Academic year

“ No normal school now completes its work with less than one full year beyond the completion of a four-year high school course, and two years beyond is rapidly getting to be the standard. So that normal school graduation gives the prospective teacher of the grades at least four years of academic, and from one to two years of professional and academic work beyond the point to be reached by "his most advanced pupil." ”

“ Disintegration of the long established College curriculum has been going on ever since the war. It began with the introduction of the old “Select Course” of the Scientific School into the Academic curriculum under the imposing title of Bachelor of Philosophy. This innovation was followed shortly by the institution of the Common Freshman Year. Furthermore, if a student now intends to become a lawyer, he may devote an entire year (and that his Senior year) to the study of law—and yet graduate as a Bachelor of Arts. ”

“ We remember that education is generally sought for by the student as a means of rising in a profession, and that if his profession is to be science, he must make use of the five years of his collegiate course for this purpose, — that spring season of his mind when the faculties are most elastic and the memory most receptive—a season to be enjoyed while it lasts, for to him it will never return! ”

“ The college course embraces instruction in the three departments of philosophy, language and literature, mathematics, and natural science. Most of the studies of the freshman year are required, with election between French and German. The elective studies of the sophomore year are Latin, Greek, mathematics, French, and German, while the elective course of the junior year occupies two-thirds of the student's time, and the senior year offers seven elective courses. ”

“ Of the other State Universities, some make pedagogics a complete course for graduates or undergraduates, while some, as at Missouri, make it an elective study during the third and fourth years of an ordinary graduate course. Where two complete [83] courses exist—an elementary and an advanced—in the same department, the distinction is based chiefly on the difference of qualification needed for admission. Students qualified to enter the University may pursue the elementary course; only those of the third year or fourth year, or graduates, may take up the advanced course. ”

“ YEAR. At the English universities, the undergraduate course is three years and a third. Students of the first year are called Freshmen, and the other classes at Cambridge are, in popular phrase, designated successively Second-year Men, Third-year Men, and Men who are just going out. The word year is often used in the sense of class.
The lecturer stands, and the lectured sit, even when construing, as the Freshmen are sometimes asked to do; the other Years are only called on to listen.—Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. ”

“ We have increased the number of studies, as well as the number of colleges; we have established schools of law and schools of science, sometimes independent of, sometimes co-ordinate with or subordinate to, the college. We have also established post-graduate courses, in the hope of inducing our young men to complete their studies at home. Yet every year we see a larger number going abroad. ”

“ Admission to college is dependent upon the mental and moral fitness of the student. If the student has completed the work of an advanced high school, or that of an academy, he may in many colleges pass immediately into the Freshman year without examination. The student is generally required to have, as a necessary preparation to gain admission to the Freshman class, three years of Latin and two of Greek, or an amount of modern languages equivalent to the Greek, besides mathematics, history, and English. ”

“ OUR university has during its existence, now for more than eighty-two years, celebrated the beginning of a new university year in a peculiarly solemn manner. This October day is the one among the festivals it observes which invites it to enter into self-contemplation, to a review of its acquired results, to a testing of the ways it has struck out, and again to the consideration of new problems and to a look into the future. Have we solved the problems that are set before us? Have we made a faithful use of the means for training youth for the highest objects of the state and of manhood? ”

“ These practical matters should be fresh in the mind of any young college graduate beginning to teach. The history of education is a good transition in study from the theory of the first principles to the practice of school matters, affording a panorama of facts to be judged by principles and racial experiments in educational practice. This means that the choice time for the course in the history of education is the first semester of the senior year in college. ”

“ Many colleges and collegiate departments of universities provide electives that are accepted by some schools of theology, law, or medicine for their regular first-year work. In rare instances, studies covering two years are made common to the college and the professional schools. ”

“ Let us suppose the revolution which we have traced in the sophomore, junior, and senior years to have reached its natural terminus; let us suppose that in these years all studies have become elective, while the freshman year remains completely prescribed; the college will then fall into two parts, a preparatory department and a university department. In these two departments the character of the instruction, the methods of study, the consciousness of the students, will be altogether dissimilar. The freshmen will not be taken by upper classmen as companions ”

“ From the age of sixteen to twenty should be devoted to the college course, beginning with few electives in the Freshman year and gradually increasing their number as the course approaches completion. On graduating from college the students should receive their first degrees from these institutions, and all subsequent post-graduate degrees should be earned in and conferred by the universities, in which all college graduates who can devote the additional time and means required should be encouraged to pursue their studies for three or perhaps four years more. ”

“ Some prominent universities have informed the community that the college course is not so important as some good people imagine. A decade or more ago several institutions decided that the fourth year in college is unnecessary and agreed to accept in its place, as counting for the degree, the first year in medicine, law or theology ”

“ But, generally speaking, you may understand that a college is an institution which gives a four years’ course in liberal arts and sciences, for which four years of academic preparation are required: a university adds to this, graduate courses, and one or more professional schools of law, medicine, engineering, divinity, or pedagogy; a technological school is one in which the higher branches of the applied arts and sciences are the chief subjects of study and in which only scientific degrees are conferred. ”

“ The college courses include—arts, science, elocution and oratory, business, music, civil engineering, physical education. The graduates of the college course are admitted to the post-graduate courses of Pennsylvania, Yale, Princeton and Harvard on their diplomas. Students pass from any year's work of the college course to the corresponding course of other Institutions. ”

“ The presence here of an unusually large number of graduates in Arts, on whom Degrees have this day been conferred, testifies to the fact that the regulations of this University are no hindrance to higher education. Year by year, the tests become more efficient and practical, and a Degree in Arts, Law, Medicine, or Engineering is not granted until the candidate has shown a competent knowledge of the subjects in which he is examined. ”

“ It is frequently claimed that the undergraduate is incapable of wisely choosing a specialty, and that hence specialization should come after a four-year course,—i.e., in the graduate school or by self-instruction after graduation. ”

“ In an American university the term college or school has largely replaced the term faculty; in Europe the term faculty is still used. Thus we say College of Liberal Arts, or School of Law, instead of Faculty of Arts, etc.
[18] For example, one of our modern state universities is organized into the following faculties, schools, and colleges:
(1) college of liberal arts; (2) school of medicine; (3) school of law; (4) school of fine arts; (5) school of pure science; (6) college of engineering; (7) college of agriculture; (8) school of history, economics, and social sciences ”

“ It therefore emphasized graduate study and research work; established study in summer as well as in autumn, winter and spring, thus adding 25% to the working year; gave an important place to university extension (q. v.) ; founded a system of affiliated colleges and schools whose students have special privileges in the university; and employed so large a corps of teachers that classes can be kept small, however many the students, and each individual receive personal attention. The university is organized into the five departments of schools, colleges and academies; university extension ”

“ The practise of colleges to admit students with conditions sometimes equivalent to a year or even more of high-school work indicates the acceptance on the part of the college faculties of the fact that the first year or more of the college course is concerned with secondary work. ”

“ The committee recommend that any study, included in a given list regarded as suitable for the secondary-school period, and pursued under approved conditions one year of four periods a week, be regarded as worthy to count toward admission to college; they recognize that not all secondary schools are equipped to offer all the subjects, and that the colleges will make their own selections for admission ”

“ Those who have watched the college have approved; the time of transition has been a time of unexampled prosperity. For the last fifteen years the gifts to the University have averaged $250,000 a year. The steady increase in students may be seen at a glance by dividing the last twenty-five years into five-year periods, and noting the average number of undergraduates in each: 1861-65, 423 ”

“ The best of the others will probably accept their mission as colleges in the true sense of the word, beginning the course two years earlier than at present, and continuing it to what is now the junior year. ”

“ While it is the work of science and scholarship, roughly what is known in American usage as graduate work, that gives the university its rank as a seat of learning and keeps it in countenance as such with laymen and scholars, it is the undergraduate school, or college, that still continues to be the larger fact, and that still engages the greater and more immediate attention in university management. ”

“ The course of general instruction extends over four years. The academical year is divided into three terms—Michaelmas, Hilary, and Trinity—and every student must keep at least two terms in each year in order to obtain a degree. The system of instruction is superintended by the fellows, both junior and senior, together with a large staff of professors in the various departments of science and literature. Eighteen of the junior fellows act as tutors, and every student must place himself under one of these on entering the college. ”

“ The study is largely restricted to preparing the student for his advanced professional and technical work. The university goes further and arranges its courses of study so as to supplement the instruction given in college and direct the student in an advanced grade of work in any department of intellectual life. The courses have the broadest scope and embrace departments in liberal arts, law, medicine, theology and science, each having a faculty composed of able professors. ”

“ But generally it is admitted that college training is one thing, and work in a university is another; that thorough instruction in language, history, mathematics, natural and physical sciences, and in morals, should precede the discipline of professional schools and the pursuit of the higher and more advanced studies in letters and science. In a complete university provision should be made, according to ancient and widespread usages, for the study of law, medicine and theology ”

“ At Yale, Greek and Latin are still required through the freshman year, but later these studies are elective. In the sophomore year five or six courses must be elected from twelve that are offered, making it possible for a student to specialize in science. In the junior and senior years, the chief work of the student may also lie in the sciences, unhampered by restrictions other than that he must take two courses in languages and literature and two courses in philosophy, history and social science. ”

“ In three New England colleges German cannot be begun till the junior year. In a majority, a physical subject is begun in the junior and another in the senior year. At Yale nobody but a senior can study chemistry. Such postponement, and by consequence such fragmentary work, may be necessary where early college years are crowded with prescribed studies. But an elective system can employ its later years to better advantage. ”