University of the City of New York

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At the close of the year 1829 Mr. Gallatin attempted to carry out his old and favorite plan of the “establishment of a general system of rational and practical education fitted for all, and gratuitously open to all.” The want of an institution for education, combining the advantages of a European university with the recent improvements in instruction, was seriously felt. New York, already a great city, and rapidly growing, offered the most promising field for the national university on a broad and liberal foundation correspondent to the spirit of the age. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ The training of teachers is amply provided for in a number of professional schools and normal school institutes, the chief being Teachers' College, Manhattan, with 75 instructors and 975 students. In the state there are some 15 or 16 theological schools, 12 schools of medicine, 8 of law, besides schools of pharmacy, music and dentistry. The chief colleges for women are Vassar College at Poughkeepsie and Barnard College, an annex of Columbia University, in New York City. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The schoolhouses in New York are not sufficient. Many of them are small, dark, unventilated, and unhealthy. They should be the finest public buildings in the city. It would be far better for the Episcopalians to build a university than a cathedral. ”

“ Surely, he said, in the greatest State there should be the greatest of universities; in central New York there should arise a university which, by the amplitude of its endowment and by the whole scope of its intended sphere, by the character of the studies in the whole scope of the curriculum, should satisfy the wants of the hour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The members of the Board of Education were ex-officio trustees of the college until in 1900 a separate board of trustees was created, composed of nine members appointed by the Mayor, with the president of the college and the president of the Board of Education as ex-officio members. In 1882 the requirement of one year's previous attendance at the public schools of the city was repealed, and the college was thrown open to all young men of the city. ”

“ Almost ever since the American Revolution a Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York has existed, on which is laid the duty of visiting and superintending in a general way our institutions of education above the degree of Common Schools. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I answer, first, the teaching profession has increased in dignity and reputation, and in no part of the world more than in the region where New York University finds its students.
A second reason is that philanthropic spirits find in teaching to-day, compared with other professions, larger scope than ever before. ”

“ The formation of the Scientific Alliance of New York marks an important step in the scientific movements of this city, and will not be without beneficial influence, we believe, in the advancement of research in the country at large. New York, long recognized as the great financial and commercial center of the Union, and pre-eminent in some other departments of the life of the century, has not been eminent in science. ”

“ Some of the most important institutions of New York, other than those of finance, began in Wall Street. The University of the State, for instance, was here created by an act of the Legislature, in 1784; an educational institution similar to that of Oxford, in England, with broader scope and greater powers (and less comprehended by the general public) than any other on this continent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There have been no acts of rowdyism or lawlessness within the enclosure, for even the most depraved feel themselves compelled to respect the rules of the place. In a few years the streets facing the walls will be occupied with magnificent residences and public buildings, and the neighborhood will be the most delightful on the island.
CHAPTER XXIV. THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. New York stands at the head of all American cities in the excellence and extent of its system of public education. It has one free college, fifty-five ward or grammar schools, forty primary schools, and ten colored schools. ”

“ If we define a university as a degree-granting institution, then there are over 700 universities in the United States of America. It is the aspiration of every American city to possess its own university. The university is, in a sense, the cathedral—a somewhat truncated one doubtless—of the American city, and every citizen is unhappy until his city gets what he conceives to be its full complement of culture, in the possession of a university. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Soon the new, beautiful University Club at Fifty-fourth Street, with the various college coats of arms on its walls, which never fail to draw attention from the out-of-town visitors on 'bus-tops, will not seem to be very far up-town, and by and by even the great, white Metropolitan will not be so much like a lonely iceberg opposite the Park entrance. I wonder if anyone knows the names of them all; there always seem to be others to learn about. ”

“ 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. ”