popular initiative is stimulated to the utmost, and every person and
every institution is encouraged to do its best. There are no formal
regulations to hamper enterprising impulses, to keep back certain more
advanced regions, or to approve mediocrity with an artificial seal of
authority. In the second place, technical education is able to adapt
itself thoroughly to all the untold local factors, and to give to every
region such schools of higher training as it needs, without pulling down
any more advanced sections of the country to an artificially mediocre
level more adapted to the whole country. In the third place, the free
competition between the different institutions insures their ceaseless
progress. There are no hard and fixed boundary lines, and whatsoever
does not advance surely recedes; that which leads to-day is surpassed
to-morrow if it does not adapt itself to the latest requirements. This
is true both as regards the quality of the teachers and their means of
instruction, as regards the length of the course, and more especially
the conditions of entrance. These last have steadily grown throughout
the country. Fifty years ago the very best institutions in the most
advanced portions of the country demanded no more for entrance than the
professional schools of third class situated in more rural regions
demand to-day. And this tendency goes steadily onward day by day. If
there were any great departures made, the institutions would be
disintegrated; the schools which prepare pupils would not be able
suddenly to come up to new requirements, and therefore few scholars
would be able to prepare for greatly modified entrance examinations. In
this way, between the conservative holding to historic traditions and
the striving to progress and to exceed other institutions by the highest
possible efficiency, a compromise is brought about which results in a
gradual but not over-hasty improvement.
We have so far entirely left out of account the state. We can speak here
only of the individual state. The country as a whole has as little to do
with higher education as with lower. But the single state has, in fact,
a significant task—indeed, a double one. Since it aims at no monopoly,
but rather gives the freest play to individual initiative, we have
recognized the fundamental principle that restrictions are placed
nowhere. On the other hand, it becomes the duty of the state to lend a
helping hand wherever private activities have been found insufficient.
This can happen in two ways: either the state may help to support
private institutions which already exist, or it may establish new ones
of its own, which in that case offer free tuition to the sons and
daughters of all taxpayers. These so-called state universities are, in a
way, the crowning feature of the free public school system. Wherever
they exist, the sons of farmers have the advantage of free instruction
from the kindergarten to the degree of doctor of philosophy.
Now private initiative is weakest where the population is poor or stands
on a low level of culture, so that few can be found to contribute
sufficient funds to support good institutions, and at the same time the
rich citizens of these less advanced states prefer to send their
children to the universities of the most advanced states. The result is,
and this is what is hardest for the foreigner to understand, that the
higher institutions of learning which are subsidized by the state stand
for a grade of culture inferior to that of the private institutions, and
that not only the leading universities, like Harvard, Columbia, Johns
Hopkins, Yale, Chicago, Cornell, and Stanford, carry on their work
without the help of the state, but also that the leading Eastern States
pay out much less for higher instruction than do the Western. The State
of Massachusetts, which stands at the head in matters of education, does
not give a cent to its universities, while Ohio entirely supports the
Ohio State University and gives aid to six other institutions.
The second task of the states in educational matters is shared alike by
all of them; the state supervises all instruction, and, more than that,
the state legislature confers on the individual institution the right to
award grades, diplomas, and degrees to its students. No institution may
change its organization without a civil permit. As culture has advanced
the state has found it necessary to make the requirements in the various
professional schools rather high. In practice, once more, a continual
compromise has been necessary between the need to advance and the desire
to stay, by traditions which have been proved and tried and found
practical. Here, once again, any universal scheme of organization would
have destroyed everything. If a high standard had been fixed it would
have hindered private initiative, and given a set-back to Southern and
Western states and robbed them of the impulses to development. A lower
universal standard, on the other hand, would have impeded the advance of
the more progressive portions of the country. Therefore the various
state governments have taken a happy middle position in these matters,
and their responsibility for the separate institutions has been made
even less complete in that the degrees of these institutions carry in
themselves no actual rights. Every state has its own laws for the
admission of a lawyer to its bar, or to the public practice of medicine,
and it is only to a small degree that the diplomas of professional
schools are recognized as equivalent to a state examination.
The history of the professional schools for lawyers, ministers,
teachers, and physicians in America is by no means the history of the
universities. We have so far left out of account the college, which is
the nucleus of American education. Let us now go back to it. We saw in
the beginning of the development of these states a social community in
which preparation for the professions of teaching, preaching, law or
medicine implied a technical and specialized training, which every one
could obtain for himself without any considerable preparation. There was
no thought of a broad, liberal education. Now, to be sure, the level of
scholarship required for entrance into the professional schools has
steadily risen, the duration and character of the instruction has been
steadily improved; but even to-day the impression has not faded from the
public consciousness, and is indeed favoured by the great differences in
merit between the special schools, that such a practical introduction to
the treatment of disease, to court procedure, the mastery of technical
problems, or to the art of teaching, does not in itself develop educated
men. All this is specialized professional training, which no more
broadens the mind than would the professional preparation for the
calling of the merchant or manufacturer or captain. Whether a man who is
prepared for his special career is also an educated man, depends on the
sort of general culture that he has become familiar with. It is thought
important for a man to have had a liberal education before entering the
commercial house or the medical school, but it is felt to be indifferent
whether he has learned his profession at the stock exchange or at the
clinic.
The European will find it hard to follow this trend of thought. In
Europe the highest institutions of learning are so closely allied to the
learned professions, and these themselves have historically developed so
completely from the learned studies, that professional erudition and
general culture are well-nigh identical. And the general system of
distinctions and merits favours in every way the learned professions.
How much of this, however, springs out of special conditions may be
seen, for instance, from the fact that in Germany an equal social
position is given to the officer of the army and to the scholar. Even
the American is, in his way, not quite consistent, in so far as he has
at all times honoured the profession of the ministry with a degree of
esteem that is independent of the previous preparation which the
minister had before entering his theological school. This fact has come
from the leading position which the clergymen held in the American
colonial days, and the close relation which exists between the study of
theology and general philosophy.
The fact that by chance one had taken the profession of law, or
teaching, or medicine, did not exalt one in the eyes of one’s
contemporaries above the great mass of average citizens who went about
their honest business. The separation of those who were called to social
leadership was seen to require, therefore, some principle which should
be different from any professional training. At this point we come on
yet another historical factor. The nation grew step for step with its
commercial activities and undertakings. So long as it was a question of
gaining and developing new territory, the highest talent, the best
strength and proudest personalities entered the service of this
nationally significant work. It was a matter of course that no secondary
position in society should be ascribed to these captains of commerce and
of industry. The highest degree of culture which they were able to
attain necessarily fixed the standard of culture for the whole
community; and, therefore, the traditional concept of the gentleman as
the man of liberal culture and refinement came to have that great social
significance which was reserved in Germany for the learned professions.
In its outer form, the education of such a gentleman was borrowed from
England. It was a four years’ course coming after the high school, and
laying special stress on the classical languages, philosophy, and
mathematics—a course which, up to the early twenties, kept a young man
in contact with the fine arts and the sciences, with no thought for the
practical earning of a livelihood; which, therefore, kept him four years
longer from the tumult of the world, and in an ideal community of men
who were doing as he was doing; which developed him in work, in sport,
in morals and social address. Such was the tradition; the institution
was called a college after the English precedent. Any man who went to
college belonged to the educated class, and it was indifferent what
profession he took up; no studies of the professional school were able
to replace a college education. Now, it necessarily happened that the
endeavour to have students enter the professional schools with as
thorough preparation as possible led eventually to demand of every one
who undertook a professional course the complete college education. In
fact, this last state of development is already reached in the best
institutions of America. For instance, in Harvard and in Johns Hopkins,
the diploma of a four years’ college course is demanded for entrance
into the legal, medical, or theological faculty. But in popular opinion
the dividing line between common and superior education is still the
line between school and college, and not, as in Germany, between liberal
and technical institutions of learning. One who has successfully passed
through college becomes a graduate, a gentleman of distinction; he has
the degree of bachelor of arts, and those who have this degree are
understood to have had a higher education.
This whole complex of relations is reflected within the college itself.
It is supposed to be a four years’ course which comes after the high
school, and we have seen that the high school itself has no fixed
standard of instruction. The small prairie college may be no better than
the Tertia or Sekunda of a German Realschule, while the large and
influential colleges are certainly not at all to be compared simply with
German schools, but rather with the German Prima of a Gymnasium,
together with the first two or three semesters in the philosophical
faculty of a university. Between these extremes there is a long, sliding
scale, represented by over six hundred colleges. We must now bear in
mind that the college was meant to be the higher school for the general
cultivation of gentlemen. Of course, from the outset this idealistic
demand was not free from utilitarian considerations; the same
instruction could well be utilized as the most appropriate practical
training of the school-teacher, and if so, the college becomes
secondarily a sort of technical school for pedagogues. But, then, in the
same way as the entrance into legal and medical faculties was gradually
made more difficult, until now the best of these schools demand
collegiate preparation, so also did the training school for teachers
necessarily become of more and more professional character, until it
gradually quite outgrew the college. The culmination is a philosophical
faculty which, from its side, presupposes the college, and which,
therefore, takes the student about where a German student enters his
fourth semester—a technical school for specialized critical science
laying main stress on seminaries, laboratories, and lectures for
advanced students. Such a continuation of the college study beyond the
time of college—that is, for those who have been graduated from
college—is called a graduate school, and its goal is the degree of
doctor of philosophy. The graduate school is in this way parallel with
the law, medical, or divinity school, which likewise presuppose that
their students have been graduated from college.
The utilitarian element inevitably affects the college from another
side. A college of the higher type will not be a school with a rigid
curriculum, but will adapt itself more or less to the individuality of
its students. If it is really to give the most it can, it must, at least
during the last years of the college course, be somewhat like a
philosophical faculty, and allow some selection among the various
studies:—so that every man can best perfect his peculiar talent and can
satisfy his inclinations for one or other sort of learning. So soon,
now, as such academic freedom has been instituted, it is very liable to
be used for utilitarian purposes. The future doctor and the future
lawyer in their election of college studies will have the professional
school already in mind, and will be preparing themselves for their
professional studies. The lawyer will probably study more history, the
doctor will study biology, the theologian languages, the future
manufacturer may study physics, the banker political economy, and the
politician will take up government. And so the ideal training school for
gentlemen will not be merely a place for liberal education, but at the
same time will provide its own sort of untechnical professional
training.
Inasmuch as everything really technical is still excluded, and the
majority of college students even to-day come for nothing more than a
liberal education, it remains true that the college is first of all a
place for the development and refinement of personal character; a place
in which the young American spends the richest and happiest years of his
life, where he forms his friendships and intellectual preferences which
are to last throughout his life, and where the narrow confines of school
life are outgrown and the confines of professional education not yet
begun; where, in short, everything is broad and free and sunny. For the
American the attraction of academic life is wholly centred in the
college; the college student is the only one who lives the true student
life. Those who study in the four professional faculties are comparable
rather to the German medical students of the last clinical
semesters—sedate, semi-professional men. The college is the soul of the
university. The college is to-day, more than ever, the soul of the whole
nation.
We have to mention one more factor, and we shall have brought together
all which are of prime importance. We have seen that the professional
and the collegiate schools had at the outset different points of view,
and were, in fact, entirely independent. It was inevitable that as they
developed they should come into closer and closer relations. The name of
the college remained during this development the general designation.
Special faculties have grouped themselves about the college, while a
common administration keeps them together. There are certain local
difficulties in this. According to the original idea, a college ought to
be in a small, rural, and attractively situated spot. The young man
should be removed from ordinary conditions; and as he goes to Jena,
Marburg, and Göttingen, so he should go to Princeton or New Haven, or
Palo Alto, in order to be away from large cities in a little academic
world which is inspired only by the glory of famous teachers and by the
youthful happiness of many student generations. A medical or law school,
on the other hand, belongs, according to American tradition, in some
large city, where there is a plenty of clinical material at hand, and
where great attorneys are in contact with the courts. It so happened
that the college, as it grew up into a complete university, was
especially favoured if it happened to be in the vicinity of a large
city, like Harvard College in Cambridge, which had all the attractions
of rural quiet and nevertheless was separated from the large city of
Boston only by the Charles River bridge. In later times, to be sure,
since the idyllic side of college life is everywhere on the wane, and
the outward equipment, especially of laboratories, libraries, etc., has
everywhere to grow, it is a noticeable advantage for even collegiate
prosperity to have the resources of a large city at hand. And,
therefore, the institutions in these cities, like New York, Baltimore,
Chicago, and San Francisco, develop more rapidly than many colleges
which were once famous but which lie in more isolated places.
At the head of the administration there is always a president, a man
whose functions are something between those of a Rektor and a
Kultus-Minister, most nearly, perhaps, comparable with a Kurator, and
yet much more independent, much more dictatorial. The direction of the
university is actually concentrated in his person, and the rise or fall
of the institution is in large measure dependent on his official
leadership. In olden times the president was almost always a theologian,
and at the same time was apt to be professor in moral philosophy. This
is true to-day of none but small country colleges, and even there the
Puritan tradition disappears as financial and administrative problems
come to be important. The large universities have lately come almost
always to place a professor of the philosophical faculty at their head.
Almost invariably these are men of liberal endowments. Mostly they are
men of wide outlook, and only such men are fit for these positions,
which belong to the most influential and important in the country. The
opinions of men like Eliot of Harvard, Hadley of Yale, Butler of
Columbia, Shurman of Cornell, Remsen of Johns Hopkins, Wheeler of
California, Harper of Chicago, Jordan of Leland Stanford, Wilson of
Princeton, and of many others, are respected and sought on all questions
of public life, even in matters extending far beyond education.
The university president is elected for a life term by the
administrative council—a deliberative body of men who, without
emoluments, serve the destinies of the university, and in a certain
sense are the congress of the university as compared with the president.
They confirm appointments, regulate expenditures, and theoretically
conduct all external business for the university, although practically
they follow in large part the recommendations of the faculties. The
teaching body is composed everywhere of professors, assistant
professors, and instructors. All these receive a fixed stipend. There
are no such things as private tuition fees, and unsalaried teachers,
like the German Privatdocenten, are virtually unknown. The instruction
consists, in general, of courses lasting through a year and not a
semester. The academic year begins, in most cases, at the end of
September and closes at the end of June.
During his four years’ college course the student prefers to remain true
to some one college. If this is a small institution, he is very apt, on
being graduated, to attend some higher institution. Even the students in
professional schools generally come back year after year to the same
school till they finish their studies. It is only in the graduate
school—that is, the German philosophical faculty—that migration after
the German manner has come in fashion; here, in fact, the student
frequently studies one year here and one year there, in order to hear
the best specialists in his science. Except in the state institutions of
the West, the student pays a round sum for the year; in the larger
institutions from one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars. In the
smaller colleges the four years’ course of study is almost wholly
prescribed, and only in the final year is there a certain freedom of
choice. The higher the college stands in the matter of scholarship, so
much the more its lecture programme approaches that of a university; and
in the foremost colleges the student is from the very beginning almost
entirely free in his selection of studies.
A freedom in electing between study and laziness is less known. The
student may elect his own lectures; he must, however, attend at least a
certain number of these, and must generally show in a semi-annual
examination that he has spent his time to some purpose. The examinations
at the end of the special courses are in the college substituted for a
final examination. Any man receives a degree who has passed the written
examinations in a certain number of courses. The examinations concern
not only what has actually been said in the lectures, but at the same
time try to bring out how much the student has learned outside in the
way of reading text-books and searching into literature. Originally the
students roomed in college buildings, but with the growth of these
institutions this factor of college life has declined. In the larger
universities the student is, in matters of his daily life, as free as
the German; but dwelling in college dormitories still remains the most
popular mode of living, since it lends a social attraction to academic
life.
To go over from this general plan to a more concrete presentation, we
may perhaps sketch briefly a picture of Harvard College, the oldest and
largest academy in the country. The colony of Massachusetts established
in 1636 a little college in the vicinity of the newly founded city of
Boston. The place was called Cambridge in commemoration of the English
college in which some of the colonists had received their education.
When in 1638 a young English minister, John Harvard, left this little
academy half his fortune, it was decided to name the college for its
first benefactor. The state had given £400, John Harvard about £800. The
school building was one little structure, the number of students was
very small, and there were a few clergymen for teachers. On the same
spot to-day stands Harvard University, like a little city within a city,
with fifty ample buildings, with 550 members of the teaching staff, over
five thousand students, with a regular annual budget of a million and a
half dollars, and in the enjoyment of bequests which add year by year
millions to its regular endowments.
This growth has been constant, outwardly and inwardly; and it has grown
in power and in freedom in a way that well befits the spirit of American
institutions. Since the colonial régime of the seventeenth century gave
to the new institution a deliberative body of seven men—the so-called
Corporation—this body has perpetuated itself without interruption down
to the present time by its own vote, and without changing any principle
of its constitution has developed the home of Puritanism into the
theatre of the freest investigation, and the school into a great
university of the world.