National university

“ The University, as a national establishment, is necessarily open to the lieges in general; the Colleges, as private institutions, might universally do, as some have actually done--close their gates upon all, except their foundation members. The Universities and Colleges are thus neither identical, nor vicarious of each other. If the University ceases to perform its functions, it ceases to exist ”

“ There should be a free exchange of professors and students between all parts of the country. Then there should be a great national university at Washington or elsewhere frequented by advanced students and professors from all parts of the country and all parts of the world—men who would gladly learn and gladly teach. Harvard, Columbia and Chicago, Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois may be secondary centers, but they should cooperate to establish a super-university, which would have the same relation to existing universities that these should hold to the colleges. ”

“ Our university was to be a model to all other institutions. Although controlled by our denomination, it was to have no sectarian bias; its policy should be conservatively liberal; morally, intellectually, and æsthetically, it might be regarded as the culmination of our American school-system. Men of national reputation and the greatest ability were to fill professors' chairs; thorough instruction could be expected in every department; languages, literatures, sciences, philosophy, and art, would occupy the time of the students who were sure to flock in from all parts of the country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With the encouragement of national grants—again from the great domain of Louis XIV—they have established universities with colleges of liberal arts and sciences, and schools of agriculture, forestry, mining, engineering, pharmacy, veterinary surgery, commerce, law, medicine, and philosophy. There is not a State in all that valley that has not its university in name and in most instances in fact. ”

“ I shall confine myself, however, to education in the narrower sense; the culture which each generation purposely gives to those who are to be its successors, in order to qualify them for at least keeping up, and if possible for raising, the level of improvement which has been attained. Nearly all here present are daily occupied either in receiving or in giving this sort of education: and the part of it which most concerns you at present is that in which you are yourselves engaged the stage of education which is the appointed business of a national University. ”

“ 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 ”

“ But a University training is the great ordinary means to a great but ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to [pg 178] popular aspiration, at giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facilitating the exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse of private life. ”

“ The beneficent work of the Commission of 1854 would have its full realization, the colleges would be able to develope and emancipate their resources, and, above all, the State would advance steadily to the conception and realisation of a completely organized system of national education. In twenty years we should be in all respects in a better position for undertaking the work which a few impatient doctrinaires are hurrying on prematurely. ”

“ If it were a mere recording instrument of conventional opinion and average information, it is hard to see why the University should exist at all. To clasp hands with the common life in order that it may lift that life, to be a radiant center enkindling the society in which it has its being, these are primary duties of the University. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ As these high powers exist only potentially and in our own imagination, we can be certain that they will not take offence if we presume to offer them our opinion and advice.
What is the first and most obvious want which we seek to satisfy by founding a university? It is the want of a collegiate system of education and discipline superior to the one already existing in our colleges, and equal to any existing elsewhere. The first thing to be done, then, is to select some already existing college, or to establish a new one, as the nucleus of the future university. ”

“ The fact that at almost any given time there may be seen, in this American land of ours, half a score of colleges standing and waiting, wondering if they will ever find a president again, is the climax of what the universities have failed to do. The university will be justified only when a man with a university in him, a whole campus in his soul, comes out of it, to preside over it, and the soul that has room for more than one chair in it comes out of it to teach in it. ”

“ 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 state universities naturally show a tendency toward the German university system.
In America the college has been frankly maintained in accord with Platonic ideals. A full rounded manhood, drawing its power from each chief source of knowledge, and prepared in a general way for every practical activity, has been the aim. The American college is dear to the people, and it has done much to make strong men who have powerfully influenced the nation. There are, however, various tendencies which are likely to modify the whole organization of the American university, including that of the college. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ In almost all the writings about a nation's university, and of course in the two Senate bills now under discussion, there will be found the implication, if not the express assertion, that it is somehow the duty of our government to maintain a magnificent university. ”

“ Prominent among the many advantages which have flowed from British rule in India, I look upon Universities as institutions which are day by day conferring the widest and the greatest possible benefits upon the natives of this country. It is not merely that the University diffuses among the population a thirst for knowledge and an intellectual cultivation that was before unattainable to them, but it is preparing and fitting a class of men well fitted to render public service to their country in every department of the State. ”

“ Nor can it justly be said that in thus acting she sacrifices Science, and, under a pretence of fulfilling the duties of her mission, perverts a University to ends not its own, as soon as it is taken into account that there are other institutions far more suited to act as instruments of stimulating philosophical inquiry, and extending the boundaries of our knowledge, than a University. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That was the original purpose of the Universities; and the more they continue to fulfil that purpose, the more will they secure to us that real freedom from tradition, from custom, from mere opinion and superstition, which can be gained by independent study only; the more will they foster that “human [pg 052] development in its richest diversity” which Mill, like Humboldt, considered as the highest object of all society.
Such academic teaching need not be confined to the old Universities. There is many a great University that sprang from smaller beginnings than your Midland Institute. ”

“ Yet even the most elementary college work cannot be given properly unless the instructor is in touch with the latest developments and discoveries in his own field, and this familiarity only comes through research, on his own part or by his colleagues.
But more than this the University, if it be worthy of the name, owes it to the State to be a leader and a guide in the development of the highest cultural standards; it should be a reservoir upon which the people of the State can draw for truth and guidance in the difficult problems of modern life. ”

“ As for the state university, it will allow the widest range of free electives, and as an university it will aim to comprise within itself every possible department of practical activity, such as business administration, journalism, banking and finance, foreign trade, political science, psycho-analysis, mining, sanitary engineering, veterinary surgery, as well as law, medicine, agriculture, and civil and mechanical engineering. ”

“ Some of the American Universities, in our judgment, come nearer to the ideal of a true University than any of the other types. Beginning on the old English collegiate system, they have broadened out into vast and splendidly endowed institutions of universal learning, have assimilated some German features, and have combined successfully college routine and discipline with mature and advanced work. ”

“ To set on foot and to maintain in life and vigour a real University, is confessedly, as soon as the word “University” is understood, one of those greatest works, great in their difficulty and their importance, on which are deservedly expended the rarest intellects and the most varied endowments. For, first of all, it professes to teach whatever has to be taught in any whatever department of human knowledge, and it embraces in its scope the loftiest subjects of human thought, and the richest fields of human inquiry. ”

“ Probably in its more complete development the stronger institutions, to the number of twenty or thirty, will, within a generation or two, become universities in the true sense of the word, restricting themselves to university work ”

“ 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. ”

“ But it is in its men that the real university has its real being. Through the work of such men it stands in the vanguard of civilization. By such men it counts the milestones in its course, and no trick of organization, no urging of the printing press, no subsidy of students can be made to take their place. ”