Undergraduate

“ The undergraduate of to-day, if he reads the magazines, discovers that a great many people are worrying seriously about his condition. College presidents and official investigators are discussing his scholarship, his extra-curricular activities, and his moral stamina. Not content with the surface of the matter, they are going deeper and are investigating the college itself, its curriculum, the scholarship of the instructors, and its adequacy in realizing its high ideal as a preparation for life. ”

“ How can college journalism be made to take a real hold on the undergraduate’s life? One might answer, present literature and writing in an interesting manner, bring out the humanity in it; for, above all, the undergraduate is intensely human. New college ideals and interests have been born, and have grown up in a new age of literary aspiration and method. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such is the simple creed of the undergraduate. If he satisfies neither of the above requirements, then he recognises, with greater or less sadness, that he is an ordinary man, the "average undergraduate." ”

“ At universities in the ordinary sense of the word there are not more than ten thousand students and the remainder is added in order surely to include all those who may be considered as doing undergraduate work in colleges and schools of various kinds. ”

“ It is not strange, therefore, that many of the professors pursued reputable occupations during their odd hours or that they took students to board. We hear to-day of frequent illustrations of the pursuit of knowledge under difficulty, but certainly during the ages to which I have referred the ardent student, were he undergraduate or professor, put up with an amount of hardship, meagre fare, and trouble of all kinds which would stagger most of the young men of to-day. ”

“ Here and there are knots of Bachelors of Arts, in their ampler gowns with fur-lined hoods, some only removed by a brief three years from their undergraduate days, others who have evidently allowed a much longer period to pass before returning [Pg 2] to bring their academic career to its full and complete end. ”

“ There is no doubt at all about the value of the undergraduate training, nor of the scholarship of the men who were turned out under the system, nor of their ability to concentrate their minds on difficult subjects—a faculty that we strive to cultivate in our time and do not always congratulate ourselves on securing to the degree, at least, that we would like. ”

“ Undergraduate life is now likewise influenced by the influx of students who are not the sons of college men, but who come from homes the chief ideals of which have been derived from counting-rooms and laboratories, from brokers’ and railroad offices. These students, scions of a property-getting class, in conjunction with the social and the scientific students in college, help to change the classical traditions. They emphasize the campus side of college life more than that of the lecture-room. ”

“ 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 characteristics of a college course demanded by our American undergraduates is determined by two things; first, by the character of the man who is to be educated, and second, by the kind of world in which the man is to live and work. ”

“ Undergraduate education was considered to be for the purpose of good living as well as good learning. It was to affect the body, mind, manners, sentiment, and business, instead of just leading to becoming a better disputant. ”

“ In many of the larger universities the younger members of the department usually teach only undergraduate courses, while some of the older members devote either all or most of their time to the advanced work ”

“ The original transitive sense of “to confer or admit to a degree” is, however, still preserved in America, where the word is, moreover, not strictly confined to university degrees, but is used also of those successfully completing a course of study at any educational establishment. As a substantive, a “graduate” (Med. Lat. graduatus) is one who has taken a degree in a university. Those who have matriculated at a university, but not yet taken a degree, are known as “undergraduates.” ”

“ It will so improve the first two years of undergraduate work that students will be much better prepared to take up courses leading to professional and graduate pursuits in their junior year. And this is what many educators, together with the National Association of State Universities, wish to bring about. ”

“ All the Undergraduates shall treat those in the government of the College with respect and deference; particularly, they shall not be seated without leave in their presence; they shall be uncovered when they speak to them, or are spoken to by them. ”

“ When I speak of the College Tutor, it must not be supposed that one man is equal to all this work in a large college,—Trinity, for instance, which usually numbers four hundred Undergraduates in residence. A large college has usually two Tutors,—Trinity has three,—and the students are equally divided among them,—on their sides, the phrase is,—without distinction of year, or, as we should call it, of class. ”

“ The social tone of the University was excellent. Many of the tutors and of the undergraduates came of good families, and the struggle for life, or for a college living, or college office, was not, as yet, so fierce as it became afterwards. College tutors toiled on for life, and certainly did their work to the last most conscientiously. ”

“ The university took responsibility for the student's morals and behavior and tutors sometimes whipped the undergraduates. For young noblemen, a more important part of their education than going to university was travel on the continent with a tutor. ”

“ American institutions of learning are at present neglecting an opportunity par excellence for presenting different phases of life-work to undergraduates, especially emphasizing the relation of this life-work to the great branches of leadership and modern enterprise. There are hundreds of students being graduated from our institutions to-day who have not decided what they are to do in after life. ”

“ In most American universities a sharp Organization. distinction is made between undergraduates and graduates, between those who are candidates for the baccalaureate degree (A.B., S.B., and Ph.B.) and those who are engaged in higher professional study, like law, medicine and theology, or in the manifold branches of modern science, like philology, historical and political science (including economics) , philosophy (including logic, ethics and psychology) , mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, &c. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It’s hardly a college since it has no student body nor faculty. Rather, both are one at the haven. Anyone admitted is a scholar or potential scholar anxious to devote himself to learning. I mean for its own sake. ”

“ But it is perfectly well understood that in this community the degree of Bachelor of Arts is for most men the one essential condition of admission to the noble fraternity of scholars, to what has been called the "Guild of the Learned." ”

“ Heroes and scholars have gone forth from their studies here, into the great field of the world, to seek their fortunes, and to conquer and be conquered. As I surveyed the exterior of the different Colleges, I could here and there see the reflection of the light from the window of some student, who was busy at his studies, or throwing away his time over some trashy novel, too many of which find their way into the trunks or carpet bags of the young men on setting out for College. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every student under the degree of master of arts was required to have a tutor, thus regularizing the position of fellow-commoners, pensioners, sizars, and subsizars as members of the College, and bringing them under the same rule as scholars. ”

“ Those who looked forward to a University degree, or any career in which public examinations must play an important part, were placed on the "Collegiate" side, and trained accordingly in the necessary classics, mathematics and physics, which would fit them for matriculation, or as candidates for certain scholarships. ”

“ The following are opinions that represent the majority or appear important as individual views: (1) The high-school graduate, when entering college, should possess a mind educated by methods that create interest and make power to think and generalize—power to do original work. (2) He should have an acquaintance with each field of knowledge, and should show a symmetrical development of his mental activities. (3) As tending to produce greater interest, knowledge, and power, he should have been trained in only a limited number of subjects in each field ”

“ If a conscientious course of study at a University secured no other advantage than that of presenting to youth a picture of the dignified calling of the Scholar as a model for life, and of repelling from this sphere those who are not endowed with the requisite power, such a course would, on account of this advantage alone, be of the utmost importance to the Student. ”

“ ALUMNI. Latin, from alo, to nourish. A pupil; one educated at a seminary or college is called an alumnus of that institution.
A.M. An abbreviation for Artium Magister, Master of Arts. The second degree given by universities and colleges. It is usually written M.A., q.v.
ANALYSIS. In the following passage, the word analysis is used as a verb; the meaning being directly derived from that of the noun of the same orthography.
If any resident Bachelor, Senior, or Junior Sophister shall neglect to analysis in his course, he shall be punished not exceeding ten shillings.—Peirce's Hist. Harv. ”

“ 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 too many academies calling themselves 'college' or even 'university,' with high grade curriculum and low grade requirements, with long lists of pupils in preparatory classes of one sort or another and very short lists of students in so-called college classes. ”

“ Now, for the first time, when we have to accompany the Student from the Academy into Life, we must call to mind that the studies and character of the Progressive Scholar are not necessarily completed with his residence at the University ”

“ Gentlemen Graduates, not only the necessity of bearing in mind the charge given you on receiving your degrees,—namely, that you ever in your lives and conversation show yourselves worthy of the same—but that you bear in mind that when you can place after your names the letters of your degree your education is not finished—in truth, it has but just begun. ”

“ In accordance with these principles, the object of the system of college education in America has always been development and discipline of character, and the broad preparation of the student for his subsequent special or professional pursuits. ”