Several prominent institutions have been reorganized; at others new departments have been formed. All of these movements have been accompanied by the inevitable changes in the incumbency of the directive offices through death, resignation, and calls to other fields of service.

In the following discussion certain of the more prominent topics of this summary receive somewhat extended treatment.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN STATE CONTROL OF HIGHER EDUCATIONAL

INSTITUTIONS.

MONTANA.

Previous reports have called attention to the overlapping and duplication among the higher educational institutions of Montana and have recorded the efforts of a former president of the State university to bring about a rational consolidation which would save the State both a considerable waste of money and the friction of institutional rivalry. A tentative step in this direction was taken, not without opposition, by the legislature of 1913, which passed an act organizing the State university at Missoula, the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts at Bozeman, the School of Mines at Butte, and the State Normal School at Dillon into the University of Montana. The control and supervision of the university is placed in the hands of the State board of education. The board is empowered to appoint a chancellor of the university and to make whatever rules may be necessary to prevent unnecessary duplications of courses of instruction in the various component parts of the university. In July, 1913, the board voted to discontinue the courses in engineering at the State university at Missoula and to concentrate all of the engineering courses at the State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts at Bozeman, with the exception of the work in mining engineering, which is still carried on by the School of Mines at Butte. The dean and several members of the engineering faculty at Missoula were transferred to the institution at Bozeman.

KANSAS.

Allusion has also been made in previous reports to the efforts of Kansas to unite its higher institutions under one board. In 1913 the legislature finally passed an act bringing this about. The act creates a State board of administration charged with the government of the University of Kansas, the Kansas State normal schools, the Kansas State Agricultural College, the school for the deaf, and the school for the blind. The board consists of three members, not more than two of whom may belong to the same political party and not

1 Control of State institutions of higher education in Montana has been vested in the State board of education since 1893.

more than one of whom may be an alumnus of any one of the educational institutions over which the board has control, nor more than one from any single congressional district. This board is appointed by the governor with the consent of the senate. Its members hold office for four years, their terms expiring at different dates. Each receives an annual salary of $3,500, together with an allowance for all traveling expenses incurred in the discharge of official functions, and is expected to devote his whole time to the duties of the board. The board elects a secretary, not one of its members, who, however, must be an experienced educator. It also may employ the clerical force necessary to conduct its business.

The authority of the board is extensive. It has the power to elect the presidents and treasurers of the institutions named in the act; to appoint professors, instructors, and all other employees, to fix the compensation of these officers and to determine their promotion, to make rules for the administration and government of the institutions, as well as to control their property.

It will be seen that no other State has vested such wide powers in so small a body of directors. While the board combines the functions of a board of control and an executive committee in a manner not quite in accord with the results of experience in other fields of public administration, nevertheless the efficacy of this type of management depends upon the quality of the board itself. The personnel of the Kansas board and the restraint which it has shown in the first 11 months of its existence augur well for the success of the Kansas experiment.

IDAHO.

Equally important and unusual is the act recently passed by the Legislature of the State of Idaho. This creates a State board of education which constitutes also the board of regents of the University of Idaho. The supervision and government not only of the university, the two State normal schools, and special schools of the State, but also of the whole elementary and secondary system, is placed in the hands of this board. The board consists of five members appointed by the governor, without reference to locality, party affiliation, or religion, one annually, for a term of five years. No member of the board can have been connected with any of the State educational institutions. The necessary personal and traveling expenses of the board are paid, and in addition each member receives an honorarium of $100. The board's functions, by the terms of the act, are purely legislative and advisory. As its executive officer it appoints, at such salary as it may designate, a commissioner of education, who is to be the supreme executive official of the educational department of the State. It also appoints such other specialists, assistants, clerks, or other executive officers as are deemed necessary, upon the recommendation of the commissioner. The act distinctly specifics

that the execution of the instructions of the board is to be left entirely to the experts that the board employs; the board's authority merely includes the determination of policies and the prescription of methods of procedure.

This separation of the legislative from the executive functions and the consequent freeing of the executive officer from petty and destructive interference is in accord with the best modern practice in administration. It has been tested and found admirably efficacious in the management of large corporations, municipal governments, and city school systems.

Through its executive officers the board is to have full charge of the public-school system of the State, the coordination of the different grades of education, the certification of teachers, the control of buildings, etc.

Unquestionably the most interesting feature of the act is the creation of the new office of commissioner of education, which is invested with large dignity and power and with opportunities for the exercise of educational statesmanship. The election of Dr. E. O. Sisson as commissioner gives promise of wise and constructive leadership. Idaho's experiment will be watched with great interest.

THE NEW ENGLAND COLLEGE ENTRANCE CERTIFICATE BOARD AND THE STATE DEPARTMENTS OF EDUCATION.

A recent protest of the New England State education officers against the methods and influence of the New England College Entrance Certificate Board gives public emphasis to certain very significant educational developments in that section. New England has been preeminently the stronghold of the principle of private as opposed to State control of higher education. Maine is the only State of the group having a State university of the same type as the State universities of the West and South. The colleges of New England, being neither tax supported nor managed by public officers, have determined the content and set the aims of higher education according to their own best judgment, without reference to the desires of the lower schools. They have, indeed, been in a position to force the secondary schools to give such courses and establish such standards as the colleges themselves have prescribed. The complaints of "college domination of the high school," which have occupied so prominent a place in educational discussions have perhaps most frequently referred to the colleges of New England. Yet it is only justice to record that this "domination" has been one of the chief influences in improving the public high school.

The power of the colleges in this direction is due primarily to the traditional prestige in New England of a college education and the institution that provides it. The stamp of the college's approval

on the secondary school of a given community has long been held by that community to be the final test of the school's excellence. Through bestowing their approval on the schools well equipped to fit for college and well taught, and withholding it from those ill equipped for this purpose and ill taught, the New England colleges have for many years been raising the standards of secondary instruction in these States. For the last 12 years a group of colleges, now 15 in number, has acted in conjunction and established a joint clearing house for the approval of secondary schools, known as the New England College Entrance Certificate Board. This board approves schools which send a certain number of successful candidates to the constituent colleges and which satisfy the board of the adequacy of their equipment. Failure on the part of a certain number of the graduates of any school to do well in colleges belonging to the board causes the board's approval of that school to be withdrawn.

A place on the approved list of the board has come to be a muchcoveted honor. While the board makes no attempt to investigate all the schools of New England and only rates those that apply for approval, and even though a negligible fraction of students may go from a given school to a New England college, nevertheless the community feels that the standing of the school is not satisfactory unless it is on the board's list. The entrance requirements of the colleges composing the board are, however, confined to a rather limited range of subjects; judged by the standards of the whole United States, they are conservative; hence the courses which schools must offer in order to secure inclusion in the list are somewhat restricted.

Meanwhile the new movement in secondary education, which seeks to relate the work of the high school directly to the life of the community which it serves, has spread throughout the country. The high school has already become in many sections "the people's college." Its curriculum is now framed with reference to the large majority who do not, instead of the small minority who do, go to college. Practical subjects, vocational subjects, informational subjects not previously offered by colleges or allowed to count for college entrance, have been introduced into the high-school curriculum. Some of the State universities of the Middle West and West have met the movement more than half way. They have made their entrance requirements constantly more elastic and have granted entrance credit for a constantly increasing number of subjects. In fact, the articulation between the State university and the secondary schools is in some States so complete that a graduate of an approved high school who has taken any course of study recognized by the school authorities may enter without serious handicap some course in the State-supported college. The policy adopted by the State university is usually followed more or less closely by the private institu

tions of the same State. A very superficial comparison of the entrance requirements imposed by the best institutions in the West with those of colleges of correspondingly high rank in New England and the East, indicates that the eastern secondary schools have not received the same encouragement toward adaptation to the popular demands by the colleges of these older sections.

Of late, however, the interests of the secondary schools in New England have received powerful support from another direction. The last decade has seen the increase in importance and authority of the State departments of education in these States. The New England departments of education have devoted especial attention to the problems of the high school. To study the needs of individual communities; to find the best method of devoting the cultural and practical resources of the high school to the community's service; to break down the conservative prejudice against the "new studies;" and to give formal public recognition to good high-school work, whether this prepares for college or not, may summarize in brief their program. In carrying out this program they find the policy of the New England College Entrance Certificate Board and the superior value attached by many communities or school committees to its approval in their way.

It is this dilemma that has led State Supt. Morrison, of New Hampshire, to urge the establishment of a State university in New Hampshire which shall serve New Hampshire as the University of Maine and the various State universities in other parts of the country are serving their States. These institutions have recognized, he saysthat the high school should adapt itself to the work done by the lower schools for the great mass of the population, and that the colleges in their turn should adapt their work to what the high school has done. So only can we build for ourselves an educational system which shall be both rational and democratic * *. We need an institution in which there shall be a place for every boy and girl who is able to make his way in college and which shall never dare to raise any artificial and arbitrary obstacles in the pathway of education. I believe that the natural solution of the problem and indeed the only solution is the development of a true State university in our midst.

*

Supt. Morrison is known to have the support and approval of the other heads of education offices in the New England States.

In a circular letter published October 1, 1914, Prof. F. W. Nicholson, the secretary of the New England College Entrance Certification Board, makes detailed reply to the criticisms of the board. He points out that as long as Harvard and Yale do not accept certificates and are not members of the board, the board can not be said to dominate high-school education in New England:

The board is concerned with just one thing—the reliability of a certificate. It has nothing to say as to requirements for admission to college; these are determined by the colleges (members of the board) themselves.