College Teaching Part 2

One of the most gratifying features of higher education in the United States during the past quarter century has been the extension of graduate schools to the strong state universities. Research work in them usually began in the school of agriculture, where the intensive study of the sciences, particularly chemistry and biology, had such splendid results in improved farming and dairying that legislatures were gradually persuaded to extend the support for research to purely liberal studies. With the growth and development of graduate schools in this country, the practice of going to Europe for advanced specialized study has abated considerably. It will probably so continue in the future, particularly with regard to Germany. On the other hand, should the new ideal of international good will become a living reality, education through a wide system of exchange professors and students may be expected to make its contribution.

=Technical and professional study=

While the graduate school was built upon the college, the technical school grew up by the side of it or upon an independent foundation.

The first technical school was established at Troy, New York, in 1824, and was called Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst.i.tute, after its founder, Stephen Van Rensselaer. For a score of years no other development of consequence was made, but in 1847 the foundations were made of what have since become the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard and the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale. The pa.s.sage of the Morrill Act in 1862 had a quickening effect on education in engineering and agriculture. In the decade from 1860 to 1870 some twenty-two technical inst.i.tutions were founded, most of them by the aid of the land grants.

The most important of them is the Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology, where instruction was first given in 1865 and which has exerted by far the greatest influence upon the development of scientific and technical education. The best technical schools require a high school diploma for admission and have a four-year course of study, but the only technical school on a graduate basis is the School of Mines at Columbia University.

Professional education in theology, law, and medicine in the United States was conducted chiefly upon the apprenticeship system down into the nineteenth century. Though chairs of divinity existed in the colonial colleges in the eighteenth century, systematic preparation for the ministry was not generally attempted and the prospective minister usually came under the special care of a prominent clergyman who prepared him for the profession. In 1819 Harvard established a separate faculty of divinity, and three years later Yale founded a theological department. Since then about fifty colleges and universities have established theological faculties and about 125 independent theological schools have been founded as the result of denominational zeal. A majority of all these inst.i.tutions require at least a high school diploma for admission; half of them require a college degree. Nearly all offer a three-year course of study and confer the degree of bachelor of divinity.

Previous to the Civil War the great majority of legal pract.i.tioners obtained their preparation in a law office. Though the University of Pennsylvania attempted to establish a law school in 1791, and Columbia in 1797, both attempts were abortive, and it remained for Harvard to establish the first permanent law school in 1817. Even this was but a feeble affair until Justice Joseph Story became a.s.sociated with it in 1830. Up to 1870 but three terms of study were required for a degree; until 1877 students were admitted without examination, and special students were admitted without examination as late as 1893. Since then the advance in standards has been very rapid, and in 1899 Harvard placed its law school upon a graduate basis. Though but few others have emulated Harvard in this respect, the improvement in legal education during the past two decades has been marked. Of the 120 law schools today, the great majority are connected with colleges and universities, demand a high school diploma for admission, maintain a three-year course of study, and confer the degree of LL.B. Twenty-four per cent of the twenty thousand students are college graduates. In some of the best schools the inductive method of study--i.e., the "case method"--has superseded the lecture, and in practically all the moot court is a prominent feature.

Entrance into the medical profession in colonial times was obtained by apprenticeship in the office of a practicing physician. The first permanent medical school was the medical college of Philadelphia, which was established in 1765 and which became an integral part of the University of Pennsylvania in 1791. Columbia, Harvard, and Dartmouth also founded schools before the close of the eighteenth century, and these were slowly followed by other colleges in the early decades of the nineteenth century. During almost the entire nineteenth century medical education in the United States was kept on a low plane by the existence of large numbers of proprietary medical "colleges" organized for profit, requiring only the most meager entrance qualifications, giving poor instruction, and having very inadequate equipment in the way of laboratories and clinics. In fact, medical education did not obtain a high standard until the establishment of the Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1893. Since then the efforts of the medical schools connected with the strong universities and of the Rockefeller Foundation to raise the minimum standard of medical education have resulted in the elimination of the weakest medical schools. The total number fell from 150 in 1900 to 100 in 1914. Not all of these demand a high school diploma for admission, though the tendency is to stiffen entrance requirements, but all have a four-year course of study. In most inst.i.tutions experience in laboratory, clinic, and hospital has superseded the old lecture system as the method of instruction.

Closely a.s.sociated with the progress in medicine and to a great extent similar in history has been the progress in dentistry and pharmacy.

There are now fifty schools of dentistry, with nearly 9000 students, and seventy-two schools of pharmacy, with nearly 6000 students.

One of the most gratifying advances in professional education has been that of the teacher. Practically all the state universities and many of the universities and colleges upon private foundations have established either departments or schools of education which require at least the same entrance qualifications as does the college proper and in many cases confine the work to the junior and senior years.

Teachers College of Columbia University is on a graduate basis. Though many of the 250 training and normal schools throughout the country do not require a high school diploma for admission, the tendency is wholly in that direction. In no field of professional education has the application of scientific principles to actual practice made such progress as in that of the teacher.

=College education for women--The independent college=

Few movements in the history of American education had more important results than the academy movement which prevailed during the period between the Revolution and the Civil War. Possibly the principle upon which the new nation was established, i.e., the privilege of every individual to make the most of himself, influenced the founders of the academies to make provision for the education of girls beyond the mere rudiments. Certainly this aspect of the movement had a far-reaching influence. Some of the earliest of the academies admitted girls as well as boys from the beginning, and some soon became exclusively female. When it became evident from the work of the academies that s.e.x differences were not of as great importance as had been supposed, it was not a long step to higher education. Some of the academies added a year or two to the curriculum and took on the more dignified name of "seminary." In this transition period the influence of a few great personalities was profound, and even a brief sketch of the history of women's education cannot omit to mention the splendid work of Emma Willard and Mary Lyon. Mrs. Willard was an exponent of the belief that freedom of development for the individual was the greatest desideratum for humanity. She not only diffused this idea in her addresses and writings but tried to utilize it in the establishment in 1814 of the Troy Female Seminary, which was the forerunner of many others throughout the country. Mary Lyon was rather the representative of the religious influence in education, the embodiment of the belief that to do one's duty is the great purpose in life. In 1837 she founded Mount Holyoke Seminary, which had an influence of inestimable value in sending well-equipped women throughout the country a teachers. The importance of this service was particularly evident during the period of the Civil War.

Although a number of excellent inst.i.tutions for women bearing the name of college were founded before the Civil War, the first one of really highest rank was Va.s.sar College, which opened its doors to students in 1865. Smith and Wellesley were founded in 1875, and Bryn Mawr in 1885.

These four colleges are in every respect the equal of the best colleges for men. They are the most important of a dozen independent colleges for women, almost all of which are situated in the East. To establish the independent college was the chief method adopted in the older parts of the country to solve the problem of women's higher education, rather than to reorganize colleges for men where conditions were already established.

=The development of coeducation=

The independent college is not the method that has prevailed in the West. When the inspiration to higher education for women arrived west of the Alleghanies, conditions, especially lack of resources, practically necessitated coeducation. Oberlin, founded in 1834, was the first fully coeducational inst.i.tution of college grade in the world. In 1841 three women received from it the bachelor's degree, the first to get it. Oberlin's success had a p.r.o.nounced influence on the state universities, which, it was argued, should be open and free to all citizens, since they were supported by public taxation. Almost all the state universities and the great majority of the colleges and universities on private foundations are today coeducational. The results predicted by pessimists, viz., that the physical health of women would suffer, that their intellectual capacity would depreciate scholarship, and that the interests of the family would be menaced, have not eventuated.

=The affiliated college for women=

The spread of coeducation in the state universities of the West and the South and its presence in the newer private universities like Cornell and Chicago had an influence upon the older universities of the East. This influence has resulted in a third method of solving the problem of women's education; viz., the establishment of the affiliated college. Several universities have established women's colleges, sometimes under the same and sometimes under a different board of trustees, to provide the collegiate education for women which is given to men by the undergraduate departments. Barnard College, affiliated with Columbia University, Radcliffe College, affiliated with Harvard University, Woman's College, affiliated with Brown University, the College for Women, affiliated with the Western Reserve University, and the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College for Women, affiliated with Tulane University, have all been founded within the past forty years.

=Graduate and professional studies for women=

All the universities for men except Princeton and Johns Hopkins and all the fully coeducational inst.i.tutions admit women upon the same terms as men to graduate work. Graduate work is also undertaken with excellent results in some of the independent women's colleges, as at Bryn Mawr. Professional education for women has been coeducational from the beginning, with the exception of medicine. The prejudice against coeducation in that profession was so strong that five women's medical schools were organized, but they provide instruction for little more than a quarter of the women medical students. The increase in the number of women in professional schools has not by any means kept pace with the increase in the colleges. It appears that, with the exception of teaching, woman is not to be a very important sector in the learned professions in the near future.

=Undergraduate life--Fraternities=

Nothing differentiates more clearly the American college from European inst.i.tutions of higher education than the kind of non-scholastic activities undertaken by the students. From the very beginning the college became a place of residence as well as of study for students from a distance, and the dormitory was an essential element in its life. With increase in numbers, especially after the Revolution, when all distinctions of birth or family were abolished, students naturally divided into groups. The first fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa, was founded in 1776 at William and Mary, with a patriotic and literary purpose, and membership in it has practically ever since been confined to graduates who have attained high scholastic standing. When one speaks of college fraternities, however, he does not refer to Phi B K, but to one of the intercollegiate social organizations which have chapters in several colleges organized somewhat upon the plan of a club and whose members live in a chapter house. The first such fraternity was founded at Yale in 1821, but it was limited to the senior cla.s.s. The three fraternities established at Union in 1825-1827 form the foundation of the present system. The fraternities spread rapidly and are today very numerous. There are about thirty of national importance, having about a thousand chapters and a quarter of a million members. The fraternity system is bitterly attacked as being undemocratic, expensive, emphasizing social rather than scholastic attainments, and, generally speaking, a divisive rather than a unifying factor in college life. Hence some colleges have abolished it. Fraternities have been defended, however, as promoting close fellowship and even helping to develop character.

So strongly are they entrenched, not only in undergraduate but also in alumni affection, that they probably form a permanent element in college life.

=Religious life=

The early American college was primarily a place to prepare for the ministry, and personal piety was a matter of official enforcement. For a number of reasons religious zeal declined in the eighteenth century.

After the Revolution, under the influence of the new political theories and of French skepticism the percentage of students professing to be active Christians fell very low. In the early nineteenth century the interest of students in religion increased, and religious organizations in a number of colleges were founded.

Practically all of these later gave way to the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation, which has now over 50,000 members organized in almost all the colleges of the country save the Roman Catholic. The religious interests of Roman Catholic students are in many colleges served by the Newman Clubs and similar organizations, and of Jewish students by the Menorah Society. The religion of college students has become less a matter of form and speech and more a matter of service--social service of many kinds at home and missionary service abroad.

=Physical education=

The educational reformers of Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries placed great emphasis upon a more complete physical training. This interest was felt in the United States, and simple gymnastic apparatus was set up at Harvard and Yale in 1826. The movement spread very slowly, however, due probably to ignorance of its real physiological import. Since the Civil War the development of the gymnastic system has been rapid, and now practically every first-cla.s.s college has its gymnasium, attendance upon which is compulsory, and some have their stadium and natatorium. Of independent origin but hastened by the spread of the gymnasium is the vast athletic interest of undergraduates. Its earliest form, conducted on a considerable scale, was rowing. The first rowing club was formed at Yale in 1843, and the first intercollegiate race was rowed on Lake Winnepesaukee in 1852, Harvard defeating Yale. Rowing is now a form of athletics at every college where facilities permit. The first baseball nine was formed at Princeton in 1859, and the game spread rapidly to all the other colleges. Football in a desultory and unorganized way made its appearance early in the nineteenth century. As early as 1840 an annual game was played at Yale between the freshmen and the soph.o.m.ores, but the establishment of a regular football a.s.sociation dates from 1872, also at Yale. In the following year an intercollegiate organization was formed, and since then football has increased in popularity at the colleges to such an extent that just as baseball has become the great national game, so has football become the great American collegiate game. Track athletics is the most recent form of athletic sports to be introduced into the college, and most colleges now have their field days. In addition to these four major forms of college sports, tennis, lacrosse, basketball, and swimming also have a prominent place. The four major sports are usually under the control of special athletic a.s.sociations, which spend large sums of money and have a great influence with the students. In fact, so great has become the interest of college students in athletics that much fear has been expressed about its influence upon scholastic work, and voices are not lacking demanding its curtailment.[1] Military training is a phase of physical education which, though it had earlier found a place in the land-grant inst.i.tutions, came to the fore as a part of the colleges' contribution to winning the world war. Students' Army Training Corps were established at many of the higher inst.i.tutions of the country, and the academic studies were made to correlate with the military work as a nucleus. At the present time, however, the colleges are putting their work back on a pre-war basis, and it seems most unlikely that military training will survive as a corporate part of their work.

=Student literary activities--College journalism=

Journalism, though its actual performance is limited to a small number of students, has had an honored place as an undergraduate activity for almost a hundred years. It served first as a means of developing literary ability among the students, afterwards as a vehicle for college news, and now there has been added to these purposes the uniting of alumni and undergraduates. Hence we find among college journals dailies, monthlies, and quarterlies, some of them humorous and some with a serious literary purpose. Journalism is not the only method of expressing undergraduate thought. There has been a great revival of intracollegiate and of intercollegiate debating in recent years. Literary societies for debating the great issues preceding the Revolution was the first development of undergraduate life, and every college before and after the Revolution had strong societies. As undergraduate interests increased in number, and especially as the fraternity system began to spread, debating societies a.s.sumed a relatively less important place, but in the past two decades great interest has been revived in them. The glee club, or choral society, along with the college orchestra, minister to the specialized interests of some students, and the dramatic a.s.sociation to those of others. One significant result of such activities has been to establish a nexus between the college and community life.

=Student self-government=

One other feature of undergraduate life cannot be overlooked; viz., student self-government. The college student today is two or three years older than was his predecessor of fifty or sixty years ago.

Moreover, with the great increase in the number of students has come a parallel increase in complexity of administration and in the duties of the college professor. Finally, a sounder psychology has taught the wisdom of placing in the hands of the students the control of many activities which they can supervise better than the faculty. As a result of these and of other influences, in many colleges today all extra-scholastic activities are either supervised by the student council, the members of which are elected by the students, or by a joint body of student and faculty members. The effect in almost every instance has been the diminution of friction between the faculty and students and the development of better relations between them. In some colleges the honor system is found, under which even proctoring at examinations does not exist, as all disciplinary matters, including the decision in serious offenses like cheating, rest with the student council. Student self-government is only one evidence of the democratization that has taken place in the administration of the college during the past two decades. Even more noticeable than student self-government is the tendency recently manifested to transfer more of the control of the government of the college from the board of trustees to the faculty.

=New opportunities in higher education=

With the extension of commerce and the attempt to bring it under efficient organization in the nineteenth century, the demand has been made upon the colleges to train experts in this field. Germany was the first to engage in it, and just before the war probably led the world.

France and England have remained relatively indifferent. In America, the so-called "business college" proved entirely too narrow in scope, and beginning with the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce of the University of Pennsylvania (1881), the higher inst.i.tutions have begun to train for this important field. Some of the colleges of commerce, like those of Dartmouth and Harvard, demand extensive liberal preparation; others, like Wharton and the schools connected with the state universities, coordinate their liberal and vocational work; a few, like that of New York University, give almost exclusive attention to the practical element.

Two other movements might be mentioned as ill.u.s.trating the attempt to extend the opportunity for higher education to an ever increasing number of people. One is the development of extension courses and the other the offering of evening work to those who cannot attend the regular sessions. These are both steps in the direction of equality of opportunity which is the ultimate aim of education in a democratic country.

=The future of the college in American education--Relation to secondary schools=

The college preceded the high school in time, and when the high school began its career in the middle of the nineteenth century it was made tributary to the college in all essentials. By deciding requirements for admission, the college practically prescribed the curriculum of the high school; by conducting examinations itself it practically determined methods of teaching in the high school. But a remarkable change in these respects has taken place in the past two decades. The high school, which is almost omnipresent in our country, has attained independence and today organizes its curricula without much reference to the college. If there be any domination in college entrance requirements today, it is rather the high school that dominates. Over a large part of the country, especially in states maintaining state universities, there are now no examinations for entrance to college.

The college accepts all graduates of _accredited_ high schools--i.e., high schools that the state university decides maintain proper secondary standards. This growth in strength and independence has been accompanied by a lengthening of the high school course from two years in the middle of the last century to four years at the present time.

=The junior college=

With the introduction of the principle of promotion by subject instead of by cla.s.s, the strong high schools have been enabled to undertake to teach subjects in their last years which were formerly taught in the first years of the college. They have done this so well that the practice has grown up in some parts of the country, especially on the Pacific Coast, of extending the course of the high school to six years and of completing in them the work of the first two years of college.

This enables more young men and women throughout the state to receive collegiate education, and as the best-equipped teachers in the high schools are usually in the last years and the worst-equipped teachers in the college are usually in the first years, the system makes for better education. Moreover, it relieves the state universities of the crowds of students in the first two years and permits overworked professors to concentrate upon the advanced work of the last two years and upon research work in the graduate schools. A system which offers so many advantages and is so popular both in the high school and the university bids fair to spread.

=The abbreviated and condensed college course=

While the movement making for the elimination of the college from below has been taking place in the West, another movement having the same effect has been taking place in the East, only the pressure has been from above. The tendency is spreading for the professional schools of the strong universities to demand a college degree for admission. If the full four years of the college are demanded in addition to the four years of the secondary school and the eight years of the elementary school, the great majority of students will begin their professional education at twenty-two and their professional careers at twenty-six, and they will hardly be self-supporting before thirty. This seems an unreasonably long period of preparation compared to that required in other progressive countries. The German student, for example, begins his professional studies immediately upon graduation from the gymnasium at eighteen. Hence the demand has arisen for a shortening of the college course. This demand has been met in several ways. In some colleges the courses have been arranged in such a way that the bright and industrious student may complete the work required for graduation in three years. In others, as at Harvard, the student may elect in his senior year the studies of the first year of the professional school. Another tendency in the same direction is to permit students in the junior and even in the soph.o.m.ore years to elect subjects of a vocational nature. This has been bitterly contested by those who hold that the minimum essentials of liberal culture should be acquired before vocational specialization begins. Columbia _permits_ a student to complete his college and professional studies in six years, and at the end of that time he receives both the bachelor's and the professional degrees.

It is to be noted, however, that these solutions of the problem and, in fact, most other solutions that have been suggested, apply only to a college connected with a university; they could not be administered in the independent college. But a movement has developed in the Middle West which may result in another solution; i.e., the Junior College.

It can be best understood by reference to the policy of the University of Chicago. That inst.i.tution divides its undergraduate course into two parts: a Junior College of two years, the completion of whose course brings with it the t.i.tle of a.s.sociate in Arts, and a Senior College of two years, the completion of whose course is rewarded with the regular bachelor's degree. There have become affiliated with the University of Chicago a considerable number of colleges throughout the Mississippi Valley which have frankly become Junior Colleges and confine their work to the freshman and soph.o.m.ore years. And this has become true of other universities. It would seem inevitable that the bachelor's degree will finally be granted at the end of the Junior College and some other degree, perhaps the master's, which has an anomalous place in American education in any case, at the end of the Senior College.

This has, in fact, been suggested by President Butler. The University of Chicago has also struck out in another new direction. Provided a certain amount of work is done in residence at the University, the remainder may be completed _in absentia_, i.e., through correspondence courses.

The Junior College movement has had the excellent result of inducing many weak colleges to confine their work to what they really can afford to do. Many parts of our country have a surplus of colleges, chiefly denominational. Ohio alone has more than fifty. The cost of maintaining dormitories, laboratories, libraries, apparatus, and other equipment and paying respectable salaries cannot be met by the tuition fees in any college. The college must either have a large income-producing endowment, which few have, or must receive gifts sufficient to meet expenses. Gifts to colleges and universities form one of the finest evidences of interest in higher education in the United States, and reach really colossal proportions. In the past fifty years, during which this form of generosity has prevailed, over 600 million dollars have been given, and in 1914 gifts from private sources amounted to more than 30 million dollars. Most of this money is given to the non-sectarian inst.i.tutions and not to the small denominational colleges scattered over the country. As they are in addition unable to compete with the state universities, they are for every reason justified in becoming Junior Colleges. But this does not apply to the old independent colleges, such as Amherst, Williams, Dartmouth, etc., which have loyal and wealthy alumni a.s.sociations.

They have the support necessary to retain the four-year course and seem determined to do so.

Just what the outcome of the whole question of shortening the college course may be is not now evident. That concessions in time must be made to the demand for an earlier beginning of professional education seems certain. That the saving should be made in the college course is not so certain. A sounder pedagogy seems to indicate that one year, if not two, can be saved in the period from the sixth to the eighteenth year. It is probable that the arbitrary division of American education into elementary, secondary, collegiate, and university, each with a stated number of years, will give way to a real unification of the educational process. Most Americans would regret to see the college, the unique product of American education, which has had such an honorable part in the development of our civilization, disappear in the unifying process.

STEPHEN PIERCE DUGGAN _College of the City of New York_

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The bibliography on the American college is almost inexhaustible. The list here given is confined to the best books that have appeared since 1900.