The Chautauqua University, (projected several years ago), was
incorporated by act of the Legislature of the State of New York in
the spring of 1883. The section of the act giving its object reads as
follows: “The leading object of said corporation shall be to promote
liberal and practical education, especially among the masses of the
people; to teach the sciences, arts, languages and literature; to prepare
its patrons for their several pursuits and professions in life, and to
fit them for the duties which devolve upon them as members of society;
such instruction to embrace all departments of culture which the board of
trustees may deem useful and proper.” In further elucidation of the idea,
the Chancellor of the University, Rev. J. H. Vincent, D.D., has said: The
design of The Chautauqua University is to aid the following persons in
the acquisition of a liberal and practical education: (1) Worthy young
people not able to go to college; (2) those who, having begun a college
course, have been compelled to abandon it by circumstances beyond their
control; (3) a class of more mature men and women who, at the maximum of
their mental power, desire to make amends for the educational omissions
of the earlier years.
The wisdom of the men who have devised this plan is apparent to any
observer. The proportion of those who are able to reap the advantages
of a college education is small, and of these there are two distinctly
marked classes. First, are those who, from choice and natural taste,
with means to gratify that taste, seek a higher education, giving to
the pursuit an earnest and untiring devotion. From this class come the
scholars, professors and specialists of the hour. Second, are those who
are put within the sphere of college training by external influences,
and who are carried to the completion of their prescribed duties only
under authority. Outside of the small number embraced in these two
classes is the vast multitude of our citizens—elderly men, in active
life, who look backward with regret to the unimproved opportunities of
early days; middle aged men, longing to drink at the fountain of eternal
youth which sends forth its delightsome streams through the fields of
knowledge; young men, with aspirations and throbbings of conscious power
if only opportunity can be found to give their endowments play; boys
on farms, behind counters and in shops, who look with half concealed
envy at their more fortunate play-fellows of the earlier years, who are
in school, academy or college, while for them, daily toil with scanty
remuneration is the price of support for daily life; matrons sighing
over life’s burdens, and mourning over the fate which has shut to them
the doors of education; young women, whose fingers, guided by a gifted
brain, might have wrought marvels in art if only they had been taught
how; and who long even yet to know—only to know. Of all such the world
is full, and they can not go to college. Again must “Mahomet go to the
mountain.” As they can not go to the university, say the incorporators
of this Chautauqua University, the university shall go to them. We will
make a people’s university which shall cover the widest possible scheme
of study. We will make it eclectic, so that each seeker for knowledge
can work in lines best suited to his own endowments. We will make it
possible for the man who has been taken out of his college course before
its completion, to finish it to his own satisfaction, in his own way, and
in the station where Providence has placed him. We will enter every open
door with our fireside college. We will make no restriction as to age or
sex. We will make no limitation as to the time occupied in the completion
of the work which we demand. We will make a Universal University.
The Chautauqua University thus outlined is as an institution _unique_.
Its local habitation is an office in the city of Plainfield, New Jersey.
Its name is as given above. New England mountain ranges, the fertile
hills and valleys of the Middle States, the prairies, the cañons and
ranches of the broad West and the wide-spreading plantations of the
South, are its campus. Its dormitories are the homes of the land; its
chapel the Church of Christ, in its most catholic spirit and form; its
curriculum is as wide and comprehensive as are the fields of knowledge;
its text-books are standards, whether in the department of classics,
ancient or modern, mathematics or science, art, or the humanities; its
chairs are filled by specialists, men of ability in their respective
realms; its library is the most magnificent in the wide world, being
the aggregate of all the books of all the homes out of which our
students shall come, and all public and private libraries to which they
have access. Its examinations will be as thorough, rigid, critical
and impartial as the severest scholarship can wish. Its diploma will
be awarded only after a successful passing of all the examinations
prescribed, and will be a well-earned guerdon of conscientious labor—a
diploma which will be an honor to its holder, and will command the
respect of even the highest of the already established universities.
Such is the non-resident Chautauqua University; a university complete in
all its purposes, perfect in its plan of organization, its constituency
the largest in the world, its dome the o’erarching blue, its center
Chautauqua, the grandest educational outgrowth of the century. The
means by which advancement in the Chautauqua University shall be
attained is correspondence. This idea, though not entirely new, nor
confined exclusively to Chautauqua, is yet recent enough in its American
adaptations, to come as a novelty to the majority of those who will
become students in this university, and will through university channels
achieve a practical realization, which will make Chautauqua the home
of its adoption. This correspondence presupposes earnest, unflagging,
indefatigable study. The class-room finds its chief work to be the
testing of results—the detection of false methods of investigation; the
correction of faulty application of principles, and the stimulation to
better efforts in the light of better information.
The part thus assigned to the class-room can be performed with equal
worth by the correspondence system, and the only proviso for the largest
success is in the regular, systematic, daily devotion to study of a
fixed portion of time, and such a student, though he may never look
into his teacher’s face, may become in the lines which he has chosen as
successful and eminent as his more fortunate neighbor, whose privilege
it may be to sit day by day in the presence of the same teacher in his
distant college class-room. The means by which this correspondence and
inter-communication is to be accomplished is the central office of the
University at Plainfield, N. J. Students desiring to avail themselves of
its privileges, upon the simple stating of the fact by letter addressed
to The Chautauqua University, will receive full details of the courses
of study, the books required, the essential particulars of the workings
of the institution, and all information necessary to matriculation. When
the student has been once fully entered in the University course he is
put into communication with one or more professors, for the beginning of
his work. From that time his progress will depend solely upon the nature
of his own efforts. The department professor will furnish directions
for study, with instructions how to use the required books, outline
memoranda which shall be filled and returned to the professor, and lesson
papers for occasional and free interchange, by which an exact record of
progress can be obtained.
The office of the University will be in charge of a registrar, part of
whose duty shall be to keep an accurate knowledge of the advancement and
proficiency of each student, to develop the university spirit among the
students, and to bring the different departments into harmonious and
concurrent relations.
What we have written will, of necessity, come under the eye of every
member of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle. To each of
you we appeal. Give to this preliminary statement as wide a currency as
possible. Representatives of the classes we have described are in every
community where the C. L. S. C. exists. Bring this article to the notice
of such. Let the Chautauqua spirit, to which you are debtor, through you
be communicated to those around you, and thereby aid in the work of a
broader and better culture for the nation.
R. S. HOLMES,
Registrar Chautauqua University.
PLAINFIELD, N. J., September, 1884.