THE CRITICAL PERIOD FOR THE AMERICAN COLLEGE

Reprinted from the Educational Review of February, 1910

The history of the American college for two centuries and a half from its founding is the story of steady evolution, growing into and adapting itself to the life of the nation, without violent shock or radical change in any particular phase. It was the cap-stone of the educational system, and so the record of higher education in the country during that time considers little but the colleges. Then began the changes whose effects have become so marked. The professional schools became post-graduate schools, technological schools were established, and the German university course was introduced and added as a graduate School to the American university. All this increased the years necessary to many men for preparation for work. Various methods were devised and are being agitated with increasing insistence, looking toward the introduction of men to their work at an earlier age, and these propositions invariably rest ultimately upon vital modification of the college. It is evident that the acceptance or rejection of the plans proposed will be determined in the near future, and it can not be doubted that the outcome will depend upon the efficiency of the American college in its present form to meet the needs of our national life, and the ability of the college to produce men to perpetuate itself. The present may well be called, then, the critical period for the American college.

The last quarter century has seen not only a striking increase in the number of students in attendance at all of the older institutions of higher education, but also an expansion almost beyond belief in the younger institutions. Moreover, not infrequently, here or there, in Mr. Corbin's phrase, "a university by enchantment" has arisen and assumed its large responsibility. Not only is the number of men enrolled in all of these greater than ever before, but also throughout the country a larger proportion of young men are going on in education to the higher reaches than at any previous time. The columns of the press attest the public interest in higher learning, and verification abounds of the recent utterance of Life that "the interest in colleges in this country must far exceed any concern in institutions of learning that the world has ever known before."

Within a comparatively brief period new factors have entered, and changes have taken place that vitally affect the whole structure of learning up from the foundations. Great educational trusts have been formed, like the Carnegie Foundation, which modify while they benefit; and the contingency is not to be lightly ignored that another quarter century will show that, to the extent to which aid has been welcomed, individuality has been sacrificed. Meanwhile, administrations are changing with a rapidity which will, before long, bring into the leadership in education a group of men outnumbering those experienced in the service,—a group whose policies are yet to be shaped, and whose powers are yet to be tried. To disregard the fact that a transition period is upon the world of education is to be blind, but to regard it with anxious thought, unfortunately is not to see the end.

The right to preservation of any particular type of institution is one of which proof is going to be required. The public interest is not simply curiosity; the educational system of the country is subject to intelligent scrutiny as never before. And the determination of leaders in education is becoming constantly more fixed upon defining efficiency and upon finding methods to increase efficiency. The two questions which must be answered by any given educational establishment are, "Ought the type to be preserved?" and "Can the type be preserved?" and to the extent to which the problem is understood and weighed by the different factors concerned—administrations, faculties, and alumni—to that extent will the finding of the correct answers be facilitated.

Throughout the land, everywhere there are colleges. These take men when they have completed four years of preparatory work in the high school, or its equivalent, at about eighteen years of age, and offer to them a four-years' course of study within which they may specialize to the extent of preparation for the professional schools and the graduate schools, or within which they may roam with some freedom in search of general culture. Mr. Flexner's description of the elective system, "It impoverishes and isolates by excessive and premature specialization where it does not waste by aimless dispersion"—points to a danger, but not of necessity to a fact. Not all men, or even a majority of men in the colleges, fall into either of these alternatives. Needless to say, the elasticity of a curriculum which will allow these options can hardly prevent some insistent men from finding ease. This is incidental to the system, but it is not an indictment of it, so long as the college turns men out at the end of four years better qualified to contribute to life and to derive benefit from life than would have been the case after four years spent otherwise.

Of course, the place of the college in the educational system requires that, whatever its large mission, it shall carefully guard the interests of those who are seeking, in the general training of the college, preparation for the special training of the university. Only in this way can the rights of those who are to become seekers of the truth be conserved.

But there is a striking unanimity among American college presidents in putting emphasis upon the fact that a vital function of the college is to prepare for citizenship. Citizenship demands not only intellectual power, but also social force. If we accept this, we come at once to the fact, heretical as it sounds, that in the college, unlike the technical school, the professional school, or the vocational school, the content of the curriculum is not an all-important factor. The courses of study in the American colleges have radically changed from time to time, but the products of the colleges have not been unlike in one era and another. The environment in which the studying is done is the vital thing—but the environment is dependent on the method of the curriculum, though not upon its content. College life has been at all times enough a microcosm to put its stamp upon college men and to introduce them into the social life of the nation at an advantage. Admittedly, the curriculum should be adapted to producing the intellect of fiber and high potentiality, but its requirements should not be so drastic as to deny all else. Naturally, the poise is delicate here.

The vice-president of one of our great railroad systems has said recently, "I may say this: that generally the men who will direct big enterprises of the future are the men in college today. While not all of them, of course, will rise above mediocre positions, some of them will bring to the big tasks of railroading the trained minds and the knowledge which the problems of the business demand. He who hasn't the proper training for such big work has no chance at all. It's far harder today for a man to rise from the section gang or train crew to the presidency of a railroad than it used to be. I myself would send my son to college, if only for the environment and the associations he would get there."

But a great danger to the college lies in the failure of some graduates and many undergraduates to understand that environment implies something surrounded, that it necessitates something as a center,—in college life the curriculum. If the diversions of undergraduate life are allowed to encroach beyond the point of subordination, college life loses its distinction and becomes the atmosphere of athletic professionalism, the dilettanteism of the idle, or the trifling converse of the club. Thus training is ignored and discursiveness is bred, conditions under which our colleges can not stand and ought not to stand. The curriculum, therefore, assumes at once its large importance to the lover of the college. It demands the most full and careful supervision from those whose responsibility it is, and it requires the thoroughgoing respect of all others. Only through this door can admission to college environment, to college life, be gained.

The social force in education is found in the colleges. The American university of first rank has not found any satisfactory substitute for the social life of the college, though this has been earnestly sought. For instance, in endowed universities of power, and in state universities of high prestige, halls have been projected and built at large expense for social headquarters, that social life might be acquired. But in spite of all things, the spontaneity of college life is lacking, and that it is lacking is acknowledged to be a defect.

It means much to be a Harvard man, because of the tremendous social force of Harvard College, and so cases might be multiplied. The graduate schools or professional schools of many a university force heartiest admiration, but a graduate of Yale, Princeton or Dartmouth studying in the schools of Cambridge or New York could not be led to call himself a Harvard man or a Columbia man, despite the pride that an undergraduate at either college justly feels in the title. The schools of the universities appeal to the head, but the heart is influenced in the colleges. So long as sentiment is acknowledged of value, so long as the inculcation of ideals is vital, for such time must the college be maintained for the sake of scholarship no less than for the sake of citizenship.

But in what form shall it be maintained? Some say that it must be radically changed, that its last two years must be given over to the graduate schools and professional schools, and that its first two years shall be taken from the burden of the preparatory school, and thus the youth shall enter college at sixteen instead of eighteen. But such a solution ignores and is unfair to the large per cent of men who receive in colleges their final training, preliminary to lifework. Is it, moreover, necessary or likely? May the college not be, as it aims now to be, a training to teach. man how to live in appreciation of those things around him—to find in what he sees, what he hears, what he reads, or what he thinks, contentment? Shall the graduate, from knowledge of the world's accomplishments through ages gone, be equipped to meet problems to come? Shall he take his place as a citizen of the world with the knowledge of culture within him, as the graduate of the medical school has knowledge of anatomy, or the engineer has knowledge of mathematics? If so, the college will be maintained, as now, a course paralleling , the courses of technological and vocational schools, and giving to many men the final training for life, while at the same time for many more it will furnish the basis of culture to which graduate or professional training shall be added. Quotation has been made earlier from Vice-president T. E. Byrnes of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad, and these further words are his:

"I think most young men of today are rushed through their schooling and then out into the world. The older boy may not learn any more rapidly than the younger, but he digests his knowledge better.

"For the executive positions which railroading has to offer to young men, broad training is absolutely required. I think it is even better than technical training, for a technical man is too often interested in his own particular branch, and in railroading there is more than one branch. It must be the man who can grasp all branches who rises to executive positions."

The university courses can not be as those of the college. The university may afford a knowledge of ethical standards, but ideals are more the part of the college; the science may be acquired in the former, but the art belongs particularly to the latter. Intuitions of right are the surest foundations of righteousness, and the possibility of implanting these is especially the part of the college. The responsibility of the college, which takes the youth in his adolescence and carries him through to the threshhold of manhood, is only surpassed by its opportunity. Its distinctive function is to train for citizenship, and for this end there it nothing else so well adapted; and for this end it would not be so well adapted in any other form yet suggested.

What is the reason, then, for apprehension? Why the question concerning the college: can the type be preserved ? Alumni are loyal beyond precedent even; trustees have never been more solicitous to faithfully discharge their trusts; presidents are sought and selected by eyes keen to find men of the rarest promise. The answer is that the danger to the perpetuity of the college lies in the necessities under which men receive their training for college teaching.

The American college is a development of the arts course, with its roots reaching back into the English college, and its purpose has been, from the beginning, to give general training. Upon the arts course, thus developed, there was superimposed, about thirty years ago, the graduate school, modeled closely after the German university, and subject to the like spirit, that of special training. The atmosphere of the college and the atmosphere of the university have little resemblance one to the other, and they can not well have, for they are established for unlike ends.

It is not unjust that the man who is to teach in the college should be required to spend time in special preparation, for that is demanded for any of the professions. From a .reservoir of knowledge acquired in advanced study, he should be able in the classroom to give to the exceptional student stimulus to fulfil his mission, as well as to maintain his own inspiration for contact with those less alert or less mature. Hence, it has come about that he who would teach must have the token of graduate work. Inasmuch as the doctorate of philosophy requires the most exacting work, the Ph.D. degree has therefore come to be the preferable token. Thus the process has developed by which the college teacher of the present day becomes eligible to his position. We therefore have the anomaly of a degree, which is in no sense a college teacher's degree, being sought almost exclusively as a basis for college teaching. In operation the course leading to the doctorate of philosophy at the present time is as much a professional course as the law course or the medical, yet it is without adaptation to the professional needs.

The change in the manner of men in college professorships a generation ago and now is emphasized in the columns of every paper .and magazine which comments upon educational subjects. In colleges, also, colleagues see the tendencies in others to which they are blind in themselves. The phonologist deplores the passing of the botanist who taught the beauty of the realms of nature, replaced by one who studies under a microscope the cross-section of a stem; while the biologist prefers that the literatures of Greece and Rome shall be presented in all their grandeur, rather than that the emphasis shall be put on obsolete roots.

Speaking of the teacher in the college of former days, President Pritchett says, in the Atlantic Monthly for December, 1908:

The old time college teacher was a man who had, above all else, intellectual enthusiasm and intellectual sympathy; his learning touched many fields, and all with a sympathetic and friendly spirit; and his work consisted largely of bringing into the lives, and into the intellectual appreciation of his students his own sense of learning and of civilization and of social relations. For this work there was needed, not primarily a man of re search, but a man of large comprehension of wide interests, of keen sympathies, and of discriminating touch. . . . .

I am the last man to wish the spirit of research dulled. We need in our universities above all else, the nurture of this spirit. What I wish to emphasize is this: the college and the university stand for essentially different purposes. These distinctions are almost lost sight of in the confusion of our educational organization. Research is a word to conjure with, but in the last two decades more sins have been committed in its name against good teaching than we are likely to atone for in the next generation. We must, if we are to retain the college as a place for general culture, and the university as a place for the promotion of scholarly research and for professional training, honor the college teacher for hi own work's sake, and honor no less the investigator in his own field.

The columns of the number of Science for November 27, 1908, contain words to the same effect;

A general survey of the institutions of learing, large and small, throughout the land, leads to the painful conclusion that our faculties no longer, as they once did present groups of cultivated men. The word "culture" has fallen into disrepute in our day; but the cultivated man, while we no longer aim to produce him, demands and receives our respect and admiration wherever he is found It would not be difficult to cite a few notably survivals of the type here and there, The rarity of teachers of this kind in our college and university faculties today will be readily admitted by all who have any intimate knowledge of the matter. Yet the desirability of having such as instructors of undergraduate students is keenly felt by those who have to choose a college for their sons. The .function of the undergraduate course is precisely to give the student what he will not get when as a graduate he enters the special field of his life work, therefore the undergraduate course should give the student a general enrichment of lite, which is exactly what we mean by estivation.

But we are content at present that the higest product of our educational system should be the specialist; a man usually thoroughly conversant with one small branch of and fairly well acquainted with some allied subjects, but often ignorant in every other field of human interest, without ideas ot his own in any field but his own, and dead to everything that can be classed as the amenities of life—the arts, literature, human society.

Probably it is not fair to let this quotation stand as a picture of the usual faculty member of the present day. Many men rise to the needs of the positions which they occupy, and the man of general culture, of broad sympathies, and of inspiring teaching ability is still found in the college, and almost invariably, it may be added, in the positions of influence. Such men, though, are as they are in spite of their training rather than be cause of it, and are the exceptions and not the rule.

Any criticism of .the results of the course leading to the doctorate of philosophy from one not holding the degree is considered to be presumptuous, in general, by those who hold it, but "by then fruits ye shall know them" has long precedent for being considered a basis of judgment, and he would be a bold lover of argument who would contend that the results have justified the situation in which the doctorate of philosophy, good as it is for its own purposes, stands as the "open, sesame" to position as a college teacher. The possession of the degree has the two great advantages of certifying to three years of advanced study, and of indicating a capacity for close and accurate work and the consequent discipline. It has, for colleges, advantages that it ignores breadth of knowledge while it seeks depth, it disregards the general in its search for the particular, it forms the habit of acquisition of knowledge without regard to its dissemination, and it makes for research rather than for culture. The characteristics of the degree have great value in the proper place. The fountains of knowledge would be dry and inspiration would be nil, were it not for the men who have lived and worked, imbued with the spirit of research; and it is from the results of their labors that we get much of the raw material from which culture is made. But the training which fits men for accomplishment of such sort inevitably tends to make them impatient of the work and methods necessary to college teaching. President Seelye, in a recent report, speaks of tendencies in college faculties which may need repression:

One is the disposition on the part of those who have taken post graduate degrees in universities to employ unduly university methods in their instruction, and to overlook the difference in the maturity of mind and the end to be sought, between undergraduates in colleges and those pursuing graduate courses in universities.

A great defect, already evident, in bringing the university methods into the college is that the college spirit of obedience to the curriculum is destroyed without transplanting the university spirit of enthusiasm for work. The college must preserve the inviolability of a worthy curriculum, whether from the negligence of graduates or from the neutralizing modifications of university processes. It can not be argued that the college should be untouched by the university influence, or that no men of Ph.D. training should be numbered among its teachers. This would be folly. But it is a fair and a necessary contention that the university should not dictate the life of the college.

The opportunity of the faculty for influence upon the college is not excelled. They are in constant contact with the student-body, and they exercise a perpetual oversight with regard to the curriculum. When they choose to have it so, their social prestige with the undergraduates is large. It becomes, therefore, a matter of vital concern as to the principal sources of supply from which instructors are to be sought.

The hope has frequently been expressed that our universities would institute courses more adapted to fitting men to teach than is the doctorate of philosophy, but it has not been done. It is not probable that the requirements for this degree could be sufficiently altered to produce the desired results without sacrificing too much of the spirit of research and investigation, for which the degree ought to stand. The suggestion has been made that the colleges should draw their teachers from the secondary schools, but obvious objections are evident at once to this. Is it, then, possible for the colleges to train their own teachers? The misfortune of in-breeding would then arise, and steps would necessarily be taken to offset it, but the increasing danger to the principles of collegiate training, through university influences, would be eliminated. It would be a far preferable solution if some great university would make provision for training for college teaching. Perhaps none could do it as well as Princeton with the spirit of the college strong within her, and the resources of her preceptorial system at hand. In the absence of such a provision elsewhere, some college of strength must do it. It will be an undertaking of great cost, and one requiring large administrative perspicacity. It will necessitate the development of the college which undertakes it to the rank of a collegiate university. But for the perpetuity of the type these things may become imperative, and if so, the institution in which the project is undertaken will be reduced to the paradoxical situation that in order to avoid becoming a university by remaining a college, it will remain a college by becoming a university.