State university

“ Within twenty years every state in the Union had taken advantage of this splendid endowment, either to found a new state university which would comply with the requirements as regards courses of instruction or to establish an agricultural college as an independent institution, or in connection with some already existing institution. Not only do some of the finest state universities like those of California, Illinois, and Minnesota owe their origins to the Morrill Act, but others owe to it their real beginnings as institutions of collegiate grade. ”

“ As an illustration of what may be done by public patronage, when States are in earnest with their universities, and as strangely contrasting the sluggish fortunes of our own Alma, look at the State University of Michigan. Here is an institution but twenty-five years old, already numbering thirty-two professors and over twelve hundred students, having public buildings equal in extent to those which two centuries have given to Cambridge, and all the apparatus of a well-constituted, thoroughly furnished university. ”

“ The primary ideal of a state university should be service to the state. As a great modern teacher has said, our "State universities should be training schools for servants of the common weal." But as institutions universities tend to take upon themselves conventional ways and to become ends in themselves ”

“ It is nation-wide, and even nation-wide as it is, it does not include, consciously and directly, the State universities. The older colleges and universities did dominate, but the relation between the State university and the high school has ever been cordial. They have always recognized their partnership and have acted in accordance with it. But yet we have all been caught in the maelstrom, and it would be difficult for any one institution or any one State to get out of it. So no immediate or rapid change can be expected. Large bodies move slowly. ”

“ The connection between the high school and the university still gives rise to troublesome problems, not alone in this country. The ideals of the older American university are often at variance with the systematic development of education below the university and the demands of the people. The state university has come nearer than any other to the solution. While Harvard and Yale met the growing demands of science by establishing separate schools, Michigan introduced the scientific course into the college, making it rank with the classical. ”

“ The plea is that the state university, as the only fit organ of the state, must first of all not merely consent to train men for the professions that serve the masses, but that it must demand this right. Of course we are assuming that the state is not a poverty-stricken one, and that it is not fighting for a bare existence. Secondly, the state's university must insist on giving its students a broad education. By this is meant that all students should not only be trained toward a professional career, but that they should also have the elements of a liberal education. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The history of the early American colleges has been varied, but the more successful ones have certainly become catholic and progressive. As the country grew and men pushed westward, leaving tradition behind and developing more freely the spirit of our advancing civilization, the conception of a university, in touch with all the people, and scientific and free, arose. Thus we have the state university. At the same time the leading religious denominations have vied with each other in founding in the new states colleges or universities that are more or less denominational in spirit and aim. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the subject of the University, it is not possible for a son of New England to think without pleasure, or to speak without emotion. Nothing confers more honor on the State where it is established, or more utility on the country at large. A respectable university is an establishment which must be the work of time. If pecuniary means were not wanting, no new institution could possess character and respectability at once. We owe deep obligation to our ancestors, who began, almost on the moment of their arrival, the work of building up this institution. ”

“ The university development since the middle of the nineteenth century has been greater than at any period before in world history, and with the spread of democracy, dependent as democracy is upon mass education to obtain its leaders, the university has become "the soul of the State" (R. 369) . The university development of the next half- century, the world as a whole considered, may possibly surpass anything that we have recently witnessed.
THE STATE SCHOOL SYSTEMS AS ORGANIZED. We now find state school systems organized in all the leading world nations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The institution owed its origin to federal land grants; it is maintained by the state, the United States, and by small fees paid by the students; tuition is free in all colleges except the college of law. The government of the university is vested in a board of trustees appointed by the governor of the state for a term of seven years. ”

“ The establishment of a university is, in my opinion, a matter alone for the future. At this time it is neither expedient nor is it good policy to provide for the sale of those lands set apart for the university fund. If at some future period it should be deemed expedient or in keeping with a more enlarged policy to devote our entire energies to a more general diffusion of knowledge than a university would afford, or even if the voice of the State should demand the establishment of one, these lands will then provide the means of advancing the cause of education. ”

“ The ideal American University is one which expresses and promotes this ideal of freedom.
A university is a group of vocational schools. A truly democratic university is an organic system of vocational schools, one which in the relations that subsist between its schools affords a shining, stimulating example of the kind of relations that ought to subsist between the vocational groups in the state.
The aim of an American university should be to furnish leaders for all the various groups who will undertake the great business of truly organizing democracy. ”

“ The result is a repetition of the old story of the house divided against itself. It is just this condition, we believe, that has led to such restless, groping questionings as, “What is Yale for?” The definition of a university as being one body of which there are many members admirably illustrates the point. For the college to-day is in the anomalous position of attempting to perform the duties of two members where it formerly functioned as one. Such a state of affairs is not conducive to the health of any organization whatever. ”

“ It will be conceded, I think, that all these activities in abstract science are to a very substantial extent due to the rapid rise of the American university and to its splendid influence upon the mentality of our industries. But in this democratic country, covering a vast area, each State has the privilege of regulating in its own way its own educational programme and policy, and each privately endowed university can pursue its own ideals in its own way without worrying very much about any other university. ”

“ At the head of the free university of the United States is the president, with a governing body and a board of trustees elected from members of the university; they appoint teachers, prescribe schedules of study and examinations, and conduct its business. True, the state cannot relinquish its right to oppose a system of teaching dangerous to the common weal; it will also provide that those to be licensed to practice the professions possess the necessary education and training; but the state refrains from further interference in the management of free universities. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lacking the stimulus of direct representation in the governing body, the alumni of the state universities have directed their efforts toward strengthening the general alumni [335] organization as the best available means of expressing the sentiment of an increasingly important portion of the university body. To further this desire alumni councils and other bodies with advisory powers have been established, though usually their status has been uncertain and their powers negligible, except as they voice a body of opinion which the university cannot afford to overlook. ”

“ There are Societies now at the following colleges and universities: Boston University, Brown, California, Chicago, Cincinnati, College of the City of New York, Clark, Colorado, Columbia, Cornell, Denver, Harvard, Hunter, Illinois, Johns Hopkins, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York University, North Carolina, Ohio State, Omaha, Pennsylvania, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Radcliffe, Rutgers, Texas, Tufts, Valparaiso, Washington, Western Reserve, Wisconsin, and Yale. New Societies are in the process of formation at several other universities. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Editors, essayists, college presidents and reformers assure us that we are on the verge of a change, and perhaps a great change, in our system of higher education. They dilate upon the indisputable fact that most of our older colleges have made rapid strides within the past ten years, augmenting their endowments, erecting handsome buildings, establishing new departments of study and increasing the number of students. Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Amherst, Princeton, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, were never so well off, in point of money and men, as they are at this day. ”

“ Of the work of improving the efficiency of teaching, the Colleges must bear the brunt; the central or administrative body of the University can contribute but little to it, and that too only by the inspection of the Colleges, wise regulation of the courses, and judicious direction of examinations with a view to influence the teaching in the right direction. Therefore, the creation of a new University, while the colleges are as much starved as before, cannot in itself improve the teaching and raise the efficiency of the education given. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The very fact, moreover, that in spite of these large numbers and other factors that we shall call attention to in a moment, comparatively so few disgraceful stories of university life have come down to us, and the other and still more important fact that the universities could be kept so constantly at the attainment of their great purpose for such numbers, is itself a magnificent tribute to those who succeeded in doing it, and to the system which was gradually evolved, not by the faculty alone but by teachers and students for university government. ”