University

“ A university now appears to mean “a college as good as it can be,” a stimulating conception, but not a finished or precise one. I would not disparage it. It is a term of aspiration, good to conjure with. When we want to elevate men’s ideas, or to obtain their dollars, it is well to talk about creating a true university: just as it is wise to bid the forward-reaching boy to become “a true gentleman.” ”

“ We welcome you to the university and to such advantages as it can afford, and we shall do all in our power to render your brief residence here fruitful both in experience and in knowledge; hoping also that the university may become to you, as she has to so many others, a bright light shining calmly over the troubled sea of active life, ever suggesting lofty thoughts, encouraging noble endeavors, and inciting all her children to work together toward those great ends, the advancement of knowledge and the education of mankind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The university, in like manner, stands to house the alphabets of civilization—the historic instruments and agencies of intellect. They are all akin to each other as the very name and function of the place imply. The presidents and professors who sit beside the fountains of knowledge bear different labels and teach subjects that are called by various names. But the thing which carries the label is no more than the shell. The life you cannot label; and it is to foster this life that universities exist. Enthusiasm comes out of the world and goes into the university. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The university or college, in its idea, is a place of research, where investigation is going on, a place of libraries and museums, where the best resources of the past are gathered, maintained and organized. It is, however, as true in the school as in the university that the spirit of inquiry can be got only through and with the attitude of inquiry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Permit me, however, to measure this independence of yours by the standard of this culture, and to consider your university as an educational institution and nothing else. If a foreigner desires to know something of the methods of our universities, he asks first of all with emphasis: 'How is the student connected with the university?' We answer: 'By the ear, as a hearer.' The foreigner is astonished. ”

“ Before these we count as nothing, for the students to come will number for each century about a hundred thousand. And there are many of these centuries, for the world is still very young, and a university once firmly rooted is as nearly eternal as human civilization itself can be. The university stands for the highest thought and wisest action possible for man, and the need of a university must endure so long as man exists ”

“ 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. ”

“ The true function of a university, according to the ‘Deduced Plan,’ has not been in general rightly apprehended. It is not the communication of knowledge by means of lectures, for, were this the aim, university work would be better performed by a large collection of books. The university is the crown or apex of the system of education, whereby the whole powers of the individual are to be trained to their highest form of exercise. A university is, in brief, a school for training in the art of using the understanding scientifically. ”

“ 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 University must be more than an abstraction, it must be a body of living men. Now, how can this end be attained in a natural process of evolution, and how can you help in that process? I have drawn your attention to the fact that this University, differing from that of London, requires its students to have passed through affiliated colleges; but so far it has not provided that they, in their life as graduates, shall continue, in communion with their colleges. Now it is in and through the college that I believe this congregation of learned and scientific men, may best be obtained. ”

“ He was also strongly of opinion that colleges should be places of research as well as of teaching.
"The modern university looks forward, and is a factory of new knowledge; its professors have to be at the top of the wave of progress. ”

“ On these accounts that university holds a most important place in the history of American higher education; for it stands practically at the beginning of the transition from the old sectarian college to the modern university, and from the simple, single, cast-iron course to the form which we now know, in which various courses are presented, with free choice between them. The number of students was about five hundred, and the faculty corresponded to these in numbers. Now that the university includes over four thousand students, with a faculty in proportion, those seem the days of small things ”

“ A university is an assemblage of schools, as our government is an assemblage of states. In England, different corporations, giving substantially similar instruction, are brought together by a common body which confers the degrees. In this country, a group of professional schools—law, medicine, theology, and science—are associated through one governing body with the college proper, that is, with the candidates for the B.A. degree. In this useful sense, Tufts and Bowdoin are universities ”

“ 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. ”

“ V., "Concerning the American University." "The university is those who teach and those who learn and the work they do." "The university is its men and their work. But certain externals are necessary or at least usual -- buildings and equipment, a president and trustees." ”

“ The word University implies a seat of universal knowledge, and it is reasonable to assume that Universities should act as fountains of new theoretical knowledge, as well as perform the function of diffusing it ”

“ We lay stress upon this aspect of universities, for, in our mind, from a catholic view-point, it is of the greatest importance in the discussion of the present issue.
The university is not only the focus of the intellectual life of a country; by its research work, by its applied science it becomes also the very fountain head of all national progress and prosperity. ”

“ In this new American usage, a college is a place where undergraduates are trained, and a university is a place where graduate-students are guided in research. Thus the college gives breadth, and the university adds depth. Thus the college provides general culture and the university provides the opportunity of specialization. If we accept this distinction,—and it has been accepted by all those who discuss the higher education in America,—we are forced to admit that the most of the self-styled universities of this country should be called colleges ”

“ Neither does the worldly spirit that pervades the gentlemen's college further the university's interest in scholarship, nor do the university's scholarly interests further the college work in gentility. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All our schools therefore are eminently classical. The University follows, as a matter of course, and then the University leads to a liberal profession, as surely as one step of a ladder conducts to another. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It teaches all knowledge by teaching all branches of knowledge, and in no other way. I do but say that there will be this distinction as regards a Professor of Law, or of Medicine, or of Geology, or of Political Economy, in a University and out of it, that out of a University he is in danger of being absorbed and narrowed by his pursuit, and of giving Lectures which are the Lectures of nothing more than a lawyer, physician, geologist, or political economist ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The term "University" has always been difficult to define. In the Middle Ages its meaning varied in different places, and changed somewhat in the centuries between 1200 and 1500 A.D. In these pages it signifies in general an institution for higher education; and "institution" means, not a group of buildings, but a society of teachers or students organized, and ultimately incorporated, for mutual aid and protection, and for the purpose of imparting or securing higher education. Originally, universities were merely guilds of Masters or Scholars ”