upon the practice of agriculture for their prosperity that their Universities are as much required to train its specialists and even some of its more ordinary adepts as they have been in the case of Engineering for a couple of generations past. The only subject in which professional training in Uni- versities has been reduced is Divinity, once the most flourishing of all. The American State University, for obvious reasons, cannot specialize in Divinity. It is less im- DIFFERENTIATION OF UNIVERSITIES 81 peded by tradition than the old Endowed University in making a speciality of the modern sciences or mechanical arts. Its inducements to give very much of its attention to Agriculture have been far greater than those of the Endowed Universities. The Morrill Acts directly invited the States to develop the study of agriculture and engineering through their Univer- sities. The task of reconciling a vaguely enthusiastic population to that increase of financial burdens, which the proper development of its University imposed was easier when the farmer could see his material advan- tage in the work the University was doing, and when citizens generally found something that concerned them in the benefit of good engineering to a State. Hence State Universities have been frankly and busily devoted to agricultural and mechanical applications of science too much so, in the opinion of some partisans of the Endowed kind. Similarly, the "business" courses for the "College" degree of a State University are suggestive, at least, of a too easy yielding to a popular demand for the sort of University training that can be turned rapidly to account in the making of money through buying and selling things. The old "College" education of four years, spent in a disinterested study of subjects supposed to be chosen for their intellectual worth, certainly has yielded a great deal to a new sort, which has a commercial-professional bias from at least its mid- point. But the new "College of Commerce," as a University undergraduate department, whatever name it is now developing under, is not peculiar to the State University; nor do those who are most alarmed by it look to the Endowed Universities to save the situation. 82 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY So Mr. Veblen, himself a distinguished American academic economist, writing in 1918, involved all the Universities in his condemnation: "The creation and maintenance of such a College of Commerce as will make it anything more than a dubious make-believe would manifestly appear to be beyond the powers of any existing University. So that the best that can be compassed in this way, or rather has been achieved, by the means at the disposal of any University hitherto, is a cross between a secondary school for bank- clerks and travelling salesmen, and a subsidiary depart- ment of economics." It appears to me that the State University is more exposed than the "Endowed" to popular influence that can force it to derogate from the higher duty of a University in some important particulars, especially those relating to vocational training. What the people of a State wants, it can pay for even extravagantly so that money may be squandered in the promotion of error. An Endowed institution is more difficult to move in any novel way; but all novel ways are not wrong. In agriculture, for example, the State Uni- versities (if Cornell, from this point of view, may be reckoned among them) have a general lead, even on the side of research, though Harvard specializes here as well. Very honourable record of this kind stands to the credit of Cornell's Agricultural College, Wisconsin and California. But from its beginning it has been accompanied by very practical work in the interests of agriculture merely as an occupation. The difference between the Endowed and the State University of the United States is, in the higher grade of both types, not fundamental. Both constitute the one American type. The really venerable greatness of a Harvard or Yale cannot be paralleled among the DIFFERENTIATION OF UNIVERSITIES 83 State institutions ; but these have the advantage of an always potentially greater share in the national wealth, and can and do use their particular means of national service as conscientiously and as effectively as their Endowed fellow-universities. An increasing share of the national academic scope and prestige will accrue to them partly by the emancipation of the State University from some of its present undue sub- ordination to political control and influence. Meanwhile such differentiation as is possible seems to the foreign observer rather external and unim- portant. Each University has its own character, and the oldest may have certain fine traditions (perhaps not wholly apt for general imitation now) which they will not willingly let die. Environment counts for something. Universities such as Chicago and Columbia are indeed "endowed," but their variation from the type is due not to that but to their being city Universities of the first magnitude. Between them and the great State University there is far less difference than between them and the other endowed University of Princeton in its secluded village, or even Yale in its not unimportant town of somewhat less than 200,000 inhabitants. The develop- ment of the American University has been longer or shorter, more or less self-regulated, and has a number of apparent diversities, but the type is fixed. The American University, as such, exists. As I regard the opportunities of the State in Aus- tralia from the point of view of University develop- ment in America, I am perplexed by Australian indifference. Properly supported by their States, some of the less endowed and less developed of our 84 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY Universities could out-rival, not in size but in merit, those more fortunately situated or of older growth, and so could be a source of quite exceptional pride to the whole people. Even now, they are institutions for which the travelling Australian has no reason to be apologetic, except on the ground of their financial starvation. There has been a good deal of wasteful expenditure in American Universities, because local patriotism and the rivalry of very different types of institutions and yet other conditions, including too much "business" efficiency have set up some un- necessary competition among them and prevented the development of specialization in a more studied and economic way. Nothing in Australia seriously hinders an arrangement between its Universities that would avoid unnecessary duplication of special lines of work undertaken by any one or more. Each University might therefore have its own field of specialization, at least for a given period, without forcing the others to have the same and to waste money in doing over again what, once done, might sufficiently meet the needs of Australia for the time being. CAREFUL decision as to the requirements for entrance to a University is an old and tedious and yet most important duty in all national systems of education. Then, as secondary schools and Universities increase, a demand is made for some standardizing of the re- quirements. Otherwise schools will be harassed by having to prepare in several different ways their senior pupils of the same grade, who are all going on to some University but not all to the same one. Great and unjust interference with school work may be caused by variation of University requirements in subjects, standards or even text-books. Furthermore, few schools in English-speaking countries can occupy themselves exclusively or mainly with preparing pupils for the University. The obligation upon practically all is to prepare only a small proportion for that, and the great majority for direct entrance to the world of ordinary work. Hence diverse matriculation needs impose a burden that may easily become more than a school can bear. Any special requirements at all because they concern few of the pupils, and can be met only after long and careful training govern the whole curriculum rather autocratically. School 86 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY authorities often cannot tell far in advance which pupils will be able or willing to continue their work in a University. To decide how far the whole number shall go along the lines of the prescribed subjects is difficult. To differentiate between those who should have their chance of a University career, however late their decision for it, and those whose proper training for life demands their following other lines in school is a perplexing and responsible task. The number of subjects in the secondary school curriculum is so large that options must be allowed; and pupils not to mention their parents have strange motives for exercising options. Schools, too, find it hard to be well equipped for teaching every possible subject. When they are State Schools, they may be severely limited in some of their teaching resources by a supreme authority that does not think some University requirements reasonable. The increase of "com- mercial" and other vocational studies, about whose general educational value Universities may be sceptical, also makes it hard for the secondary school to give University preparation, as well as every other desirable or necessary kind, its proper amount of attention. The organizing of school studies must, at least, be helped by a reasonable standardizing of Uni- versity matriculations. In Australia the problem is not so acute as else- where, for each Australian State as yet contains but one University, and between the different Universities there is very little migration. In the United Kingdom much has been done in recent years to define matricu- lation qualifications that will admit to any one of whole groups of Universities. A reasonably common MATRICULATION REQUIREMENTS 87 basis of matriculation into British Universities generally is still to be found. But pro tanto recog- nition of all good University matriculations through- out the British Empire is not far ahead. Meanwhile, matriculation is still regarded with some of the old superstitious reverence. In the ancient Universities methods of entrance are peculiar, and distinct from those that prevail elsewhere in the United Kingdom, in the Dominions, or in the United States. The com- mon British methods have been derived from Scottish precedents; first, as regards the exaction of proof, given in written examinations, that the candidate has a sound general education based on a limited range of subjects ; secondly, as regards a school course, that he has studied certain things in certain years, and passed certain examinations of all of which a School Leaving Certificate is the proof. Germany also has the Leaving Certificate system, but for a very different kind of School and University and organization of life in general. Australia, between the examples of Scotland and Germany and the United States, received it too. Whether England will get it remains in doubt. But some high educational authorities are determined that England shall not, as may be seen from the report given in the Times Educational Supplement (January 2Qth, 1920) of an address on "The Educational Out- look" by Sir Michael Sadler, Vice-Chancellor of Leeds : "The State Examinations, insisting upon a high all- round standard of general culture as evidenced by skill in writing answers to examination questions, may check indolence and raise the commonplace a few notches higher in the scale of industrious competence; but they are the enemies of genius, and destructive of those infinite shades of originality which are characteristic of English 88 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY life at its richest and best. Germany took no more certain step towards the weakening of independence of judgment among her educated classes than when she instituted, and perfected with bureaucratic precision, the falsely-praised regulations for the school-leaving examinations. There is danger lest we who have shattered the pretensions of Germany should now bind ourselves with the fetters of her school-leaving system." The Americans have been through conditions analogous, on one side, to those common in Australia with institutional and private and State secondary schools preparing for one University in each State; and, on the other, to those common in England with all sorts of schools, all over the country, preparing for certain old Universities of fixed traditions, and cer- tain city Universities of high standards but necessarily less conservatism of practice. And the German edu- cational influence on America has been very strong. After almost fifty years of struggle, and a variety of changes, the American University has reached a work- ing compromise on the old vexed question of entrance requirements. The compromise is liberal enough. Whether it is sound and will endure remains to be proved. It is partly conditioned by defects, peculiar to the United States, in elementary and secondary education. The leaving certificate, or "High School Graduation Diploma," is one of its essentials, and gives the best point of view from which to judge its scope. The American High School has only a four years' course, intended to cover the pupil's school-time from his fourteenth to his eighteenth year. The course is not long enough for an approximately complete secondary education. The working day is rather short about five hours, divided into six or seven "periods" of forty MATRICULATION REQUIREMENTS 89 to fifty minutes each. There is a conventional avoid- ance of written "homework," but private study out of school hours is encouraged. The lesson "periods" will not be all classroom studies ; some will be spent in the gymnasium, or at individual work in the library or in the "study hall." The method of teaching is free of the British tendency to drive or "cram." The pupils do the work; they do not merely receive in- struction. At their "recitations" the teacher is but a moderator in their discussions. Discipline is not dependent on the teacher's authoritative position and power of inflicting punishment, but on the teacher's influence and the pupil's ready assent to regulations that secure order. There is no American school tradition of natural enmity between teacher and taught, of rules being made to be broken at a price and whatever is incident to more autocratic forms of school government. It follows that the High School processes are exempt from that "hustle" which the world generally attributes to all American life. They need ample allowance of time, and do not tend to overwork. Pupils may overtax themselves in private study. The school never overtaxes them. The five-hour High School, with a four-years' limit, naturally tends to a four-subject grouping and a school career of sixteen courses. The general practice is to set aside for each main subject approximately one period a day. That gives, or can give, every sub- ject at least four periods a week during four years. Out of this has developed the method of reckoning matriculation requirements in "units." The "unit" is thus defined : "A unit represents a year's study in any subject in a secondary school, constituting approxi- 90 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY mately a quarter of a full year's work." This is the definition first formulated by the "National Con- ference Committee on Standards of Colleges and Secondary Schools" about ten years ago, and since accepted by all the authorities of importance in this connection. The Committee further explained that its definition is: "To afford a standard of measurement for the work done in secondary schools. It takes the four-year high- school course as a basis, and assumes that the length of the school year is from thirty-six to forty weeks, that a period is from forty to sixty minutes in length and that the study is pursued for four or five periods a week; but, under ordinary circumstances, a satisfactory year's work in any subject can not be accomplished in less than 120 sixty-minute hours or their equivalent. Schools organized on any other than a four-year basis can, never- theless, estimate their work in terms of this unit." For matriculation purposes, estimation of school work in terms of units is now practically universal. But it is not left entirely to the leaving certificate (for which there is no regular external examination) to show that the work has been properly done, and that the holder is fit for entrance to a University. Some- times there is an independent examination to pass; sometimes the schools must be approved by a Uni- versity or other external authority before the certifi- cate will be accepted; and, almost always, the certifi- cate must include particular subjects and a stated number of units. The general rule as to number of units has been evolved out of discussions about matriculation requirements generally, like those typified by the report of the "Secondary Department" of the "National Education Association" published in 1911. This report recommended that fifteen units should be the required number in a full High School MATRICULATION REQUIREMENTS 91 Course; that they should be earned at the rate of not more than five a year; that physical training and chorus singing should not count towards the total; and that the satisfactory completion of such a course should be deemed a sufficient preparation for College. The "Articulation of High School and College" thus specified is now generally in practice. A "standard" College is one that requires, for entrance, at least the completion of from 14 to 16 units in a High School course of four years. The usual requirement is 15 units. But this is not the whole requirement, and beyond it there is much variation. Colleges fall into groups largely governed by the extent to which they intend to link up with the High Schools. Thus Bryn Mawr the great Women's College whose standards are extremely rigorous, demands the equivalent of 20 units for full admission, and will give only a conditional matriculation for 15 units. It bases itself squarely upon an examination test in two "divisions," and directs candidates to study Mathe- matics, Latin and English for four years and two other languages for three years before presenting themselves. History and Science also must be taken, but for them one year's study is indicated. It is evi- dent that Bryn Mawr recks not at all of the High School, to which It sets an impossible task. The College, in fact, draws practically all its students from special preparatory schools or private tuition. The other Colleges or Universities of most strict- ness in regard to standards, and with most reliance on the examination tests are also great endowed institutions of the East Harvard, Yale and Prince- ton. But the rigour of Bryn Mawr is not quite 92 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY repeated. Yale has its "Old Plan of Examination" and its "New Plan of Examination." Under the Old Plan a candidate who intends to read for the B.A. degree must show, by examination, "at one or more sessions" successful study of English to the amount of 3 units, a foreign language 2 units, Mathematics 3 units, Latin 4 units, with "electives" to the amount of 3 units from a long list of mathematical, scientific, historical and linguistic subjects. The candidate for a scientific or less traditional Arts degree (hitherto called at Yale B.S. or Ph.B.), has been allowed to substitute two units of a principal foreign language (Latin or another) with one of History and one of Science, for the four units of Latin required from entrants to the strict B.A. course. The New Plan merely requires evidence of completion of "an approved school course," and proof of "satisfactory scholarship" shown in "four comprehensive examina- tions taken at the same session." The school record of the candidate must appear on a proper certificate giving very detailed information as to subjects studied, time given to each, quality of work done, and a whole course that has both extended over four years and been concerned chiefly with the school studies upon which Yale thinks fit to base its own studies. The New Plan, therefore, should not offer much way of escape from the prescriptions of the Old Plan. The examinations under the New Plan are, respectively, in English, Latin, French or German or Greek or Spanish, and Mathematics ; and in English, Latin or French or German or Spanish, Mathematics and Physics or Chemistry or History or Mechanical Drawing. No conditional matriculation is allowed on MATRICULATION REQUIREMENTS 93 this scheme. Harvard also has its Old and New Plans, similarly defined. But it specifies either Latin or Greek for entrance to the B.A. course, and it de- mands the equivalent of i6 units. Universities like these are conservative in their matriculation requirements. They will not forgo their right to say just what basis of school work their own courses need. They will not accept the mere certificate of any school that the basis has been pro- vided. Yet they do take school records into account. They draw the majority of their students not from High Schools but from special preparatory schools. That other great Eastern University, Columbia, has an "Old Method" and a "New Method" of entrance as well as a "Four Examination Plan." The Old Method and the Four Examination Plan are similar to the Yale and Harvard Old and New Plans respectively. Under the Old Method the test is by examination, with the school record also considered. The units required are fifteen. The compulsory sub- jects are English and Elementary Mathematics, each in three units. The remaining nine units must con- tain either four units of Elementary Latin, or three of Elementary Greek, or three of a foreign language with one unit of "Physics or Chemistry or History." Beyond that, choice is almost unlimited. Under the Four Examination Plan, the examinations are held in the compulsory subjects, the option taken from the special list, and another subject chosen under certain slight restrictions. The real novelty at Columbia is indicated by the New Method, which is officially des- cribed as "a test of mental alertness and power" or as the "psychological" test. But the novelty is not so 94 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY great as it looks at first sight. The test is supposed to be applied to all matriculants. It is decisive only for those without regular examination certificates. These candidates must also have, like all others, "full and specific" testimonials as to character from the school from which they come, and must have done a satisfactory school course "concerned primarily with languages, science, mathematics and history." Each "must answer questions bearing upon his extra- curricular activities in school, and on other matters affecting his interests and capacities, as well as write a letter telling why he wishes to go to College, why he has selected Columbia College, and what purpose he has in life, if one has already been formed." Then, if it can be conveniently arranged, he must have a personal interview with the Director of Admissions. After that come the psychological tests, in which he must show that he "possesses intelligence distinctly above the average." It all seems a very elaborate way of dispensing with the traditional Eastern requirement of written examination and of substituting the acceptance of school certificates and recommendations, characteristic of the West. In many cases little enough can be left for psychology to determine. But there is a reason for it that arises out of a peculiarity in Columbia's situation. Candidates from New York City and New York State high schools regularly finish their school courses, subject by subject, with an examination held by the Regents of the University of the State of New York which is not a teaching University, but only an examining and co-ordinating body. The results of this examination, if of a certain standard, are accepted by Columbia. Hence pupils MATRICULATION REQUIREMENTS 95 from anywhere within the State of New York naturally matriculate into Columbia by the Regents' examinations. Those outside the State have hitherto been required to pass other examinations of a collec- tive, not piecemeal, character to achieve the same result. So, says the President of Columbia in his last annual report: "The disadvantage was particularly marked in the case of those students who did not decide to enter Columbia College until near the close of their secondary school course. Many students from other States near and far would inquire regarding the conditions of admission to Columbia College, and on finding that they would be required to review their high school course from the beginning in order to make sure of passing the entrance examinations, they frequently decided to go to some other institution where the requirements for admission were different, and perhaps less difficult to meet." (It is probable at least, that they did not go to Yale or Bryn Mawr.) The President adds that "the num- ber of applicants for admission to Columbia College in September, 1919, from outside New York State was several times greater than in any previous year," although the New Method was "not announced until after the middle of the last academic year." From that point of view, the psychological estimating of Columbia has been sound. But why it should be necessary to show so much concern for candidates from outside New York State is not evident. That State has a population of many millions, and Columbia's own city of New York is itself not an in- sufficient province for a University, however compre- hensive. Still "the Director of Admissions is en- forcing with great strictness the standards of admission prescribed by the Faculty." The fact is, then, that Columbia is just experimenting carefully 96 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY with a form of matriculation mainly depending on school certificating, checked by the expert opinion of some representative or representatives of the Uni- versity after inspection of the candidate. There seems to be nothing inevitably new about the method. The precedent officially quoted for it is "the obvious success of these general intelligence tests when used in the selection of candidates for officers' commissions in the United States Army during the war." But some State and Endowed Uni- versities, particularly in the West and Middle West, had set a sufficient precedent. Thus Stanford Uni- versity, California, long ago made the rule: "Undergraduate standing, without further tests, is granted to graduates of approved schools who have completed a regular four years' course, amounting to not less than 15 entrance units, and who are fully recommended to the University." But certain limi- tations exist within the University for those whose school training has not brought them up to the level from which a University course in a particular subject begins. So too Clark College (Worcester, Massa- chusetts) "makes no requirement in terms of specific subjects, and admits graduates of approved high schools if satisfied that the student is capable of doing his college work." This kind of rule depends for its operation entirely on the interpretation given to the word "approved," on the policy followed in giving approval, and on what constitutes being "capable." But Clark College is part of Clark Uni- versity, whose ambition is mainly graduate. The problem is much easier than at different colleges such as Yale and Columbia. MATRICULATION REQUIREMENTS 97 Then follows the great example of Chicago a University that defines its "relations with Secondary Schools." It offers co-operation to all, and has a "Board of Admissions" as main authority in the matter. The "Co-operating Schools" are said to be "accredited." They are classified as accredited by the University's own Board, or by a few other similar but external authorities, including some lead- ing State Universities whose "standards of admission are substantially the same" as those of Chicago. The Chicago Board judges the school by the quantity and quality of the school work offered by the school's "graduates" when they seek admission, and by the attendance of "one or more" members of the school teaching staff in the Graduate School of the University, and again by the "creditable record" that pupils have after passing to the University. The school certificate admits those who come from a "Co-operating" or "Accredited" school, if everything else is in order. The general requirement is indicated as "15 units of credit by examination or by certificate from an approved school." Of these, three must be in English and seven more in what are called "academic subjects." The remaining five may be "selected from any sub- jects accepted by an approved school for its diploma." Specific "advice" is given to school pupils as to the work they had better do in the last year at school. It is based on the different courses they may wish to "continue" in College or the "electives" they may wish to have open to them there. "Proper subjects" so mentioned are "History, Greek, Latin, French, Ger- man, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Physiography, 98 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY and Biology." Outside the compulsory subject of English, 3 units or more must be in a "principal group," and two or more in a "secondary group." Principal and Secondary groups are Classical Languages, Modern Languages, History (including Civics and Economics), Mathematics, and Sciences. If only 2 or 3 units are offered in either group of languages, they must all be in one language. The Chicago system is very extensive and elaborate. Taken in any typical aspect, it seems to aim not merely at a "comprehensive" method but even at one that may somehow comprehend all methods ; and, while en- couraging the formation of special preparatory schools, it also encourages high schools to become preparatories. It further tends rather to encourage a larger amount of work in a chosen subject than to prescribe particular subjects. Among the State Universities direct relation to the high schools is fore-ordained. That constitutes a grave difficulty ; for high schools which are all institu- tions of the same State may yet be very diverse in scope and quality. A policy of accepting their certifi- cates is unavoidable, but entails a great deal of hindrance to the work of the University. To protect themselves against the possible deluge of unfit material, the Universities have largely developed the "Accrediting System." It has the merit of being logical, in the supposition that a good school ought to be trusted to prepare for the University as for any- thing else within the scope of a school. Its demerit lies in the fact that preparation for a University is only one of the duties of a school the one most difficult to perform well, and most easily overlooked MATRICULATION REQUIREMENTS 99 or sacrificed to a general burden of work, because it concerns only a small number of pupils. The task of the University in making sure that school standards are being maintained is heavy; if not allowed to be- come that, it is not properly performed, with great risks to the University's own standards. Yet a rational method is not to be condemned for its diffi- culties. The whole question is, nominally, one of standards ; for each University requires of its matriculants the qualification in subjects and units that it thinks fit to prescribe, whether the evidence of standard be given by examination or by a school certificate. If the evidence of the certificate is in- sufficient, the deficiency may be made up by examina- tion. A school may be accredited merely on its general record. In this case the University does not inspect the school, or seek any other means of being sure of its worth. If the training of the pupils sent up proves to be inadequate, the school may be removed from the accredited list. But, generally speaking, the practice of inspection prevails, especi- ally in the case of the greater State Universities, such as Michigan, Wisconsin and California. Sometimes the accrediting is done by an external authority approved by a group of Universities as for example the "New England College Entrance Certificate Board," which does not inspect. But the important "North Central Association of Colleges and Second- ary Schools," covering eighteen States, from Montana to Ohio, has a special department for accrediting after inspection. Sometimes an agency of the State accredits, and guarantees the certificates, as in Minne- ioo THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY sota where, of course, there is inspection. What "inspecting" signifies will depend on the competence and means, for such a purpose, of the accrediting body. At its best, it is a serious attempt to record and estimate the equipment, curriculum, staff and standards maintained, after examining classes or hold- ing written examinations in particular subjects in which signs of weakness or other unsatisfactory con- dition may appear. The working of the system has given enough satis- faction to cause its spreading very widely. In 1913 Dr. G. E. MacLean gave his high authority to the statement: "The examination system, which was uni- versal for centuries, has been supplanted almost uni- versally by some form of the certificate system. The prominence, however, of the few institutions maintain- ing the examination system makes it still a living issue." The great examining body whose results are accepted by all Universities is "The College Entrance Examination Board." Its headquarters are in New York; its examinations are held in 42 States and in 180 different places, including the Continent of Europe and England. It shows no sign of diminish- ing activity. In the State of New York, the Regents' Examination is still largely essential for intending matriculants within the State. The question at issue is not yet decided. The evils of examination do not need reviewing; the defects by which the "crammer" flourishes (not only outside the secondary schools), and through which Universities are fooled into accepting many incompetents, must be admitted. In 1907 the College Entrance Board com- plained: "As the number of candidates examined by MATRICULATION REQUIREMENTS 101 the Board increases, the quality of the average candi- dates' preparation is steadily deteriorating." And Mr. Flexner pointed the moral : "the outcome will be to convert the secondary school into a cramming machine." The concurrent taking into account of the candidate's school record is a just development, and reduces the chance of failure to the candidate, but does not safeguard the University very much. Yet it remains true that the examination can be a fairly sure test of both ability and knowledge, and that all other means of estimating them, in relation to a definite standard, are more fluctuating and less trust- worthy on a large scale. The American does not like the spur of competition to be applied in education. He would see no merit in rivalry between schools to keep good records to their names in matriculation examinations. But in British conditions it too has a wholesome effect, if it does not lead to cramming for results as indeed it often does. The American University recognizes the defects of "entrance by leaving certificate," but thinks it the more rational method in most States, especially in those that have Universities of their own and a public education system of which the University is theoreti- cally the completion. There is reason in this ; and, if the University can enforce a proper entrance standard in appropriate subjects, it should result in much benefit to the secondary part of the system because the smallest and most remote town either must have its high school staffed well enough to prepare for a really good matriculation or must collect the few pupils who wish for such teaching and send them where it is obtainable. But there is great risk that 102 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY the effect will be merely to pull the University entrance standard down to the low average level of high school training as exemplified in schools that have little need to prepare matriculants. "This State," said a University authority in education, "does not possess so high a standing as it should, but it has one as high as is practicable." He explained the remark by one American view of a University, as imaged in a satiric saying attributed to Robert Ingersoll : "a University is a place where diamonds are dimmed and pebbles are polished." There is no means of putting much polish on pebbles in an ordinary four years' high school course of 16 units. The University must receive quantities in many stages of dimness. It is the will of the people. But a good University is always at work, through some accrediting system, to improve its supply. Thus Wisconsin University accredits about 350 schools in its State. It is also a member of the North Central Association, and represented on the Association's principal Committee, which receives reports about accredited schools and lets them know of their weak- nesses and failures. And the Association accredits less than one-third of the 350. It therefore sets the higher standard ; and the University whose standard is not lower by choice is able to prove the necessity for a raised standard by outside authority as well as by its own judgment. The University acts through its own Accrediting Committee, which is one direct means of making its influence felt. It sends suitable members of its regular staff to visit and report on the schools, and it tells the State authority what the inspectors have to say. It also keeps a register of MATRICULATION REQUIREMENTS 103 teachers, and acts as a sort of appointments bureau. From it every High School gets a copy of the under- graduate record of all pupils accepted. Those who are "fired" -suffer a humiliation that is real, and is shared by the school. Even though candidates have a leaving certificate of the proper number of units in the acceptable subjects, the University examines them all in English, and makes those below standard do extra work that will not count for a degree until they come up to the standard. The nature of the deficiency in each case is reported to the candidate's school in any detail it desires. If a High School teacher wishes to have the work of his pupils appraised, the English Department will read their compositions and give an opinion on them. This all represents an excessive burdening of the University, but also implies its strenuous attempt at improvement of school standards. In Wisconsin conditions, the University would not only accept but be satisfied with a High School course running somewhat as follows, in preparation for the B.A. course: First Year English, Algebra, Latin, Science (one unit each). Second Year English, Plane Geometry, Latin, His- tory (one unit each). Third Year English, Latin History, Science or Mathematics (one unit each). Fourth Year English, Latin, United States History (compulsory in this year), and Physics or other "elective" (again in single units). The same subjects would be a good preparation for a B.S. course. The difficulty in reaching a fuller language equipment is typified by present conditions in regard to the foreign languages. Before the war, only about fifty schools on the accredited list did not give at least two annual courses in a foreign language ; but the language was German. Now, in all but about fifteen schools German is extinct, and French, which has often been substituted, has not at all fully taken its place. The probability is that the limitation on foreign languages will remain, despite all the Uni- versity's efforts. Wisconsin has large elements of foreign extraction in its population. One common language is its principal care. The United States itself has no large sense of a common tradition in any language. As President Butler said recently in Columbia: "Linguistic study as such, even for purely practical purposes, has not often appealed to the young American . . . the study of the older forms of the Romance and Germanic languages, never very popular among American students, is already begin- ning to go the way of the study of the ancient classics." In Wisconsin, only the University pre- serves from death the study of the modern forms as well. The University of California has recently lost the power of indicating the subjects which must be studied in High School by way of preparation for the University. The State Board of Education, upon which the University is not represented, attends to that. But educational influence generally including that of the University has led to the development of a "core" of High School studies without which no High School certificate is approved by the State Board. There is nothing new in this. Other States MATRICULATION REQUIREMENTS 105 also try to settle the whole High School course round a nucleus of subjects which may fairly be regarded as essential to a right secondary education. The Cali- fornian High School "diploma" is accepted by the University, which takes what precautions it can to assure the quality of work represented. There is on the staff of the University an official visitor of High Schools, who spends every second semester in in- spections. For short periods (such as a couple of weeks) his activity is supplemented by that of other members of the University staff. The schools whose subjects and standards are approved by the Uni- versity appear on a list that it publishes. School pupils who present the usual recommendation and certificate from the schools are automatically accepted. But the University prescribes definitely what subjects and standards must be presented by all its students who wish to do work in the two higher years (Junior and Senior) of its course. Thus the high school "core" at present does not include mathematics or a foreign language. But the student matriculated on that "core" will have to come up to standard in either or both of them, according to the course he wishes to take after his first two years. He may, for example, then seek entrance to the College of Engineering. But he must first meet its mathematical requirements. The College of Letters and Science similarly insists upon a proper language training for those who want to go past its midpoint and complete a regular College course. The University cannot demand that all its undergraduates shall enter with precise qualifications in the subjects and at the standards that it thinks best for its work. But, once they are admitted, they are 106 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY wholly at its disposition. This fact, and the use that the University makes of it, and the influence that the University brings to bear on the schools, co-operate to make the high school pupil select from the margin round the "core' what will be needed for permission to go on to the Junior year at the University. Those who matriculate without taking this precaution have the two earlier years in which to make up their deficiencies, unless after private study they pass a special examination in the deficient subjects. It seems as if the University of California is tending to divide its College of Letters and Science into a Junior and a Senior College, and to evolve an old-fashioned examination for entrance to the Senior one impelled thereto partly by the loss of right to specify particular requirements for matriculation beyond the "core," and partly by the exceptional development of the "Junior College" system in California, which has made more progress along this line than any other State. A legislative Committee has been working on the subject, and will soon report to the Legislature. Meanwhile the Junior College is a part of the State secondary system. It forms an upper division of the high schools, somewhat independently organized. At the beginning the teaching had to be done by the high school staff, but it is passing to a special staff, which will have positions more attractive than those of "instructors" in University Colleges. If this arrangement is carried to its logical conclusion, it will be the Junior College that will prepare for the Uni- versity, and the ordinary University College course will drop its lower half. In short, California may lead the way to the exclusion of all secondary studies MATRICULATION REQUIREMENTS 107 from the American University. Yet there are many difficulties to overcome, e.g., the supply of a sufficient force of thoroughly qualified teachers, and the organi- zation of the Junior College to include enough "vocational" departments. To supplement high school work with a two years' training in commercial subjects is not very hard. But to do the same in other subjects (e.g., agriculture) may raise serious problems. The Junior College must apparently be not only a training ground for the full Colleges of Letters and Science, Engineering, Medicine, Law, and the rest, but also a sort of "middle vocational school." In any reasonable development, some relief should be given to the University, which at present receives too many "high school graduates" not fit for really higher work, but forced to seek what further training they do want from the University because they can find it nowhere else. Are matriculation standards adequately maintained under the American system? The evidence, to a foreigner, is rarely exempt from doubt. Two things, especially, give an unfavourable impression. One is the amount of "conditioning." A result of the war has been to make the more or less conditional admission of undergraduates a necessity in all Universities of the belligerent Powers. It is not possible to send men back to school or private study to complete formal qualifications, after they have missed through war service the proper time for that work. It is not just to refuse those who did not qualify at the proper time but, later than is usual, have found means or felt the desire for some higher intellectual training which, but for the war, they would have forgone or io8 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY not even considered. Rewards to soldiers every- where now include help towards their further prepara- tion for civil life; in some American States, the soldier entering a College may continue to draw the equivalent of military pay. Many young men have suffered an intellectual awakening through the war: from the over-strain of brute force they have turned eagerly to fuller occupation of the mind. The Uni- versities are liberally waiving the ordinary safeguards of entrance in order to let the world's fighters have new scope. But, neglecting this special and temporary increase of conditioned students, one should recognize the problem that they ordinarily present to American Universities which accept students who have not passed an examination at a definite standard. These Universities must consider individual cases in great numbers, "psychologically" or otherwise, through officials whose business it is to give the consideration. These officials must have some definite University policy in mind; but they must also be allowed no small discretion, and its limits will be hard to define. It frequently happens that a pupil presents the usual number of units without satisfying all the requirements in respect of subjects or standards. Such a case may be met by allowing the requisites to be made up during the undergraduate course, which therefore proceeds under "conditions." Then the work of all who take that course is subject to the influence of the students who are clearing them- selves of their conditions. The institution itself has to face the difficulty of putting them, below standard as they are, into suitable classes, since their limitations MATRICULATION REQUIREMENTS 109 tend to drag down the class standards. The Chairman of the "Committee on the Articulation of High School and College" of the National Education Association declares "the practical fact is that the college necessarily adjusts its organization to the students it admits, whether they are classified as freshmen in full standing or as conditioned students." Any too liberal matriculating on the certificate of an im- perfectly adapted or inefficient school course means the lowering of standards within the University itself. The same result follows where candidates are con- ditionally admitted to a University though they have failed in its entrance test. It is not easy to make the removal of entrance con- ditions a reality. The same authority contends: "either the conditioned student is seriously over- worked, or the instruction is modified and the rest of the freshmen class is underworked. If, as so often happens, the removal of entrance conditions is made absurdly easy, the College virtually abandons the standard it professes." This probably indicates a wide and unavoided risk to standards in the general American practice. School pupils are not sufficiently compelled to come right up to University requirements before they enter as undergraduates ; Universities are too much compelled to re-instruct their own en- trants before proceeding with them at their own standards. The result is increase of confusion between work proper to the school and work proper to the University, with dangerous contamination of method or what seems such to those who believe that the study of a subject in a University should differ in method from its study in a school. Young instructors no THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY are already doing quantities of "freshman" work which if it is for a University to do at all ought to be done by teachers who have all the qualifications and the full responsibility of professorship. High school courses and high school methods are both out of place in a University ; and this does not mean that particular subjects, even subjects that are taught at school, may never be begun within the University, but only that their treatment must always be of the Uni- versity type. The present too easy accommodation of standards to the diversities and deficiencies of school curricula, and of individual pupils, makes the schools beyond the danger of lapse into the function of cramming machines also less bound by their duty to the University, and more subject to the competing in- fluence of the wider demand for a secondary educa- tion that will suit those who pay for the schools as places of general secondary education not preparatory to anything but "life." It seems as if the American University has now, at considerable inconvenience and risk to itself, experienced every possible concession to that demand, and has arrived only at an uncertain matriculation compromise that leaves it with standards subject to too much variation downwards. The other unfavourable indication is the whole pro- cess of elimination of the unfit which is always going on within the University. American and British views diverge here. An American student thinks of College as a place in which a certain toll of work is demanded of him, and expects that if it is not rendered expulsion will follow: aut disce out dlscede. The British student, forced to learn what he needs (and often very much more) for entrance, thinks that MATRICULATION REQUIREMENTS in all compulsion should stop when he leaves school ; and in a University he is traditionally very free to learn or not, providing that he is a good member of the community in his own particular way, and is not mis- using any scholarship or exhibition. He may, after all, be thinking and learning outside the curriculum, and in contempt of it and its professors, like Thackeray and Tennyson and many another on the record of the ancient universities. But, quite apart from special cases that it might tolerate, even a good American University may continually have to regrade its freshmen after their arrival, and to throw out the incompetents whom entrance requirements did not keep out. The system has more than one reason. Universities that educate huge masses of students, at the cost mainly of trust funds or the public treasury, should not waste money, or its equivalent, upon idlers and the unfit. But involuntary or tolerant acceptance of unsuitable material from the schools appears also to be a reason for what is done as, for example, by one great State University which thus warns its matricu- lants that the initial presumption of their fitness may be rebutted at any time within a year: "The status of all undergraduate students shall be probationary during their first year of residence." The confusion existing between the work of the secondary school and the work of the University in America is harmful to both. They need to be separated by a more definite line of standards. The traditional duty of the University to do some second- ary teaching in College is one cause of difficulty in making more satisfactory entrance requirements uni- versal. One of the principal experts in education ii2 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY said to me: "I wish we could tear the whole thing up and start afresh." But national traditions with so much deserved love as the College has won cannot be treated as the Americans regularly treat antiquated buildings and even towns. The develop- ment of the Junior College will perhaps work the revolution gradually. At present there are many regulations that provide for the admission of students to "advanced standing," or to the ordinary kind. They allow for all sorts of special cases among adults who cannot furnish ordinary matriculation qualifica- tions, and should not be put through more school work. Under the more rigid British matriculation system these cases are ignored. But the influx of adults after the war has forced them particularly into notice. Permanent effects will remain. One Aus- tralian University, for example, has begun to admit qualified adults on what might be (but is not) termed a "psychological test" inspection of the candidate and estimation of his worth by a responsible and competent committee. In America, such persons have never far to seek for admision to regular status in a University. But there is still the more general question of "advanced standing" for students who have done courses in institutions for the training of teachers, such as "Normal Schools," Junior Colleges and others that may be regarded as of "College grade." Liberal concessions are made to them. Hence it is easy to let a subordinate kind of "College" form upon the basis of a high school, so that higher work done in a high school with special advanced classes beyond its regular four-year course, and as a continuance of that, may count as if it were done in MATRICULATION REQUIREMENTS 113 the regular College of a University. "Junior Colleges" of this kind are already frequent, and can cover two years of the University college course of four years leading to a degree. In this respect too the present situation is unsatis- factory. It has the apparent advantage of allowing pupils in whose town there is no University to re- main at home and practically at school for two years longer, and yet go working on towards a Uni- versity degree. This, being an economical arrange- ment, perhaps results in more pupils of good high schools being able ultimately to have partial Uni- versity education. It may also tend to improve the staffing of high schools. But it has the grave dis- advantage of further confusing the work of the Uni- versity with that of the secondary school. Hitherto the higher institution has traditionally contained both kinds; now the lower one is also to contain them, to a sort of halfway extent as regards the University studies. The only good issue visible is that the Uni- versity College will apparently be compelled to shape its policy in anticipation of a time when it will be able to demand a "Junior College graduation" as its main matriculation qualification. Then the American high school, alone or in co-operation with some school intermediate between it and a University, will pro- vide the six years of secondary school training upon which a University should normally be able to build. Then, too, the University College course may be, not the remaining half of a general four years' course, of which the Junior College has done two years, but an independent one of at least three years. Whether this development can take place will de- ii4 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY pend largely on a change of heart in the American people. At present everyone admits that the whole situation is unsatisfactory. But to put secondary education on a sound basis everywhere means the adequate payment of teachers. The last statistics made public by the United States Commissioner of Education, and quoted by the New York Independent in its issue of May ist, 1920, show that 18,279 schools are closed for lack of teachers; 41,900 substitute teachers without regular qualifications are being em- ployed; and sixty per cent, of the Normal Schools have a total decrease of 11,503 teachers in training as compared with the year before the war. Since 1910 the percentage of men teachers has fallen from 22 to 17; the average salary for an elementary teacher is 120 a year, and for a high school teacher 206. The movement to remedy this disastrous state of affairs has begun, where almost all good educational movements begin in America, from the Universities. Harvard has just doubled its Professors' salaries. The State University of Michigan has been granted 70,000 a year for a similar increase. Organizations are being formed, even in Universities, whose ultimate object is the adoption of strike methods. Meanwhile comes the era in "the unorganized profession of teach- ing" of "wholesale resignations and a nation-wide drift to better paid professions." Any sound recon- struction of American education, especially one that will develop and strengthen the secondary school part, must involve an enormous monetary cost. Perhaps the most unfavourable influence on matricu- lation standards is a certain tendency not peculiar to the United States, but yet very evident there MATRICULATION REQUIREMENTS 115 to judge success and importance by numerical tests. About this the American University reformers are most bitter. They ascribe it to the influence of ideas of "business efficiency," or blame the Presidential sys- tem. So it is said: "The bidding for numbers is part of the system that operates to the disadvantage of standards; for the size (not the quality) of the annual freshman crop, when reported, affects the rating in the educational Bradstreet" ; or again, "They (College offices) send out drummers who beat up recruits, and the credit man at home cannot be over- squeamish about carrying business thus obtained." There is, certainly, too much competition among Universities for students. This means only that in America, more than elsewhere, a University is sub- ject to a particular kind of influence adverse to the maintenance of standards, especially at matriculation. In Australia there can be, for a long time to come, no such competition. The absence of it is not wholly good. The Australian University is tempted to a monotonous repetition of its past actions, so that it is liable to develop without proper adaptation to changing conditions, and even without proper revolt against outworn precedents. Yet it too may be un- duly influenced by consideration of numbers. There is such a thing as the unwise use of public money to increase the passing of school pupils into Universities, if no adequate preparation can be made to deal properly with them when they arrive. "The smaller Universities" is a phrase that too often suggests inferiority. A certain magnitude gives a University more varied and valuable life as a community and a kind of wider usefulness ; but in the last decision ii6 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY nothing counts but quality. It is not at all amazing that, in American conditions, some prejudice to stand- ards through competition for numbers must be ad- mitted. What remains most wonderful is the quality and quantity of the right work that the American Uni- versity does upon the insufficient and unsafe basis of American public secondary education. CHAPTER VII GRADUATE WORK THE vast bulk of the work done in American Universities is undergraduate work in "College." A large quantity more is "graduate" only in a limited sense. Thus an American University may (but the majority do not) require a candidate for a medical degree to take first the College (Faculty of Arts or Faculty of Science) degree. If the College degree is a "pre-requisite," the medical school of the Uni- versity is a Graduate School. Constitution of a Graduate School may also follow if College and professional courses are telescoped, so that part of the work done in a professional school counts for College graduation which is taken on the student's way to the professional degree, after a fashion familiar enough from the "B.A., LL.B." combination in Australia.* * The great Harvard Law School is a graduate school. Speaking of its experience, Mr. Flexner says: "Formerly college undergraduates were permitted to take work in the law school, and men registered in the law school were permitted to complete unfinished college work. The practice has been discontinued, because carefully pre- pared statistics show that such students fall far below the men whose work is solely in the law school and whose interests are solely in graduate work." Hence American Universities with the usual older professional schools may have a considerable "gradu- ate" element. But under the British system, which Australia repeats, such "graduate" professional work is treated as undergraduate still. In the American University professional school, graduates who hold the first professional degree may continue their work for a degree of advanced pro- fessional standing, as in Engineering or Law ; or may do a post-graduate course of more scientific or specialist character, as in Medicine for which the first degree given is, regularly, M.D. The higher medical degree, if any, then taken will be mostly Ph.D. or D.Sc. But, when an American University speaks of "giving advanced or graduate instruction," it refers especially to distinct "graduate Schools," organized as such within the University, and not merely to a "graduate" appendage of any professional department. The degree-granting Technical Institute of which the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the supreme type offers very valuable opportunities for post-graduate study, not in technical branches only. This Institute's degree of B.S. implies a high training for the engineering profession ; the advanced course for the M.S., lasting an additional year, is intended to foster the young graduate's ability to deal indepen- dently with yet unsolved problems. More lengthy and difficult courses lead to a degree of Doctor of Engineering, for which the advanced study consists principally of engineering subjects ; or Doctor of Philosophy, for which the qualifying work is mainly study and research in Science. There is a difficulty, perhaps more pronounced in America than elsewhere, GRADUATE WORK iig in deciding whether and to what extent professional advanced studies should qualify for doctorates. The traditional University and the modern professional school of University grade naturally tend to disagree on this point of practice. "Graduate Schools" have no long history. Up to about 1872, when a Harvard man wanted to do post- graduate work he went abroad for it, as Australians are still doing. Yale is said to have had a Department of Graduate Instruction since the middle of last century, and to have re-organized it some fifty years ago. But the important growth is all later than that, and is a direct result of two things the historic limitations of the American College, and the influence of the Philosophical Faculty of the German Uni- versity, the Faculty of knowledge in general. The tradition of undergraduate education in the United States shows it to contain more of school work and school method than Universities generally have retained. The tradition of all University study in Germany is one of practically complete exemption, for both teacher and student, from the courses and obligations of the school. The "electives system" was taken over from the German University practice in which it was essential, because the German student's school-days had been prolonged to about the age of twenty, and he had reached a point at which it might be considered that his general education was complete, and the time for specialization and pro- fessional study had arrived. The grant of this really "adult" privilege to American College boys did a good deal to weaken the general educational value (which was the supreme value) of the traditional College 120 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY course; though it also stimulated development in number and range of courses, and therefore had a certain favourable influence on scholarship. But the freedom to choose what he might learn was not all that the German student possessed. He might also "elect" whether, and from what University or group of Universities, and in what way he would learn what he had chosen. The American student had to learn mostly in one place and under the sanctions of a specific curriculum. Periodically he must "recite" and pass examinations or be "fired." It always had been so ; it had to remain so, for he was an undergraduate in statu pupillari. The national instinct to preserve the national college system was sound. The American College was not a University in the German sense, but it was, and is, another kind of University, a very valuable possession that no German University could replace a school of character and civic virtue where in all sorts of community occupations, studious and recreative, youth learns how to use manly freedom as something distinct from licence. So the attempt to Germanize had to stop far short of destroying the best of American institutions. The "Graduate School" was the final result of an effort to follow the German example where it best applied in post-graduate studies. An attempt to found a Graduate School apart from the College is indicated by the history of Johns Hop- kins and Clark Universities. They had graduate work as the special object of their foundation. College de- grees were merely a qualification for entrance on their proper courses. The President of one of them laid down the common ideal thus: "The College digests GRADUATE WORK 121 and impresses second-hand knowledge as highly vitalized as good pedagogy can make it, while the University, as one of its choicest functions, creates new knowledge by research and discovery." This statement was unfair to the College, which in Liberal Arts and Sciences at least is neither in theory nor in practice limited to the second-hand; and the Graduate School is by no means invariably creative, in any important sense. It is quite natural that no form of German or Graduate University should have been able to grow independently of a College in America; nor is the fact to be regretted. Johns Hopkins and Clark are quite normal American Uni- versities now, but still faithful to a graduate ambition. Everywhere the endeavour has been to develop graduate upon undergraduate studies; and the "Graduate School" in its most valuable form is a pro- duction towards infinity of the work begun in the "College of Liberal Arts and Sciences." It has not yet attained dimensions at all proportion- ate to those of the College. The College has gone on developing its range of work, and is swelling to numbers that defy restraint and threaten to over- whelm the most generous provision already made for their teaching; but no "Graduate School" is over- crowded. The Graduate students are but a very small remnant of the College host. Large efforts are being made to stimulate graduate work in all the Univer- sities, and in Colleges that wish to be Universities in the full American sense. A very fine list of graduate studies could be compiled from the official publications of the leading Universities. But the graduate depart- ments of "Liberal Arts and Sciences" the non- 122 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY professional schools are not yet generally developed in full proportion to the College. Nor are they sufficiently distinct from the College, and free of the sort of graduate who needs still to attend under- graduate instruction, or of the hybrid course open to undergraduates as well as graduates. There are many who hold the degree of Ph.D. the final graduate aim but there are vast multitudes holding College degrees. Hence the reformers of the day are using bitter language, such as: "Most of the graduate students in our Universities are men of mediocre ability, drifting along with the aid of fellowships and underpaid assistantships to an inglorious Ph.D. and a profession (i.e. academic teaching) with meagre rewards." One great use of the graduate departments is "professional," in the sense that they are a means of qualifying aspirants for the highest and some other teaching positions. But teaching is lamentably under- paid in America, and offers no material inducements that can affect men of marked ability and energy, who insist upon having moderately good material rewards. Yet few other countries can show much greater care for scholarship and education as far as rewards in money go the prestige of both is higher in some countries. The point rather seems to be that the American love of learning is somewhat limited in range; the College satisfies almost all requirements, and what lies beyond it is admired, but not much used, except with some professional motive. "Greek," said Dr. Johnson, "is like lace : everyone gets as much of it as he can." Taking Greek as a symbol of pro- fessionally valueless scholarship, one might add that GRADUATE WORK 123 lace is no longer fashionable for men and not only in America. Reformers think to make it so once more by creating a University that will deal only with "Liberal Arts and Sciences" from a point well above that at which the College ends. So Mr. Veblen claims that, as University professional schools appear to be asserting an independence of all the others, "the separation between the University and the professional and technical schools should be carried through and made absolute" ; again, that the present struggle to get a remnant of funds for disinterested higher studies, as against all the popular expansion of the College into new provinces of school work, "secondary, primary, elementary, normal, professional, technical, manual- training, art-schools, schools of music, elocution, book- keeping, housekeeping, and a further variety," should be stopped; and America should finally prove that "it is quite feasible to have a University without professional schools and without an undergraduate department ; but it is not possible to have one without due provision for that non-utilitarian higher learning about which as a nucleus these utilitarian disciplines cluster." On the other hand, reformers like Mr. Flexner think the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences "insidiously sacrifices the College," leads to "the folly of loading down gifted and promising in- vestigators with an exhausting and distasteful college routine," increases the "vogue of the lecture system" which "permits the College to handle cheaply, by wholesale, otherwise unmanageable numbers," diverts money to narrower use than was intended because "it costs far more to train a research worker than an 124 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY undergraduate" so that to improve the efficiency of the Colleges means "lopping off entirely some of the graduate schools." But separatist policies are not likely ever to go so far. The present provision for research, and advanced work generally, appears to be as much as America needs and, proportionately, more than most countries have. So far as it contemplates study within a University for a degree, it is large; beyond that, the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Institute and other endowments of less magnitude, together with the Federal Scientific departments and the National Council of Research, are offering stimulus enough to "creative scholarship." The value of the work to be done will depend far more on the special genius and interest of the American people than on any form of organization. The separation of undergraduate from graduate work has gone far enough already in America. In itself it may be of doubtful advantage, at least from the British point of view. It is as undergraduate that the future scholar and man of science usually acquires his first enthusiasm for his subject. The rest of his development is continuous; a first graduation is not a particularly significant point in his career, except so far as it marks his first special distinction, in a large field, by those called to judge his work. Long before it he has been allowed the liberties and responsibilities of an "honours" man, and has undertaken a great deal of special and independent study because he is deter- mined to excel somewhere, or has suffered an attraction that makes the labour delightful to him. At an early stage he will be more fit for graduation GRADUATE WORK 125 than many "pass men" will ever be, though he and they may graduate together. Without him the pro- fessor would lack some valuable stimulation to do his own best. The refreshment of repeated contact with enthusiastic youth just discovering what it wants to do is essential for the teacher who tries to increase as well as to transmit knowledge. The graduate student who is making himself a professional in his subject is also very stimulating company, but he cannot take the place of the undergraduate of talent, who is just finding himself, may never go much beyond a first degree with Honours, but is the material out of which professional scholars are made, and may yet decide to renounce the world and devote himself to scholarship. The more the undergraduate is called forthwith to be as much a scholar and a man of science as he can, the larger will be the number of learned men a Uni- versity produces, and the more "creative" its mind. But the American College system is not the British undergraduate system. It is a longer and more elaborately regulated discipline for the whole mass of students. The normal course is four years, and includes (or may include) a greater amount of ele- mentary work. Before its bewildering array of "electives" one sometimes stands amazed. They are contained in a book of perhaps two hundred pages, and the foreigner marvels how the student "elects" not merely what he thinks he might like but what he will find to be a right choice. There is no Honours system of the familiar kind. Something analogous exists in some Universities, particularly in the East. It is extremely well schemed, and is intended to appeal to all students of good or 126 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY exceptional ability. But it is not the same. There is generally a classification of college students for gradu- ation. But this is not, in the British sense, inclusive of complete and separate Honours classification. There is a marked difference here between national methods of education. The British method tends towards early discovery of the fittest intelligences, and to their con- stant stimulation as they are found. At school, they are sifted out of the mass by competitive examina- tions with carefully estimated orders of merit ; by the lure of rewards in the shape of prizes and scholar- ships ; by the making of higher and lower divisions of classes to facilitate quickest progress for the brightest pupils ; and by double-promotions that enable those most alert of mind, or most acquisitive and industrious, to be kept always on their mettle. At the University, such pupils along with others of equal powers but slower early development form the Honours class. Either their curriculum is different from that of the pass-students, and their period of study for the Honours degree possibly longer, or they must seek a much deeper knowledge of their special subjects. In any case they must do a great deal more work, in a more independent spirit; and they ought to show a definitely higher kind of ability than is required for a pass degree. Again, competition will be promoted among them to the same stimulating effect and win- nowing purpose. This British method is a good one for impelling men to realize and develop their special powers, and for comparing and testing those powers in exercise. Wayward genius can be allowed by it to concentrate on a desired object, even a rather narrow one. It produces an elite of individuals all along its GRADUATE WORK 127 course, a few highly specialized talents at its con- clusion. And the work has been done rapidly by the systematic exclusion of the slow as well as the unfit. To the American mind there is something educa- tionally wrong and even unfair in this process. Dr. E. E. Slosson, in his Six Major Prophets states the contrast thus: "The British system is built upon competitions, prizes and examinations. The Ameri- can State Universities in the days of their pristine purity I mean by that of course, when I was a student regarded competitions as vicious, prizes as demoralizing, and examinations as an evil to be eliminated if possible. But it ill becomes a pragmatist to condemn a system that works so well as the British, whatever theoretical objections may occur." The British method has also to meet objections in its own country. So a writer in the Times is able to say: "It will be admitted, generally, that the somewhat narrow, if intense, course of study required for an Honours degree is not the best preparation for life in general, and that the intellectual training might be equally well obtained from a course of wider cultural value." The American method is traditionally directed towards movement in common, over a wide field, at a good average rate. School pupils are sup- posed to go through their grades, not indeed at the same pace (for that is impossible) but, anyhow, in about the same time. The quick are left to stimulate the slow in their common "recitations," and no com- petition for individual distinction is encouraged to break their community of interest in the work. They are expected to criticise one another's knowledge and ideas, but not to split up into groups selected by 128 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY authority on the evidence they can give of personal superiorities. At College the principle of equality still holds. Sometimes the better prepared may be allowed to shorten the time of the whole course, as from four to three years. Certain differences in quality of work are recognized formally. There are certain easier or more difficult options. Plenty of advanced work may be done by those judged capable of it. But there is a prevalent uniformity of grading and of rate of pro- gress. Intense specialization of individuals is not a principal concern. The class is the main object of attention. Its general level has most care from the authorities. Lists of academic distinctions attained by students are not evidence upon which colleges are judged, and graduates do not trail them through life. Degrees are worth the general repute of the College that grants them, and that repute rests upon the record of its graduates in all their careers. Precisely how a man was classified on his undergraduate work seems to be a very minor consideration. Under both the British and the American systems, there is need for the development of Graduate Schools, particularly in Arts and Science. But under the American it is more easily satisfied in point of organization. British arrangements for Honours work often allow considerable scope for graduate study. British degrees have not the same meaning as given by one good University or another. There are some Masterships in particular which imply neither Honours grade nor post-graduate study. There are others, styled Bachelorships, that represent good post- graduate courses. Even the B.A. may profitably be taken in certain Universities by post-graduate Honours GRADUATE WORK 129 students from some others that do not specialize as much in a particular undergraduate Honours course. If the titles are all diversely used, and the organization is unsystematic and otherwise defective, there has long been in Universities of the United Kingdom good provision of graduate studies, leading not only to doctorates but also to various other degrees. Re- organization is now made possible by the institution of the Ph.D. degree as a general British title for success- ful completion of systematic post-graduate work, last- ing normally three years, pursued under direction of a University and mainly within its walls. It may be that the old division of undergraduate studies into Pass and Honours should be given up, and the Honours course be made definitely longer than the Pass, so that it may lead through a Pass degree to a higher degree. It would be possible in some Universities to reconstitute the M.A. degree as a purely Honours degree, beyond which the road lies open to the Graduate School and its Ph.D. or other doctorates. The effect of the present system is often to lower the standard of the Pass degree. Under such a revised system that standard could be raised. In America the Graduate School need not clash with the College, but can form a proper continuation of the undergraduate work in depth and extent, generally at a higher standard. The M.A. or M.S. is definitely a higher degree in Arts or Science, and higher still are the doctorates. The whole field of academic study is well plotted before the student. In the development of its Graduate Schools the American academic system has one of its main distinctions. The whole American method is more systematic 130 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY than at first appears. Serious abuse of the free choice among subjects has practically ceased, and worthless courses made up of elementary "electives" are made impossible. The student is not really left to pick his own way through that book of two hundred pages. If he wishes to graduate with any distinction, he must submit to strict limitations in Universities that have the American kind of Honours classification. Even the ordinary and general courses are subject to certain kinds of grouping. The "Major" and "Minor" arrangement is very common. It secures progressive study of one subject to a higher standard, and the con- current study of some related subject, for a very large proportion of the time spent in Junior and Senior years. An incidental advantage is the interest and help the student will find the professor of his "Major" always ready to give. But no one is left without advisers, whose duty it is to see that he complies with what Chicago calls "the requirement of coherent and progressive sequences." There may be room for difference of opinion as to whether such require- ments are sufficiently met. But their existence, and the policy it indicates, are alone in question here. The American system, with its "grade-points" and "credits" its whole apparatus of accounting the subjects and marks that must be registered for a degree is but an elaborate way of arriving at a simple result. Like other Universities, the American finds it hard to prevent all smattering and irrational grouping of studies on the part of the less well- prepared and less responsible adolescents, who stream into it for only a little more liberal education before they go on to some profession. GRADUATE WORK 131 The remainder that passes to the Graduate School directly, or returns unsatisfied after a few years in the outer world, has either shaped a course towards some advanced work, or developed a special ambition, or found a new intellectual interest. For these graduate students there is provided ample means of thorough study in their particular subject. They spend a year, at least, in attaining the first higher degree, usually the M.A. They have the special guidance of a professor. They work in a "seminar," or small co-operative class, with him and others specializing in the same subject. They have the duty of contributing to the discussions of the class, and the responsibility of collecting and presenting matter for its examination. The criticism of professor and class is continually bent on the work that the individ- ual is doing for himself. A kind of social effort after not only the relative but also the absolute increase of knowledge is the Result, and its value is both stimu- lating and corrective. Upon this social aspect of graduate work the Americans lay great stress ; their judgment, even of ability, seems to depend partly on the talent thus revealed in the scholar. Formal in- struction is also given ; but the whole orientation is towards special investigation. Yet, the M.A. degree may be achieved without very much specializing. Beyond it no good University will encourage a can- didate for the Ph.D. to proceed, unless he appears to have both the talent and earnestness required for research and the ambition to make fresh contribution to knowledge. No doubt the value of the Ph.D. degree varies. But only five or six hundred such doctorates are given in all the United States during 132 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY any one year; and quite a large proportion of them are granted by Universities that would not accept a dissertation unmarked by genuine research or con- structive ability. The really typical American Graduate School has a justly high repute, whether or not it is professional in the narrower sense. In Law the name of Harvard is famous among all the English-speaking peoples. In Medicine it is rising as high. The comparatively unproved Graduate School of Business is an interesting experiment. The Medical Graduate work of Johns Hopkins is perhaps best known; but that University has distinction in many other subjects, of which some, like Political Science, are comparatively new. Minnesota seems about to develop rather specially on the medical side. Chicago has such advantages of situation, and so thorough a scheme for the development of special studies in Medicine, that it is likely to become one of the great graduate schools in that kind, as it already is in some other kinds. The Canadians have long been making large use of it, as of some others, with the interesting result that quite a considerable number of the best Canadian scholars have had careers opened to them as professors even as presidents in the Universities of the United States; for the Canadian Universities, numerous as they are in proportion to the population, cannot re- absorb all their own fit men. Michigan has a fine organization of graduate work, in Arts and Science particularly. California has put all its graduate departments under one headship, and is in the first rank for certain subjects (for example Physical Chemistry). So from East to West there GRADUATE WORK 133 is a chain of Graduate Schools, of which but a few can be mentioned here. Exact discrimination among them would need very close study, and they must vary in scope and standard from time to time. But their general aim is constant; their characters are alike. One of the most interesting has an exceptional organization. It is Princeton, whose adherence to the old residential traditions of the Eastern University has caused it to build a separate home and centre of work for its graduate students. This is called the "Graduate College." It is situated on the Campus, a little remote from the undergraduate buildings. The architecture is particularly fine, and aims at repro- ducing in externals and in spirit the beauty of ancient English collegiate Gothic. As a residential College, the whole great structure is "devoted solely to the higher liberal studies," and forms a "home of science and philosophy, of literature and history." Only about a hundred men are admitted. They are not to consist wholly of students for the higher ranks of the teaching profession. Community life is to be essential to their training. Their special professors will be members of their community, and will sometimes live among them in the College. Several great benefactors made this noble scheme (of which the present head of the College, Dean Andrew F. West, was long the enthusiastic prophet) an accomplished fact a few years before the war. What it can effect has yet to be proved. But, if to live and learn and think and commune together in beautiful surroundings and con- ditions most favourable to quiet and studious occupa- tion may have any exceptional charm for young American graduates, they cannot find more bounteous 134 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY provision for their benefit than Princeton has made. There surely is a definite function for such a Graduate College among all the schools of its kind. It offers a form of life as well as a scheme of studies member- ship of a household of learned men and their maturer disciples, valuable beyond all the usual apparatus of scholarship or modes of teaching. This bold experi- ment may yet have an influence quite disproportionate to its size, not in nicely measured efficiencies but in immeasurable inspirations. At present its novelty attracts most attention, and its future is not guaran- teed by its ambition, so that there are sceptics even among those who admire. From the British point of view, two things appear to hamper the development of the American Graduate School. One is its excessive dependence on the sub- sidized student; the other, its undue continuance of the methods of undergraduate study. Too many of its graduate students in Arts and Science are already earning their livings in the practice of teaching; or doing their advanced study upon a Fellowship, Scholarship or Assistantship which requires them to take an important share in the instruction of under- graduates, at the expense of their own special work. At the Nineteenth Annual Conference of American Universities, in 1917, one speaker said: "We have almost reached the point at which every person who received the Ph.D. degree in the United States has held an appointment during every year of his work as a graduate student." The system of aided studentship has been submitted to close analysis by the American Association of University Professors, with results which tend to justify though, GRADUATE WORK 135 of course, not exactly to confirm that broad generali- zation. It is significant that the Universities largely support their own graduate students, by using them as minor teachers of undergraduates. This must mean that the graduate work is less well done than it might be. It also means that the American University has a kind of pupil-teacher system for training recruits to its own teaching ranks. Fellowships and scholar- ships, even if free of teaching obligations, are usable as means of drawing off promising men from one University to another, or of retaining them in face of other attractions. The growth of graduate studies is therefore not wholly disinterested, and perhaps not so largely unprofessional of spirit as it should be. At the same Universities' Conference another leading member spoke apprehensively of movements to improve teaching in the Colleges : "Our great efforts seem to be put forth merely to bring up to a certain level students who are not interested in learning . . . and the excessive amount of schoolmastering necessary to attain this end rather makes learning repellent to the older and more ambitious students, who require more freedom. ... To some extent that problem is being met by the introduction of honour courses." But the British student who goes to an American Graduate School is apt to be struck by its insufficiency of freedom even for graduates not merely for those who are reading for the first higher degree, but actually for Ph.D. candidates. There is perhaps over-much requirement of attendance upon formal instruction. The American academic book- keeping of students' "units" and "credits" and "points" not unnaturally tends to intrude on the 136 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY higher grades of work, where it is both less requisite and less desirable. Universities do not sufficiently restrict seminary and research courses to graduates, and do not sufficiently exclude the graduate until he has all the necessary fundamental knowledge. They also allow graduate courses to be taken piece- meal in different ordinary sessions, and in Summer Sessions, so that a kind of mathematical reckoning of equivalents to long unbroken periods of studentship is inevitable. The graduate is perhaps held too long in tutelage at a time when, if his ability is particularly high, he is most impatient of restraint or of task- work. In this respect the best Graduate Schools are already relaxing their control of the individual. Typical arrangements for a graduate course in a great University might run somewhat as follows. The holder of a Bachelor's degree as in Arts, Letters, Philosophy or Science, or some equivalent in the case of a foreigner (and, very rarely indeed, in the case of an American) may be granted admission to the Graduate School by the proper authority. This will not entitle him to be a candidate for a higher degree. It may only allow him to do a year's work, and to prove, if he will and can, that he deserves from his "Major" professor a certificate of fitness to be a candidate. Assuming that he is duly certified or otherwise accepted, he must have been in "resi- dence" for a year in order to take the M.A. degree. What "residence" means will depend on the particular University. One great typical School defines it as registration for, and attendance on, courses amounting to "thirty tuition points," and counts two hours' study in class each week as three points. This GRADUATE WORK 137 minimum of formal instruction may be extended in some subjects by really considerable requirements that cannot be evaded; but in all subjects the candidate must, at least, enter the M.A. seminar as well. In that select class he will have a good deal of work to do under direction. Its object is to help him in building up the essay that he must write as one condition of the degree. Before the essay is judged, the candidate sits for examination of a detailed character. If his work (both in seminar and in examination) is reported as satisfactory, a favourable judgment on the essay gives him the degree. An incidental requirement, tested only in the general course of his work, is that he must be able to read at least two foreign languages, usually French and German. Candidacy for the Ph.D. degree is similarly limited by special acceptance and conditions of residence. The M.A. degree once attained, two years must pass before the candidate can present his dis- sertation, and he is often not ready with it till much later. The aim is to absolve him from all further compulsory attendance upon courses of lectures, and in any further examination to relate the tests closely to the subject of his dissertation. But the method varies with the department in which he is working and the nature of its branch of learning. The vogue of the "points" system, the excess of "schoolmastering" in college with its effects upon the students' initiative the existence of "Summer Sessions" and even "Correspondence work" through which requirements for higher degrees may partially be met, the traditional granting of doctorates in older professional subjects for technical proficiency as 138 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY distinct from research, the claims for similar action in newer departments of applied science, and the ambition of some Universities to give such degrees before they have reached a proper equipment of teaching power and other resources, very much in- crease the difficulty of estimating the Graduate School situation in the United States. But the idea in it is gradually clearing itself of obstructions ; and there are perhaps a dozen Graduate Schools which either have developed or are developing a theory and practice of unimpeachable Tightness in American conditions, as well as of power to influence all the lower course of American education and to do great service to the cause of learning. The time for instituting Graduate Schools of full scope has not yet come in Australia. The establish- ment of the Ph.D. degree in practically all the Uni- versities of the United Kingdom should not provoke Australian imitation. It must be premature, even in some British institutions which it has already com- mitted to a development of graduate studies possible only to Universities of really great resources as undergraduate schools, and eminent already for their Honours Schools. It is to be hoped that the Aus- tralian Universities will remain true to their tra- ditional policy of not seeking to do more than they can do well, and of not pretending to have a wider range than is possible in their conditions. The very few doctorates that they have are a proper index of the amount of independent advanced study which at present they can foster and judge. Their remaining few higher degrees have a definite significance, not always appropriate, but rarely misleading. When they GRADUATE WORK 139 attempt a systematic development towards Graduate Schools, they will have much to learn from the pioneering of the American University. NOTE The following recommendations of a Committee of the American Association of University Professors, published in the report of last year, form a good summary of the best ideas in American practice, and are worth immediate consideration in Australia. A. GENERAL STANDARDS DIVISION I 1. There should be a minimum time requirement for the doctor's degree to be disregarded only in the most exceptional cases. Not less than three years should be thus required, of which at least one year should be in the institution granting the degree. 2. (a) Your Committee recommends that organized summer school work be recognized as part of the pre- paration for the Doctorate when conducted on the same plane as work in the regular session, and when of distinctly advanced character. (fc) The Committee recommends that work in other institutions of substantially equal rank should be accepted at par value. (c) The Committee believes that approval should be given to work done in government bureaus or similar institutions when a careful scrutiny of the situation indicates that conditions are substantially equivalent to those of properly organized university work. The Com- mittee believes that such work would often have to be accepted at some discount, and to a limited extent. (d) The Committee has expressed approval of the encouragement of migration, but no satisfactory methods for promoting it have thus far been discovered. 3. It is recommended that sharp distinction be made between admission to the Graduate School and admission L 140 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY to candidacy for the doctor's degree. The first should depend upon the presentation of a standard bachelor's degree, or in the case of foreign students of some unquestionable equivalent. Admission to candidacy should involve in addition written assurance by the head of the department in which the candidate desires to do his major work that he deserves the opportunity to secure the degree. 4. The Committee disapproves the acceptance of correspondence work as satisfying any part of the requirements for the doctor's degree. 5. It is recommended that French and German should both be required of candidates for the doctorate, efficiency to be tested at least one year before the conferring of the degree. Other languages will often be necessary also. DIVISION II 6. The Committee is of the opinion that general faculty control of the standards under which the doctor's degree is conferred is desirable, but administrative detail should largely be left to the departments. 7. The Committee is unable to agree upon any single formulation as to the confinement of the work of the doctorate to one department, but it is clear that such differences of opinion as exist concern solely the best methods for assuring breadth and depth of training with- out undue sacrifice of either qualification. There has been evidence of some distrust of the wisdom of allowing the work to fall entirely within the confines of one depart- ment, lest the eccentricities of one or two individuals be given too free range. On the other hand, it is obvious that the men actually in charge of the research are more likely than others to appreciate the requisites for sound training in the case of any particular candidate. The Committee has not found it practicable to frame a satis- factory definition of a "department." 8. The Committee is unanimous in holding that the doctor's degree should be conferred only upon persons of unusual intellectual endowment with unequivocal capacities for research. 9. The relation of the Ph.D. degree to doctorates in law has been postponed for later consideration, as indicated above. The Committee feels that the doctor's degree should always involve distinct proficiency in GRADUATE WORK 141 research, but are doubtful whether this can always be distinguished from technical proficiency. A majority of the Committee hold that wherever applied science is implicated in the work for the doctorate, the pure science most nearly related should also be definitely represented, and emphasis should particularly fall upon the making of a definite contribution to knowledge in .the work of the thesis. 10. The Committee feels that at present it is impractic- able to characterize explicitly the type of laboratory, library and instructional equipment justifying the attempt to confer the doctorate. B. THE THESIS 1. There is considerable diversity of opinion in the Committee, only one member maintaining that the thesis should be printed in full, but a considerable majority would require the printing of a portion or an abstract. In general it may be said that the Committee favors the publication of at least so much of the thesis as would adequately represent the methods and results. The Com- mittee is divided in its opinion regarding the require- ment that the University should share the cost of publication with the candidate. The Committee also is indisposed to dictate with regard to format and so on, but is appreciative of the advantages of uniformity. 2. The Committee is divided in its opinion regarding the scheduling of the final examination before the com- pletion of the thesis. The views are so diverse as to render a summary impracticable. C. THE EXAMINATION 1. The Committee recommends that more than one department should always be represented on the examining committee. 2. In the judgment of the Committee both oral and written examinations should be given. 3. The Committee recommends that there should be preliminary examinations held at a considerable period in advance of the final examination as a protection both for the candidate and the institution. 142 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 4. The Committee is of the opinion that the final examination should cover the capacities of the candidate in the widest possible way, with distinct emphasis, how- ever, upon the subject of the thesis. In the discussions and correspondence of the Com- mittee it has been abundantly shown that the Committee regards the creation of a genuine appreciation of research work, and the providing of satisfactory conditions for its encouragement, as of vastly more consequence than any agreement upon technical requirements or administrative details. On the other hand, the discussions have served to bring out with great distinctness the impossibility of safeguarding standards under existing conditions in American institutions without explicit and unambiguous formulation of ideals. CHAPTER VIII THE DORMITORY THE word "Dormitory" suffers at^rst, in Australian ears, from its association with the idea of long rows of beds down the sides of some gaunt room in a boarding-school. But in America it recalls to memory a much more pleasant picture. There is nothing incongruous, to an American, in quoting the lines ". . . . and last Up that long walk of limes I past To see the rooms in which he dwelt, Where once we held debate, a band Of youthful friends, on mind and art, And labour, and the changing mart, And all the framework of the land;" and then solemnly referring them to Tennyson's visit to the "dormitory room" most sacred in the memory of his Cambridge days. An American College dormitory is often the centre of the American graduate's most vivid and personal memories. It may be "College" to him about as much as Balliol or The House or Christ's or Trinity to an Oxford or a Cambridge man ; Paul's or Ormond to a Sydney or a Melbourne man. The American University began as a College. At first one building served all 144 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY academic purposes, including that of a residence for students. For the better part of a century all the buildings at Harvard bore the name. Then one was termed Hall ("Massachusetts Hall"). Towards the end of the eighteenth century the word "college" is said to have disappeared "as an official name of a building." It is now the official name of a depart- ment in a University, or of a University that has only the one (undergraduate) Department or Faculty. The word "dormitory" is not the only one now em- ployed for the whole of a residential building. "Hall" is still in use ; and there are "Houses," and "Cottages" as well; in some places. But "dormitory" is the pre- vailing term ; and, although as such it dates back only some fifty or sixty years, it has quite good historical warrant, if rather monastic than academic. The dormitory, like the residential system itself, is not characteristic of all American Universities, but only of the Endowed, or independent, kind ; and so it is mainly confined to the East. But its value is so incontestable that the great Western Endowed Uni- versity, Stanford, has it. Chicago has an ambitious dormitory development among its plans. The best State Universities are looking in the same direction; and Michigan already possesses, by the generosity of a private benefactor, perhaps the most beautiful dormitory for women in America "Martha Cook Hall." It is a large and stately building of collegiate type in a prominent position near the other University buildings. The architect had quite a free hand to make it a model of its kind. From entrance hall to kitchens it combines utility with comeliness, and its two great purposes are everywhere in evidence to THE DORMITORY 145 be a worthy memorial of a good woman, and to pro- vide some of the women-students of Michigan with a collegiate home fitted by its beauty and convenience for all the needs of individual study and common life. The co-educational Universities think first of their women students in building dormitories. Some, like Wisconsin, have made substantial (though not ade- quate) provision of official residences for women students, but none at all for men. Yet it is the common practice to supervise the housing of all students; and this is a special function of certain University officials, among whom the Dean of Men and the Dean of Women are prominent. Beyond doubt such work is valuable. It safeguards the students against rapacious, dirty and immoral boarding-house keepers or letters of rooms. It encourages decent people to take students into their homes without personal recommendations. It enables all sorts of pleasant and appropriate groupings of students to be arranged by the University, and un- desirable groupings to be avoided. The Australian custom of allowing students, both men and women, to live where and how they please was a cause of amazement to some of the American authorities I consulted. "Why," they said, "the parents of our students would never stand for that ! What assurance would they have that all was well with their boys and girls?" But this is partly another aspect of the fundamental difference between an American College and an Australian University the former accepts and performs a great deal of the duty of a secondary school; the latter assumes that school-days are en- tirely over for the student, and aims to treat him or 146 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY her as adult and personally responsible for work and conduct. Of course the difference is not so sharp in practice as in the underlying assumption. Too much school-work is still forced upon the Australian Uni- versity, and the habit of it persists in some cases longer than the necessity. Moreover, the traditions of academic community life under supervision continue in the Australian University Colleges, and neither will nor should be given up. But the independence of the student his right to lead his own life, off the University premises, quite as he pleases has, so far, led to no scandal or annoyance, and is just as well worth preserving. Subject to those reservations, I think that the American system of housing students in "dormitories" and otherwise, under official control, is well worthy of adaptation to Australian needs. Students are coming now in greater numbers from remote parts of each Australian State to the University in the capital city. They ought to be encouraged to come, and their difficulties should be met by co-operation of the University with themselves. They may be even too ready to risk their health in unsuitable cheap lodgings. They may not under- stand that their work will be better done if their surroundings are quiet and convenient, and modestly comfortable to a degree not easy to secure in the average cheap boarding-house that does not specialize in providing for students. They perhaps waste a good deal of their few undergraduate years before they learn how fafal is the error of attending a University merely to be taught and to study for oneself ; how much is to be gained by regarding it as a community THE DORMITORY 147 in which everyone has a citizen's duty, and the privileges of a most delightful society in work and play. In various ways through Colleges, Unions, subsidized Sports Associations and the like the Australian University helps its students already to find good working conditions and a proper place in the common life. But surely more could be done. The American "dormitory," translated into terms of British University tradition, is really a residential, non- tutorial College for men or women. It provides each student with appropriate lodging and study accom- modation at a price for which housing of equal quality could not be obtained outside the University. The older dormitories do not furnish meals to their inmates, but are never far from some University "Commons" or dining-hall, at which all meals are served on corres- pondingly easy terms. New dormitories are frequently built with dining halls, and have a regular service of meals. There is no very obvious organization for discipline, and no ordinary English collegiate regula- tion of residents' lives. The object is to manage the house as much as possible through student-committees elected by the students in residence. Frequently some bachelor member of the University staff is a resident, and may officially represent the University in the management. He may be called "Proctor," or have some other title indicating more or less res- ponsibility. In the women's dorm Tories there are always responsible women appointed by the Univer- sity. But all such approximations to collegiate head- ship carry no great authority. Every breach of decorum or infringement of fellow-residents' rights, every interference with their comfort or with the good 148 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY name of the house, must be referred to the students' committee, which either takes action itself or recom- mends action to the University. No doubt the University safeguards its position very carefully, though very unostentatiously. It is much more paternally operant in all student activities than any Australian University would think of being. Hence it is never unaware of what is happening in dormitories or elsewhere. It is practised, like a good Headmaster and his Staff, in not hearing and not seeing what is better left alone for the time being. It has all the old powers of rustication and dismissal. To be "fired" from an American University, even for neglect of work or inability to do it, is a painful thing for the victim and his family. Without a proper clearance from one good University nobody can pass to another, and honourable College records are life- long assets in America. The American dormitory system of "self-government" is a source of pride to the Universities, and works well. I do not mean to imply that American youth is so tame as never to "rag" or "haze," or otherwise disturb the peace of the dormitory. One professor, who had been a president, told me that he had always looked out for dormitory squalls in the Spring! The great value of the dormitory lies in its being the centre of the student's community life. Under cover of giving him merely decent housing and facilities for study, it provides him with experience of the joy of living in the free and confidential relationship of what we call "college men." This creates a bond between man and man, as well as between man and University, the benefits of which are THE DORMITORY 149 permanent. Loyalty to classmates who have, often enough, also been dormitory mates, is a great feature of American graduate character. Loyalty of graduate to University shows itself best when classmates assemble, as they regularly do, to co-operate in doing something for the University. The whole wonderful life-long enthusiasm of the American University man for his University seems to me essentially to proceed from that part of his experience as an undergraduate which is best typified by the dormitory. The tradition that the dormitory did so much to create has spread into Universities that have no dormitories. The other housing operations of the University are much on the lines of academic "house-licensing" in England. The University officer charged with this keeps closely in touch with both the keeper of the house and its student occupants. There is generally a University Medical Service, which inspects all rooms about whose healthiness there is any doubt. If a student misbehaves, the house-keeper will complain; if a house is ill-kept, the student has an immediate remedy. The patronage at stake is not that of an individual but that of the University. Hence a good type of lodging is always available for students, and good behaviour in the student-lodger is practically certain. Men and women students are never allowed rooms in the same house ; and a reception-room has to be provided in the women students' house, so that they may be able to receive men as well as women friends. By these and other means the social life of co-educational Universities is well regulated. CHAPTER IX UNIVERSITY EXTENSION THE vast development of University Extension in America is a commonplace. But there is no vast development in the Universities of the East, except in Columbia. Neither Yale nor Princeton has made any such development at all. Others do Extension work in a strictly limited way. For example, Johns Hopkins is giving a careful training to about five hundred students from electrical workshops. It is doing this in co-operation with the men and their em- ployers, upon a guarantee of $10,000 offered by the employers. In the first year of the course about fifteen per cent, of the guarantee had to be claimed. After that the class needed no financial help. But this is scarcely Extension, in the ordinary meaning of of the term. It corresponds rather with the evening technical classes for mechanics given by Yale (Sheffield Scientific School), and continued when ordinary Extension was dropped. Again, Harvard University has no ordinary Exten- sion of its own, but co-operates with various other neighbouring institutions Tufts College, the Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, Wellesley College, etc. to arrange courses of College UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 151 grade, given by College professors, which run through the entire year, are open to men and women, and re- quire a sufficient preliminary training, though not a formal matriculation qualification. The classes are held in Boston and the neighbourhood. Fees vary from $2.50 to $20 a course. A single course or any number may be taken; and when seventeen full courses, including certain requirements in English, have been satisfactorily completed, a degree of "Associate in Arts" at Harvard, or Radcliffe, or Tufts, or Wellesley may be granted. The courses taken for the degree must include the equivalent of one full course from each of the following four groups of subjects: I Language, Literature, Fine Arts and Music. II Natural Sciences. III History, or Political and Social Sciences. IV Philosophy, or Mathematics. These Extension classes are generally timed for the late afternoon or evening. They are typical of a good deal of Extension work done in the United States work intended to meet the case of students who can- not give up their occupations in order to study in a University, and who yet wish to learn in a regular way under academic guidance. Such students in Aus- tralia are now mostly assembled at the "evening lectures" of a University, and can prepare for the regular degree in Arts. At Harvard, and at the other co-operating Colleges mentioned, they are given a special degree indicating that they have not had the full training of a resident student. This exhibits the guarded attitude of most of the great Endowed Uni- versities of the East. They concentrate their 152 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY resources upon full academic training which includes an unrestricted share in community life that no student can enjoy unless he has nothing else to do but be a student. They will not turn themselves into universal providers of education for large city popu- lations. If Harvard, for example, cared to "raise the slogan of a nation-wide campus" (which means: to declare that it would teach, for graduation, anybody anywhere in the United States), its prestige could be coined into many millions of dollars, drawn from students eager not only to learn but also to share in the prestige of a unique national institution. The work could not be well done, and the University would rightly lose its prestige, no matter what its ill- gotten profits. Those who still think superstitiously of the power of the dollar would be surprised how much resistance to brute money-power a good American University can develop. It appears no- where better than in connection with Extension work, where a University's duty is hardest to define, where conflicting duties are most dangerous to academic ideals and honest financial management, and where temptation to sacrifice quality to quantity is most forceful and insistent. It is not selfishness that makes Princeton do all its work in its own little town : it is only that Princeton's resources scarcely command enough scholarship and teaching power to deal with the crowds of young men who come from all over America to live in that little town, and attain the old high standards at the great old College. Yale is so eminent in history for the tradition of public service among its graduates, that the University itself will scarcely be taxed with lack of desire to use its re- UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 153 sources for the public benefit. It probably finds, in Bacon's image, that "Charity will hardly water the ground where it must first fill a pool" ; that the greatest public service it can do is through the several thousands of young Americans whom it has every year in residence, and under training in the Yale tradition of serving their country with what they are and know. The requirements in University Exten- sion of so great a city as Boston must be felt as put- ting more direct obligation on Harvard, whose village of Cambridge has quite lost its original remoteness, and is now only an outlying part of the historic town. The co-operative Extension already described is per- haps not all Harvard should do, yet may be all it can do while maintaining its present unsurpassed record for scientific and other scholarship. No achievement in Extension would compensate the whole United States for the loss of that record, even if it passed undiminished to some other University. Such things have both unique and cumulative value. The Extension demands of New York upon its Uni- versities are such as no other city in America, except Chicago, could approach. They are met both by Columbia University and by New York University, as well as by a number of other agencies. A great deal of valuable work is being done. The most in- teresting from the Australian point of view is that of Columbia, an Endowed University which has a very special policy and scope. Columbia is a City University in the fullest sense of the term. It is cosmopolitan, like its City; it has a great Graduate School, and adds New York's drawing power to its own, fetching graduate students from all 154 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY over America; it has now made the announcement that it is attracting even more undergraduates from outside New York though one would think there was little need of that, since it has already perhaps the largest student-roll in the world and a city of nearly seven millions to serve; and it uses the city as its oyster which it, with Extension, will open to some profitable yield. In other Universities stories are told impressively of the vastness of its returns from Ex- tension. The substantial measure of justice recently done to its professors, when it raised their salaries beyond precedent in America, is said to have been made possible by the Extension management's financial success. To what degree the stories are true is of no consequence; the fact is that Columbia is using the advantage of its situation in a city of stupendous size and wealth, and of multitudinous enterprise, to turn its teaching power to business account. If it is the duty of a city University to be a great centre of popular as well as scholarly and scientific and professional education, Columbia is doing as it should do. Its example is therefore to be studied in Australia, where all the Universities are city Universities as cities go in a country about the size of the United States, but containing about one- twentieth of its population. The head of Extension at Columbia is a scholar. His subject is Latin, and his special interest is in Archaeology more evidence in favour of the idea that your philologist is your best man of business, when you can induce him to attend to it at all. Quite appropriately, then, this philologist has for his title "Director of Extension Teaching and the School of UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 155 Business." Quite naturally he has applied the analytic methods of scholarship to the problems of Extension and business training. Consequently he has been successful, though the ordinary business man might well have made a failure by the use of practical idealistic or other unscientific methods. Columbia Extension began, like all American Uni- versity Extension, under English influence. It was simply a matter of courses of lectures given to mixed audiences with a general interest in the subject. Such lectures had to be attractive in manner as well as in- structive. They had the value of a good article in a review; and that value is not small. This kind of lecture is and always has been greatly appreciated in America. It is provided still under the "lyceum, or short lecture-course, system," which enjoys ample popularity. One of the most typical developments of this minor Extension is the Brooklyn Institute in New York, which furnishes "cultural entertainment" (in the form of lectures and discussions) at one great popular centre, as do several hundred similar societies elsewhere in New York and other American cities. But the Universities could not remain content with the elementary kind of Extension teaching, especially after the Chautauqua movement began in 1874. Chautauqua is a lake-side summer resort in the State of New York, to which tens of thousands of people flock every year. They make a kind of American Canterbury pilgrimage, primarily for rest and recreation, secondly not so much for thanksgiving on account of mercies as for hope of religious, moral, intellectual or physical benefits. Among the many 156 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY diversions provided, lectures particularly abound, and the plan includes quite systematic and serious teach- ing. One can combine a summer holiday with the study of almost anything that is taught in "College.' 7 Indeed, efforts are made to attract the same class of students particularly school-teachers as attend the University Summer Schools which prepare for higher degrees. Chautauqua itself can give a degree after a course of study lasting three years, in each of which six weeks are spent in Chautauqua classes; the intervening time affords opportunity of studying Chautauqua text-books. A professor there told me of some Chautauqua students whom we should think unusual among them an actor and various members of his troupe, including three chorus girls, who successfully did the three years' work. The name of Chautauqua is renowned; and popular regard, for both it and the method for which it stands, has led to some questionable and some curious developments. Piecemeal qualification for degrees of regular Uni- versities, through attendance on skimpy courses of Extension lectures, is going too far. Further, if you cannot go to Chautauqua, there are "travelling Chautauquas" that will come to your town and with lecturers and musicians and other entertainers will give you amusement and instruction for your money. This might be a good relief from the affectionately- named "Movies," and preferable to most Vaudeville. So stimulated, University Extension has developed rather special forms in the United States, particularly in the more experimental State Universities of the West. These tend to specialize in "Correspondence Courses" and "Agricultural Extension," with certain UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 157 other kinds of public utility work, such as "Debating and Public Discussion" (for promoting consideration of questions of the day) ; "Loan Service" (for send- ing packets of current literature, such as pamphlets and magazine articles, to societies and individuals) ; "Municipal Reference Bureaux" (for supplying in- formation about municipal developments and practice, principally to city administrators) ; "Municipal and Sanitary Engineering Service " (for advice to com- munities, on waterworks, sewerage, paving, etc.) ; "Bureaux of Community Music and Drama" (for guidance to musical and dramatic societies, schools, and individuals, in recreational activities) ; "Visual Instruction Bureaux" (for supplying lantern slides and cinematograph films to schools and companies and institutes) ; "Health Instruction Bureaux," etc. This is all so much matter of correspondence that it may be regarded either as an outgrowth of the "correspondence-teaching" method, or as an easy derivative. The beginnings of Correspondence Extension were made by Chicago in 1892. When in 1900 that Uni- versity gave up its ordinary Extension a "Correspon- dence-Study Department" took over the work, and brought it into direct relation with the general Uni- versity administration and the studies of students attending regular University lectures. Wisconsin, which began its Extension in 1906, is more typical of the Western kind. It has a quite separate Extension organization, and classifies as "Correspondence-Study Teaching" all "Consecutive studies . . . whether . . . done wholly by mail ... in local class or conference groups; or ... through any combination of degrees 158 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY of use of either method" in fact, whatever is "the extra-mural cognate of the familiar class and lecture instruction work of intra-mural teaching." Wiscon- sin Extension claims that it has "a body of text materials and of teaching techniques of its own," and that it is destined for "independent development," so that it is "no longer the extension of University teach- ing but has become Extension teaching." Thus the close association of University and Extension, well illustrated in different ways by Columbia and Chicago and California, has been given up ; and the question arises more insistently with regard to Wisconsin whether a University should become a universal pro- vider of educational needs and a bureau of every con- ceivable kind of information, rudimentary as well as specialist. It is hard to believe that, in an education- ally well-organized State, or in one with properly developed libraries and public departments of ad- ministration and information, a University would be allowed so to extend its functions. Why, for example, should a University teach "sanitary plumb- ing," by correspondence or otherwise? Why should it supply courses to "those who want credit in High School work," whether or not such students are still attending High School? The answer may perhaps partly be inferred from a recent estimate of the "edu- cational standing" of the forty-eight States, the Dis- trict of Columbia and the three territorial possessions, made by the Director of the Department of Educa- tion of the Russell Sage Foundation. He places Wis- consin thirty-third on the list. A feature of all American Extension most interest- ing to an Australian is the effort to use it as an UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 159 equivalent for the regular University teaching. The first experiment of this kind at Columbia was made by Teachers' College in 1889, and was intended to benefit only teachers employed by the State. It was not till 1897 that the courses became full equivalents, and were allowed to count for the diploma. In 1902 Columbia University established its Extension Depart- ment, which in 1904 passed under control of an ad- ministrative Board representative of the whole Uni- versity. In 1910 the University combined Summer Session and General Extension so far as possible under the same direction, so that the Extension could "offer courses of graduate standing and those of pro- fessional and collegiate character, equivalent to at least the first and second years in the professional schools and in the College . . . regulated by rules determined by the University and the Faculty concerned." The gradual organization of a regular department of University Extension at Columbia was caused by pressure of the two forces vital to a proper develop- ment ; first, the requirements of the city to be served ; and secondly, the demands of the University teaching staff that no teaching should be done in the name of the University without the approval of the Uni- versity's own professor or professors controlling the subject inside the University. Columbia is now free to be as enterprising and speculative as it pleases in Extension Teaching, provided that it can find teachers considered worthy to represent it after the Uni- versity's own experts have scrutinized their qualifica- tions. Wherever this principle is not applied in America, so far as my observation went, Extension work appeared to be unsoundly based and conducted. 160 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY The warning to Australia seemed plain: Extension in Australia will not flourish, except spasmodically; or will develop to a quasi-independence in which it will remain unco-ordinated with the teaching strength of the University, as it partly is now; or become a function practically separated from the University, though using its name and credit and funds ; unless it is made a definite University department, much as at Columbia. Under proper organization, University Extension can really extend a University, and do almost as useful work as any literary, scientific or professional School. That is why the Director at Columbia has a position equal to that of any Dean or -other Adminis- trative Officer in charge of a School. He must co- operate with all the other Schools, and he helps to develop them. He does not pretend to wait until a class forms somewhere outside and comes asking for instruction, or to share the administration of classes with their members or voluntary helpers. His business is to judge what is wanted, as a part of the University's duty to the people, and to take the responsibility of seeing the want adequately supplied. But it is not his business to find the teachers ; the University does that, upon his request. If the University wishes to experiment in the foundation of a new School, the Extension Department is entrusted with the testing of the means and methods proposed. This saves the expense that would sometimes be in- curred by founding the School only to learn that it was wrongly schemed, or really premature, or in some other way a mistake. That is why last year the Director of Extension was also Director of the UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 161 "School of Business." It was a new formation suggested by Extension developments ; but there was no money available in the University funds ; and so it was temporarily organized as a part of Extension at an estimated cost of 16,000, which it set out to earn. A responsible University department can be trusted to specify the detail of its courses, and the require- ments for its degrees. Hence this Department has specified that its regular students may read for a degree of "B.S. (Business)" to be obtained through specialized courses lasting two years, after two pre- liminary years of "College" work; also for a degree of M.S., after a third year of specialization analogous to that required of a candidate for the M.A. in the Graduate School. If all goes satisfactorily, and the requisite endowment is obtained, the School of Business will become a regular School of the Uni- versity, and pass beyond the sphere of the Extension Department. Already one benefactor has given over 120,000 for a building to house the new School, and about 80,000 has been promised for its endowment. It might be advantageous to experiment a little on those lines in Australia. But no Australian Uni- versity has a department in which such experiments can be made. Another interesting case of the kind, at Columbia, is the recent development in Dentistry. It is a subject in which American training runs from unsurpassed to unspeakable. Columbia has taken it up, has established it as a University Extension study, on a good basis of general education, and in due course will set it up on its own account. The Extension work of Columbia fills prospectuses of some hundreds of pages. They comprise courses 162 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY in Agriculture, designed both for those capable of specializing in the subject and for those who are interested as amateurs. There are evening classes in Architecture, covering more than two years of the four required in the School of Architecture; intro- ductory courses in Astronomy ; every kind of instruc- tion in Commerce, Accounts and Finance; all sorts of linguistic and allied subjects from Phonetics to the Literature of the Old Testament, and from Chinese to Croatian; the full range of social science from Sociology to Household Chemistry; and so on. In some towns, not so very far from New York for instance, Buffalo and Trenton there are special classes which do not count towards gradua- tion. There is even a Chorus "devoted to the study of choral music of the highest character" and "main- tained by the organization of local choruses." For ordinary Extension of the older kind (or, as the Americans term it, "the lyceum method of instruc- tion") there is a subordinate "Institute of Arts and Sciences." It was set up about six years ago, at a cost of about 2000, and has never failed to pay its own way. It enrols members at an entrance fee of i and an annual subscription of 2. The member- ship ticket is "transferable, and admits one person in the afternoon and two in the evening to the entire programme of approximately 250 meetings." The place of meeting is always at the University, and the programme contains lectures of many kinds, but also concerts, readings, recitals of plays, and anything else that will "diffuse culture." These are not all the lines of activity in Columbia University Extension. There are also Correspon- UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 163 dence Tuition courses, termed "Home Study Courses for persons who are unable to attend classes"; "Collegiate Courses" provided for Long Island College Hospital, at Brooklyn, which cover the "College" requirements for entrance to medical studies; and courses in Optics and Optometry. The last are an attempt to use the resources of the Uni- versity in the training of spectacle-makers and all the skilled workers classed generally as "opticians." They are intended also to give medical students the training in "visual optics" desirable for oculists. Their institution is due to the stipulations of New York State law in respect of opticians, and the request of the Education Department of the State, which must issue a "qualifying certificate" as to the general educational record of the candidate for admission to the courses. The University also imposes a kind of matriculation test. On successful completion of his work, the student receives no degree or diploma but a "certificate of graduation in optometry." In all Columbia's Extension the Australian Uni- versity will see, very vastly magnified, the essentials of its Evening Lectures scheme, some of its depart- mental diploma work, its flickering ordinary Exten- sion and yet other unco-ordinated work. Some may ob- serve, in the magnification, certain principles of struc- ture that are also applicable in Australia. Certainly Evening Lectures, at present mostly a financial loss and a heavy burden upon the time and energy of the teaching staff (which generally has to work double shifts, day and evening), might in some Universities be handed over to a fully responsible Extension De- partment, under a professor who would specialize in 1 64 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY such work and who might have the title of Dean. The Evening system now is merely parasitic. It should either be given definite independent being, such as a "Department" has; or should be abolished, and its present cost funded in "maintenance exhibitions" that would allow some able men and women, who would otherwise be evening students, to enjoy the in- comparably superior advantages of University study and University life in the daytime. In some Uni- versities this abolition might be easy now. In others, no power but bankruptcy could separate the Uni- versity from the fine characters and intelligences of which it has had long and happy experience in its evening classes. There, the Evening system is likely to grow more and more inclusive of subjects beyond those which it is now possible to teach on the two- shift method that of overworking professors and lecturers, and under-providing all their students, both day and evening, with individual help and example. A further lesson from American Extension as seen in Columbia, and one considerably emphasized by developments peculiar to the State Universities of the West, is that the Universities are educating adults generally to an extent beyond parallel in the British Empire. Columbia illustrates only the kind that is self-supporting. It had, last year, nearly 10,000 Ex- tension students, all getting what they wanted, and paying anything from about i to about 4 a session for very much of it. Columbia does not pretend to work for nothing. It has no subsidies beyond private benefactions, and is administered so as to earn all it needs to pay its way. It reinvests its surplus in de- velopment. Thus it expects soon to endow some UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 165 special research out of Extension balances. Within that limitation of earning its keep, Columbia Exten- sion is ready and able to do any kind of adult edu- cation. It has accepted the theory that, so far as funds permit, it shall teach anything to anybody. One of the most eminent scholars on the professorial sta^f of the University told me that : "A University to the average American is a place where anyone who is adult can go and learn anything; and when a University does not function on that principle it has not the support of public opinion. Among academic people there are those who think it is a place where anything under heaven can be taught. This is the radical view, and very widely held." Of course such views are partly to be explained by the peculiarities of American educational systems. The elementary school wastes valuable years of the future adult citizen's time. The secondary schooling he gets is not properly linked to the elementary kind, and itself is not long enough. The University also overlaps the secondary school. Proper provision is not ma/ie, outside the University, for continuation schooling. About twenty-five years ago there were actually no public High Schools in New York City. The adult learner is therefore grateful to the University for taking him up when, rather late perhaps, he feels the need of more systematic study. If he wishes to graduate, it may even teach him the High School sub- jects which are necessary for matriculation. A Uni- versity may include a High School department. The American is apt to say, in the teeth of tradition : "... Are these things then necessities? Then let us treat them like necessities." Yet it is a pity that the necessities exist, and make Universities do more than they should have to do. 166 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY Columbia, then, aims to be an efficient business organization, and, as such, to provide education for the adult on mutually advantageous terms. It does not care whether he wants to graduate. If he does, and is properly matriculated, his "credits" for Exten- s : on courses may be counted towards graduation by any regular department of the University if it is satisfied of their worth. The applicant for this con- cession will at least have been taught by a teacher approved by that Department; he will also be inter- viewed by its representative, and re-examined, if that is thought necessary. Everyone recognizes and regrets that the degree he may take may not imply much in the way of experience of University life. But Columbia is a city University, with many thousands of students (very few of whom can live in the Uni- versity) and with a vast array of departments. Its community life is a very small element in the ex- perience of most of its graduates. The necessity is therefore treated as such, and a large amount of adult education is on the whole soundly achieved. The underlying idea of a University's function may be too wide; when it leads to the inclusion of subjects like "Typewriting, elementary" (learnt "in a University way," as the Director says) and "Sewing, elemen- tary" (done as "Laboratory work. Fifteen three- hour lessons. No credit") it may make our Quin- tilians stare and gasp. But the adult can learn very much else that is undoubtedly proper for a University to teach. There is no claim raised by Columbia, or by any other American University specializing in "adult edu- cation," that special methods are used in finding the UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 167 students, managing them in their classes or helping them to learn. The principles of most American teach- ing are democratic. The University is there for any- body who wants it, if it has room for him. He does not need to negotiate with it through any outside agency. It will treat him as liberally as it can. Once in the class, he is free to contribute his special know- ledge or experience to its common work, which in accordance with the American tradition often pro- ceeds by discussion between teacher and students, as well as by direct instruction on the part of the teacher. The American student is not treated like the "passive bucket" under the pump, as Coleridge's neophytes are said to have been when he lectured to them ; except at ordinary lectures or when some other Coleridge casts a like spell over him, and he yields in pure delight. There is no method of adult education that cannot be practised under American Extension. But it is sometimes so liberal, and so anxious to be of service to all, that it embraces large elements of more than doubtfully academic character. Acute foreign observers have been struck by its "demagogic stagecraft" and other such "makebelieve." One pro- fessor, so much in request for Extension teaching that it threatened to become his regular work, told me that it "is good only in a limited way, and can easily become not worth the money spent on it. Chicago has given it up on that ground." Another, whose judgment seemed to me equal to his great scholarship, and his knowledge of Universities in America and Europe, said: "Extension is, no doubt, overdone at some Universities; and yet it must go on." Yet another warned me not to believe every- 168 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY thing I heard about Extension, because it was often "not really University Extension, but secondary and trade-school work loosely attached to a University." Signs of this I have already indicated. There is one stock reason current in the United States for the vast development of its University Ex- tension the obligation felt by the State Universities to show large amounts of popularizing work done in return for those vast State subsidies. But I do not think this reason sufficient. It will not account for the Extension policy of Columbia; and it ignores the proof given by Columbia that, in large cities, Exten- sion can be profitable in the business sense. It also does not explain why so great a State University as that of Michigan is not included among the universal providers of University Extension. It offers no clue to Chicago's retention of Correspondence Study when, being free of all State obligation, it let all other Ex- tension go. There are deeper causes. One of them, I think, is the competition for high place on the list of Universities having most students. External students count in some reckonings ; and, under the "credit" system, they frequently become internal students after a little experience of the ex- ternal student's often very dull tasks. The business method that tends to frank advertisement of a Uni- versity's wares is nowhere so openly and secretly applied as in Extension. In a large city I saw hoard- ings covered with the Extension advertisements of one great University, and no dry-goods or patent-medicine artist could have beaten them for picturesqueness and point. In another University I was taken to see a Professor in his Laboratory, and found him in deep UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 169 meditation over a series of proofs. His specialty was advertising, in relation to Extension ; and he showed me how to advertise. There are ways in which the visual and argumentative effect is one the glory of a name; but more subtle is the free kind, in which no name at all appears, but is triumphantly supplied by the imaginative or the logical mind. The inventive and enthusiastic American business advertiser would "boom" University Extension almost for the fun of the thing, but certainly if it were not half as good as it is. I happened to be particu- larly well impressed by certain aspects of Extension in the two Universities I have just mentioned ; that is why I mentioned them. They do good work, and pro- claim it. Success in the business leads to more pro- claiming, and to expansion of business. It would be hard to say exactly where, in the marketing of intellectual goods, overtrading or the abuse of the old firm's name begins. But I got the impression that some State Universities were representing their Ex- tension as able to do more than it could, besides offer- ing to do more than a University should. Nor could I see that they did this out of sense of obligation to their States. A sort of inter-University competition seemed partly responsible, and the greatest risks were taken where the Extension was too independent of the University. Another cause affects principally the "Correspon- dence" work. The United States is more addicted than any other country I know to learning by corres- pondence, or by text books that make a teacher unnecessary. The proprietary "Correspondence Schools" are flourishing commercial affairs. Adver- 170 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY tisers can afford to pay for whole pages in expensive magazines because they sell so many little text-books, or so many letters, explaining how never to forget anything, how to be an engineer or a dramatic writer, how to exercise the charm of a gifted and refined personality, or how to achieve eloquence and "wield at will the fierce democracy." The Universities have surely been influenced by what this means the existence of dauntless enquiring minds in every class of society, with their demand for a kind of assisted self -education. The Universities have, therefore, intervened like good educational shepherds of the people to save them from so much of this exploitation as may be unfair, and to combat the exploiters with appropriate weapons. They,*oo, have their methods of inducing people to make inquiries about correspondence courses, their "form letter" for reply to the vague or indirect enquirer, and another one for the person who looks like doing business. The first will probably begin "Dear Friend," and show a very coming-on dis- position. One such describes the huge number of "College courses" that can now be done by corres- pondence ; it tells how they "include a number of pro- fessional courses of the Schools of Education and Engineering" with "many vocational courses in business and engineering" ; comprise "practically a full four-year high-school course" ; procure high- school and University "credits," and are to be had for "very nominal" fees. It also ends with the win- ning appeal "Do you not wish to devote a few hours each week to this work?" There is something for practically everyone on the card that accompanies that UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 171 letter, and itself urges: "Begin now: turn your spare moments to account. . . . The opportunity is for those with little education as well as for those of Uni- versity grade." So the man or woman who cannot do Astronomy may enter for the study of Salesmanship, and has an equal choice between Romance Languages and Home Economics, Physics and Public Speaking, etc. The prospective learner is promised "individual attention from the teacher" even, indeed, "intimate contact" and the assurance that he "may advance as rapidly as (his) circumstances will permit." Any- how, if he is not interested himself in correspondence- study, perhaps he will kindly hand the card to some friend who is. After the first "form letter" sent to an enquirer, there are "follow-ups" of increasing urgency ending, perhaps, "Can't you manage to mail us your enrolment to-day?" quite in the best American business style that composes on the personal note as dominant theme. All this "form-letter" preliminary corres- pondence is said to be so well drafted that individual answers frequently express gratitude for the exact understanding shown of the applicant's case. There is, of course, every reason why a University Exten- sion that teaches Salesmanship ought to be as good a practitioner as any proprietary Correspondence School that has to make money or go out of business. Another method which the Universities are learning from the same source is as yet not widely applied by them; it is the use of district representatives to keep calling upon students who are in arrears, as well as securing fresh orders. N 172 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY Underlying this competition with other Universities, and even with proprietary concerns which brings some Universities into undertakings not usual outside America a different cause dignifies their labour. This is their real sense of responsibility for the general welfare of the people in all that education can influence. The academic spirit in America seemed to me decidedly more missionary than it is with us ; and this is most marked in the Western Universities. The spirit itself is not commercial, and not political. Its manifestations may seem both, and, to a certain ex- tent, may be both. Yet University Extension, in most of its departments, has a right motive in the sincere desire of the American University to get its learning and science to even the least learned worker in a form practically useful to him, and to keep up a steady outflow of advanced but assimilable knowledge from its own studies and laboratories to the "business and bosoms" of the multitude. If this is really done (and I think it often is), some extravagance in money and some extravagances of method are worth risking. Perhaps we in Australia are too British as regards University Extension. I do not advocate the imita- tion of American Correspondence Study, or anything else. American University Correspondence Study is not possible here, except in a comparatively feeble and worthless way, because our Universities have such small teaching staffs compared with the American. Anyhow, it is only a poor substitute for the regular work with which most Australian Universities are now utterly overwhelmed to such an extent, that one teacher for nearly two hundred students is an actually existing proportion at one University. Such an over- UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 173 loaded University ought not to be expected to attempt any Extension. Its first duty is to find enough means of doing its regular work. But British methods of Extension are too mechanically followed in the very different Australian conditions. What is done by Oxford should not, necessarily, be attempted by Western Australia, even though the English pro- vincial Universities join in setting the example. An Australian University cannot possibly occupy the same relation to the Australian community as Oxford does to the people of England. Universities in Australia belong to the British tradition which is not exclusively English. But their relation to their people is like that of an American University to the American people. From the British point of view, it is most that of the Scottish University to the Scottish people. This is nowhere so marked as in the general prob- lem of adult education, to solve which Australia has means that can be more evenly developed, through primary, secondary and continuation schooling, than those of America; and a Technical School and Uni- versity system requiring only more public and private financial support to be made as good as the American. The looser American organization still has its ad- vantages over the Australian which is again per- haps too much bound by the British tradition of separate public authorities, each jealously defending its own educational domain against all the others. On the side of popular education in agriculture, for ex- ample, the American University through its Extension does much of that which under British tradition is the work of a State department. This aspect of the matter is one upon which the Australian agricultural experts who have recently been or still are in the United States, often as soldier-students, should be better able to advise. I merely say that I was favour- ably impressed, as a University layman, with the agri- cultural Extension of Cornell, Wisconsin and Cali- fornia; and I felt that agriculture in Australia might benefit a good deal if the corresponding department or departments in our Universities could be brought into some consultative and educating relationship with our farmers. The elaborateness of the American sys- tem is perhaps excessive, and probably would be neither necessary nor, in point of expense, possible under Australian conditions. But the bringing of academic research methods to work on practical prob- lems, such as gave the world, unpatented, the Babcock milk-tester the invention of a Wisconsin professor and still gives the Wisconsin farmer the immediate benefit of what is learnt in the laboratory of a great plant-pathologist, also a Wisconsin professor, seems worth trying to emulate. The value of Professor Elwood Mead and his department to California will be evident of itself in Australia, where his name is so well known. But it is only typical of the very large agricultural service of his University to its State. The agricultural Extension of Cornell last year brought 4,300 persons to the twelfth annual "Farmers' Week" at the University. This, too, is just typical of all the College of Agriculture is doing to influence the practice of agriculture in its State. The pro- gramme for the meeting to be held this year is a pamph- let of some forty pages, full of notes of scientific demonstrations and practical instruction to be given in UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 175 the application of science to land cultivation and stock- raising. The readiness of the farmers in the State of New York to learn from professors and their laboratories is a sign of the American agriculturist's temper; he believes that science has always something to teach him, and (apart from the profit in learning) likes using the most intelligent and even experimental methods. But Cornell is always following him to his own home, and organizing him in rural communities to ensure that he is speedily informed of its results. So perhaps it would not be fair to think that the little part which such a University as Sydney takes in such an agricultural gathering as that of the Royal (Easter) Show is due to the less intellectual interest of the Australian farmer. California University Extension in agriculture has the advantage of dealing much with the highly intelligent class of men who have made Cali- fornian fruit renowned in the markets of the world. But it also has the advantage of liberal financing. Thus in one recent year it had, from the Federal Government (on different accounts) over 21,000 ($107,221) ; and from the State nearly 30,000 ($143,422). Its total revenue was therefore over 50,000 ($250,643). With this (more than any Aus- tralian University, except Sydney, has from the public treasury in Australia for the whole range of its work) the agricultural Extension of California Uni- versity a mere single department of the University College of Agriculture placed thirty-five graduates in agriculture as Farm Advisers in different parts of the State. These were its administrative heads of local Extension work. It also placed ten Home Demonstration Agents all women graduates who had 176 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY specialized in "Home Economics" at various State agricultural centres. It further organized boys' and girls' clubs, in as many places as possible, to make even children more interested in farm life. All these agents of the University must co-operate with the "Farm Bureaux" of their counties that is, with each general farmers' organization, which has a "Board of Supervisors" apportioning county funds. The Board gives substantial grants at least 400 for each Farm Adviser's local expenses, and nearly as much for those of each Home Demonstration Agent, and helps financially in other respects as well. If it does not, it gets no Adviser or Agent ; but it always does. Los Angeles, for example, also pays for four assistants to the Farm Adviser. School-teachers be- come Club Leaders, and receive an honorarium from the University. They too may get expenses. Like all the others on this Extension Staff, they are nominally Federal servants, and have the privilege of not paying postage. Even railway passes are given to Advisers, or to any other officers of the University whose duties compel them to travel much. The remaining Uni- versity teachers are entitled to half-fare concessions. On these terms Californian Extension is facilitated by State and Federation as much as Australian Exten- sion is hindered by the corresponding authorities. There are 475 "Farm Bureau Centres" in California, with a membership of 25,000 farmers. Each Centre meets once a month, and the Adviser must attend. Independently of these meetings, the Farm Advisers from the University have held over 4,000 of their own. Their business is not to interfere with the individual farmer, but to be at his disposal for advice, and for UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 177 enquiry from the University. They also arrange visits from University specialists. For example, while I was there, a professor (described to me as "the eminent Hog man") was giving a series of lectures to the livestock raisers of Riverside County. He was telling them what constitutes a good hog; why a pure-bred hog returns more, per dollar put into him, than any other kind ; and so forth. At the same time a series of demonstrations of the scientific and economic principles of silo construction was being con- cluded. I do not know the scientific worth of such University operations. No doubt in Australia some of them devolve upon State Agricultural Colleges and the staffs of State Agricultural Departments. But there seems to me something of real value in Uni- versity Extension that brings a scientific interest into the work of so many farmers. Sydney was able to do a little in that way when, for one year, it had a Professor of Agriculture before there were any students of the subject. The agricultural Extension of Wisconsin is paid for out of the general funds of the University College of Agriculture, which represent an income of nearly a million dollars (say, over 190,000). This enables so very much agricultural experiment, research and teaching work to be attempted that no general account can do it justice. It ranges from the most strictly scientific to the most practical. A specialty at Wis- consin is the "Short Course in Agriculture," which has been held since 1885. Its object was to give syste- matic training to farm boys who had not the high school qualification necessary for students seeking an agricultural degree. Of its results Wisconsin is very 178 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY proud. The College of Agriculture estimates that 91 per cent, of those who have been through it are still farming, 81 per cent, being in the State of Wisconsin. The older ex-students hold a notable proportion of seats on the State Board of Education, in the Legis- lature and in the Societies of farmers and breeders; and the influence of the University is operating in various ways through them. Every year, still, when November ends and the snow falls to remain on the ground till March troops of boys come in from the farms to do fifteen weeks' work at the College. The period is long enough, even if not repeated in a second year, for serious study and a great deal of happy com- munity life. Sometimes graduates from other Uni- versity schools attend because they want to do some farming; professional men, wishing for health or other reasons to change over to agriculture, also join the farm lads. So the level of intelligence, and even of training, is often quite good. One of the most im- portant branches is the Dairy School. There was a time when Wisconsin's agriculture failed, and the State was starved into dairying, from which it now derives most of its wealth. Hence many short-course students specialize on that line. The part taken by the College of Agriculture in the development of dairying has been large; indeed the College is some- times derisively termed "Cow College" by Wisconsin men who are minded to jest at it as a University institution. But this Extension is a power among the farmers and their 134 "Breeders' Associations," which it promoted to the lasting improvement of Wisconsin stock. I saw the University's own herd in its com- modious and perfectly appointed winter residence, and UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 179 wished that all human beings could look so handsome and be as well housed. Cornell and Wisconsin have been leaders in the de- velopment of Plant Pathology. Cornell is most devoted to the pathology of tree fruits. Wisconsin gives most attention to cereal and vegetable pathology, with special reference to bacterial diseases and the conditions of environment in temperature and moist- ure. Under the Extension system of "County Agri- cultural Advisers" the University is kept informed of the pathological problems of its State, and the labora- tory responds. Wisconsin aims particularly at keep- ing its laboratory undistracted by direct appeal from the grower, but always at the service of the "Adviser." The last feature of American University Extension which has special interest for Australia is the Summer Session. It tends to draw Extension work generally to a point, and yield it the use of the University while the regular students are away on vacation. It also serves the graduate students who wish to read for a higher degree, but cannot give up their whole time to attendance at the University. From another point of view, it is the Universities' "Chautauqua" on their own grounds, many of which are so vast and beautiful that they are not unfit rivals of the great pleasure resort. It is said that Harvard began its Vacation Courses as early as 1871. Quite recently, Chicago decided to divide its academic year into four quarters, and so to incorporate the summer session into the regular course of University instruction. There is no "long vacation" at Chicago now, though every teacher is entitled to one quarter off any one that he can arrange to take. Columbia has followed suit, in a i8o THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY less thorough way, by bringing its Summer Session into the academic year under general Extension con- trol. The ordinary Summer Session is practically Exten- sion, everywhere. It is intended for adults who wish to take "refresher" courses in particular subjects, to learn the latest developments in their professional lines of work, or to get some less definite intellectual stimulus. Many will be school-teachers, not a few of them gaining "credits" towards a higher degree ; some will be undergraduates shortening their courses by the acquirement of extra "credits," or making up the number of "credits" they ought to have gained in regular term-time. The teachers may be drawn from the University's own staff, or may be "exchanges" from other Universities, combining a holiday away from home with the earning of more money perhaps the actual means of having a "holiday." All the work is specially paid. Hence the student may have to meet fees that are unusually large up to 12 for a single course at Harvard. Columbia estimated that, ex- cluding railway fare, a student would have to spend between $150 and $175 (say up to ^35) during its Summer Session of 1919, which lasted six weeks. The time is generally fixed for July-August, and covers, as a rule, from six to eight weeks. It may be lengthened by an "Intersession." Thus in 1920 Cali- fornia will have an "Intersession" of six weeks before its regular Summer Session of the same length. This will enable students who attend both, especially those who are regular undergraduate or graduate students, to gain credits for a whole semester's work. The American Universities thus often avoid the reproach UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 181 once levelled at the Australian Universities by a certain politician that they are "intellectual grave- yards" during the summer months. Again, the liberal staffing of the American University makes such a plan feasible, though the painfully illiberal academic salaries cause many good men to overwork themselves for the sake of a very modest addition to their in- comes. The American Summer Session is. therefore, a feeder to both the College (Undergraduate School) and University (Graduate School). Beyond that, it is a general post-graduate and general adult-education enterprise. It is popular. Good Universities have large numbers of Summer students. The following figures were given to me by Wisconsin : Attendance at Summer Sessions, 1919, in round numbers. Columbia .... 9,500 Minnesota . . . 1,600 Chicago 3,5OO Illinois l >35 Wisconsin . . . 3,200 Indiana 1,100 Michigan .... 2,000 I add, on the authority of California, these statistics as to the attendance of teachers (who constituted about half the total number of students) in its Sum- mer Session of 1919: From California 1,138 From other States 502 From Foreign Countries 27 1,667 Michigan shows a graduate enrolment of 303 in the 182 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY University, of whom 142 were in attendance for the last Summer Session. From another point of view, Wisconsin's last Summer School registrations were analysed as 66 per cent, undergraduate students (nearly half being "from other Colleges"); 25^ per cent, graduate students; the remaining 8 per cent, being "preparatory and un- classified special students," among them a number of wounded soldiers. The undergraduate element was unusually large, being conditioned by the large return of men from active service. The year's attendance record was, in fact, exceptional in most of the important Summer Schools, owing to "the numbers of students seeking to pick up the broken threads of their college courses." But the increase of teacher-students is partly due to the increasing prac- tice among city school boards of "making the advance- ment of teachers contingent upon attendance at a summer session." The poor teacher everywhere in the world seems driven to buy his "advancement," such as it is, through other things than merely being good at his work which, of course, means being a student of his subject, but does not need to mean sacrificing his free time to take lessons (and, especi- ally, certificates) from some other student called a professor. Yet the Summer School may be of very great value to the school-teacher, who in six weeks may attend some ninety classes in his special subject, and by private study for some four or five hours a day, with the use of a great library or laboratory, may largely increase his knowledge and power. There seems to have been, at least in particular Summer Schools, a decrease of graduate-students, but it is UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 183 hoped (and sincerely is to be hoped) this will not continue. Yet the improvement must depend partly on the success of the attempt being made to raise all teachers' salaries. Until teaching in the United States is made to yield a fair living for the man of ability that it needs, all schools of training for such men will suffer loss of students. ("The teaching profession in the United States," wrote the President of a great University last October, "is in grave peril.") The average cost, per student, over receipts was $2.89 at California which appears to have escaped lightly for a State University. The registrations of men and women are, normally, about equal. On the whole, American University Extension con- tributes well to the American Universities' record of national service; and the fact suggests the danger the Australian University runs in its present lack of a reasoned and systematic Extension policy. There is a general problem of adult education. But it varies widely from country to country, even within the British Empire. The spasmodic copying of English precedents will not solve it in Australia. CHAPTER X UNIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY THE American University (which in the affections of the people is still the "College") has of all American institutions the longest and most inspiring tradition. If its origins were English, it was forced by its wholly different conditions to diverge from them very early in its development. From its foundation in 1636 to the present day Harvard has been the master of its own destiny and the creation of its own community. Its example has been potent in the forming of almost every great College now in being. It has borrowed very little from outside even from its "mother- country," when it had one. But it is neither afraid nor ashamed to borrow when it sees good reason. Its partial Germanization, during the last Presidency, was deliberate, though a mistake that is perhaps not even now fully retrieved. It is about to fill the chair of the late illustrious philosopher, William James, with a very distinguished Oxford psychologist. It is one of the most venerable Universities of the English- speaking peoples. Long before the nineteenth century teeming all through with its prodigious family of Universities, eager, freakish, audacious or stolidly imitative had sprinkled their countries with the new kind, Harvard and Yale and Princeton, and the unlike UNIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY 185 Pennsylvania, had fixed the American type; not beyond modification or differentiation, but beyond radical change through any but an American influence. The American people knew its own creation, and saw that it was good, and fostered it with loving care. There was nothing exotic about the type, except in rare instances; nor was there anything that made it stiffly the institution of a class, or the perquisite of wealth. Harvard and Yale may still be rather ex- pensive places, and ironical folk still like to call Princeton "the best Country Club in the United States." But even those Universities have always welcomed, and still do welcome, men of no means who earn with their hands what they need to pay their way through College. One of the founders of Yale, in 1701, was a Harvard man of the class of 1659, who is recorded as having waited in Hall and served in the buttery for money. In the later eighteenth century it was forbidden at another such College on various penalties (including dismissal) and evidently out of regard for self-supporting students "to speak diminutively of the practice of labour, or by word or action endeavour to discredit or discourage the same." Everybody knows that a man may still "work his passage" through an American University by any kind of labour, inside or outside the University. At Princeton itself I saw many handsome lads, under- graduates, acting as waiters. At a State University I heard the manager of a club telephone to one of the University departments for "that Australian student" to come and wash dishes, the regular hand being off duty on account of influenza. (Unfortunately I could not wait to see my sensible countryman.) At a great 186 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY city University I read a notice calling for snow- shovellers. The American University is, as it always has been, the great exponent of an "open-door" policy. It is a popular possession, in the best sense a place to which the poor go without driving the rich away. It may be that the popularity of the American Uni- versity has influenced, not all for good, the develop- ment of the newer growth. There are signs that suggest too much inclination to attract not only the poor and capable but also the poor in previous train- ing, and even the poor in mind and spirit. Some of the internal club-life also seemed to me too much a division of students according to their wealth and social position. At one place I heard of a sort of trousseau party, given by girls before leaving for College; and I was told that a good set of clothes was an advantage because "it might favourably in- fluence an election to one of the best Sororities." Sectional clubs often seem very delightful things in American Universities, and the national genius for organization makes them, apparently, easy to establish and maintain. But in many instances they must limit the common life and promote sectional feeling. Yet they, too, are indigenous; and whatever they are "Secret Societies" ("Greek-letter Fraternities," "Soror- ities"), "Dinner Clubs," and the like they are emblems of the pride that the undergraduate takes in his, or her College membership, as also of the abiding affection that the graduate retains for the College associations of youth. The outsider seems to think of them tolerantly, and with the interest that everything "College" so easily provokes. UNIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY 187 After all, the American people, as such, has few great traditional institutions to capture its imagina- tion and fill its heart with contemplative pride. A great President of the Republic once in a long while becomes a national hero, and vivifies a Constitution that is otherwise no great incentive to popular en- thusiasm. There is no national religion, even in the real fervour of patriotism. A foreigner does not feel a thrill in the popular acclaim of the country, or any symbol of it like "Uncle Sam" though he will notice the proud profusion in the uses of the national flag. The United States has been made so largely of so huge and constant an inflow of diverse peoples that it has no large common past, no powerful moulding body of tradition. Such tradition has still mainly to be created. The war should hasten its coming. At present the oldest and best of American traditions is resident in the long-evolving and truly American Uni- versity, a focus of the national spirit, a meeting-place of all classes of people, a country of the young where social happiness and material advancement and disinterested learning are sought all together, and where a cultural ideal is forming, if no one can yet say what it is. No true American can help thinking proudly and affectionately, and with some high hope, of the Universities of his land. They are bound to be "America" to him, in some aspect. It is, or used to be, the fashion to credit the Americans with an extraordinary enthusiasm for education. I cannot see that this is justified. Edu- cation, for its own sake, does not appear to me more highly regarded, or more desired, in the United States than elsewhere. I should say that to have a 1 88 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY trained intelligence and an active intellectual interest in life is more an ambition in France than in either America or Australia. The educational records of the Armies show that illiteracy among Americans in the flower of their youth is dangerously large, and beyond all comparison with that almost negligible proportion found to exist in the miscellaneous assort- ment of men, of all military ages and all conditions of life, who made up the Australian Imperial Force. The intellectual distinction of the United States among the nations of the world is not abnormally high in proportion to its wealth and population. It is a country in which private gifts for educational uses are stupendously great, and local authorities, more often than elsewhere, provide magnificent buildings and equipment for all sorts of schools. Yet it is also a country in which the over- crowding of school classes is perhaps as bad as any- where else ; in which the profession of teaching, in all its grades, is at least as ill-paid as anywhere else; in which public esteem for the teacher's occupation is much lower than in Europe, and possibly lower even than in Australia; in which higher general education, as distinct from vocational and professional, is being increasingly left to women on both the teaching and the learning sides a modern tendency, but most marked in America. These are not signs of an exceptionally pure and strong national devotion to education. Observers have generalized too easily from some particularly generous educational uses of American wealth. All modern democratic nations know that liberal means of popular education are vital to their health UNIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY 189 as bodies politic. All are permeated with idealisms of the power and dignity of knowledge, would resent as an injustice its retention as the hereditary possession of certain social classes only. Aiming at a maximum production of educated citizens, all risk an over- production of the too partially educated. The United States is not different from the rest, except in having no strong traditional stratification of classes, and in being called to deal with annual hordes of immigrants and the resulting annual crops of Americans of the first generation. The present nation-wide movement of "Americanization" is merely an attempt to quicken a process always conscious of itself. How necessary it is may be symbolized by a few facts. Chicago is a city of some four million inhabitants, speaking forty different languages. It is not only one of the very greatest English-speaking cities in the world, but also one of the greatest colonies of people speaking German, Czech and other European languages. New York has a population of perhaps seven millions, and one person in every four has the special nationality, now recognized by the League of Nations, called Jewish. It is said that in the year before the war unprecedented numbers of Italians entered the United States; and about the heart of old "New England" itself the population is becoming Italianate. In the background of all other problems is always that of the negro perhaps one-fifth of the American people now; prolific, though "inferior in mental and physical stamina; and filtering North. To "Americanize," in some essential meaning of the vague term, is vital ; and to the process of Americanization education is vital, in a degree that makes it even more the concern 190 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY of the American democracy than of any other. Americanization begins, theoretically, in the elemen- tary school. In practice, the transforming spirit is created in, and proceeds from, the greatest of all American traditions that of the University. It is the educational power-station of the land, supplying the force of a true American ideal, and occupying itself to a most burdensome extent with even minor forms of the education that leads to prosperous and contented and understanding American citizenship. It is no wonder, then, that in the best of American youth there is a passion for "going to College," and in the American "College graduate" a passion for the particular College, or University, that made him one with his kind as nothing else in America could have done. The American school has some obvious de- fects ; the high school, in particular, has not yet found (has not at any rate yet occupied) its proper place. \Ye have little to learn from it, and can evolve a better one on our own account. It does not seem to hold the affection of the American boy as the secondary school of our own tradition has been able to do and may continue to do, if \ve do not sacrifice quality to quantity in schools and teachers and pupils. The love of his school which an Australian may carry out into the world, and by which he may remain bound to the school itself and all his successors in it. is curiously unsupplanted and unparalleled by love for his University if he goes on to one though it is his traditional "Alma Mater." The case is quite other- wise in America. All such love is absorbed and trans- muted within itself by the American boy's "College." He does not talk much of an "Alma Mater" as a UNIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY 191 Frenchman does not talk of a "home." But each has the reality even more than some who have the name. The American University compensates in American life for more than defects in the school system. The country is intensely individualistic in temper. Public sentiment is not against the accumulation of riches in private hands. The modern millionaire, like his earlier analogue the prince or feudal baron of Europe (who founded churches, and colleges too), has the University as his chief means of proving himself more than a lover of gain. He uses it well. If America outgrows the type, and it disappears, the millionaire's place will be filled by the generosity of the incorpor- ated people. The State Universities are already showing the way. Australia, practically without immensely rich individuals and striving against their production, has* yet to learn the lesson of the United States. But Australia belongs to the British tradition ; and it, like the common European University tradition, has passed the stage at which University students in any large number are expected to be self-supporting. That type of student is a kind of survival from the Middle Ages. The tradition of it had not died out of the European Universities when Harvard of the seventeenth century let it grow again in America. It has done much good, and is very honourable ; but the modern world has widely learnt to do without it, while giving the poor student his chance. Evening Lecture schemes and American Extension, in some of its working, are palliatives. Scholarships do much, and could do more if they were restricted, in all but honour, to the poor. Exhibitions ought to be, as their 192 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY good old name implies, exclusively maintenance grants for poor and able students. It is not good either to allow a poor man at once to imperil his health and lose valuable time from his studies and community recreations, or to weight a University with men only part of whose energy and worth can be at its disposal. When the Americans learn how to relieve their poor students of the burden of self-support which even now they systematically lighten by all sorts of considerateness on the part of the University authorities they will let the present system die. But they will never do as some European Universites do let the poor student himself disappear from them, except for a very few and select speci- mens. Mediaeval or not, the American method of to-day is better than that. It keeps the whole door open, if at painful cost and with dubious advantage to many that pass in. In all admiration and sympathy for both parties to an honourable arrangement, one cannot but feel that even a "College education" may take more out of the self-supporting student than it can return in any form. Yet the compensation must often be adequate. Hence the American University wins the gratitude of more elements in the population it serves than does almost any University of the British peoples. In particular, the American does much of its work in adult education, by a good old mediaeval method, within the University and at an earlier student age. Its hold on the popular mind is the greater. The life of the American student at College is part of the life of a lavishly equipped and self- contained community. Everywhere about him are UNIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY 193 signs of public and private generosity exercised on his behalf. The University "campus," or site, often owes its selection to its natural beauty ; and the student may find himself free of a domain that extends for hundreds of acres, and is inexhaustible in its variety of native and cultivated loveliness. The University buildings are not all architecturally successful. But many are ; and almost all are spacious, wholesome and thoroughly well adapted to their practical uses. Some are as beautiful as the vast spaces they adorn. The Libraries can scarcely be over-praised. The best of them are not only nobly housed, but also arranged so that quick reference to catalogues and quick issue of books is easy. For advanced and special students and professors there are, in among the books which are mostly not on open shelves in public chambers all sorts of rooms and nooks for quiet study or con- sultation. Many libraries, however, have chambers where large collections of books lie open to the ordinary student seeking ordinary help with his work, or browsing in an ordinary subject. Some Univer- sities have dining-halls architecturally as fine as any other important buildings ; others, or their benefactors, have provided Unions (or similar institutions) for men or for women, that meet the community's need in this respect, and more widely too; almost all have at least some common dining place. The students' Fraternities and Sororities and Club-houses of all kinds supplement the official provision. "Faculty Clubs" or similar houses for the Teaching Staff also abound, and increase the impression that the Uni- versity suffices to itself, even if it is the kind that has no dormitories or halls of residence. A "store" 194 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY is probably also on the campus, stocked with almost everything a student can need, and co-operatively managed so that the buyer gets an ultimate discount, in the form of a dividend out of profits, proportionate to his purchasing. A huge gymnasium is almost uni- versal, and usually contains a fine swimming-pool in which the water is always at an agreeable temperature. Gymnastics of various kinds, games such as basket- ball, track-running and much other good exercise can be had all through the winter when much outdoor sport is not possible in many parts of the United States as well as during the milder weather. Most Universities require their students to attain a certain standard of physical culture. A "Stadium" is a very common part of a University's equipment. It is especially used for the American academic type of football, that has an extraordinary fascination for both players and onlookers. Many Universities have daily papers edited, written and often printed by students. The news of the campus is eagerly awaited by all its inhabitants. Musical and Dramatic Clubs are very frequent and strong. At some places there are fine theatres for student theatricals. In the climate of California an open air Greek theatre was possible, and was long ago constructed. Even to seek medical treatment or advice the student need not, as a rule, go off the campus ; for a small entrance fee he can ensure himself all the medical attention he is ever likely to seek while in attendance at the Uni- versity. If a student is in doubt or difficulty about work, or perplexed by any problem of conduct, the University has its officers "Advisers," and "Deans of Men," and "Deans of Women" to give expert or UNIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY 195 friendly counsel. In all his or her existence, the undergraduate will have consciousness of being a member of a self-contained, co-operative community under an ultimate authority that is watchful and benevolent. It is a life that must leave a profound impression on those who have lived it heartily. The American graduate never seems to forget it, or to lose the feeling that it is his duty to perpetuate it and increase the numbers who may share in it. Nothing afflicts an Australian with sense of what is wanting in his own University more than realizing how comparatively little it retains the interest of its graduates. They can perhaps form a club in the city, and collect in its membership a moderate percentage of their number. It may take high rank among the other clubs, and be a certain link between its members and the University. But it will not be much more than a club like another except that a University qualifi- cation is requisite for entrance, and some rather in- expensive and vague assistance may be lent by it to University movements. Beyond that Australian graduates do little, co-operatively, for their Uni- versities. Many of them will live in the University city and not see the University, except from a dis- tance, for twenty years at a stretch. After taking his degree, a man may not visit his University again till he goes there to view his son's or daughter's graduation. In the meantime he may never have contributed sixpence to its funds thought it taught him for nothing or, perhaps, for some twenty-five per cent, of what his teaching cost; and he may have given it no other service but the casting of an 196 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY occasional vote, as for a member of its governing body. It is not only a bad tradition that is in fault. Bad legislation accounts for some of it such, for example, as throws the whole governing body out of office at a given moment and, leaving the University headless, convulses it with a general election. But the Universities themselves are also to blame. They have the respect and affection of their graduates, and are too content with that proud result of what they already are and do. Their duty is also to teach their men and women students, while undergraduates, that membership of a University not only confers rights and benefits but implies duties the duty of remaining an active and thoughtful and well-informed participant in the life of the University, and the duty of helping in its support and improvement, as well as in its control. The American University trains its undergraduates to be University men and women all their lives; nor does it risk their forgetting the obligations of academic citizenship. It aims at keeping everyone of them well informed after graduation as to its achievements, its purposes and its difficulties. They are its "alumni" or "alumnae," and may belong as such to an Association "Alumni Association" or "Alumnae Association." This they are asked to join when they graduate. As members they get many University publications with their own "Alumnus" Magazine. That of Michigan, for example, is a beautifully printed monthly review, which contains every sort of news that a graduate can need to follow the development of the University from an account of the last University work in research, a des- UNIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY 197 cription of the last addition to University buildings, and the record of the last meeting of the Board of Regents, to information about fellow-graduates, the exploits of University athletic teams and the happen- ings in the Unions, Fraternities and other Clubs. This kind of magazine omits everything that is in- telligible only from the undergraduate point of view, or is merely matter of official University routine. It makes the graduate feel still a member of the com- munity in which at one time all his days were passed. The Association that issues it is independent, and yet quite a part of the University. It has its offices there, perhaps admirably housed in buildings it has erected for itself. At Michigan its home is one of the show places. Its well-paid officers are in the con- fidence of the University authorities. Its members are always coming back to renew their old relation- ships with the University, or writing to give news of themselves or enquire about others. Almost complete lists of graduates are kept, with their addresses, occupations and records. Their Committee never hesitates to ask them to help the University realize some ambition. For example, Harvard in 1919 appealed to graduates for some $15,000,000, to be used mainly in raising the salaries of professors. By the end of the year about $11,000,000 had been contri- buted. Yale is doing a similar thing as part of "an imperfect tribute to Yale's Heroic Dead in the Great War." It already had an "Alumni Fund," which had been running for twenty-one years and had subscribed $1,405.489 to the current expenses of the University, as well as nearly $1,750,000 to the University endow- ment. Its report for the year ending July ist, 1919, 198 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY contains over forty pages of names of subscribers, three columns to a page in small type. Each list, under the heading of the year in which the graduate entered the University, ends with a summary of the year's record, thus : 1862 Graduates living .... 26 Contributors (42 p. c.) .. n In Memoriam I Gifts for year $455 There happened to be, in that small section, no great giver. But the small gifts averaged about 8; and by all such little benefactions the University benefited by nearly 130,000 in the year. Individual sub- scriptions were as low as one dollar. There were bequests in considerable number none of them very large, but all. as the report says, "significant in their expression of loyalty and devotion to Yale." They amounted to the useful sum of nearly 40,000. The Fund is entirely controlled by Yale graduates, who must spend it on the University, and may "suggest" how it shall be applied by the University. The present "suggestion" is to remove the "injustice" of the traditional underpayment of University teachers. Yale depends on its own resources and benefactions. But a State University like Michigan can point to the gifts of its alumni as "property conservatively valued at $1,000,000" and "at least $2,000,000 in cash" during "the last ten years." This kind of self-help stimulates the outside benefactor. In 1919 Yale learnt with surprise that some quite unknown man in New York had left it. by will, no less than $15,000.000. Yale has about the same number of students as Sydney Uni- UNIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY 199 versity, whose graduates probably contributed nothing at all that year; though a great Australian who had never seen the inside of a University, Sir Samuel McCaughey, bequeathed it the largest amount ever received by any Australian University perhaps 300,000, of which the Government (not being American) took a large proportion as succession duty. I asked the President of Harvard, who has been in office about ten years, how much money had been given to the University in that time. He replied: "Oh, it has been dribbling in at the rate of about three millions (of dollars) a year." The American graduate is also helped in keeping touch with his University by the "class" system. This is a characteristic American tradition, dating from the earlier centuries when, in the primitive "College," all students of the same grade studied the same subjects in the same class. Each class was known by the number of the year in which its mem- bers entered College. After graduation they retained that classification. Even now, when subjects are immensely multiplied, when "Colleges" have become Universities, when matriculants are counted by the thousand, when students are dispersed through a multitude of departments and may have a bewildering variety of "electives" while degree "credits" may be obtained in ways that help further to disintegrate the "class" the system survives. It is still the regular custom to classify graduates by the year in which they first became undergraduates ; and the members of that year manage to retain the corporate spirit proper to the beloved old tradition. No doubt it is strongest in the old Universities of the East; but it 200 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY is part of the American academic inspiration which they contributed to the new growth in the other parts of the country. The "classes" keep records of them- selves, and often publish them in some handsome book. At regular intervals after graduation they come home to their University, to disport themselves there for a while, and to devise and execute some scheme for its advancement or to make it some gift. Classmates stick to one another through life. It is delightful to hear the tone in which a Yale man, for example, will say at fifty, or thereabouts, "we belong to the same class" when referring to some perhaps long-unseen college friend. The most venerable citizen keeps his college nick-name or other familiar designa- tion all his days, so far as the "class" has to do with him. One Eastern Professor, bearing a very honoured American name, living in his old College town and still adding distinction to its staff, told me of the last meeting of his class. His was evidently a vigorous generation; for it was among the most advanced in years, and yet, at its last meeting, had assembled forty out of the total of sixty-five. All came to his house. All paraded before the under- graduates and the town, and had their fun, much after the manner of the days of their youth. "I think," he said, "that the memory of our common dormitory life has much to do with our feeling. Those four years seem most filled, of all a man's years, with the joy of living." But from his Uni- versity I passed to another with an unsolved problem of finding dormitories for its students, and the first thing I saw was a touching dedication on a bene- faction to the University "from the Engineering UNIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY 201 Class" of a recent year. The good tradition no doubt owed much of its origin to the "dormitory," but can even do without it now. Another professor, of a much younger generation and of distinguished academic lineage, with exception- ally wide American experience, told me that College athletics were no small part of the bond between graduates and University. Yet he misliked them in some of their aspects; and, as an outsider, I shared his feeling. There is a difference between British and American traditions of academic sport. I was conscious of it, but gave it no special attention, chiefly through lack of time other things were more im- portant from an Australian point of view. Yet it is worth further and more expert study. Traditionally, at least, the Australian student does not need to be guided, under pressure of compulsory gymnastics, to take an active interest in athletic games. His climate tempts him to all sorts of open-air exercise. His physique is generally good. And yet he is perhaps losing some of his traditional keenness for the organized and competitive kinds of sport. As his numbers increase, it becomes impossible for everyone to be a player of traditional games within the University. Our Australian imitation of the niggardly and unimaginative choice of University sites, so largely characteristic of modern England, has deprived most of our Universities of room in which they may grow and still provide their students with adequate playing-fields. An American "campus" could be conferred on several of the Australian Universities even now. But the modern English idea that inexpensive buildings on small allotments, in mean 202 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY city streets, are good enough for a home of learning and a national treasury of youthful enthusiasm and ambition has been so influential that, failing the emergence of some political genius to undo the evil work of the past and make the future secure, we must not hope to follow the American precedent. Our small cities will spread. The great clear spaces in and about them, that might now be given, in the necessary hundreds of acres, to our Universities, will become thickly settled and create unwholesome con- gestion. The Universities will be unable to expand with the population. Their students will be denied those benefits of the common life which come from being able to pass easily and universally from hard mental work to vigorous play in the open air. Yet the American University Stadium and what it stands for, including perhaps the abiding enthusiasm of the graduate for undergraduate sport, is not a symbol of the best in University athletics. It implies that the interest is more that of the spectator than of the player. A better sight, from the Australian point of view, would be many of those hundreds of acres laid out in playing-fields that would hold many hundreds of players at the same time, if not all those thousands of spectators. That sight is not to be had in America. In fact, not many students seem to play some most popular games : that part of the business is done by a few picked men trained scientifically, and at great risk to their work, by experts whose occupation is often more profitable than that of the trainer of minds. The revenue from athletics, so staged, may be immense, and the temptation to make a business of them is great. A kind of athletic pro- UNIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY 203 fessionalism exists among American Universities. They are perhaps making too much of athleticism which, in a sense, is financially more profitable than any form of learning, because the public as well as the graduates and undergraduates will pay largely for being excited by the public display of athletic skill and endurance. The handling of the money so made is, of itself, a difficult problem within a University. The tendency of all sport, when it is very widely popular, is to degenerate into professionalism ; and this is as true of sport in Australia as of sport in other countries. Whatever can be done in resistance to the tendency is worth doing, even if it sacrifice a means of promoting graduate interest in the life of the Australian University. But perhaps the amount of graduate interest that depends on the athletic prowess of an American University is exaggerated, or is not associated so narrowly as appears with the Stadium type of display. After all, it centres round inter-University contests, which in themselves are good things and worthy of a graduate's enthusiasm, even if it seems to take them too seriously as evidence of a University's flourishing. "Our graduates," said a Dean of a Graduate School, "seem more dis- couraged by our bad football record than pleased with all our advance in graduate studies." But he was an enthusiast of another kind. In 1919 a great Eastern University sent a football team to the West, and it had some heroic tussles with University teams among the best there. All over the United States, on those fateful days, the Uni- versity clubs were said to be thronged with men of all ages awaiting the results. Every detail of the p 204 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY game was received by telegram, and recorded so that all could see. The excitement of the crowded Stadium was repeated in the clubs. 'Varsity football is at least one great subject of common interest among American 'Varsity men. Those clubs, too, are a noteworthy emblem. The land is sprinkled with them. A great University will have one wherever any large number of its graduates can be found. So there is the Harvard Club at Boston, and another in New York. Both are worthy of the name they bear substantial and comely of architecture, from the outside; within, spacious and comfortable; full, too, of all the ingenious American devices for saving members time and trouble in their relations with the outside world ; yet quiet and restful, lavishly but tastefully equipped, and with libraries that are a marvel of good selection and management. Yale, being in a smaller town, is more modest in its home club, but not less adequately supplied with what it needs. Its "Graduates' Club" at New Haven is a comparatively small house, apparently frequented most of all by members of the University Staff. But it is a model of what can and should be done by University men for themselves where they cannot collect in very large numbers. The model is repeated in various other places. Princeton has its "Nassau Club" at Princeton; Wis- consin its "University Club" at Madison, and so on. In New York, the Yale Club is the vast institution proper to that huge city, which is the home also of its own greatest University's "Columbia Club," and of the general "University Club," whose building is a palace full of almost unostentatious luxury. In UNIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY 205 Chicago another general "University Club" occupies one of the handsomest buildings in the city, and com- pares well with the best that New York contains. But the tale cannot be completed. All this club life for University men is significant, because it implies the pride that Americans take in their Universities, the permanence of the bond that is knit upon them in their undergraduate days, and the continuing pleasure they have in the society of their fellows. But it means even more. The clubs serve also as centres from which information about the Universities whose names they bear can be rapidly circulated as among members of a family. President Eliot, who for over forty years presided over Harvard, used to make a practice of visiting the Harvard clubs in order to tell members what the University was doing and how they could help. A succession of academic generations of Harvard men thus followed the fortunes of the University in the most delightful way through personal contact with the great man who more than any other, embodied their University to them, and was its living voice. Again, in revisiting the University town, the graduate is able to stay at the club, and finds himself at home once more among the old scenes, in friendly and familiar company. The tug on his heart-strings is ever being renewed. Another and minor advantage of American Uni- versity club organization is the opportunity it gives for academic hospitality. Of this it is hard to speak in moderate language. If there is any kind of man more warm-hearted and generous than the American University man when he meets an academic brother 206 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY from abroad, then the world is indeed richly supplied. It is enough for the stranger to make one acquaint- ance among these University club-men. The club doors open to him as if of their own accord. With- out fuss or formality of any kind, he will be passed from one club to another wherever he goes. All their services are at his command ; he is free of their most charming society. In a country where the traveller from lands of simpler modes of life finds mere existence costing him far more than it ever did before, the University club is a refuge of extra- ordinarily moderate living, for the comfort it affords, and of rare social pleasure. So, at least, it proved in my experience. A vast and beneficent influence in American society is the American University. The support that it has from its graduates and the community proceeds from just regard and is but a sign of mutual service in a noble tradition of the American nation. CHAPTER XI SOME PRECEDENTS IT is only in detail, some of which may appear trivial, that American Universities offer precedents to those of Australia. Yet the whole example is a fine one of courage and independence, with desire for inter- national co-operation. The American University began upon the British precedents, as did the Aus- tralian. Tt never allowed those precedents to hinder its development into the national institution it has become. Even in "colonial" days it cultivated self- reliance, by providing its own academic teachers and administrators. By this means it made from the first a native growth, and fixed upon graduates and people the responsibility of rendering their Universities worthy of the American name, without continuous help from British prestige. In the present stage of its development the American University is a distinct national type. It is just reaching an important international function. In particular, it is capable of aiding very much the fuller training of Australian graduates who wish for a wholly academic career, or for wider knowledge and experience of life than their own country is yet able to give them. The English-speaking peoples of 208 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY the Pacific in North America and in Australasia need to know one another more familiarly. Through the great Universities of California and Stanford, on the one side, and immediately but later on through the Universities of Washington (Seattle) and British Columbia (Vancouver), at present less considerable, with others more remote there should be a regular line of communication between this Australasian outpost and all the centres of European tradition in the Pacific countries. The Universities of eastern Australia should have most responsibility for main- taining the line from this end. The many decent nations, recently leagued against the predatory horde that began to over-run the world from Central Europe, know that through their Universities they can co-operate best in preserving common ideas as in developing mutual respect for their national qualities, with combined action for the increase of knowledge: Certain, if knowledge bring the sword, That knowledge takes the sword away. Movements towards reciprocity and closer associa- tion are in progress through the Universities of all the countries now responsible for the maintenance and spread of European culture. Australia's part in them is that of a Pacific people. To imitate the American University is both un- worthy and impossible for Australia. Copying has contempt for its just reward, and pitiful degradation of the model for its certain end. To copy American University method is particularly futile, because the American University is so characteristic of the American people which speaks English indeed, and has British blood and traditions in its inheritance, SOME PRECEDENTS 209 but is totally un-British. To be anything else but a British institution, in its essentials, will be unachiev- able by any Australian University so long as the Australian people remains a new growth of the old stock 97 per cent, of which has the British Isles for ancestral home, and receives from them the history and literature and legend of their inhabitants in all past ages. All that Australia can worthily do is to develop its own type of University upon the British tradition, which is varied enough to give it warrant for all the variety it needs. But this is not to say that America can furnish no precedents at all to Australia. There are some of evident value: /. The Precedent of the "Dormitory" Universities were once communities in which teachers and students lived together for the purpose of studying. Their bond was a common enthusiasm for knowledge and its increase. Their society con- sisted only of men. Poverty was rife among them, and was an honourable estate because it implied self- sacrifice in the cause of learning. It was mitigated by charity, begging for which was no shame. The scholar's life was a bare living, in the material sense. In our day Universities sometimes remain, or are con- stituted, as communities of a type analogous to the old kind. Yet they are changed by modern conditions into societies open mainly to the rich, the compara- tively well-to-do, and the liberally-subsidized poor. A student at Oxford now requires an income of about 350 a year to live in College and use well that great experience. 210 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY In this there is nothing to denounce. So long as wealth is unevenly distributed, there should be good uses to which it can be turned by its possessors, for their own as well as the public advantage. The self- devotion of Oxford graduates and undergraduates to national defence in the late war is just one proof that the ancient Universities of Britain teach holders of private wealth their public duty, and help to make good working men out of those born able to elect for idleness or parasitism. But the high (and rising) cost of life in the ancient Universities has created just alarm, because it limits the classes to which they are accessible. Yet to destroy their character, in order to make them very much cheaper places of universal resort, would be to impoverish the nation, by reducing its best-tried means of counteracting that corruption of men which accompanies the growth of national wealth. A traditional community life, motived by reverence for learning, and bringing the individual man at least to a sharp sense of his moral obligations as a citizen to whom duty has been revealed through privilege, is worth even as much as must be paid for it now in the ancient Universities. But there is too little analogous to that life in almost all British Universities of less ancient or of purely modern growth. Some have made no pro- vision whatever for students' life in communities. Others have just a beginning of organization towards a real common life. The revolution of ideas which has' brought women as students into practically all Universities has led to serious re-consideration of the undergraduate's whole existence. It is not so very long ago that in the old Scottish University of St. SOME PRECEDENTS 211 Andrews the student-lads were living in college. When teaching-space had to be found at the cost of room for residence, the lads easily billeted themselves upon the little town, in which they still formed a looser community. When student-girls appeared in numbers, the town was not able to absorb them so readily. The nature of the problem was the same as elsewhere. But it was not obscured and made to look less urgent, as in some other Universities, by the neighbourhood of a great city. St. Andrews has, therefore, perhaps the best Hall of Residence for women in Great Britain. It is not called a "College," but it can give its occupants every essential of a true collegiate life. Elsewhere in Scotland, by the co- operation of educational authorities and good interested people, hostel accommodation for women students is provided to a fair extent. The tendency is for all such provision already made to pass into the ownership and direct control of the University, and to be extended in favour of men also. This is a remarkable development for the Scottish University, where tradition is strongly in favour of an unsupervised private life for the student. Under- graduate opinion is vigorous on the subject of "the right of the latch-key" and the pitifulness of grown- up "mither's bairns." But, as University towns become great commercial cities, and the modest lodging required by students is more difficult to find (and more costly, too), parents grow anxious. The undergraduate himself is beginning to see the advan- tages of the good housing provided for women- students. Hence even Scotland is moving towards collegiate homes for men. Edinburgh has acquired 212 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY an estate of 120 acres at some little distance from the University, and will probably use part of it for residential colleges. St. Andrews is finding its town no longer able to absorb all its students. Glasgow admits the success of women's hostels, and regards them as necessary and as a good precedent in regard to men also. Aberdeen, on less urgent grounds, takes the same view. The provincial Universities in England are prac- tically unanimous. They too are moving towards absorption of privately-founded hostels into the University, with the foundation of new ones especially for men. Manchester is one important case in point. The most ambitious scheme is, perhaps, that of Leeds, which has bought 170 acres half an hour distant by tramway from the University, upon which student residences are to be built. The number of under- graduates now at Leeds is abnormally large perhaps 2,000. To house the ordinary number requiring residence outside their own homes is no impossible ambition. If achieved, it will be a great experiment in making a modern British University into a true community. Bristol has a large hostel for women, under control of the University, in a fine old eighteenth-century house near Clifton. But it has begun a wider development. On its own estate, newly acquired, it will build more. One part of its new University structure is to form a sort of college for men, a considerable number of whom are already lodged in a hotel bought by the University for this purpose. There can be no doubt that the English provincial Universities are bent upon an adaptation SOME PRECEDENTS 213 of the old custom of community life to their modern circumstances. But in the United States the adaptation has been made already, and has been fully proved in the course of long years. The American Dormitory is fit to serve all the British Dominions as a model. Some- times, particularly in the case of the residences for women, it is more elaborate than it need be, though not more elaborate than one likes it to be. Plans and photographs of some of the best Dormitories are in Australia, or easily obtainable. Methods of management offer no special difficulty. Only servile copyists or unimaginative traditionalists will seek to borrow those of either America or the ancient Uni- versities. The old American practice of providing only for lodging, and not for board, is being changed. In Australia it should be avoided. The Australian analogue of a Dormitory should be a student's Uni- versity home in as full a sense as is an Oxford vor Cambridge College. The English tradition should also prevail over the American in the constitution of that home as a distinct "society," with a senior officer of the University as its Head. But the society should be of the Head, as representative of the Uni- versity, and the students. The rule of it might be self-government, like that of a University Union but include representation of graduates out of resi- dence as well as of students in residence. The powers exercised would be delegated by the University's own governing body. The Australian University is already a great and honoured institution, faithful so far as inadequate means will permit to its chief duty of teaching, into 214 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY which the imported virus of degree-granting upon examinations only has nowhere made serious inroads. It also does something to form its students into a community. But it nowhere does enough. To bring University and undergraduate into active co- operation, through self-controlling groups of men or women in University houses on the University grounds, would be a sure means of increasing not only the influence but also the value of the University which itself is a society, but now, in its larger growth, is threatening to degenerate into a mere ad- vanced and professional Day and Night School, largely for want of more teachers and more friendly intercourse between its members of all grades. The necessity for such residential Houses is being acutely felt in our Universities. The Australian "College" system is admirable. To have college societies, of religious foundation but mostly of diverse faiths, in intimate association with the "unsectarian" Universities, gives a notable advantage to the student who seeks more than lodging or tuition and wishes to live with his fellows and enjoy with them a kind of family life dignified by recognition of more and higher elements than are in work and play alone. A distinguished American University President told me that he envied us our Colleges. But the system is not capable of very large extension. It cannot now provide for one-tenth of all in attendance. The Churches can scarcely be asked to add building to building, and undertake other large financial risks, so that room may be found for every homeless student who would like to live in college, though his means extend only to the rates charged in one of the cheaper SOME PRECEDENTS 215 boarding-houses. Only the Universities themselves, with the support of the Australian people, can accept such a burden. In some cases the acceptance cannot be much longer deferred. Sydney, for example, gathers students to the number of more than 3,000 from all parts of the State of New South Wales. There will not be a time, within measurable dis- tance, when a good University can be set up in any other part of the State unless the Commonwealth should defy the enormous necessary expense and establish one at Canberra, its Capital. An inferior, or partial, or pretended University in any country centre would cost far more than it could be worth to any section of the people of the State, and would be left severely alone by students, even in its immediate neighbourhood, who wanted not merely a degree but a training and experience as good as their country could afford them. A "bush" University could have no adequate professional schools. In Medicine, for example, large hospitals such as are found only in large cities are essential to proper instruction. Until the University at the great general centre has grown to three or four times its present size, and is too large even for a metropolis, it would pay the State better to give country students a maintenance grant on which to live and work at the Capital, than to establish even one minor University in one minor centre of population. Doubtless a University can be too large. But large city Universities exist elsewhere and, apparently, must be allowed, if only for economic reasons. Sydney and Melbourne are still only of moderate size compared with many in America. 216 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY Yet the Australian student from the country should not be left to the chances and the handicaps of ordinary boarding-houses, where bed and board are provided, but no facilities for intellectual work. How can undergraduates live a properly studious life, when they must share with other boarders rooms that are perhaps mere dormitories in the common sense; when they must use the common dining- tables for their study materials after the table-gear has been cleared away, and the dining-room has reverted to its other uses for other people? How can a mixed assemblage of boarders be expected to allow a few students the quiet that they need? What boarding-house keeper, not specially providing for students, will not grudge them the extra expenditure for light that their late study necessitates? It is not right that a University serving a whole vast State should leave the country lad, or girl, utterly unhelped in finding some lodging fit for really studious occu- pation. The duty of both State and University seems plain it is to favour the development of the College system, but also to institute a proper Australian analogue to the American Dormitory system. Comely well-designed buildings are needed, in which every- thing is appropriate to a simple studious existence at a minimum of expense, and in which that real Uni- versity life may be led, as Newman described it : "If I had to choose between a so-called University which dispensed with residence and tutorial superintend- ence and gave its degrees to any person who passed an examination in a wide range of subjects, and a University which had no professors or examinations at all> but merely brought a number of young men together for SOME PRECEDENTS 217 three or four years and then sent them away. ... I have no hesitation in giving the preference to that University which did nothing, over that which exacted of its members an acquaintance with every science under the sun. . . . When a multitude of young men, keeh, openhearted, sympathetic, and observant, as young men are, come together and freely mix with each other, they are sure to learn from one another, even if there be no one to teach them; the conversation of all is a series of lectures to each, and they gain for themselves new ideas and views, fresh matter of thought, and distinct principles for judging and acting day by day." 2. The Precedent of Administration. The undemocratic character of American University administration is typified by the Presidential system. On that side it is quite useless as a precedent for Australia. But the system is being modified by what is sometimes called a process of "decentralization," under which large administrative powers are dele- gated to permanent administrative officers termed "Deans," "Superintendents," "Directors," and so forth. Out of the complex of titles, and the some- what intricate (perhaps hypertrophied) organization they imply, emerges this suggestion for the Australian University that it needs both a more definite head- ship and a more developed administrative scheme than it now possesses. There is no necessity to have so elaborate a scheme as that of California, for example which provides for a President, an Assistant to the President, a Comptroller (who is also Secretary of the Regents and Land Agent), an Assistant Comp- troller, twelve Deans, four Directors, a Recorder of the Faculties, a "University Examiner," a University Physician and a woman "Physician for Women," an Appointments Secretary, a Librarian and an Associate Librarian, a Superintendent of the University 218 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY Printing Office, another of Grounds and Buildings, a Manager of the University Press and an "Alumni Secretary." All these, with a host of subordinates, are at the University itself. But there are also a "Treasurer of the Regents," an "Attorney for the Regents," various Deans and Directors of pro- fessional schools, a Registrar and a Curator in San Francisco, attending to the University's business there. California is certainly a large University, more than twice as large as the largest in Australia. Its income from State and private benefactions is out of all comparison with Australian University incomes. It has the means to organize well, as also to teach and to do research well. Admitting, however, the limitations of comparative poverty, how long is the administration of even the largest Australian University to be left under the original primitive arrangement whereby one executive officer, with a couple of senior assistants and a librarian and a few clerks, must cope with all the business, academic and financial? How long are overworked professors in understaffed departments to add to their proper professorial duty the toll of attendance upon innumerable Faculty and other meetings, advising upon applications, consultations with students, hand-writing of memoranda, reports, answers to letters on Faculty details, and yet more? The Australian method is obsolete in even the smaller Universities of the United Kingdom. It probably never existed in America, where the University President was never so tied by the administrative routine of Registrarship, or by the teaching duty of Professorship, that he could not organize an adminis- SOME PRECEDENTS 219 tration beyond but leading up to himself. It is the absence of recognized headship within the University, and the loosely co-ordinated Committee form of Government throughout the University, more than the lack of money, that account for this lack of adminis- trative development. The Universities of the United Kingdom have a far better organization. It begins from the Vice-Chan- cellorship, or Principalship, or whatever the effective headship may be called. The rest is based upon a division of functions, according as they are academic or financial or have relation to the ordinary business routine of an office. Manchester offers fair com- parison on the administrative side with the largest Australian Universities. Besides its Vice-Chancellor and all its Deans, it has at least one Pro-Vice- Chancellor. a Treasurer and Deputy-Treasurer, a Registrar and Assistant Registrar, many Secretaries, and a further considerable list of persons on the ad- ministrative staff. Liverpool, which before the war had fewer than eight hundred students, was equipped not only with a Vice-Chancellor, Treasurer, and University Librarian, but also with a Registrar, a Secretary to the Vice-Chancellor, a Secretary for Appointments, and no less than six "heads of depart- ments" such as the Accountant, Controller of the Academic Department, Chief Clerk of the Adminis- trative Department, and so on. It is not necessary to compare the British and American administrative methods. Both are more de- veloped than the Australian ; and the American, being the more complete in appearance, throws into stronger relief the Australian state of arrested development. Q 220 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY It is strangely but pitifully true here that no Uni- versity has any officer paid and set apart from all other work in order that he may, first, study the Uni- versity organism as it is and as it continually develops in his own country and in others of importance; secondly, analyse his own University in all its parts, and learn how it may best be co-ordinated and con- ducted ; thirdly, represent it before the outside world, as well as moderate in its internal conflicts of policy and desire; and fourthly, see visions and dream dreams for it through the fulness of his knowledge and the attraction of his ideal. Some obligation to practise research in every subject that it teaches is recognized by each Australian University, but none at all in regard to the still vital subject of what it is by nature and what it can become by precedent and its own creative effort. There are professorships of Architecture and Political Economy; lectureships in Public Administration and Town Planning, and all that but no one mind devoted to the study and ex- position of the art of designing the society called a University, the economic conditions of its growth, the principles and technique of its management, the standard forms of its kind and the differentiations needed in a given environment. Such scholarly and creative work our Universities are ordered to pro- vide in a great array of subjects, and upon a scanty dole of public funds. It has not yet occurred to them that similar work upon themselves as institu- tions, and in and for themselves as entities, ought always to be in progress if they are to do their other duty and fulfil their own destiny. It is work for which the elaborate American organization partly SOME PRECEDENTS 221 exists, and by which, though only imperfectly per- formed, the American University has made not a little of its great name. 5. The Precedent of Federal Aid. The Australian University stands in much the same relation to the Australian Government as does the American University to the Government of the United States. In that respect its conditions differ from those in the United Kingdom. So far, the difference has affected it unfavourably. Beyond some slight help in forwarding the study of Tropical Medicine, or of Military Science, or of Eastern Languages, no Australian University has specifically benefited by the existence of a Commonwealth Government. But towards the end of the war the Minister for Defence set a precedent that may have important results. He co-operated with the Australian Universities in es- tablishing a joint "Administrative Committee" in London for the especial purpose (among others) of directing the continued University education of Uni- versity men on active service. The whole expense of the Committee was borne by the Commonwealth Government which, for the time being and for the special object, thus created a kind of joint Australian University. The co-operation that followed between the Australian Universities themselves, and between them and other British and Foreign Universities, has been educative for all concerned. Much has been learnt as to the problems of such co-operation, and a strong desire now exists for its development in time of peace. The British Empire as a whole has its "Universities 222 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY Bureau" in London, upon which the Australian Uni- versities are represented. There is also an "Inter- change Committee" of that Bureau, to promote international co-operation and exchange of teachers and students between Universities. Upon it Australia is not yet directly represented. Its work is being largely subsidized by the British Government, and is, in a manner, supported by the Australian Universities, which subscribe generally for the maintenance of the Bureau. The French have their "Office National des Universites et ficoles Franchises," which corresponds to the British Bureau ; and the French Mission which visited Australia in 1918 reported strongly in favour of encouragement being given by the French Govern- ment to closer academic relations with Australia. An "Institute of International Education" has been established in the United States for similar purposes, with the lavish endowment usual among the thorough- going Americans. Its founder and source of supply is the Carnegie Endowment, and its head office is at New York. At Washington there is the office of the "American Council on Education," which is a sort of federation of national associations that, during the war, created a body at the Capital to form American opinion, serve as a channel of communication with the Government, and participate in the international movement in education which was then beginning. It is financially well-supported, and is recognized by the Federal Government as representing American higher education. The British University Mission that went to the United States in 1918 was under its charge, at the expense of the Carnegie Endowment. It also made arrangements for the corresponding French SOME PRECEDENTS 223 Mission. The primary function of the Council is the treatment of domestic educational problems, but it will help in solving those of an international kind. Another body, the "American University Union," has offices abroad, in London, Paris and Rome. In London it is housed with the Universities Bureau of the British Empire. It is supported by the American Universities, and will act as general supervisor of American University interests in foreign countries especially the interests of travelling scholars and exchange students or professors. The work that it did for Americans during the war won it great prestige, and was sometimes turned to the advantage of Australians. All these fine American organiza- tions are now working harmoniously together. The recognized international agency in America, the Insti- tute of International Education, has further sought representation in Australia, as a means of keeping the Australian Universities in touch with those of the United States for such interchange and common action as can be devised. Its Director, Dr. Stephen Duggan, has begun a series of publications that will be of great value in interpreting the Universities of the world to one another. So far the academic co-operative movement in Australia has developed only to the extent of holding a Conference of Universities at which many common problems were discussed especially those on which the work of the "Administrative Committee" had thrown some light, and those which would have to be reviewed at the Congress of British Universities summoned by the Universities Bureau to meet in London in 1921. The Conference decided, amongst 224 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY other things, to recommend the Australian Univer- sities to support a "Standing Advisory Committee" with the following functions: (a) To collect, and critically to examine, informa- tion for arrangement in reports, with advice, to the constituent Universities. (b) To consider and make recommendations tending towards the co-ordination of educational require- ments. (c) To arrange for the holding of inter-University Conferences, and generally to promote the ex- change of views between the constituent Uni- versities. (d) To compile a Year-Book of the Australian Uni- versities, and to prepare such other publications of common interest as may be requested from time to time by the constituent Universities, (e) To act as medium of communication between the Australian Universities and the Universities' Bureau of the British Empire and similar bodies in foreign countries. (/) To consider the general aspects of any matter referred to it by any constituent University. (g) Generally to promote common action in any matter concerning the work and development of the constituent Universities. Among matters that it was determined should be referred to the Advisory Committee was "The ques- tion of Federal co-operation in maintenance and inter- relations of Australian Universities and in their representation abroad." Here the precedent most in point is that set by the British Government when it gave the Universities' SOME PRECEDENTS 225 Bureau of the British Empire a first subsidy of 5,000 for its international work. The Standing Advisory Committee of the Australian Universities will consti- tute a similar organization, and will have also to serve as a means of communication and co-operation with Universities abroad. The Commonwealth Govern- ment could therefore fairly be asked to recognize its work as of national importance, and to give it national financial support. Nor should this check the liberality of Australian citizens and institutions to- wards the new advisory body created by the Aus- tralian Universities. Their combined effort to be- come more efficient and more united in their service to Australia ought to win them more approval every- where. American precedents show how much private generosity can help this kind of national undertaking. The Carnegie Endowment is making University co- operation easy in America through the Institute of International Education. Such an educational foundation as the Walter and Eliza Hall Trust (the nearest approach Australia has seen to a Car- negie Endowment) might therefore be asked to con- sider the claims of the Universities' new co-operative scheme, when it has formally begun. Many more public bodies might, by good example here, be led to emulate the patriotic associations supporting the American Council on Education. But the main American precedent has reference to the more general relation of the Federal Government to the Universities. This has never yet been given consideration in Australia. It has been assumed that the Federation has no educational function, except on the military and naval sides. But, with a similar 226 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY Constitution, the United States will not let its Govern- ment act as if education were solely the affair of the individual States. Last year there were no less than eighty-three educational bills before Congress. One of them was to constitute a Federal Department of Education with a Secretary in the Cabinet, and in- volved the expenditure of a hundred million dollars on promoting education in all the States. Hitherto the United States Bureau of Education at Washington has been under the Department of the Interior, and has not had its own Secretary of State for Education or any large administrative scope. Its chief function has been investigating and advisory, and in that it has done some admirable work. Educationalists all over the world are indebted to its long series of "Bulletins." Two of the most important special studies ever attempted of the Universities of the British Isles were made at the expense of this Bureau by a distinguished American professor of English, Dr. G. E. MacLean, and were published by it in two volumes called "Studies in Higher Education in England and Scot- land" and "Studies in Higher Education in Ireland and Wales." A similarly valuable survey of Ameri- can Universities, for the use of foreign students, was made by Dr. Samuel Paul Capen while he was on the staff of the Bureau. These are just typical examples of the wide scope of its investigations. Congress is not asked to limit the old function of the national Bureau of Education, but only to find effective means of giving the United States Govern- ment a large field of operations in stimulating and supplementing the independent educational efforts of individual States. There is already a well-defined SOME PRECEDENTS 227 federal policy of giving financial aid to States that carry on education in agriculture and the mechanic arts; and, under a Federal Vocational Education Act, State expenditure on vocational education is en- couraged by the offer of a dollar-for-dollar Federal subsidy. In the future, however, large educational developments are expected to accompany a new sys- tem of universal military training, which of course can be administered only by the Federal Government. Under one Act alone a permanent appropriation of over four and a half million dollars a year has been made for agricultural instruction. The United States is prepared to use Federal funds very liberally in sup- port of education, and to leave their administration largely in the hands of Universities, Colleges and State authorities. It is certain that the Australian Commonwealth could take some leading part in Australian education, if only it would apply the American precedents to its own case. In the United States there are special problems, such as that of "Americanizing" citizens of foreign birth. These almost necessitate the use of any compulsory military training for a general edu- cational purpose. Such problems, happily, do not exist in Australia. But one result of the war has been to prove that all armies will henceforth need to be schools for civilian life, as well as for fighting. The British Government has published "Regulations for Army Certificates of Education," which are to come into force on July ist, 1921. These aim to give the British Army a definite status among educational bodies, being "designed with a view to enable soldiers to use the opportunities afforded by their service with 228 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY the colours for the purpose of acquiring an education in successive steps not less effective than that which they could have obtained in civil life. It is expected that by this means a substantial number of men will be in a position on their discharge to pass to the Uni- versities and other learned bodies well prepared for more advanced or specialized studies." The Australian system of compulsory military training does not seriously interfere with education or need much further adapting to State educational policies. But, if there should come into existence an Australian Standing Army, the British example would have to be followed, and some good suggestions as to method are sure to be derivable from the scheme of the American Federation. Beyond all that, however, lies the American desire to keep the various States on much the same educa- tional level. They differ in population and resources, as do our own. But they have another difference of important effect upon them, according as they were grouped in the Civil War. The "South" was ruined then, and has since borne a heavy handicap, in educa- tion as otherwise, when compared with the "North." There are many agencies working to give every part of the Union a full measure of educational oppor- tunity, and to maintain a universally high standard of American education, general or special. This is a matter that concerns the people of the United States as a whole, and therefore the Federal Government is both attracted and driven towards support of educa- tion throughout the States. It has already over thirty educational offices of various kinds, and the natural tendency is to bring them all into one De- SOME PRECEDENTS 229 partment of State. The situation is not at all so complicated in Australia. Yet the Federal obligation is the same, and particularly clear in regard to Uni- versities. The Australian States which are financially weakest have Universities that they find it difficult to main- tain. As the cost of education increases, money for the most expensive higher grades is provided more sparingly. Yet if those Universities cannot continue their professorships at salaries that will secure men of the right ability and training; or provide the sort of equipment essential to a scientific instruction of real University character and extent; or furnish their students with a proper reference library, and do many other necessary things ; the credit of all the Australian Universities will be diminished, and many Aus- tralians fit for the highest intellectual occupations will be denied their chance, merely because the University of their State is insufficiently developed, through no fault of its own, while the nearest adequate one is per- haps many hundreds of miles away and so beyond reach. Surely this should concern the people of Aus- tralia as a whole. It may not be right to follow the American dollar-for-dollar method of encouraging the smaller States to keep up fully their educational enterprise. But the principle of Federal support to some essential forms of such enterprise ought to be accepted. It is profitable to the whole of Australia that an Australian University shall be kept good, whether it is in Victoria or in Western Australia, in Queensland or Tasmania. It exists for the advantage of Australia, not merely of its own State. There are many ways in which the Australian 230 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY Commonwealth could vitally influence the develop- ment of Australian Universities by considering and applying precedents set by the Government of the United States. An immense field is open in Agri- cultural Science, if one regards only that which has obvious practical uses. But why should there not be "Commonwealth Professorships," in a certain pro- portion to the other professorships, in each Uni- versity? Why could not the Commonwealth endow "Commonwealth Departments" of this or that subject in those Universities most needing extension, but otherwise unable as yet to come up to the regular Australian range of subjects? Might not the Commonwealth give pound for pound on State sub- sidy or private subscription, and have its co-operating representative on each governing body? The object, once realized as the advancement of learning in Aus- tralia by united action in every part of Australia, can soon be attained by some appropriate means. There ought to be a Commonwealth educational organization to collect and interpret the informa- tion that the Commonwealth would need if it were to assist in Australian education. The Standing Ad- visory Committee of the Australian Universities may be all that is immediately required. But the American Council on Education and the national Bureau of Education at Washington between them suggest a line of further development in Australia. A Commonwealth Board of Education could be estab- lished, and (under a Commissioner or President or other such officer) could survey the whole field of Australian education and culture for the purpose of advising the Federal Government where and how it SOME PRECEDENTS 231 could best offer its co-operation or a particular stimu- lus. There can be no question of interference with the States, whose security is absolute under the Con- stitution. 4. The Precedent of Graduate Studies. The organization of the American University has one incontestable distinction in the distinct Graduate Schools which it has evolved. The College is under- graduate, and comprises curricula equivalent to those of the separate Faculties in the Australian Uni- versity. The term "University" in America strictly applies to work that is done upon a basis of College studies completed in accordance with the requirements of a "graduate school" or "professional school." Hence comes the condition that, before it can obtain entrance to the Association of American Universities, any institution terming itself a University must have a regular organization of graduate studies. Hence, too, arises the demand of certain extremist reformers that both Colleges and professional schools shall be eliminated, and "University" shall mean nothing else but an institution for advanced and independent non- professional study. No Australian University now demands that the candidate for entrance to a professional school (such as Law, Medicine or Engineering) shall possess an Arts or Science degree. Not one has a properly organized scheme of graduate studies leading to higher degrees. In the strictest American sense, therefore, Australia has no Universities at all, but only groups of Colleges, some (Faculties of Arts and Science) being regular; others (Faculties of Law and Medi- 232 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY cine) being less or more anomalous, according as they do or do not require (or generally secure) a pre- liminary training that ends with a B.A. or B.Sc. degree; others again (Faculties, or Schools, of Engineering, Agriculture, etc.), having a recognized mixed character as technical schools that are mainly collegiate. The Australian arrangement whereby the work for the B.A. or B.Sc. falls into two categories Pass and Honours would not affect the American view. Nor would the existence of M.A. or M.Sc. degrees. The formal training given is all for a first degree, and, with rare exceptions, lasts for the same time whether the degree is taken at Pass or Honours standard; while the M.A. is granted sometimes mainly because the B.A. Honours standard has been reached, and sometimes because the candidate, after attaining his B.A., has continued his studies on his own account and been successful in a further test by examination or written \vork but never because he has entered on a further period of formal and more advanced train- ing in a regular graduate school belonging to his Uni- versity. The existence of doctorates, in Letters or Science or Law or Medicine, would also not be in point because that in Medicine does not necessarily imply any College training at all of a general character (beyond the equivalent of one year in a Faculty of Science), and the others are merely degrees given upon examination for which the candidate has privately prepared, or upon evidence of some credit- able research that he has set himself to do. What is most lacking, to an American eye, is organized train- ing above all undergraduate standards, with the object of producing specialists in particular subjects who can SOME PRECEDENTS 233 (if they will) proceed still under University direction from the Mastership to the Doctorate, by way of approved work of special investigation showing particular intellectual ability. There is no doubt that the American idea is sound. A University ought to have a higher organization a series of specialist schools for the best of its stu- dents, who have taken its lower degrees and who should be trained to a more intense specialization. It may be doubted whether this is necessary in all subjects. The advanced study of medicine and surgery must often be best pursued to ends that have little relation to University degrees, in hospital and other institu- tions beyond (perhaps not even associated with) a University. But the American graduate school is mostly entitled "of Arts and Sciences," and has most reference to the Humanities and pure science. In both of these, above all others, a University ought to specialize and train specialists. It would, of course, be wrong to imply that British Universities in general, even those of Australia in particular, do not perform this duty. But it is right to admit that the American University has developed an organization which pro- vides definite means for the performance of the duty, and systematically directs the course of its general work towards that end. The impulse which produced the American gradu- ate school came from Germany, where no University contains the true equivalent of either the British Faculties of Arts and Science or the American College, The highest classes in the secondary school in Ger- many do the corresponding work. When the young German reaches the University (at an age not less 234 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY than twenty), his general education is finished, and he goes on forthwith to specialize, whether he enter the Faculty of Law, or of Medicine, or of Divinity, or the Philosophical Faculty. A German University is essentially a place of specialization. An American University, in its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences like an ordinary British University in its Faculties of Arts and Science is not, and cannot be wholly that if only because the student is at least a couple of years younger, and has had an intentionally less com- plete general education. This difference has been fully analysed by Professor John Burnet in his masterly criticism of the German educational system, published in 1917 under the title of "Higher Education and the War." He pictures the American system thus : "The Americans have a Republican Common School with a Scottish High School above it, an English College on the top of that, and a German University to crown the edifice." But the construction is not quite such an architect's nightmare as this suggests; for the American College is truly American, developed out of the English College and Public School to be the most distinctive and most valuable institution yet created in America. As Professor Burnet also says : "Neither the High School nor the Graduate School has made the United States what they are, but the College." So the imposing of the German University on the College is but a natural addition made, upon a Ger- man precedent (but rightly), to an American struc- ture. The Germans have sometimes thought of underpinning their University with an American College, and it might be well for them if they did. The Australian University is still in some instances SOME PRECEDENTS 235 remote from, and in the rest not very near, the institu- tion of an American graduate school. Like most British Universities, the Universities of Australia are traditionally organized almost wholly for under- graduate work. For graduate study, their best gradu- ates are traditionally sent abroad. Oxford, Cam- bridge, London, Paris, certain American Universities, with the British School at Rome, and yet other British and Foreign seats of learning have supplied their need, and given their scholars, as an incidental bene- fit, experience of a different and a wider life. That experience alone is worth all it costs either the Uni- versity or the student. It should still be put, annually, within the reach of many Australian graduates whose undergraduate work has shown their fitness to specialize to attempt all that may be done in a few years more at any University most eminent in their subjects. The number of Travelling Scholarships for post-graduate study abroad should even be greatly in- creased. No Australian University should be without a number properly proportioned to its attendance of students. The benefit to the Commonwealth is cer- tain. The time is coming when our Universities will have to be mainly staffed by Australians ; to be properly fitted for the work in some subjects Aus- tralians must be and in almost all they ought to be partly qualified by long and systematic graduate train- ing in other countries. But no other Universities can relieve those in Aus- tralia from the duty of instituting a proper scheme of graduate studies within themselves. Towards that duty the American precedent shows the readiest way. So long as the Australian Universities are over- 236 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY whelmed with undergraduates, in number so utterly disproportionate to the teaching staffs which are at present limited by inadequate resources and niggardly State subsidies they would neglect the duty that lies nearest if they attempted to do what the well- supported American University is doing. So long as they cannot organize the advanced studies of their graduates, and furnish the additional training and direction required, they would do wrong to increase the number of higher degrees. The first step should be to give the Masterships an Australian normal value, below which none shall be granted. Then might follow the institution of specific graduate courses in each University as it finds adequate means. Perhaps at first one University will become the graduate school of all Australia; perhaps two or three will have small diverse graduate schools, between them supplying the needs of the Commonwealth. With so very much development of undergradute studies still to be made everywhere, it does not seem worth while entering into more detail as regards the graduate kind. But towards it the Australian University must consciously move, or it will split up into a loose association of professional schools all good in their limited way, most working on only such a basis of general culture in the student as he could obtain while at school, and all uninspired by anything more than the pride of a specialized study fairly adequate for the practice of some profession. 5. The Precedent of Self-Help. It might be possible to discourage the Australian University by comparison of its finances with those of SOME PRECEDENTS 237 the American University. The poverty-stricken sick man is only made more depressed when his physician tells him that he could regain health and strength if he had a few thousand a year to spend in quest of them. There is no hope for him on such terms. Similarly, the Australian University that learns only from America the necessity of an income proportionate to that which is received, from State and private bene- factions, by any good American University, may feel ours to be a country so little interested in Uni- versities that it must bear the badge of its inferiority and work out a lower destiny. Against such a spiritless and unjust inference I should like to protest in advance. It is not my own ; nothing I have said is intended to make it possible. The Australian University does not suffer shamefully by comparison with the infinitely better subsidized American University. So far as it goes, it is healthy, though very far from wealthy. It has a sound tradition of limiting its work to its means, and of doing well whatever it professes to do. Its faults of development are due mainly to conditions which are affecting all Universities, and forcing many of them to develop most on their technical sides in applied science, in commerce and other such professional and utilitarian studies. The newness of some Australian Universities, combined with the financial restrictions common to them all, makes them particularly suscept- ible to this external pressure. The fondness of the Australian people for experimenting upon traditional institutions has also its influence. An idea that social justice in education demands most of all an open road from the elementary school to the traditional pro- 238 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY fessions, through the Universities, is resulting in a large increase of State expenditure on subsidizing students who wish to have a professional training. Universities that must provide the highest part of that training are not being developed fast enough to cope with the increase of students promoted by the edu- cational liberality of the State. Secondary schools are multiplied, while the University for which they qualify is left undeveloped. The way of their most intelligent pupils towards the life of, say, an inde- pendent farmer (who requires more than knowledge, e.g., land, before he can begin) is not so cleared of obstacles whose removal needs money as is the way to- wards the life of an independent lawyer or medical man. Such University development as is made is, there- fore, chiefly on the professional sides. The claims of general studies are little regarded. The University spirit itself has become dangerously professionalized, because in its support of the University the State represented by a Cabinet that must justify its expendi- ture to the average elector seeks first a return that can be estimated in terms of production of graduates with certain professional qualifications ; while the student asks only the practically useful training on which he is afterwards to make his professional success. Neither State nor student can be expected to divine that a University is one society of many parts, and must have devotion to learning for its own sake as first and last unifying motive. The Uni- versity itself has to reveal that to both State and student. In Australia, at present, the task is ex- ceptionally difficult. But it is being performed. His- tory should some day record with honour the names SOME PRECEDENTS 239 of professors now heroically maintaining the cause of disinterested learning against excessive professional- ism in the Universities of Australia. The American precedent ought to help the Aus- tralian University in its duty toward the Idea for which it stands. In America, the Universities do not leave their work entirely to speak for itself. Their Presidents are public authorities, who are expected to advise the people. Their advice is welcome on all great public questions. It is felt that they speak for a whole body of specialist opinion (their Faculties) on many topics, but especially on those of University development. The President of a great University who is believed great enough for his position is as sure of a respectful hearing as the President of the United States himself. He has distinctly a wider audience than the average Governor of a State or member of the Cabinet. In purely educational matters, he is expected to make some regular contri- bution to American thought; the annual reports of some University Presidents will be widely read and discussed in newspapers all over the country. This gives men of large ideas an opportunity of influencing public opinion to important effect. One of the most dangerous elements in the situation before the United States entered the war was that at least a thousand University men of influential character, Presidents and Professors, had received their graduate training in Germany (the older and better Germany) and might have been unable to convince themselves of Germany's unpardonable wrongdoing. If these men had let old and happy association or any other sentimental con- sideration influence their advice to their own people, 240 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY the wonderfully united effort made by the American nation in the cause of humanity might have been seriously checked and weakened. The war-time leadership of University men has given Americans strong additional reason for patriotic pride in their Universities. This public authority won by the American Uni- versity, and heartily conceded to it by most classes, turns directly to the advantage of learning. Against a hostile or unjust Legislature a State University can appeal direct to the people of the State and, beyond it, to the national regard for Universities. Against pressure of means too narrow for proper performance of its work, an Endowed University may take the whole nation into its confidence without being re- pulsed as a sturdy beggar, or reviled for not knowing how to use what it already has. When the President of Chicago, in 1916, asked for a sum of fifteen million dollars not to build a "large medical school" but to train a small number of the best men, and simul- taneously to train men as medical teachers and experts in medical research" he got it within a few months, because he was trusted and believed, although his Uni- versity had many Rockefeller and other millions in use already for other more fundamental work. The American University does not need to suffer in silence till some benefactor happens to think of it and relieve its worst necessities ; or to hold out a trembling hand to some Government, often grudging and hard to convince, and harsh in the conditions of its gift. The American University is trusted; its word is taken for its needs, almost as if it were a patriotic institution like the Red Cross or the War Chest in Australia. SOME PRECEDENTS 241 And this comes largely from its having openly sought and won the confidence of the people by reasoned direct appeal, and by the open public service of its best minds. The same spirit motives the relation of graduates to their University, which consults them, informs them and calls upon them for help. They do not all respond. But a large proportion of them does so. It may not be money for which they are asked. Their moral support is the main thing. It is curious that in most of the British world in which every school of any importance has its flourishing "Old Boys' Union" or "Old Girls' Union" there are so few similar institutions connected with the Universities. King's College, London, is said to be forming an "Old Students' Union," which is, perhaps, among the first of its kind. In America such things, called "Alumni Associations," are almost universal. They are not an unmixed blessing, particularly in times of rapid development in Universities, because some graduates so idealize the University of their youth that they contest any serious changes. But the Uni- versity itself can argue it out with most of them. And the trouble is worth while; for the same loving care of the University that was once the whole world to them is operating always to sustain it, and to defend it against both the consequences of its own mistakes and the risks it must run in doing its work faithfully. The Associations of Graduates in America are, on the whole, a mighty force for good. They promote soli- darity in the membership of the University to which they belong, and no public authority or University body can defy them. Their members are trained in 242 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY the knowledge necessary for those elected to the Uni- versity governing bodies, and for all who do the elect- ing. It is not only their power, but also their useful- ness, that is bringing graduates into the Boards of Regents of State Universities which at first were constituted without them. Recognizing his responsibility, and being provided with the requisite information, the American gradu- ate, in no inconsiderable measure, supports his Uni- versity even by contribution to its funds, especially to those for whose purposes an ordinary public appeal is less appropriate. Thus he proves and helps it to prove that those who have shared its benefits in their dependent youth are not unmindful of their obligation, in days of independence or prosperity, to maintain the benefits for their successors. It would be interesting to reckon up the benefactions conferred on Australian Universites by their graduates. The total could not be a cause of much pride. In America the corres- ponding record would be immense. This is due, not merely to the difference in the wealth of the two countries, but also to the difference in feeling. The Australian is proud of his University, and treats it always with respect. He may even think and speak of it with warm gratitude. But to the American it is far more often an object of lifelong and devoted affection, and its students, past and present, form an ever-living society, inspired with a sense of family duty in love to a common mother. There is not in America a more valuable precedent for us than this proudly self-conscious academic brotherhood. W. C. Penfold & Co. Ltd., Printers, 88 Pitt St.. Sydney. A Selection from the Catalogue of ANGUS & ROBERTSON LTD., Publishers, Sydney, Australia CONRAD MARTENS, THE MAN AND HIS ART. By LIONEL LINDSAY, assisted by G. V. F. MANN, Director of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales. With repro- ductions of 61 of Martens' pictures, mostly in colour. A handsome volume 10i x 8| inches, in cardboard box, 42s. THE ART OF HANS HEYSEN. V/ith critical article by LIONEL LINDSAY and reproductions of 60 of Hans Heysen's pictures, mostly in colour. A handsome volume 10J x 8| inches, 42s. THE ART OF ARTHUR STREETON. With critical and biographical articles by P. G. KONODY and LIONEL LINDSAY, and reproductions of 56 of Arthur Streeton's pictures, mostly in colour. A handsome volume 10i x 8f inches, 42s. THE ART OF J. J. H1LDER. Edited by SYDNEY URE SMITH, with Life by BERTRAM STEVENS, contributions by JULIAN ASHTON and HARRY JULIUS, and reproductions of 56 of J. J. Hilder's pictures, mostly in colour. A handsome volume 10i x 8f inches, in cardboard box, 42s. DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE IN AUSTRALIA. Special Number of Art in Australia. Edited by SYDNEY URE SMITH and BERTRAM STEVENS, in collaboration with W. HARDY WILSON. With articles by leading Australian Architects and 45 full-page illustrations. 11^x9 inches, 21s. AUSTRALIA IN PALESTINE. 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Selected and carefully revised by the author, with several new poems, portrait in colour by JOHN LONGSTAFP, and 9 full-page illustrations by PERCY LEASON. 9 x ?i inches, handsomely bound, in cardboard box, 12s. 6d. AN ANTHOGRAPHY OF THE EUCALYPTS. By RUSSELL GRIMWADE. With 79 beautiful plates, 11 x 8J inches, 52s. 6d. THE FIRST AEROPLANE VOYAGE FROM ENGLAND TO AUSTRALIA. By SIR Ross SMITH, K.B.E. With portraits and 27 full-page aeroviews of Sydney, its Harbour, the Suburbs, and many Country Towns, 10 x 7 ins. 2s. 6d. DIGGERS ABROAD : Jottings on the Australian Front. By Capt. T. A. WHITE. Illustrated by DAVID BARKER. 6s. POEMS BY RODERIC QUINN. With portrait, 6s. AMERICAN IMPRESSIONS. By HON. H. Y. BRADDON, ex- Commissioner for the Commonwealth in U.S.A. 5s. CASTLE VANE: An Australian Historical Novel. By J. H. M. ABBOTT. 5s. THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY : An Australian View. By Professor E. R. HOLME, University of Sydney, 7s. 6d. COLOMBINE. Poems by HUGH McCRAE. With 11 illustrations by NORMAN LINDSAY. 10 x 7^ inches. 10s. 6d. AUSTRALIA MUST PREPARE. A Lecture delivered by JAMES MURDOCH, M.A., Professor-of Oriental Studies in the University of Sydney. Is. SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE'S GHOST. 3s. 6d. THE GEOLOGY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. By C. A. SUSSMILCH, F.G.S. Third edition, revised, with over 100 maps and illustrations. 7s. 6d. LIFE OF CAPTAIN MATTHEW FLINDERS, R.N. By Professor ERNEST SCOTT. With 40 maps and illustrations. 21s. Matthew Flinders was the 'first man to circumnavigate Australia. Arriving seven years after the first British settlers, he did more than any other to fill the gaps left by the early navigators, and it was he who gave Australia its name. Australian Publications JIM OF THE HILLS. A Story in Rhyme. By C. J. DENNIS. With frontispiece, title-page, and jacket in colour, by HAL GYE. 7i x 6 inches, 5s. DIGGER SMITH: POEMS. By C. J. DENNIS. With frontis- piece, title-page and jacket in colour, and other illustrations, by HAL GYE. 7$ x 6 inches, 5s. THE SONGS OF A SENTIMENTAL BLOKE. By C. J. DENNIS. With frontispiece, title-page and jacket in colour and other illustrations by HAL GYE. 1\ x 6 inches, 5s. Pocket Edition, 4s. DOREEN : A Sequel to "The Sentimental Bloke." By C. J. DENNIS. With coloured and other illustrations, ?i x 5J inches, Is. THE MOODS OF GINGER MICK: Poems. By C. J. DENNIS, With frontispiece, title-page and jacket in colour, and other illustrations by HAL GYE. 1\ x 6 inches, 5s. Pocket Edition, 4s. BACKBLOCK BALLADS AND LATER VERSES. By C. J. DENNIS. New edition, revised, with 16 new pieces, wholly printed from new type, with frontispiece, title-page and jacket in colour, by HAL GYE. 1\ x 6 inches, 5s. THE GLUGS OF GOSH: Poems. By C. J. DENNIS. With frontispiece, title-page, and jacket in colour, and other illustrations by HAL GYE. 7$ x 6 inches, 5s. Pocket Edition, 4s. POEMS OF HENRY KENDALL. Enlarged edition, with biographical note by BERTRAM STEVENS, and portrait. 7s. 6d. THE COLLECTED VERSE OF A. B. PATERSON, author of "The Man from Snowy River," etc. With portrait. 7s. 6d. AN IRISH HEART: Poems. By DAVID McKEE WRIGHT. With portrait. 5s. THE AUSTRALIAN, AND OTHER VERSES. By WILL H. OGILVIE. With frontispiece, title-page, and jacket in colour by HAL GYE. 7$ x 6 inches, 5s. THE PASSIONATE HEART: Poems. By MARY GILMORE. author of " Marri'd," etc. With portrait. 5s. SONGS OF LOVE AND LIFE. By ZORA CROSS. Fourth Edition, with portrait. 5s. THE LILT OF LIFE: Poems. By ZORA CROSS. 5s. Australian Publications SONGS OF A CAMPAIGN. By LEON GELLERT. New edition, with 25 additional poems and 16 pictures by NORMAN LINDSAY. 5s. THREE ELEPHANT POWER, AND OTHER STORIES. By A. B. ("BANJO") PATERSON, author of "The Man from Snowy River," etc. 4s. A CHANT OF DOOM AND OTHER VERSES. By C. J. BRENNAN. With portrait. 3s. 6d. 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AUSTRALIAN VERSE Handsomely bound in cloth, 4s. 6d. per volume A BOOK OF AUSTRALIAN VERSE FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. Edited by BERTRAM STEVENS. With 16 portraits. GOLDEN TREASURY OF AUSTRALIAN VERSE. Edited by BERTRAM STEVENS. BOAKE (BARCROFT), Where the Dead Men Lie, and other Poems. DALEY (VICTOR J.), At Dawn and Dusk. DALEY (VICTOR J.), Wine and Roses. EVANS (G. ESSEX), The Secret Key, and other Poems. FARRELL (JOHN), How He Died, and other Poems. LAWSON (HENRY), Verses Popular and Humorous. LAWSON (HENRY), When I was King, and other Verses. LAWSON (HENRY), When the World was Wide, and other Verses. LAWSON (WILL), The Three Kings, and other Verses. OGILVIE (WILL H.), Fair Girls and Gray Horses. OGILVIE (WILL H.), Hearts of Gold. STEPHENS (BRUNTON), Poetical Works. HENRY LAWSON'S AUSTRALIAN STORIES Handsomely bound in cloth, 4s. 6d. per volume CHILDREN OF THE BUSH JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES ON THE TRACK AND OVER THE SLIPRAILS WHILE THE BILLY BOILS ANNOUNCEMENTS THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA AND TASMANIA, with their Nests and Eggs. 300 original water-colour drawings, by NEVILLE W. CAYLEY, exhibiting about 800 Species, with their Eggs, reproduced in natural colours. The letterpress by A. S. LE SOUEF, Secretary of the Sydney Zoological Gardens, with the assistance of CHARLES BARRETT, C. M.Z.S., and the leading Ornithologists of Australia. The Oological Section con- tributed by A. J. CAMPBELL, C.M.B.O.U. With hundreds of pictures in the text, from photographs, of Nests and Nestlings. Size, 1 1J x 8 inches. {In preparation* The scope of the work is both popular and scientific, and it will therefore be suitable for general readers as well as for students. It will be issued in parts, commencing in 1921. A prospectus and specimen plates maybe had from the publishers. WHO'S WHO IN THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA. By FRED JOHNS, author of " Notable Australians," etc. 8 x 5 inches. [Ready early in 1921. OFFICIAL HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA IN THE WAR OF 1914-1918. Edited by C. E. W. BEAN. With many maps and other illustrations. 12 vols., demy 8vo., cloth gilt. ] In preparation . We have been entrusted by the Government of the Com- monwealth of Australia with the publication of the above. The work will comprise the following : BEAN (C. E. W.) The Australian Imperial Force in Gallipoli and France. 6 vols. GULLETT (H. S.) The A.I.F. in Sinai and Palestine. CUTLACK (F. M.) The Australian Flying Corps. 1 vol. JOSE (Captain ARTHUR W.) The Royal Australian Navy. 1 vol. MACKENZIE (Lt.-Col. SEAFORTH) The N. and M.E.F. in New Guinea. 1 vol. HENEY (T. W.) Story of the War Effort in Australia. 1 vol. The Story of the War in Photographs, taken by Capt. G. H. WILKINS, M.C. and Bar; Capt. FRANK HURLEY; Lieut. BALDWIN, and others, annotated by C. E. W. BEAN and H. S. GULLETT. 1 vol. ANGUS & ROBERTSON LTD., Publishers 89 Castlereagh Street, Sydney, Australia And at all Booksellers This book is DUE on the last date stamped below RETURNED TO SUBJ DUCATION UIBRARY RECEIVED SEP 1970 EDU./HSVCH. FormL-9-15m-7,'31 ECT TO FINE IF NOT UCLA-ED/PSYCH Library LA226H73a Education Library L 005 605 986 8 000 958 972 2 "NIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES LIBRARY