Graduate school

“ The student of the professional school who must complete his work in three years should be permitted to do so, while those who show ability for investigation and independent thought should work both in the professional school and the graduate school, and should be permitted to prepare simultaneously for the professional qualification and for the degree of A.M. or Ph.D., or what they represent. ”

“ And now the undergraduate will emphasize study. But a sharp line must be drawn between study that looks forward merely to the A.B. degree as the end of schooling and the beginning of business, and study that is a part of professional training, that looks forward to some professional degree at Commencement or to matriculation in a graduate school. ”

“ A graduate school is [Pg 3] the most suitable medium for accomplishing the task in hand. It is the only reason we have post-graduate schools at all.
The existing situation in the college is exactly the reverse. Those who are working for the B.A. degree and nothing else are carrying on side by side with what are in reality pre-medical students and first-year lawyers. ”

“ The regulations governing admission to the graduate school, and in particular to candidacy for the competitive fellowships, the awards of which depend entirely on scholarship and ability, attracted to the school an increasing number of select advanced students in liberal studies. ”

“ It has been found to operate to the disadvantage of our students entering other institutions in graduate as well as undergraduate departments. Graduate schools have become very particular, some of them not being satisfied without passing in review well nigh the entire former school life of an applicant, apparently to assure themselves that no short-cuts have been made. ”

“ Not only should we adhere to our faith in university education, but we can find reasons for raising the standard of a part of university work. Even now, no student should receive a professional degree who has not previously obtained at least a complete high-school education; and the time may come when, in all institutions, at least two years of college life will be required as a basis for a doctor’s or a lawyer’s degree. Graduate courses have become a prominent feature of many American universities, and year by year larger numbers of students seek higher degrees. ”

“ It will be remembered that the undergraduate courses constitute for many of those who plan to teach in the secondary schools the sole opportunity for specialization. For them the undergraduate curriculum affords essentially a professional training, and subserves exactly the same function as does the graduate school for those who are preparing for collegiate positions. ”

“ I believe that an honest observer of the highest institutions for learning in our land, whether they were founded for the interests of young men or young women, will remark that there is too small a chance for grouping studies, and that the opportunities for choosing electives are too few. The American idea is, to get through the academy or college, and graduate with a diploma, rather than to pursue a study till such time as those who know most about that branch of learning shall deem a student ready for entrance upon higher work. ”

“ The whole question in every high school and every preparatory school is whether the training will accredit one to certain colleges and universities. So the traditional high school graduate is not prepared for life; he is prepared for college or the university. He goes on to the university. There he finds that he is being prepared chiefly for four or five learned professions—the law, the ministry, medicine, engineering, and teaching. In the beginning, the university was supposed to train a man, not for work, but for leisure. The very word scholar means a man of leisure. ”

“ A new college is founded every week. Today more than half of the high school graduates go on to college.
There are hundreds of thousands of fathers and mothers who never completed grammar school--who will see their children graduate from college. ”

“ The growth of summer schools at universities and the frequent transfer of normal-school graduates to college and graduate courses show with clearness the desire of teachers to enjoy the advantages of all kinds of higher education. ”

“ In the first place, it would seem that to stimulate study, and to increase the gelehrtes Publikum, the class of highly educated men in our country, is the only positive good, and consequently the sole direct end at which our graduate schools, with their diploma-giving powers, should aim. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now the student, a young man of about twenty-one or twenty-two years, is supposed to be prepared, either to go into the world as a fairly well-educated citizen, or to continue his studies for a professional career. He finds the graduate schools of the universities ready to give him courses which lead to the degree of M.A. or Ph.D., and prepare him for the higher kind of teaching. ”

“ A conspicuous tendency in our universities is toward specialization; their spirit and methods are largely derived from the professional and graduate schools which give them their tone and prestige. They look toward research and the advancement of learning as their particular raison d'être, and also toward the practical application of knowledge to actual life and the disciplining of special faculties for definite vocational ends. ”

“ In 1858 I received the degree of D. S. from the Lawrence Scientific School, and thereafter remained on the rolls of the university as a resident graduate. ”

“ Three elements compose the graduate college. Foremost is a body of first rate professors, to be added to others now in the faculty, interesting men, scholars of high power, eminent in their subjects, and able to waken young men. ”

“ What counts toward the advancement of learning and the scholarly character of the university is the graduate work, but what gives statistically formidable results in the way of a numerous enrolment, many degrees conferred, public exhibitions, courses of instruction -- in short what rolls up a large showing of turnover and output -- is the perfunctory work of the undergraduate department, as well as the array of vocational schools latterly subjoined as auxiliaries to this end. ”

“ We would by no means interfere with this graduation in the schools; but, in addition to this, there ought, we think, to be some goal of more elevated attainment, which might excite the attention and emulation of those whose opportunities admit of their being well educated. Let it bear the title of Bachelor of Arts, or Master of Arts, or graduate, and, if a definite meaning be affixed to it by the college authorities, it cannot fail to be as well understood as the unmeaning terms, sophomore, freshman, senior-wrangler, &c. ”

“ Only when the professional schools are real graduate departments, requiring under-graduate training for admission, is the university doing its work properly. This was the rule in the past--hence the precious lessons for the present in the story of these old-time universities. ”

“ THE future of higher education in America depends upon the position we shall grant to the college and university professor. The growing conception that the faculty—not buildings, nor advertisements, nor pyrotechnic display—but the faculty, makes the school is bound eventually to be accepted. ”

“ There are three things that the university would do—represented by the college, the professional schools and the graduate faculty. Through the college it would give men broader interests and wider sympathies, through the professional schools it would teach the routine methods of practise, through the graduate faculty it would improve these methods and enlarge our knowledge. ”

“ In the dogma expressed here it seems to me you treat the university graduate, who has had four years' earnest study, as if he were in kilts, and the girl in short skirts. Those men and women have wrested from the college tradition the right to say what they are going to do, in their junior, if not their sophomore year, and to come out after their graduation from economical and sociological courses and to be presented to the curriculum you have, is little short of absurd. ”

“ The college, moreover, should start the graduate interest in philanthropic and serious enterprises which in themselves furnish suitable as well as pleasing relaxation to hundreds of American university men. ”

“ The spread of varied types of secondary schools, the increasing specialisation of higher education, and the experience which all the universities of the world have accumulated as to the possibility of testing the genuineness and intellectual quality of 'post graduate' theses have had little or no effect. ”

“ In connection with higher education there are such new tendencies as university extension, correspondence courses, summer sessions, university interest in the practical problems of the people, the correlation of the first two years of college with the secondary school, more flexible entrance requirements, an increasing number of fields of professional work, and, above all, the professional training of teachers through Departments of Education, Teachers Colleges, and Schools of Education. ”

“ The University was governed, the University was taught, by the graduates at large. Professor, Master, Doctor, were originally synonymous. Every graduate had an equal right of teaching publicly in the University the subjects competent to his faculty, and to the rank of his degree; nay, every graduate incurred the obligation of teaching publicly, for a certain period, the subjects of his faculty, for such was the condition involved in the grant of the degree itself." Sir William Hamilton, Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, etc.: Education, chapter 4. EDUCATION: Modern: European Countries. ”

“ Some of these opponents have gone so far as to assert that the customary college degree, Bachelor of Arts, stands as definitely for Latin and Greek as the degree M.D. stands for the study of medicine. Now, inasmuch as the college is the school in which, according to the best authorities, our young people are expected to gain a higher degree of education than the lower schools, academies, and high-schools can give them, the question. What constitutes the basis of higher education? ”

“ But why strive for high rank in the college? Why not wait for the more "practical" studies of the professional school? Hundreds of boys the country over declare to-day that it makes little difference whether they win high grades or merely passable grades in the liberal arts, since these courses have no definite bearing on their intended life-work. Almost invariably they are ready to admit that they must settle down to serious effort in the studies of law, medicine, engineering—that is to say, in professional schools. ”

“ The Three Learned Professions.—When there were but three learned professions, law, medicine, and theology, and the man of action, soldier or ruler, thought lightly of them all in comparison with his own field of activity, the higher education could be limited to those of selected classes. Now the social need is for trained talent in a far broader area, and the consequence is that not only 273is the grade-school being made over but the professional goal of college and university is being extended beyond the dreams of old pedagogues. ”

“ Instead of working out and teaching methods of connecting the school with life, thus making it a centre and a source of inspiration that might gradually transform the communities about them, these colleges have too frequently permitted their graduates to go out with the idea that their diploma was a sort of patent of nobility, and that the possessor of it was a superior being who was making a sacrifice in merely bestowing himself or herself as a teacher upon the communities to which he or she was called. ”

“ Training for citizenship and the preparation of the scholar are then the twofold function of the college. To furnish professional training for lawyers, doctors, ministers, engineers, librarians, is manifestly the work of the university or the technical school, and not the function of the college. Neither is it, in my opinion, the work of the college to prepare its students specifically to be teachers or even wives and husbands, mothers and fathers. ”

“ At any rate, in this borderland between cultural and professional studies, where the college is merging with the university or professional school, the necessity for the able teacher is a paramount issue. ”

“ Even now, though the system is, so to speak, in its infancy, graduates judge of universities not so much by the standing of the professors or by the grade of instruction offered, as by the value of the fellowships. Students about to graduate have been known to ask their professors what inducement the college offers them to remain—more than that, have been candidates for appointment at more than one institution. ”

“ In the university, and to some extent in the graduate courses of the college leading to the master's degree, the subjects and methods of teaching may well be very different. Studies in comparative literature, studies of literary origins, the investigation of perplexed or controverted questions in the life or work of an author, the study and elucidation of the work of an unknown or little-known writer—all these and many other similar matters may very properly be the subjects of specialized graduate study. But they will rarely be found of most profit to undergraduate classes. ”