Marischal College

“ Marischal College is a stately modern building, having been rebuilt in 1836–1841, and greatly extended several years later at a cost of £100,000. The additions to the buildings opened by King Edward VII. in 1906 have been already mentioned. The beautiful Mitchell Tower is so named from the benefactor (Dr Charles Mitchell) who provided the splendid graduation hall. The opening of this tower in 1895 signalized the commemoration of the four hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the university. The University Library comprises nearly 100,000 books. ”

“ In 1833 he was elected professor of chemistry in Marischal College and University, Aberdeen, after a competitive examination. He occupied the chair until the fusion of the Marischal College and University with King's College and University in 1860, when he was pensioned ”

“ The impressions gained during his residence at Faraoun are apparent in the descriptive passages of his best and most celebrated poem, written many years afterwards, the 'Minstrel.' With a view to entering the church he returned during the winter to the Marischal College, in order to attend some divinity lectures. In 1758 he was appointed to a vacant mastership at the grammar school of Aberdeen; and two years afterwards, much to his own surprise, was raised, by the influence of a powerful friend, to the chair of moral philosophy and logic in the Marischal College. ”

“ Within twenty years every state in the Union had taken advantage of this splendid endowment, either to found a new state university which would comply with the requirements as regards courses of instruction or to establish an agricultural college as an independent institution, or in connection with some already existing institution. Not only do some of the finest state universities like those of California, Illinois, and Minnesota owe their origins to the Morrill Act, but others owe to it their real beginnings as institutions of collegiate grade. ”

“ Dr Rashdall, in his learned work, tells us that it is used by medieval writers in addressing "all faithful Christian people," and he quotes an instance in which Pisan captives at Genoa in the end of the thirteenth century formed themselves into a "Universitas carceratorum." The word "College" affords us no further enlightenment. It, too, means literally a community or association, and, unlike the sister term University, it has never become restricted to a scholastic association. The Senators of the "College of Justice" are the judges of the Supreme Court in Scotland. ”

“ At the present time, and for years past, the noble University Endowment is virtually expended by parties directly or indirectly connected with but one college; and the scholarships and prizes, the honors and degrees conferred, are virtually the rewards and praises bestowed by professors upon their own students, and not the doings and decisions of a body wholly unconnected with the college. ”

“ It is impossible to estimate the indebtedness of popular to collegiate education. There is an intimate and vital relation between the college and the public schools, which differ not in kind, but only in the degree of instruction. "The success and usefulness of common schools," says Professor W. S. Tyler, "is exactly proportioned to the popularity and prosperity of the colleges, and whatever is done for or against the one is sure to react, with equal force and similar results, upon the other." ”

“ Matriculation in the University, not the taking of a degree in it, introduces one into the society of the educated with its appellative "intellectual" corresponding to our "high-brow" rather than to our "college grad." Joining the membership of a student organization marks the entrance into that large class of "intellectuals." And once you join such an organization you are a member ever after. In Germany, in fact, nobody graduates from a university in the same sense that we do. There the taking of a degree is merely an episode. ”

“ One of the gravest obstacles in the way of higher education arises, I think, from our colleges themselves. It is this: our colleges are too numerous. With the exception of some boys from Spanish America, we receive no pupils from other countries. At home, the number of Catholics who can afford a college education for their children is limited. Supposing, then, all our colleges patronized, it is impossible that any of them should reach a respectable figure in the number of its attending pupils. ”

“ We submit, therefore, that justice and the best interests of liberal education require the several colleges of the country to be placed upon equal footing according to their works. We ask nothing for Victoria College which we do not ask for every collegiate institution in Upper Canada upon the same terms. ”

“ After five years of preparation, of painful and strenuous effort, this institution takes a step in advance. The idea of education has taken a higher form of development the academy has become the college." Upon President Marsh personally fell most of the work. He had to outline the policies for the future, to map out the courses of study, set the proper standards for a college education, educate public opinion to appreciate and accept such standards, provide funds for an enlarged work, and do most of the advanced teaching himself. ”

“ In any further reorganisation of university and higher education it is earnestly to be hoped that the Day Technical College will find its rightful place as an integral part of the University, and that the latter may realise that her function is to further and extend the bounds of knowledge in order that practice in every sphere of life may be rendered more efficient. ”

“ The college—the university as it in time came to be—early broadened its scope, but it has from the first continued to aim at the needs of those unable to secure education without such help as, through its methods, it affords.
It was chartered in 1888, at which time its numbers had reached almost six hundred, and it has ever since had a constant flood of applicants. [Pg 137] "It has demonstrated," as Dr. Conwell puts it, "that those who work for a living have time for study." ”

“ Throughout our school years, we were always keenly conscious of the growing development of Rockford Seminary into a college. The opportunity for our Alma Mater to take her place in the new movement of full college education for women filled us with enthusiasm, and it became a driving ambition with the undergraduates to share in this new and glorious undertaking. We gravely decided that it was important that some of the students should be ready to receive the bachelor's degree the very first moment that the charter of the school should secure the right to confer it. ”

“ These smaller colleges fulfil a special mission, therefore, and they do their best when they do not try to seem more than they really are. There was the danger that the colleges would think themselves improved by introducing some fragments of research work into their curriculum, and so spoiling a good humanitarian college by offering a bad imitation of a university. ”

“ Conwell, the father of Temple College and who in years to come will be spoken of as the father of Temple University, said yesterday:
"'It will be a university for busy people, the same as the college has been a college for busy people. Our institution reaches and benefits a class—in some respects the greatest class—of persons who want to study and enlarge their education, but cannot attend the other universities and colleges for financial reasons and because of their business. ”

“ In this respect, in preventing waste, the college or tutorial system has, no doubt, many advantages, but the young Prince saw very clearly that what is called in Germany academic freedom cannot be touched, that the universities could not be changed into schools, if for no other reason, because it would be impossible to find the necessary funds to inaugurate the college system by the side of the professorial system. ”

“ Such ambitions need not be in conflict, but should be in harmony, the influence of the college being strengthened through its graduates. Such a gathering together of educational forces will, I would fain believe, raise this University to a far higher sphere of usefulness than that which it now occupies—confer on it uniqueness and individuality, and tend to give to the Professors of its colleges University rank. It needs the friction of mind against mind to kindle the heat which generates thought ”

“ While the authorities have turned their attention primarily to the undergraduate division and its numerical increase, they have at the same time, and largely with the same end in view, endeavoured to give it more of the character of a "gentleman's college", that is to say, an establishment for the cultivation of the graces of gentility and a suitable place of residence for young men of spendthrift habits. ”

“ The multiplication of such institutions, the increase in number of students, and the confusion of professional and trade schools have robbed the familiar phrases of their meanings. To a far greater degree than we realize, the liberal arts and sciences have themselves disappeared and what remains of them has been confused in the minds of administrators and teachers as well as in the minds of the people, all of whom now need the education that the liberal college should provide. ”

“ The institution struggled on, but in 1856–7 some of its most advanced students left it to go to the better endowed eastern colleges. This led the trustees and president to make a special effort, and Marsh went to New York to secure further aid, leaving the university department in the charge of Rev. H. Lyman, professor of mathematics, who associated with him Rev. C. Eells. The help received from the college society and others in the east, enabled the university to improve the general régime of the university. ”

“ The members of the University are divided into those who are on the foundation and those who are not. Those on the foundation are the dean, president, master, warden, according to the charter of the College; the fellows, scholars, called demies at Magdalene, and post-masters at Merton; chaplains, bible-clerks, servitors, at Christchurch and Jesus. The qualifications for these advantages vary; but leading colleges—Oriel and Balliol—have set an example likely to be followed of throwing fellowships and scholarships open to the competition of the whole university, so that the best man may win. ”

“ President Foster of Reed College, Oregon, puts it thus: "It is possible to graduate from almost any college without an idea in one's head." Professor Wenley, Head of the Department of Philosophy in Michigan University, had about the same thought when he gave me his original definition of an American college as "A so-called institution of higher learning whose chief accomplishment is the inoculation of innocent youth against education." ”

“ This was the theory of the middle-age university and the design of collegiate foundations in their origin. Time and circumstances have brought about a total change. The colleges no longer promote the researches of science, or direct professional study. Here and there college walls may shelter an occasional student, but not in larger proportions than may be found in private life. Elementary teaching of youths under twenty is now the only function performed by the university, and almost the only object of college endowments. ”

“ And indeed it is quite certain that, unless this bill, or some similar bill, be passed, a new college will soon be founded and endowed with that munificence of which the history of the Free Church furnishes so many examples. From the day on which such an university arises, the old universities must decline. Now, they are practically national, and not sectarian, institutions. And yet, even now, the emoluments of a professorship are so much smaller than those which ability and industry can obtain in other ways, that it is difficult to find eminent men to fill the chairs. ”

“ Much of the cultural life of Lancaster has been influenced by its educational institutions. Franklin and Marshall College, established in 1787, is one of the outstanding liberal arts colleges in the East, and provides many educational opportunities to the community in addition to its regular program of studies. Lectures, musical programs, and the facilities of the North Museum and Planetarium are available for the public. Other colleges in the area include Millersville State College, one of the state’s finest teacher training institutions ”

“ These men founded a college. Here is Maurice’s conception of a college, as given by Llewelyn Davies: ‘The name College had a significance on which Maurice loved to dwell.... A college was an association of teachers and learners; and that was what Maurice desired the Working Men’s College to be. It was not to be an institution to which the uneducated might resort, to pick up knowledge which might be of pecuniary benefit to them. The idea of fellowship was to run through all its work; every teacher was to assume that he might learn as well as teach ”

“ But 'the knowing of men by name,' the care for their personal lives and characters, must be the essential element in the new college course, as it was in the old. And the college function of the university must not be despised or belittled. Because Germany has no colleges, because her students go directly from the high school at home to the professional school or the university, some have urged the abandonment by the American university of this primal function of general culture. ”

“ It should be recalled that it was for the purpose of introducing and assimilating the laboratory that Eliot of Harvard opened the liberal college to the elective system. The hope was that the college would provide the conditions and the techniques for the liberalizing and humanizing of science. The present disorganization of our colleges is evidence that the problem is not yet solved. It is of utmost importance that it be solved. ”