Institution of higher education

“ The directive hands, too, under whose discretionary control each of these establishments entered on its adventures and attained its distinctive character, were men who, at one point or another in their administration of academic policy, entertained a sincerely conceived scholarly ambition to create a substantial university, an institution of learning. ”

“ It appears certain that in time the name university in America will be applied only to those institutions which maintain the graduate school and raise the dignity of the professional schools. The university system will develop freely in this country only after a somewhat important reorganization of our higher education. The line must be drawn more sharply between foundation education and university work, the whole period of education must be somewhat shortened, and, in most of our universities, the graduate faculty must be strengthened. ”

“ From this point of view, the University occupies a position altogether independent of that of the copingstone of schools for general education, combined with technical schools of Theology, Law, and Medicine. It is not primarily an institution for testing the work of schoolmasters, or for ascertaining the fitness of young men to be curates, lawyers, or doctors.
It is an institution in which a man who claims to devote himself to Science or Art, should be able to find some one who can teach him what is already known, and train him in the methods of knowing more. ”

“ A real university, or any other institution of learning, is made up of the men and the women who form its student and its teaching bodies. The character of the institution, its very life blood, is drawn from them. Their points of view, their motives, their scholarships, their visions, their aspirations, make it what it is in every instance.
You recall that ex-President Garfield's description of a university included only two factors as essential—the teacher and the student. The external equipment—buildings, libraries, laboratories—what not—is merely a tool in their hands. ”

“ A trustee of one of our eastern universities has recently affirmed that the greatest need of these institutions is not money, but the services of men who have just and definite ideas of the essential characteristics of a university. If our higher institutions of learning are ever to keep pace with the intellectual progress of the nation (the question of actual leadership can not yet be considered) , there is immediate need of a statement emphasizing the distinction existing between university and college, in order that such an institution may develop a healthy independent existence. ”

“ Certainly a true university will be the home both of ancient wisdom and of new learning; it will teach the best that is known, and encourage research; it will stimulate thought, refine taste, and awaken the love of excellence; it will be at once a scientific institute, a school of culture, and a training ground for the business of life; it will educate the minds that give direction to the age ”

“ What you want in order to stimulate higher education in the higher sense of the word is a staff of competent tutors supplied with ample means for advancing and furthering knowledge in every possible direction; encouragement for all efforts to cultivate sound science, and nothing but the most beneficial results will accrue to society at large. Universities, at the dawn of their existence, were, as a rule, endowed with certain rights and privileges, like moral corporations ”

“ The modern university is the only institution in which the minister of the future can get it all and get it in the right order and in the correct admixture. In the laboratories, the libraries, and the classrooms he will delve deeply into the realms of science, literature, and art, and there and on the campus, in its varied activities, touch hands and exchange thoughts with the future lawyer, teacher, physician, engineer, [Pg 180] business man, what-not, and thus gain tolerance, humility, catholicity of spirit, and the spirit of true democracy. ”

“ In our colleges the professors are paid for teaching and for teaching only, while in a foreign university the teaching is wholly secondary, and the professor is expected to announce in his lectures the results of his own study, and not the thoughts of other men. Until the whole status of the professors in our chief universities can be changed, very little original thought or investigation can be expected, and these institutions can not become what they should be, the soul of the higher life of the nation. ”

“ It is, indeed, the one great institution of modern times that works to no ulterior end and is controlled by no consideration of expediency beyond its own work. Typically, normally, in point of popular theory, the university is moved by no consideration other than "the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." ”

“ Whatever we may do now, we may be sure that if the Universities exist in anything like their present relation to education in days to come, they will be moulded to supply the crowning glory of what generations of educational reformers have been desiring to see. ”

“ The system of higher education was comprised primarily of universities and polytechnical and specialized institutes, which in 1971 had a total enrollment of approximately 150,000 students. All institutions were under the direct supervision of the [Pg 86] Ministry of Education and were geared to produce specialists in the humanities, in the social, natural, physical, and engineering sciences, and in education as needed to fill positions in government and all sectors of the economy. ”

“ Though the University does not itself enter upon the practical work of education — though it has no professors or teachers, yet, by prescribing the subjects for examination for degrees, it necessarily controls all liberal education in the Presidency. ”

“ The Royal Institution may in some degree supply the [Pg 242] place of a subordinate university to those whose sex or situation in life has denied them the advantage of an academical education in the national seminaries of learning.
With regard to the special objects of the Institution, the theory of practical mechanics and of manufactures, he said:
We must be more practical than academies of science and more theoretical than societies for the improvement of arts ”

“ We believe that the universities are an overlooked seat of influence.
First, the university is located in a permanent position of social influence. Its educational function makes it indispensable and automatically makes it a crucial institution in the formation of social attitudes. Second, in an unbelievably complicated world, it is the central institution for organizing, evaluating and transmitting knowledge. ”

“ For our colleges and universities and their researches, the library must have all that we have suggested as important for the schools, and a great deal more. The term university implies an education as broad as the whole world of books can supply: yet we must here meet with limitations that are inevitable. In this country we have to regret the application of the word "university" to institutions where [283] the training is only academical, or at the highest, collegiate. The university, properly speaking, is an institution for the most advanced scholars or graduates of our colleges. ”

“ This in itself is one of the most encouraging manifestations of a new and broader conception of the university as an institution whose functions are to gather in to itself and conserve all knowledge, to represent the interests of all classes of the community which supports it, and to be as broadly useful as is possible, consistent with true learning in the training of men for the various activities of life. ”

“ The third point on which I should like to insist has an especial interest for those whom the Master of Balliol once described as waiting to have done with constitution-making and to set to work. The condition of the educational problem in England seems to me clearly to indicate that any present settlement of the University can only be temporary. The great fabric of national education will, we cannot doubt it, one day be reared from the foundations to the sky, and the Universities should form the crown of the majestic edifice. ”

“ A defense of the college as a peculiar institution will need to recognize first, I think, two sets of distinctions. One is the distinction between professional or scientific efficiency in specialized tasks, and an intellectual leadership in the sense in which this affects directly the general life and ideals of the nation. Now that the university is the instrument for developing the first or specialized intellectual capacity, of course goes without saying. ”

“ So that, while the higher learning still remains as the enduring purpose and substantial interest of the university establishment, the dominant practical interests of the day will, transiently but effectually, govern the detail lines of academic policy, the range of instruction offered, and the character of the personnel; and more particularly and immediately will the character of the governing boards and the academic administration so be determined by the current run of popular sentiment touching the community's practical needs and aims ”

“ The regime governing access to university and the other higher education institutions shall guarantee equal opportunities in and the democratisation of the education system, and must have due regard to the country's needs for qualified staff and to raising its educational, cultural and scientific level. ”

“ Organization of the Universities.—The term universitas, or ‘university,’ did not imply originally, as often claimed since, an institution where ‘everything’ is taught, The ‘university’ a corporation. but it was used of any legal corporation, and only in the course of time was it limited to an organization of masters and students. The phrase studium generale was also often used of a university, to indicate a school where the students from all parts of civilization were received, and to contrast it with a studium particulare, which was confined to pupils of a limited neighborhood. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We of the academy accordingly hold to the law of the grove; that a university ancient or modern is wholly and vitally an educational institution; that the aims for which it exists are cultural; that its methods must be shaped by its own standards; that the activities of those devoted to its welfare must be freely developed from within and suitably to the cultivation of the ends for which the university alone exists. ”

“ The Universities must be made and kept independent on that side as well as the side which they present to the Government, and they must always seek in the faculty of arts—the source and guardian of all the others—to maintain the very highest standard of learning in science and literature. ”

“ Yet when all these sophistications of practical wisdom are duly allowed for, the fact remains that the university is, in usage, precedent, and common sense preconception, an establishment for the conservation and advancement of the higher learning, devoted to a disinterested pursuit of knowledge. As such, it consists of a body of scholars and scientists, each and several of whom necessarily goes to his work on his own initiative and pursues it in his own way. ”

“ The life history of any one of the state universities whose early period of growth runs across this era will readily show the effectual guidance of such an ideal of a college, as a superior and definitive member in a school system designed to afford an extended course of instruction looking to an unbiassed increase and diffusion of knowledge. ”

“ Speaking generally, the state universities have large incomes and good facilities. They require high standards for admission and graduation. Wherever feasible, they maintain professional schools and schools of applied science. They do this upon the theory that the state should both regulate and provide professional education in the interest of proper standards, and that, in the interest of the state and of the individual, such education should be made available to the sons of the poor. Every leading state university is developing a graduate school. ”

“ The University, in its teaching aspect, may be regarded as an organization for providing instruction in all those branches of knowledge the teaching of which cannot be economically undertaken by the colleges. Thus, for the teaching of science, and for the provision of costly laboratories, the University is responsible; and the higher and more specialized teaching in most other departments is also provided by the University. The ancient endowments are, in the main, college endowments; but the history of the development of modern subjects is also the history of the development of the University ”

“ The truth is, however, that the State Universities are the most democratic of all the institutions of higher learning; this truth is now generally perceived, and the institutions are growing proportionally popular. ”