New York University

“ I have for a number of years past been connected with the University of the city of New-York, first as a resident graduate and lately as the Professor of a modern language, and have ever since my connection with the institution resided in the building on Washington Square, spending most of my time in authorship and instruction in a room, which for several years I have occupied for that purpose. ”

“ New York's whole system of higher professional and technical education rests on the supervision of education in high schools and academies by the university. It has stimulated the improvement of commercial education and of business schools. ”

“ The courses in pure science of the New York University include undergraduate, graduate, and summer courses in mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, and biology, with laboratory privileges and provision for special students and independent work in chemistry. ”

“ In a three-day-campaign in New York, the industrial service movement was presented to selected classes of students at Columbia, New York University, and the College of the City of New York, with the result that 280 students signified their hearty interest and 125 were willing to undertake immediate work. In a single year 165 undergraduates engaged in industrial service in New York city, and the movement has become of such importance that a secretary gives all his time to it. ”

“ The width of outlook which I have noted as characteristic of literary New York is deliberately aimed at in the university system, and most successfully attained. The average young man of parts turned out by an American university has a many-sided interest in, and comprehension of, European literature and the intellectual movement of the world, which may go far to compensate for his possible or even probable inexpertness in Greek aorists and Latin elegiacs. ”

“ Outside of this benefaction the college buildings were entirely paid for by the taxpayers of New York City.
The institution has no professional schools and no graduate department, but simply the arts and science course. In this it is in marked contrast to the State University. Two degrees are granted, each in accordance with the type of course chosen by the student, either Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science. The college also maintains a preparatory school, and night schools for teachers and others who cannot attend regular college classes. ”

“ An institution of this character, which embodies in its external impressiveness as well as in its work and aims civic duty and pride, represents the best ideals of modern civilization.
The College of the City of New York is maintained by the people of the city for the education of its young men, and is in some respects unparalleled in this country or elsewhere. Philadelphia and Baltimore have high schools of nearly college rank, and Cincinnati has a municipal university, and these four institutions represent a movement likely to become general throughout the country. ”

“ That so familiar circumstance, in America, of the completion of the good thing ironically and, as would often seem for the time, insuperably baffled, meets here one of its liveliest illustrations. It at all events helps to give meanwhile the mingled pitch of the whole concert that Columbia College (to sound the old and easier name) should have “moved up”—moved up twice, if I am not mistaken—to adorn with an ampler presence this very neighbourhood. It has taken New York to invent, for the thickening of classic shades, the “moving” University ”

“ Of collegiate institutions, Columbia college is the oldest in New York. It is finely situated on a square ornamented with majestic trees; and the standard of classical education here is very high. This institution possesses an estate valued at four hundred thousand dollars. In 1831, the University of New York was chartered; it is projected on the broad and liberal plan of the continental universities, and promises to be of great utility. Schools of all kinds are numerous; bible and missionary societies are numerous and well endowed. Literary and scientific institutions flourish. ”

“ In the attendance to the number of population the comparison is even more startling for those who have not thought at all of the Middle Ages as a time of wonderful educational facilities and opportunities. In the greater City of New York as we begin the Twentieth Century there are perhaps fifteen thousand students in attendance at educational institutions which have university privileges. ”

“ Some idea of the extension of university opportunities can be judged from the fact that, according to the best and most conservative statistics available, there were more students at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge to the population of the England of that day, than there are {280} to the population of even such an educationally well provided city as Greater New York in the present year of grace 1910. ”

“ The faculty is composed partly of the regular Columbia staff and partly of special professors, among whom are a number of women. The seniors attend certain courses in philosophy and science in the regular university classes, and all of these are open to post graduates. The University of New York, situated in and near the city, is co-educational in its post-graduate courses and in its Departments of Law, Pedagogy and Commerce. Its Law Department is celebrated for the prominent women it has graduated. Pratt Institute of Brooklyn is open to both sexes alike. ”

“ In 1829 seven prominent New Yorkers—bankers, merchants, and professional men—met to consider the establishing of a liberal university, designed to comprise a graduate division for the pursuit of advanced studies, and an undergraduate division devoted to classical and scientific courses. ”

“ The College of the City of New York, in view of what it has already accomplished and in view of the great population and wealth of the city, seems destined to take the lead in an educational advance likely to be as important for the next generation as the evolution of the state universities has been for the present generation. ”

“ I have had associated with me both kinds of young men, collegiate and non-collegiate, and I must confess that the ones who had a better knowledge of the practical part of life have been those who never saw the inside of a college and whose feet never stood upon a campus. College-bred men and men who never had college advantages have succeeded in about equal ratios. The men occupying the most important commercial positions in New York to-day are self-made, whose only education has come to them from contact with that greatest college of all, the business world. ”

“ Nearly every college has its distinctive feature, which balks classification. One might conclude, from the studiousness of the boys at the College of the City of New York, that large, free, urban universities are the usual resorts of serious-minded youth. ”

“ One of the most curious of these cases was that of a student, I am not sure but a graduate, of the University of Virginia, who claimed that geometers were in error in assuming that a line had no thickness. He published a school geometry based on his views, which received the endorsement of a well-known New York school official and, on the basis of this, was actually endorsed, or came very near being endorsed, as a text-book in the public schools of New York. ”

“ Having said so much of education in other cities, I will only observe, that in regard to common schools, New York is on a par with most of her rivals in this noble strife for superiority; but I must ask those who are interested in the subject to give me their attention while I enter into a few details connected with their admirable Free Academy. The object of this institution is to combine—under one system and under one roof—high school, academy, polytechnic, and college, and to furnish as good an education as can be obtained by passing through each of those places of instruction separately. ”

“ These three elements, represented by the bachelor's degree, the doctorate of philosophy and the professional degrees, are variously combined and developed in our different institutions; and this certainly gives great flexibility and possibilities to university development. The foundation of new universities—Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Stanford and Chicago—and the enlargement of the resources of private and state institutions have greatly favored progress and differentiation. We have no one kind of university, but many types, each seeking to work out its own salvation. ”

“ We should also explore innovative approaches being pursued here in New York City; innovations like Bard High School Early College and Medgar Evers College Preparatory School that are challenging students to complete high school and earn a free associate's degree or college credit in just four years. ”

“ THE COLLEGES OF NEW YORK. By Judson Newman Smith.
I.—Columbia College. While the highest prestige of age and renown attaches to those of our American universities that are located in lesser towns, the tendency of recent times seems to be rather toward the development of fully equipped educational institutions in the great urban centers of population. ”

“ Our colleges were, indeed, established early in the history of the settlements, New York having been a trading village of less than 15,000 inhabitants when 'a public lottery was authorized to raise money for the advancement of learning and towards the founding of a college.' The first president, Samuel Johnson, in the announcement issued in 1754, offered an ambitious if somewhat vague program of studies. ”

“ Just how this can be done is one of our most important modern problems. With the feeling that New York offers an unparalleled field for such activities the New York conference adopted a resolution calling upon the College of the City of New York to institute a series of experiments along this line, whose results should serve to guide other institutions toward the same goal of public service. ”

“ NEW-YORKERS are somewhat exercised over the question what to do with their college, a problem which it ought to be easier to solve, by remembering how they came by it. What on earth New York City wanted with a college, when there were two good ones already in the town, not half full of students, might be a perplexing inquiry, did we not know that corporations, as well as individuals, often find themselves possessed of things which they don't want and never intended to have. ”

“ Years ago in New England it was said that a log by the roadside with a student sitting on one end of it, and Mark Hopkins sitting on the other end, was a university. It is the quality of its men that makes the quality of a university. You may have your buildings, you may create your committees and boards and regulations, you may pile up your machinery of discipline and perfect your methods of instruction, you may spend money till no one can approach you ”

“ Many minds, so employed, have produced many works and much fame in that department; but if all liberal arts and sciences, useful to human life, had been taught there, if some had dedicated themselves to chemistry, some to mathematics, some to experimental philosophy, and if every attainment had been honoured in the mixt ratio of its difficulty and utility, the system of such a University would have been much more valuable, but the splendour of its name something less. ”

“ The old-fashioned university, secure in its omniscience, merely taught; the university of the coming time will, as its larger function, criticize and learn. It will be organized for research—for the criticism, that is, of thought and nature. And a subtler and a greater task before those who will presently swear allegiance to the New Republic is to aid and stimulate that process of sound adult mental activity which is the cardinal element in human life. ”

“ There are plenty of quiet, cultivated people in New York and elsewhere who, I am sure, want just such a school as I mean to have,—a sensible, honest school, that shall give a sensible, honest, all-round education. ”

“ Just previously to my election to the university presidency I had presented a ``plan of organization,'' which, having been accepted and printed by the trustees, formed the mold for the main features of the new institution; and early among my duties came the selection and nomination of professors. In these days one is able to choose from a large body of young men holding fellowships in the various larger universities of the United States; but then, with the possible exception of two or three at Harvard, there was not a fellowship, so far as I can remember, in the whole country. ”

“ It requires some little time to become known in such a city as New York. Colonel T—— is growing old, too, and there is no artist of education sufficiently prominent to take his place as President of the Academy of Arts. By becoming more known to the New York public, and exerting my talents to discover the best methods of promoting the arts and writing about them, I may possibly be promoted to his place, where I could have a better opportunity of doing something for the arts in our country, the object at which I aim. ”

“ The nature of the case and the history of philosophy combine to recommend to us this division of intellectual labour between Academies and Universities. To discover and to teach are distinct functions; they are also distinct gifts, and are not commonly found united in the same person. He, too, who spends his day in dispensing his existing knowledge to all comers is unlikely to have either leisure or energy to acquire new. ”

“ While, then, we honor the universities of which New Eng [Pg 952] land has been the mother, let us remember that New England owes its being to a university. In remembering this, we shall be prepared to follow in the steps of our fathers, and to be mindful of what we ourselves owe to our own institutions of learning.
In respect to the rivalry between Yale and Harvard, which was noticed in the sentiment to which I speak, and in reply to the suggestions which have been offered by the President of Harvard, I will venture a single remark. ”