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they are dependent on the funds for their support. In the great flood of benevolence which now flows toward colleges and universities men and women are forgetting the necessity of strongly endowed academies. I can not here enter upon an argument in behalf of the academy, but it is safe to say that, just as there is a place for the State university and for the university established by private munificence, so there is a place for the academy as well as for the high school supported by the city.

No one can doubt that the onward movement of secondary education during the past year has been as great as that of any preceding year in the decade.

INCREASE OF HIGHER EDUCATION.

Every succeeding year of the past decade has witnessed a greater interest on the part of the American people at large in the work of higher education. The year just passing has contributed as much, perhaps, as any two or three of the preceding years. This larger interest is manifested by the increased attendance at all institutions giving instruction in higher work, by the greater numbers of men and women preparing themselves for the work of instruction in higher institutions, and by the larger public generosity which is manifesting itself on every possible occasion. In each of these particulars the advance during the past year has been significant. Many of our institutions are actually overcrowded, the numbers being greater than can be adequately cared for. The number of graduate students in our universities has more than doubled in five years. It is from this source that men and women are being selected to fill the chairs of our colleges and universities. Every week, and in some weeks every day, the public press announces gifts for higher education of $50,000 to $100,000, and larger sums. The Federal Government appropriates in one bill $6,500,000 for the Military Academy at West Point; in another bill, even a larger sum for the Naval Academy at Annapolis. This increase in the numbers of students and in the numbers of those preparing for professorial work is not limited to any one section of the country. It reaches from the East to the far West. Nor are the gifts for education limited to the East, to the Central States, or to the West. They are being poured out lavishly in every direction, and are given alike to the smaller institutions and to the large universities.

HIGHER COMMERCIAL AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION,

An important feature of higher educational work in most recent times is the attention which is being given to commercial and technical instruction. The time has come when the university is compelled to adjust itself more definitely to its environment. The prevailing characteristic of the modern environment is now included under these words: Commercial and technological. In spite of the fact that in Boston there exists the greatest technical school in America (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Harvard University is compelled, so says its president, to establish by the side of it another school of technology. This is necessary in part because students who wish to attend school at Harvard desire instruction in technology, and also because a university must serve as the true expression of the sentiment of its period. The State universities have naturally led the way in the development of technological work. Other universities must follow if they are to meet the demands of the times. It still remains to be seen whether the steps that have been taken in the direction of commercial education of a college grade will realize the hopes of those who have engaged in it. After all, it is to be remembered that the main purpose of a college course is not the information which the student gains; and yet it is to be conceded that any ordi

ED 1902-42

nary subject, well studied, may be used advantageously for the purposes of general education.

FEWER BACHELOR'S DEGREES.

A strong movement seems to have set in in the direction of reducing the number of bachelor's degrees to one. Following the lead of Harvard University, several institutions, including Columbia and Cornell, have given up the degrees of bachelor of science and bachelor of philosophy, and bestow upon all students who finish the college course the degree of bachelor of arts. This policy can, at all events, be defended on the ground of simplicity. It does away with distinctions which may seem to have lost their force. The strongest argument that has been urged is that by concentrating effort in the preservation of this degree the college course will be saved, where otherwise it is in danger of being lost. It may be questioned whether this tendency will go much further. It is surely doubtful whether it is to become universal. There are those who believe that the distinctions proposed in the different degrees are distinctions based upon real differences; that a course, the larger part of which is in science, may properly be called a course in science, and the degree given be a degree in science. The word "science" is one which its enthusiastic advocates should honor by use rather than dishonor by rejection. By the side of the old college of arts, the characteristic feature of which was the study of the classics, there have grown up two sister colleges-that of science and that of modern history and literature. Surely this fact may well be recognized, and nothing is gained by adapting the old degree to the new college, when it is so easy to employ a degree the name of which explains itself. This step can hardly be regarded as a forward step in education. The breaking down of real distinctions means backward movement, not progress.

MORE TRAINING FOR COLLEGE INSTRUCTORS.

It is generally conceded that the instruction given to students in the earlier college years has greatly improved within a short period. The custom of appointing as tutors or instructors students who had just graduated from college has almost disappeared in the better class of institutions. It is now expected that an instructor shall have had at least three years of special training in the subject in which he is appointed to give instruction. In some institutions there must be added to this at least one or two years of class-room instruction before an appointment is made. Not long since it was a common complaint that students in their freshman year received poorer instruction than in the last years of the academy or high school; and there was ground for this complaint. It can no longer be made, however, in view of the men appointed in all our institutions to do the earlier college work. In many institutions the oldest and most experienced professors give a portion of their time to freshman and sophomore classes.

STUDENT LIFE DEMOCRATIC,

A recent discussion in the Century Magazine on the growth of luxury in student life seems to have shown that, in so far as there has been a growth in this particular, it has not exceeded the similar growth in ordinary American life. Student life in our colleges and universities differs very slightly from the life of young men and women in any other sphere. Nowhere is life more democratic. It is impossible in student life that the influence of wealth should be felt. In most institutions the man who earns his livelihood by waiting on table occupies as high a position in the estimation of his fellows, if he is himself worthy of it, as does the man whose father is worth millions. The passing year has furnished no evidence that our higher institutions are moving further away from the people. The

fact that entering classes have been larger than ever indicates a confidence on the part of the American public in the purposes of the college and a faith in its ability to work out these purposes.

COLLEGE ATHLETICS.

The much-discussed subject of college athletics has received no important contributions during the year. Three things may perhaps be noted: First, the more stringent rules adopted by the Western colleges for the regulation of intercollegiate athletic work, and the general opinion that Western college athletics are now practically free from professionalism; second, the policy of many institutions to organize games between different divisions of the university itself, as well as to develop a special team for intercollegiate or interuniversity work; third, a growing feeling that the charging of large fees for admission to games savors too much of professionalism.

It may be feared that within a comparatively short time the rivalry between closely located institutions, East and West, has developed some antagonism. In not a few institutions there seems to exist a strong spirit of personal hostility toward other institutions with which competition in athletics is undertaken. Some of this same spirit has been manifested by home teams toward visiting teams, as well as by visiting teams toward the teams on whose grounds the games have been played. It is hardly, necessary to say that such manifestations are a mark of deterioration and indicate that instead of making progress we are losing ground. Such an attitude of mind is hardly worthy of a true sportsman; much less does it accord with the high academic spirit. If such feelings are a necessary part of intercollegiate athletics, the sooner intercollegiate athletics are abandoned the better for all concerned. One can not believe, however, that these manifestations are anything more than passing phases, which in another year will have been forgotten, and that in their place there will arise a stronger spirit of dignified and friendly rivalry, characteristic at once of the gentleman and the scholar.

FRATERNAL FEELING BETWEEN UNIVERSITIES.

The head of a prominent State university in the West has written to me that in his opinion one of the leading features of the educational advance of the year "is the measure of fraternal regard which has grown up between leading institutions of higher learning. If this existed before it has certainly had a marked advance in the course of the last twelve months, and it is a very important factor in the future of American education." No one can doubt the truth of this statement, made by President Draper, of the University of Illinois. It is not too much to say that nowhere in the various activities of the world has fraternal regard shown itself more distinctly, nowhere has the spirit of cooperation been manifested more definitely, than among the higher institutions of learning. A conspicuous example of the good feeling existing between institutions is the interchange of professors which has grown up during these last years, the trustees of one university consenting to the transfer, for a certain period, of a particular person to another institution. A most striking case of this kind is the arrangement by which the corporation of Harvard University has recently given leave of absence to a professor in its law school with the understanding that he shall accept for that period the deanship of the new law school of the University of Chicago, and undertake to establish in connection with the latter university a school which shall, at all events in some measure, partake of the strength and characteristics of the Harvard school. What greater evidence of good will and mutual interest could be presented? This spirit of fraternal regard has been shown most tangibly in the four great academic festivals of the year held in connection with the celebration of the

Yale bicentennial, the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Johns Hopkins University, the inauguration of President Butler at Columbia, and the centennial celebration of the Military Academy at West Point. At each of these celebrations representatives of many institutions were assembled. It seemed to be the prevailing opinion that good relationships between institutions of higher learning are not only conserved but greatly encouraged by such gatherings. In any case it is evident that, so far as the faculties are concerned, old hostilities have disappeared. In spite of the sharp competition which necessarily exists, feelings of the most friendly character are entertained, officially and unofficially, by one institution for another. It is evident to all that such gatherings are the means by which higher education makes a most forceful impression upon the consciousness of the people of the United States. The country knows no kind of celebration more brilliant or more effective than that which is connected with the twohundredth anniversary of a university, or even with the twenty-fifth anniversary of an institution of higher learning; and the time has come when the inauguration of the president of a large university is of greater importance and attracts more general interest than the inauguration of the governor of a commonwealth.

CHANGE IN THE ATTITUDE OF BENEFACTORS.

The president of Harvard University has called my attention to a change which, as he puts it, "has been strikingly illustrated during the year now almost finished in the altered taste of benefactors in regard to objects of endowment. The older endowments of Harvard College were for mathematics, divinity, Greek, Latin, moral philosophy, and belles-lettres. The subjects which most easily enlist the interest of benefactors now seem to be medicine, architecture, history, economics, and government. Intelligent benefactors are generally moved by some far-reaching hope for good. This change indicates that the hopes of our generation concerning the future progress of civilized man are somewhat different from those during the earlier part of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."

The experience of Harvard is the experience of many universities, and no year has furnished more evidence of this change in the attitude of benefactors than the year just closed.

A BACHELOR'S DEGREE AS A CONDITION OF ADMISSION TO THE PROFESSIONAL

SCHOOL.

In certain quarters much enthusiasm has been exhibited over the proposition to limit admission to professional schools to those who have already taken the bachelor's degree. The most conspicuous examples of this policy are the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Harvard Law School. During the year the Columbia Law School and the Harvard School of Medicine have adopted the policy. Within two weeks the President of Yale University has expressed in no uncertain way his opinion that "this movement is a movement in the wrong direction." In this opinion I am compelled to join; and, if all the facts were announced, I am persuaded in my own mind that a large proportion of the membership of the very faculties through which this change has been brought about would agree substantially with Mr. Hadley's point of view. Men who are to do work that shall count in their professions must find themselves in possession of the technique of the profession before they have reached an age when such technique is impossible. Besides this, the earlier courses in law, in medicine, in divinity, are as truly disciplinary and as productive of culture as any subjects that are offered in the college curriculum. Many men who are preparing for a profession are distinctly injured by the last year or two in college instead of being benefited thereby. There are some men for whom the college atmosphere, as dis

Men

tinguished from that of the professional school, is not a wholesome one. who in college idle away their time in many cases find the more strenuous life of professional training exactly suited to their needs. The value of this movement, both from the point of view of the college and from that of the professional school, may, therefore, be doubted. In any case, a middle ground, requiring two or three years of college work, is a superior policy for the next decade.

SHORTENING THE COLLEGE COURSE.

The feeling grows stronger in every quarter that the college course, at least for those who are to engage in a profession, must be shortened. It does not seem that the Harvard plan of three years meets with general favor, even in Cambridge, although, according to the official report, 40 per cent of the men now graduating from Harvard College finish their academic work within three years. It would. seem to be a better plan to allow those who do not contemplate a professional course of study to take the full four years of work in college, and to arrange for the other class to count their early professional work as a part of the work accepted for the bachelor's degree. A great forward step in the direction of this policy has been taken in the recent action of Yale. This policy has been adopted as the basis for the organization of the schools of medicine and law in the University of Chicago. It is the most practicable solution of the problem which confronts us, and bids fair to be the commonly accepted solution within a short time.

MORE WOMEN DESIRED ON COLLEGE FACULTIES.

Considerable comment has been made, although in a quiet and cautious way, upon the apparent scarcity of women possessed of the proper qualifications and training for the highest positions in college work. A prominent educator (I think it best to withhold mention of his name) has gone so far as to say that this scarcity is greater to-day than it was five years ago. Several suggestions have been made in explanation of the fact. For myself, I am not convinced that the proposition itself is true. The women now being graduated, with the doctor's degree, from our strongest institutions, are, in almost every particular, as able and as strong as the men. If opportunity were offered, these women would show that they possess the qualifications demanded. The fact is that to women there do not come the opportunities to show their strength which come to men. In colleges and universities for men only, women may not find a place upon the faculty. In a certain great State university, in which there are as many women students as men students, women are represented in the faculty by a single individual, and she has been appointed within the last three years. In some of the women's colleges women find a place. In others, second-rate and third-rate men are preferred to women of first-rate ability. The number of faculties of colleges and universities on which women have appointments in any number is very small, and even in certain institutions in which women have gained secure footing there is often greater or less distress among the men of the various departments if even one or two women are appointed. And yet, is it possible that the heads of our State institutions-institutions which are established by the people and conducted with the people's money; institutions which are professedly democratic beyond all others-deliberately refuse to recommend the appointment of women even when they have attained equal rank with men in scholarship and efficiency? So far as I can ascertain, during the past year the appointments of women, east and west, even in coeducational institutions, have numbered very few-fewer, perhaps, than ever before. Is this progress? Or is it rather a concession to prejudices which, instead of growing weaker, are growing stronger? I

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