]> Undergraduate Work and the University of North Carolina: A Report on Recent Tendencies and Present Problems in Undergraduate Work in Some American Institutions of Higher Learning: Electronic Edition. Knight, Edgar Wallace, 1885-1953 Funding from the State Library of North Carolina supported the electronic publication of this title. Text transcribed by Apex Data Services, Inc. Images scanned by Brian Dietz Text encoded by Apex Data Services, Inc., Brian Dietz, and Elizabeth S. Wright First edition, 2005 ca. 465K University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005.

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 Undergraduate Work and the University of North Carolina Edgar W. Knight [ii], 212 p. Chapel Hill, N.C. [s.n.] November 1, 1934 Call number C378 UI c. 3 (North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

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 Library of Congress Subject Headings English College students -- North Carolina -- Chapel Hill. Curriculum change -- United States -- History. Education, Higher -- Aims and objectives -- United States -- History. Education, Higher -- United States -- History. Universities and colleges --United States -- History. University of North Carolina (1793-1962) -- Curricula. University of North Carolina (1793-1962) -- History. University of North Carolina (1793-1962) -- Students. 2005-08-19, Celine Noel and Wanda Gunther revised TEIHeader and created catalog record for the electronic edition. 2005-05-09, Elizabeth S. Wright finished TEI-conformant encoding and final proofing. 2005-01-05, Brian Dietz finished TEI/SGML encoding. 2004-10-29, Apex Data Services, Inc. finished transcribing the text.

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 Undergraduate Work and the University of North CarolinaBy Edgar W. Knight, The University of North Carolina A report on recent tendencies and present problems in undergraduate work in some American institutions of higher learning. Chapel Hill, N. C., November 1,1934 CONTENTS I. The Background . . . . .1 II. Some Recent Changes and Tendencies . . . . .42 III. The University of North Carolina . . . . .119 IV. Some Suggestions for the University of North Carolina . . . . .200 Chapter I The Background

“I must in all honesty say, that, looking back through the years, and recalling the requirements and methods of the ancient institution, I am unable to speak of it with all the respect I could wish. Such training as I got, useful for the struggle of life, I got after, instead of before graduation, and it came hard; while I never have been able — and now, no matter how long I may live, I never shall be able — to overcome some great disadvantages which the superstitions and wrong theories and worse practices of my Alma Mater inflicted upon me. And not on me alone. The same may be said of my contemporaries, as I have observed them in success and failure. What was true in this respect of the college of thirty years ago is, I apprehend, at least partially true of the college of today; and it is true not only of Cambridge, but of other colleges, and of them quite as much as of Cambridge. They fail properly to fit their graduates for the work they have to do in the life that awaits them.”

Thus was Harvard criticized by Charles Francis Adams, Jr., in an address called “A College Fetich” which he gave before the Harvard Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa June 28, 1883, three decades after he had been graduated by that distinguished institution. A century earlier another distinguished son of Harvard (Harrison Gray Otis) had charged that his Alma Mater was oppressed by traditional and fixed academic customs. In 1782 he said: “May Father Time ameliorate his pace and hasten the desired period when I shall bid adieu to the sophisticated Jargon of a superstitious synod of pensioned bigots.”

In these two bitter criticisms is revealed the supremacy of ancient higher educational ideals that had been inherited from the early colonial colleges and had persisted through the eighteenth and far into the nineteenth century. The substance of the college curriculum far after the Civil War rested upon old foundations and a historic model whose roots reached back into the dim past. Higher education was firmly fixed in the grip of a stubborn tradition that was to become and remain for many decades the center of violent scholastic struggles, conflicts between the traditional subjects on the one hand and modern subjects on the other. Nearly two and a half centuries were to pass after the founding of Harvard before serious attention was to be given by the colleges and universities of this country to the facts of the material universe and the science of human society. Meantime, college students continued to be immersed in ancient linguistics, vague theories, and dogmas that bore little relation to their life. Opportunities for vital education were probably little richer here than in England in the eighteenth and a large part of the nineteenth century.1

1 Gibbon, the historian, said of Oxford in the middle of the eighteenth century: “The Fellows or monks of my time were decent easy men, who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder: their days were filled by a series of uniform employments—the chapel, the hall, the coffee-house, and the common room—till they retired weary and well satisfied to a long slumber. From the toil of reading, writing, or thinking they had absolved their conscience.”

The American college is a native institution only in the sense that it is a European institution transplanted to this county in the seventeenth century by the early settlers who brought it from England along with their Bibles and their axes. It soon became an accepted part of life here and is still taken for granted. College presidents who wrote about it, especially before the Civil War, almost uniformly praised it as an institution whose promise of permanence was an argument for its usefulness to American life. The most difficult problems that faced college executives during that time and even since emerged from the continued necessities of trying to adjust the work of the college to the needs of its environment and its supporting constituency. But real changes came slowly. In aims and policies American colleges were very similar down to the middle of the nineteenth century. They were also quite similar in their programs of study. In the main, the curriculum was prescribed and fixed for all students without regard to their needs or abilities, and electives were generally unknown.

But the history of the collegiate curriculum of the United States shows it definitely as a growth and not as an accident. From the curriculum of Henry Dunster, who brought it from Cambridge in 1640, from the earliest to the latest record of the course of study, there is this evidence of growth, although fundamental changes did not take place in the curriculum until after 1860. The story of this part of the American college, over which conflicts have so often waged, also shows that as time passes and conditions change the demands upon the college curriculum increases. In the main, this story divides itself into three rather definite periods: from the beginnings to about 1860; between that date and the World War; and since the World War.

The first of these periods was marked by the well-known domination of the classics in a fixed curriculum of a few other subjects that included mathematics, rhetoric, logic, and moral philosophy,—the seventeenth, eighteenth, and a part of the nineteenth century version of the ancient trivium and quadrivium, the “seven liberal arts,” which formed the curriculum of the mediaeval universities. These subjects were standard in most of the colleges; slight differences here and there only served to give emphasis to the similarity of the American college curriculum for two centuries or more. Generally, also, these subjects had become ends in themselves. Completion of them was required because of their alleged cultural values and the dignity they were supposed to bestow upon the students who kept the faith and finished the course.1

1 “Here in college is to be fashioned, in the highest attainable perfection, the scholar, the citizen, the good man, the Christian gentleman,” said Charles King in his inaugural address as president of Columbia College, New York, in 1849.

Occasional efforts at departures from the traditional curriculum were made,—as at Philadelphia under the influence of Franklin about the middle of the eighteenth century, at William and Mary about 1779, by suggestion of Governor Thomas Jefferson, and at the University of Virginia, in 1826, under the influence of Jefferson. But prophets of new ideals in collegiate curriculum were not numerous in the United States until far into the nineteenth century.

The second period in the development of the college curriculum of the United States may be said to have begun after the Civil War. If a date must be fixed the most nearly accurate one would probably be 1869 when Charles W. Eliot began his distinguished career of forty years as president of Harvard. From that time until about 1914 the tendency was definitely away from a fixed curriculum toward gradually increasing freedom of elective programs, under the assumption, which some thoughtful people believed to be a bit violent, that the college student was sufficiently mature to make wise selections of his courses. The classics now began to yield and numerous new subjects were given places in the curriculum.

The elective system gained wide vogue under the influence of Harvard which was the leading university of the land and therefore identified with the fitness of things. By 1885 Eliot was able to say of that institution: “No required subjects now remain except the writing of English, the elements of either French or German, and a few lectures on Chemistry and Physics.” His address on “Liberty in Education” presented the arguments for the elective system.1

1 See Eliot, Charles W., Educational Reform.

No consideration of the change in the curriculum during this period, however, can neglect the significance of the secular upheaval in its administration following the advent of the “Gilded Age,” when the colleges and universities appeared to begin to pay “less and less attention to the thunders of the pulpit.” Great business leaders were being appealed to for educational endowments and by 1900 the lists of trustees of colleges and universities “read like a corporation directory.” This change from eccleslastical control to lay control of higher education had direct effect upon the heritage of the old classical tradition which had come down from the theologians and had held sway since colonial days. The classics which for centuries had been bent mainly toward theological purposes began to wane and religion began to have a smaller place in the program of higher educational study. This dissolving process was hastened also by the growth of the natural sciences as subjects of instruction in the colleges and universities. Changes in the curriculum now began to point definitely towards business and the secular professions. Meantime, Eliot was reorganizing Harvard and, apparently with the manner of a business “efficiency” expert, was sweeping the place clean of “most of the old-fashioned teachers whose minds and methods belonged to the eighteenth century.” As already noted, the classical prescriptions for the Harvard degree were radically altered. Henry Cabot Lodge remarked on the change that under the old plan “a certain amount of knowledge, no more useless than any other, and a still larger amount of discipline in learning were forced on all alike. Under the new system it was possible to escape without learning anything at all by a judicious selection of unrelated subjects taken up only because they were easy or because the burden imposed by those who taught them was light.”1

1 Professor Henry Adams asked one of his students under the new plan what he could do with the education he was getting at Harvard. The student is reported to have said: “The degree at Harvard College is worth money to me in Chicago.” At any rate it does appear that the new plan of election served to accommodate the “spiritual requirements” of many young men who began to flock to higher education.

Whatever the criticism—and it increased during the next few decades—the widened elective curriculum offered to those students who were really interested in learning richer opportunities than they had ever before known and in fields which the old curriculum had closed to most of the earlier generations of college students. The sciences, for example, were now given a place which had formerly been occupied only by the ancient languages. Art, music, letters and the social studies came into the curriculum of higher education even if they sometimes had to creep in through the back door.

The third period, which roughly covers the past two decades, has been marked by a strong swing away from freedom of election to a measure of prescription by the faculty, a change that appears to have come about as a result of several influences. Before the World War began chaos was threatening to reign under the rampant elective system, many of whose romantic promises were unfulfilled. Meantime, there was a growing belief among many educators who were agonizing with the problem that the college students of this country needed acquaintance with “a common intellectual world” and opportunity to develop more social intelligence. This recent tendency in the curriculum, therefore, took the form of experiments with required or elective orientation, general, or over-view courses in the social and the natural sciences, and of the establishment of group requirements, major and minor sequences, fields of concentration, and specialized curricula. There has been increasing effort also to guide students without hampering them and to adjust the work of the college to their needs, interests, and abilities. This change has been due in part to the changed student personnel (the colleges now have many students who were not the well-instructed students whom Harvard had in Eliot's day), to the new necessity brought about by an increasingly complex world, to the influence of the fact of individual differences and to the growing need for educational guidance. Psychology, for example, has given to educational workers instruments for knowing students better and social developments have brought about a need for the integration of knowledge. Modifications during the past two decades do not indicate that the elective system has been abandoned but rather that the principle of election has been adapted, through the means of increased knowledge of the educative process and of the human material with which the colleges work, to changed conditions. These changes have been made, as changes in the college curriculum have always been made, after much contest against the “momentum of inertia,” against open opposition, and the doubts and fears of vested academic interests and departmental aspirations or ambitions.

The commonly accepted attitude toward the college curriculum appears in discussions of that subject during the three periods briefly described above. While the periodical literature does not abound in discussions of the curriculum during the first period, there is a surprisingly wide interest in it. Following the inauguration of Eliot at Harvard the discussions increased rapidly. And since the World War the literature has become voluminous. Hundreds of books and thousands of magazine and newspaper articles have dealt and continue to deal with the problem of the college curriculum. Some of the writing on this subject has, of course, been somewhat vague; but the discussion shows that higher education has become a subject for serious concern in recent years; and the re-examination of the curriculum is undoubtedly a very wholesome sign in the educational life of the United States.

The emphasis in the first period is too wellknown to be discussed at length here. Most of the educational writings, particularly of college presidents, concerned the importance of the classics and their place in the curriculum. The doctrine of mental discipline was as fashionable in education as was that of original sin in theology. The high veneration for the traditional curriculum and particularly for the classics may be seen in the founding of Alleghany College in a frontier town of 700 people in Pennsylvania in 1817. Encased in the corner-stone were a chip of Plymouth Rock, some mortar from what was said to be the tomb of Virgil, and a piece of marble from Dido's temple. And at this institution's first commencement a citizen of the village gave an address in Latin to which the president of the college responded in the same language. Other features of the exercises included an oration in Latin, an oration in Hebrew, and a dialogue in Latin, which “proclaimed the intellectual kinship of the new community with the older centers of learning,” and showed Alleghany's constituents that the new college spoke the cultured language of Harvard and Yale and therefore deserved support.1

1 See Schmidt, George P., The Old Time College President, New York, Columbia University Press, 1930.

The contents of the cornerstone of Alleghany symbolized educational ideals which were paramount in the colleges of this country until after the middle of the nineteenth century. Moreover, the religious and political philosophy that emerged in New England was a powerful influence in determining college work from one end of the land to the other during the period under discussion.2

2 The college presidents prior to the Civil War numbered about 276, and forty per cent of these educational leaders were born in New England.

A few prophets of new ideals in higher education appeared during the latter half of the eighteenth century. One of the earliest of these was an Anglican clergyman, William Smith, the first provost of the University of Pennsylvania. His “A General Idea of the College of Mirania,” was written in 1753 as a guide for a group of New York citizens who were considering the establishment of a college there. Smith held that the object of all education was to perpetuate peace and prosperity by “forming a succession of sober, virtuous, industrious citizens, and checking the course of growing luxury.” The plan laid much emphasis upon the selection of teachers.

Benjamin Franklin was definitely liberal in his views on education and proposed for the College of Philadelphia near the middle of the eighteenth century such subjects as surveying, navigation, physics, chemistry, history, government, civics, and modern languages; but this enlightened plan, which is conspicuous in the history of higher education in the United States, was too advanced in perspective; and soon the grip of tradition forced Pennsylvania practically into the pattern of the other Colonial Colleges. George Washington looked upon higher education as a useful servant of the new order and through it he would have the citizens of the new nation prepared for the strange task of self-government.

Another important educational proposal had come from Benjamin Rush, a colleague of Franklin, who insisted that the youth of this country should have opportunity to study those subjects and things which would “increase the conveniences of life, lesson human misery, improve our country, promote population, exalt the human understanding, and establish domestic and political happiness.”1

1 See Hansen, A.O., Liberalism in American Education in the Eighteenth Century. The Macmillan Company, 1926.

Thomas Jefferson's modern view of education is well known to all students of the social history of the United States. To him “ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities,” were incapable of self-government. He had high confidence in education as an instrument of democracy and free government. And the change made at the College of William and Mary about 1779 was a radical departure from the restricted curriculum that had been followed there since the college was founded. For the scholastic and theological program of nearly a century Jefferson would substitute a scientific and modern curriculum that was more practical in character. Modern languages, law, political economy, and history were introduced; and these subjects have to the College of William and Mary a broader curriculum than that of any college in the country.2

2 Williams College, chartered in 1793 by the legislature of Massachusetts, at once permitted French instead of Greek as a subject for entrance and shortly afterwards created a department of French language and literature. Bowdoin College, organized about 1802, showed a slight liberal tendency in its curriculum.

 Moreover, the students were granted a degree of freedom in selecting their subjects and the honor system in examinations.

The perspective which Thomas Jefferson had for education has not yet been widely gained in this country. He considered popular education the most efficient means of successful democratic government. He would draw the power and leadership of the State from the people themselves through education. He would bring the fundamentals of education within the reach of all so that worth and genius could be found in every condition of life and the State could profit by “those talents which nature has sewn as liberally among the poor as among the rich, but which perish without use if not sought for and cultivated.” He would rake “from the rubbish” the best geniuses of the commonwealth.

It is interesting to note also that Jefferson was among the earliest advocates of “adult” education. He would link up the school to the work shop, the farm, and the office. He proposed convenient classes for elementary and practical instruction by lectures, to be given in the evening so as to afford opportunity for those who labored in the day time. To such schools, he said, “will come the mariner, the builder, the metallurgist, the druggist, the tanner, the soapmaker, and others to learn as much as shall be necessary to pursue their art understandingly of the sciences.” Probably no man in our entire history has urged so bold an extension of activity in education as did Thomas Jefferson. Moreover, he drew no line on state administrative enterprise other than the needs of the community. He insisted on no rigid forms; he was not tenacious of the mold in which education should be introduced: “Be that what it may, our descendants will be as wise as we were, and will know how to amend and amend it until it shall suit their circumstances.”

When Samuel Johnson was chosen the first head of King's College (now Columbia University) he was asked to prepare its course of study and the ideal program which he laid down has probably not yet been realized. In his “Advertisement” of the new institution he announced:

“The chief Thing that is aimed at in this College is, to teach and engage the Children to know God in Jesus Christ....and to train them up in all virtuous Habits, and all such useful Knowledge as may render them creditable to their Families and Friends, Ornaments to their Country and useful to the public Weal in their Generations....” But, with the exception of a somewhat early development of courses in economics and political science the curriculum of this institution was not very different from that of any other college until 1866 when F.A.P. Bernard became president and started the work which transformed the college into a university.

Between 1779, when Jefferson proposed a liberal plan of education for Virginia, to the time when Charles W. Eliot began to change things at Harvard, the growth of the ideal of a liberal college curriculum was slow. In practice the traditional program generally continued to be followed for many years. In 1842 Francis Wayland said, in his “On the Present College System,” that “the Northern Colleges are so nearly similar that students, in good standing in one institution, find little difficulty in being admitted to any other.” Mental discipline was the chief purpose of the college and any effort to alter this was not looked upon with favor.

In 1802 the trustees of Union College in Schenectady permitted those students who were not headed for the learned professions to substitute French for Greek; and by 1828 Union had established a course in which neither Latin nor Greek was required for admission or graduation; modern languages had taken the places of the classics. This was a revolutionary change and brought violent protests from representatives of the old order who cried out that all that was wise and good had been repudiated and that Union was faithless to the old tradition, had lowered scholastic and ethical standards and was demoralizing higher education. But it appears that President Eliphalet Nott held to his educational convictions.

Among the small group of dissenters and independent thinkers in higher education during the first six or seven decades of the nineteenth century must be included President James Harsh of the University of Vermont who sought to liberalize the curriculum and to humanize the discipline of that institution. He undertook to break down the rigidity of the old curriculum and to provide the students with more natural motives for real study, by appealing to their interests, as his “System of Instruction....in the University of Vermont” (Burlington, Vt., 1931) shows. In the forties and fifties Francis Wayland of Brown advanced some noteworthy views in his writings, especially “Thoughts on the Present Collegiate System in the United States” (1842), “Report to the Corporation of Brown University” (1850), and “The Education Demanded by the People of the United States” (1855). He was among the earliest college leaders to re-examine the base of higher education in this country, following a visit to Charlottesville. The University of Virginia impressed him as an institution that was measurably emancipated from the slavery of scholastic tradition; but he saw afflictions in the emphasis which the colleges of New England placed upon academic precedent and authoritarianism. He believed that “God intended us for progress, and we counteract his design when we deify antiquity and bow down and worship an opinion, not because it is either wise or true, but simply because it is ancient.” He argued in “The Education Demanded by the People of the United States” and in an address at Union College in 1854 that the college curriculum should not be looked upon as a fixed pedagogical faith anciently delivered to academic saints. But, the curriculum of a college should be intelligently adapted to the talents of its students and the needs of those who support the institution and to the needs of the community, state, or region which it presumes to serve. This view of education, advanced four years before John Dewey was born, also questioned the validity of the doctrine of mental discipline nearly two decades before Edward Lee Thorndike saw the light of day, and urged that science have its place beside the classics more than a dozen years before Eliot took over the direction of Harvard. The mediaeval subjects of the classics and mathematics, as Wayland called them, could not meet the needs of the American people, he argued. Moreover, the outmoded arguments that these subjects provided mental discipline were only lazy excuses of poor teachers, he said. He argued that entirely too much time was given to drill in language and that the college graduates could scarcely translate the Latin printed on their diplomas. The old curriculum was supported only by traditional authority and should be required to stand upon its own merits.

When Josiah Quincy became president of Harvard College in 1829, the theme of his inaugural address was “The Spirit of the Age,2 in which he discussed the “wants of the age; and the duty of literary seminaries to keep pace with that spirit and to supply those wants.” The tone of this address was moderate and Quincy's statement of his educational faith was probably acceptable to most of his conservative contemporaries. But there is in the address an uncommon liberality for the time. Moreover, it showed that criticisms of the college course and the methods of the schools had been very frequent in those years, “for their lack of advancement to meet the spirit of the age.” The mission of the college, as Quincy saw it, was to guide and inspire the community. This service could be rendered, he thought, not only without loss of dignity by the institution but with added fame to its reputation:

“On the one hand it is the duty of those who conduct or influence the institutions to foster the spread of intellect in the community and to encourage that noble disposition, which characterizes the age, to take delight in literary works and attainments, and seek in them a refuge from meaner and grosser pleasures. On the other hand it is no less their duty to yield nothing to any temporary excitement, nothing to the desire of popularity, nothing to the hope of increasing their number; nothing to those morbid cravings for farther supply which the cheapness and abundance of exhilarating literary elements and their evaporating qualities have a tendency to create. If anything be done under such circumstances of the nature of innovation having any critical effect, it ought to be after a thorough investigation of the consequences on the permanent interests of science to the community. In this respect the conductors of such institutions have a great trust confided in them, nothing less, perhaps, than the intellectual health and power of the coming and future ages. Whatever is done in respect of innovations in such institutions ought to be for distinct and well-defined purposes, with known limitations and restrictions, which on no condition should be permitted to be passed.”

During the first half of the nineteenth century numerous magazines contained articles and editorials dealing with higher education. The discussions dealt with such topics as: “Colleges and Discipline,” “The Relation between the Trustees and the Faculty,” “Defects of the American University,” “Reforms in Colleges,” “Liberal Education,” “Improvement in Colleges,” “Improvement Practicable in College,” “The Consolidation of Colleges,” “The College Code of Honor,” “Instruction in Colleges,” “College Ethics,” “College Secret Societies,” “Scholarships in College,” “Compulsory Attendance in College,” “College Government by Students,” “Reform in School and College,” “Objects and Claims of Higher Education,” “What is the Use of Colleges?” “University and College Reform,” “Entering College,” “Colleges on the Defensive,” “Method of Culture in Colleges,” “Scientific Teaching in Colleges,” “The Poverty of the Colleges,” “College and Scholastic Quackery,” “The Improvement of Colleges,” “College Examinations,” “Colleges, Can They Reform Themselves?” The numerous discussions of “Liberal Education” indicate how persistently this subject has defied adequate definition and how slowly and grudgingly scientific and social studies were admitted to the college curriculum.

The charge of the stubbornness of tradition in higher education is amply confirmed by the literature of the period under discussion. The theory of higher education that had so long prevailed, and prevails even now in some quarters, seemed to maintain that through it minds should be formed by one pattern and human characters fashioned in a uniform mold. Most of those who were responsible for the direction of higher education seemed to see beauty and completeness in the curriculum. To them there was little or no opportunity to improve its effectiveness. It was defended eloquently and emphatically and criticism of it was resented. The college curriculum was a definite thing, and the required subjects were believed to furnish the best discipline of minds and to be indispensable to liberally educated men. A report of a committee appointed at a meeting of the president and fellows of Yale College September 11, 1827, which seems to have been intended for the governing board of that college, emphasized discipline as the basis of higher education. A committee of the trustees who commented upon the report said:

“What subject which is now studied here, could be set aside, without evidently marring the system, not to speak particularly in this place of the ancient languages? Who that aims at a well-proportioned and superior education will remain ignorant of the elements of the various branches of the mathematics, or of history and antiquities, or of rhetoric and oratory, or natural philosophy, or astronomy, or chemistry, or mineralogy, or geology, or political economy, or mental and moral philosophy?”1

1 See Snow, Louis Franklin, College Curriculum in the United States, Columbia University Contributions to Education, Teachers College Series, No. 10, New York, 1907.

“But why, it is asked, should all the students in a college be required to tread in the same steps? Why should not each one be allowed to select those branches of study which are most to his taste, which are best adapted to his peculiar talents and which are most nearly connected with his intended profession? To this we answer, that our prescribed course contains those subjects only which ought to be understood, as we think, by every one who aims at a thorough education.”

This report denied that Yale was not progressive and insisted that the institution had properly found “what was and what was to be the best college course possible for American youth. Any change from the existing order was to be resisted as one resisted a dire calamity to students, college, and the commonwealth. For the safety of all the present excellent, adequate and comprehensive system of collegiate education must and should be preserved.” The influence of these ideas on other colleges appears to have been strong, for graduates of Yale were then moving into the western and southern states as educational workers and were carrying with them the ideas of discipline, of thoroughness, and of the completeness of the Yale program under which they had themselves been nurtured. The report of the Yale faculty stated that the college should not be opened to the general public because in doing so “we would lower our standard and would lose prestige and students.” The report also insisted that badly prepared students constituted one of the chief difficulties of the institution. Another difficulty was the notion of the students “that some difficult studies have no practical utility.” Yale had an “abundant supply of this Lombardy poplar growth, slender, frail and blighted. We should like to see more of the stately elm; striking deep its roots, lifting its head slowly to the skies, spreading wide its grateful shade and growing more venerable with years.” The report also insisted that “We must set the standards for the lower schools.”

One of the Yale professors who highly commended this report declared that there was no “wide demand for change. By persevering in the course of conferring degrees on those only who have been thoroughly disciplined in both ancient and modern learning, the college has much to expect and nothing to fear, but by deserting the high road it has so long travelled and wandering in lanes and by-paths, it would trifle with its prosperity and put at hazard the very means of its support and existence.” The college was not opposed to improvement, declared the Yale professor, nor was it stationary. Examinations were not a farce but a “powerful incentive to study.” The faculty endeavored to meet its teaching obligations as well as it understood them.

The committee of the governing board of Yale praised the faculty for cooperation in the preparation of the report and even called them educational “experts”, a name that was later to resound down the decades of American educational history. This committee pointed out that the system at Yale was “all-inclusive and nothing can be omitted.” Everything in it could be comprehended by every student. A parallel or different course was out of the question because it would invite poorly prepared students and gave lazy students a superficial course which would be easier than the one then followed. Thus the Yale degree would be cheapened. Innovations were dangerous because censor would follow them. There was not need for change, although the college was not stationary or opposed to change. It kept abreast of the times and did its work well. Here appeared a complacency which was not unlike that found in some higher educational institutions today; but a faculty that resists suggestions for changes of the curriculum has many precedents to invoke in its defense.

But other ideals then the conservative were beginning to take form in this country more than a hundred years ago. The faculty of Amherst College made two reports to the Board of Trustees of that institution about 1827 which stated that the idea of college reform was a “popular question” even in those days. The report also stated that the American public was not “satisfied with the present course of education in our higher seminaries;” and that the course was “not sufficiently modern and comprehensive to meet the exigencies of the age and country in which we live.”1

1 See Snow, op. cit., pp. 155ff.

The popular voice was not hostile alone to the ancient languages but there appeared to be a growing belief that the colleges should open their doors more widely to those young people who would not go into the learned professions but whom the colleges could help. “The complaint is, and if our ears do not deceive us, it daily waxes louder and louder, that while everything else in on the advance, our colleges are stationary; or, if not quite stationary that they are in danger of being left far behind, in the rapid march of improvement.”

This is one of the earliest of the progressive notes struck by a college faculty in the literature dealing with the curriculum of higher education in the United States. Complaints were being made “by men whose strong good sense, education and standing in society entitled them to be heard.” It was also argued that, these people would likely contend that in times of progress and in a country like this “It is absurd to cling so tenaciously to the prescriptive forms of other centuries”; it was ridiculous to meet demands for improvement “without cry of innovation.” Here as in most of the quarrels about the college curriculum in most of the nineteenth century in the United States the contest was largely over the monopoly of the ancient classics. It is interesting to note also that in this report of the Amherst faculty arguments were made for the establishment of a department of “The Science of Education.”

In 1867 Cornell set forth some educational ideals which were not unlike those published at Amherst forty years earlier and promised that “every effort will be made that the education given be practically useful.” There was to be no fetichism in regard to subjects of study. “All good studies will be allowed their due worth.” An effort was to be made to give every student studies which would take a “practical hold on the tastes, aspirations and work of his life.” There was to be no “petty daily marking system, a pedantic device which has eaten out from so many colleges all capacity among students to seek knowledge for knowledge's sake. Those professors will be sought who can stir enthusiasm, and who can thus cause students to do far more than under a perfunctory piecemeal study.” The plan adopted by the Board of Trustees of Cornell also called for “a closer and more manly intercourse and sympathy between Faculty and students than is usual in most of the colleges.”

Other leaders occasionally expressed liberal views. Jasper Adams of Hobart College, who went to South Carolina in 1824 and undertook to put life into the College of Charleston, while a conservative in education, was not inhospitable to suggestions for improvement. Jonathan Maxcy, who preceded Thomas Cooper at the University of South Carolina, introduced French into the curriculum of that institution and as early as 1811 was interested in putting science into the course of study. Courses were arranged for those students who did not wish to take Greek or Latin, and a chair of political economy was established. The interest of Thomas Cooper in the natural and the social sciences is wellknown and his lectures on geology and political economy were distinguished for their stimulation. Joseph LeConte and some other progressive members of the faculty of the University of Georgia planned some reforms in 1859 but the Civil War kept the proposed measures from being put into operation. Horace Holley, of the University of Transylvania in Kentucky, maintained that education should be adjusted to changing conditions, “much more with a regard for the present, and a prospect for the future, than from a retrospect and rememberance of antecedent times.” Philip Lindsley, of the University of Nashville, had a progressive view of education, and sought to make use of a plan similar to that in operation at the University of Virginia. Henry P. Tappan of Michigan would give students freedom of choice and stimulate them not by authority but by developing their natural interests. He advocated self-direction and not compulsion. F.A.P. Barnard, who went from a professorship and later the presidency of the University of Alabama to the presidency of the University of Mississippi and then to the presidency of Columbia, changed his views on higher education and apparently became more and more progressive. While in Alabama he was an avowed conservative, but in Mississippi he had a slight change of heart as he faced actual conditions and needs in that State, and at Columbia, where he became president in 1866, he became even more liberal. There he maintained that the classics as taught in the colleges were “not a stimulus but a sedative.” When Joseph Caldwell came from Princeton to Chapel Hill he found a rather liberal curriculum in the University of North Carolina, with an unusual amount of science, history, and political economy and provision for electives, but he gradually substituted the traditional curriculum and North Carolina soon returned to the classical fold where the institution remained until the Civil War and for some years afterwards.

College presidents and faculties in the first period here discussed should not be too severely censured for failure to study the curriculum, which was fixed, unchanging, and sacrosanct. Any alteration of it would have been profanation. Moreover, even if it had seemed wise to change the program of study it probably could not have been done, because the energies of the faculty were so absorbed in making and enforcing rules of conduct among the students that they had no time to employ in curriculum reconstruction. The early American college was a patriarchial institution and the life of the student was not unlike that of a soldier in barracks. His existence for the twenty-hours was regimented and each hour was covered by a rule.

The laws of Union College in the early part of the nineteenth century contained eleven chapters running from seven to twenty-three sections each. President Eliphalet Nott, who showed a liberal tendency on questions of curriculum, said that perhaps no college had over provided so complete security as Union for “the manners and morals of youth, or a course more likely to ensure a thorough education.” The rules at the University of Georgia consisted of sixteen pages. Princeton students were covered with rules, one of which required them to raise their hats to the president at a distance of ten rods. Students at Transylvania could not lean on each other in class. James Russell Lowell was forced into “rustication” for two months in his senior year at Harvard and compelled to read John Locke and other difficult authors during the period. A visitor at the commencement at Yale in 1847 was shocked to see so many members of the graduating class wantonly break “the glass in their rooms. Very dignified and honorable beginning of the world for them.” President Samuel Smith expelled 125 of the 200 at Princeton in 1807, following a riot, which was far from the last trouble in that Presbyterian stronghold. President Hale of Hobart “was kept at bay by a shower of beer-bottles” and at another time was forced to climb through a window and down a ladder to escape trouble from students in his classroom. At Chapel Hill the students “rode horses through the dormitory and ‘shot up’ the place generally”; at Charlottesville a student shot and killed a professor in 1842; and President Jeremiah Chamberlain of Oakland College in Mississippi came to his death at the stabbing hand of a drunken student.

Francis Wayland's first job at Brown “was to frame a new set of laws for the college....It made a vastly greater amount of labor necessary for both officers and students.” Caldwell of North Carolina and McLean of Princeton are reported to have taken nightly walks about their respective colleges to catch student offenders, and the latter often chased them to their rooms and up trees. The president of Miami in Ohio prayed in Chapel “with one eye open.” When he saw a trouble maker he would dart off the platform, attend properly to the offender, and then return to his post and resume his prayer. In most of the colleges there were long lists of merits and demerits and systems of fines for offences. Discipline was made more difficult, too, because parents were more troublesome in those days; and in some of the smaller colleges a few students and a few “tuition fees might be the margin of financial solvency.” Indulgent parents of wealth and “the alleged laziness of Southern youth” were pointed out by Basil Manly as two afflictions of his administration as president of the University of Alabama; and Phillip Lindsley told a commencement audience at the University of Nashville in 1848 that the interference by parents in his efforts at the discipline of students was one of his gravest difficulties. Irate parents caused much trouble when their son was not promoted, or got into trouble, or was sent home. The impatient president states the case this way: “The son is a high-minded, honorable, brave, generous, good-hearted young gentleman; who scorns all subterfuge and meanness, and who would not lie for the universe: Not he. In this particular at least, he is above suspicion; and, like the Pope, is infallible. While the Faculty are a parcel of paltry pedants, pedagogues, bigots, charlatans— without feeling, spirit, kindness, honesty, or common sense.” President Nisbet of Dinkinson College often complained of interference by the trustees; and Andrew D. White gave the same condition as the basis of “the anarchy at Hobart”; the expulsion of wealthy boys meant a loss of revenue for the college and such a loss was difficult to take.1

1 The College of William and Mary seems to have made considerable disciplinary use of the honor system. The student's relation to the faculty is shown by a faculty regulation of 1830: “He comes to us as a gentleman. As such we receive and treat him....He is not harassed with petty regulations; he is not insulted and annoyed by impertinent surveillance.” If a student denied “on his Honor as a Gentleman” the offence the denial was taken as “conclusive evidence of his innocence.”

It should be noted, in defense of such extra-curricular activities, that mischief-making was about the only outlet for college youth who bore in the old days such a burden of original sin.

In the same year that Cornell made its announcement, John Fiske, writing in the Atlantic Monthly, said that many of the colleges needed minor reforms. He thought that even Harvard could stand a little improvement. But reform was one thing; revolution was another. So, he warned against sweeping changes. He favored a degree of the elective system and argued for “comprehensive” examinations to include fields of knowledge rather than particular subjects. A closer and more friendly relation between the students and the faculty was necessary if the colleges were to become truly democratic and liberal. The Atlantic Monthly for September 1866 contained an article, the substance of an address to the alumni of Harvard University, which attacked the prevailing system of college marks and compulsory tasks. It argued for a reduction of the college course to three years and urged that the freshman year be made a probationary period. The interests and needs of the individual student were subjugated to traditional academic forms and procedures; the first duty of the college was to offer students broad opportunities and inspiration.

In December of 1868 the Nation published a letter which discussed “University Reforms.” The vacancy in the presidency of Harvard afforded a good opportunity for that institution to improve its work. The need was for a new form of discipline, for the old system had led to the preoccupation of the students with “grades,” to emphasis upon trivialities, and to dishonesty in the relations of students and faculty. The police-like attitude of the faculty should be changed; students should never be spied upon. The letter was promptly replied to and the charge of faculty espionage at Harvard was denied. The faculty did not spy upon students but merely tried to maintain order and dignity through cooperation. It was argued that discipline there was modern, liberal, and conducive rather than coercive. But in June of 1869, shortly after Eliot had been chosen to the presidency of Harvard, the critical Godkin noted that the battle between science and religion over the control of the universities still waged. He thought college students should be taught by lay professors rather than professional moralists. A college education, he said, should be a period of influences for the student and not a period of coercive learning, which rarely remains long with the student. And in 1882 Godkin was pouring a broadside into “Teaching in American Colleges.” A middle course in the elective system would be the wisest of all, rather than too many electives or none. But it was very important for the student to choose not isolated subjects but general courses or groups of subjects. Many people feared that athletics was becoming too important in college life. But Godkin differed with them: athletics had such definite physical and spiritual values that much more time should be devoted to them.

Two months after Adams had taken Harvard to task, Godkin took Adams to task for failure to realize that the student who refused to learn Greek would probably refuse to learn any other language, as Godkin seemed to believe. Besides, the chief trouble was with the students. These fell into three classes: a small group, generally poor, who found that learning was worth all the effort and sacrifice they could make; the group who were concerned only with the benefits of the degree itself; and the idle and dullards who were beyond help. The second and third groups included seventy per cent of all college students, Godkin said. The average college student failed to see reality in college life and so entered upon it haphazardly. Only when he saw its connection with his later life and career did he give it his full interest.

A writer in Education for July 1882 urged a division of the college period, the first two years for a general foundation and the last two years for concentration in a chosen field. Such a plan would afford the student a more nearly complete and generous education and at the same time provide him with the best disciplinary values. Improvement in the organization and instruction of the colleges would mean improvement of the work in the lower schools. All studies should be “integrated” with actual life needs, he said, and, whatever reorganizations were undertaken, only the best teachers should be engaged. “The essential test of a school system is to be looked for in the quality of its teachers.”

A writer in the Atlantic Monthly the following year deplored the multiplicity of college studies and the elective system and proposed in place of the chaotic curriculum of the time the principle of general courses in the social and biological sciences not unlike the orientation or overview courses such as have found their way into some higher educational institutions in recent years. Such courses, he said, would give a good foundation for life and for further study in specialized fields. The college must fit men for living in the actual world of men, he insisted.

The next year Daniel Coit Gilman of Hopkins was asserting in the Nation that although colleges had powerful forces in their tradition yet these institutions required adaptability to change, to keep up with the times and the “circumstances of the country.” James Bryce pointed out that the ideal university would exclude no worthy knowledge, would be open to all applicants, allow freedom of choice to the students, and be a great teaching institution and not an austere examining board. To him the imperative need was for stimulative teaching. The university should adapt itself to the needs of general social progress, and no man could dictate immutable principles which would serve for all time. Friendly personal relations between the students and the faculty should be encouraged.

A writer in the Atlantic Monthly for August, 1885, insisted that among the fallacies then present in the educational thought of the country were the elective system, preoccupation with practical considerations, and the insistence upon education for the “struggle of life.” The same year Andrew F. West employed the North American Review to assail President Eliot's elective system as unsound in theory and to assert that all educational experience taught that the ancient classics and mathematics were the foundations of mental training. He said that the elective system struck at the heart of what collegiate prestige the United States had built for itself, by lowering entrance requirements, by destroying the meaning of the academic degree, and by encouraging students to forsake those twin roots of culture: Greek and Latin. The monster was feeding upon the vitals of education and should be resisted and dispatched. On the other hand, the breezy Godkin of the Nation (November 1885) saw hope in the modern attitude of Harvard which offered a student 189 courses in twenty departments. He believed the college was becoming modernized and liberal and that this changed condition was due to the substitution of lay control for ecclesiastical control in its management. A few months earlier the same publication editorially deplored the position of college professors in this country. They were at the mercy of the boards of trustees who were generally business men, usually ignorant, uncultured, money-grabbing people who cared not a whit for the actual educational work of the colleges but only for filling the institutions with tuition-payers. The editor believed that the professors could manager better.

The next year the Atlantic Monthly declared that college or university classes should not test “the freightage of the memory,” but should have “an enduring influence upon the thought of the people.” It should put sociology, the study of human society and of human institutions, laws, and relations in the place of subjects that promised so little to the students who pursued them. The University should teach, among the subjects, the history of the family and society: the University exists for the students rather than they for it,—a view of higher education that has not yet been gained generally in the United States.

In the late nineties Cosmopolitan provoked considerable discussion by its questions to leading educational administrators on “Modern College Education—Does it Educate, in the Broadest and Most Liberal Sense of the Term?” Later the magazine invited students to give their side of the question, in a prize contest which many college and university presidents objected to for the reason, stated or implied, that the opinions of students on such matters were not valid.

An article in the Atlantic Monthly in 1900 urged that the college course be reduced to three years and that the college encourage the planning of the student's course far enough ahead so that his study would assume a definite direction. Articles in the Independent in that year urged that a period of three years was sufficient for a college course. The Outlook urged that the college curriculum be liberalized, to meet the changed conditions of modern life; and the Nation contended that the increased academic machinery for the sake of the system was not good for the students or the public. The following year the Independent asserted that the college should stand for broad and liberal education rather than specialties. School Review for that year pointed out an affliction that has increased in American education during the past thirty years: that students were required to repeat during their first or second year in college work previously done in the high school; it warned against the unguarded system of election that was already finding its way into secondary education. About the same time Dean Briggs of Harvard advocated a few subjects in the secondary schools, “a modest general education” in the early years of college, and the opportunity for the students to specialize energetically later.

Education conducted in June of 1900 a symposium on “The Problems which Confront our Colleges at the Opening of the Twentieth Century,” in which a number of distinguished university presidents participated. Among the pressing problems listed were the elective system, personal freedom of students, the controversy of the classics, interest of students in merely earning degrees, the tendency toward specialization, the lack of interest of students in politics and government, the failure of the colleges to imbue students with public spirit, the need for the integration of the cultural and the disciplinarian values in the college curriculum, the loss of simplicity in college education, the growing complexity of administration, the predominance of athletics, the apparent failure of the colleges to integrate their programs with actual life, and the danger that the colleges would unwittingly blunder into or be led to by placing emphasis upon crass materialism. It is distressing to learn that this affliction of higher education in recent years and even since 1929 should have appeared impending more than three decades ago.

By the turn of the century the subject of higher education had a more prominent place in magazines and newspapers than it had ever before held in such publications, and between 1900 and the close of the World War there was wider discussion of higher education in the United States than this country had ever witnessed. While the increased number of students attending colleges and universities was regarded as a good sign in 1900, a slight uneasiness was felt here and there because of the apparent tendency to create a group of scholars who could not do “the common work of the world.” A writer in World's Work for that year noted that “men of fortune endow schools which train youth who win success and in turn endow schools to train other youth,” presumably to win success. The same publication the same year asked whether education was “the great panacea for social ills that our fathers thought it.” Dr. Butler's Education in the United States, which gave an excellent summary of education in this country in 1900, sought to refute the idea or notion that education caused crime, a subject that led a colleague of his three decades later to argue that the kind of education given in the United States had caused or appeared to have caused crime.1

1 Bagley, W.C., Education, Crime, and Social Progress, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1931.

An editorial in a prominent magazine in June of 1900 praised the general trend of education but criticized some of its practices, such as the elective system, the growing demand for Ph.D's in the colleges, and the lack of contact between teacher and student. Scribner's deplored the tendency toward “Teutonizing in Education” while a writer in Education urged the colleges to train their students for business, to foster business, and to give specialized courses leading to all kinds of business. The heads of the colleges should be business men, he said. “Culture for its own sake has gone up in smoke.”

An editorial in Scribner's warned against our acquiring the faults of the German system in the tendency to let learning swamp common sense, tact, the sense of proportion, and the sense of humor. An article in Review of Reviews in 1901 undertook to answer the charge of business men that college graduates were “commercially inefficient.” The writer urged that the colleges attend more seriously to the task of guiding students “to sane and self-directed manhood” and asserted that the luxury indulged in by college students was parasitic and was partly paid for by the miserably paid college professors. The Forum deplored the standards of the market place and the counting-house in education and also its lack of touch with public affairs. A closer connection between higher education and public service would save politics from becoming materialistic and education from becoming monastic. Woodrow Wilson, in his inaugural as president of Princeton declared that the colleges should deal with the spirits and not the fortunes of men. An editorial in the Forum discussed the need for shortening the college course; the Nation editorialized on “Education as a Public Peril,” and warned against the relaxation of discipline; Lyman Abbott in the Outlook made a plea for the “Educational Rights of Man,” urging the colleges to provide a broader education and the inclusion of religious instruction in the schools; Hamilton W. Mabie made a plea for the teaching of internationalism; Andrew S. Draper charged that the chief trouble in education was with disagreeing experts who kept the schools stirred up; another writer cried out against uniform universal education; Professor George Trumbull Ladd, in “Disintegration and Reconstruction of Curriculum” in the Forum, urged that the curriculum be made over, that certain courses should be required, and that the liberal arts course be reduced to three years. He frowned upon the excessive and injudicious use of the elective system. For an increasing multitude of students education was “cram, cram to get into college and sham, sham to get through.” Jealousies, prejudices, and the inhospitality of professors toward fields of study outside their own specialties prevented an intelligent reconstruction of the curriculum. Departments should cooperate and offer integrated courses, he said.

Michael Sadler, in an article in Educational Review in 1903 deplored the tendency of higher education to become superficial and soft and the apparent efforts of business men to dictate its curricula; the National Education Association was told in 1903 that the perils facing education came from common defects of American civilization, the confusion of counsels inside the college and the feverish pursuit of that which “pays” as the end of life; that of all the perils to education commercialism was the most dangerous. And when the Amherst class of 1885 celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary its alma mater was vigorously wanned against going off after the strange gods of technical and vocational education and against the fashionable tendency to train men “with a direct view to gaining a livelihood;” Barrett Wendell wrote in the North American Review in 1904 on “Our National Superstition” in which he pointed to the “flabbiness” of college students. An article in the Atlantic pointed to the growing materialism, regretted the passing of good the old-fashioned virtues of New England, and questioned whether real progress had been made; an article in the Educational Review pointed to the dangers of the utilitarian emphasis in education as did also the editor of The Dial who saw outside pressure on the schools; an article in World's Work in 1907 declared that the colleges, instead of being abreast or ahead of the nation's best life, were lagging and remote; and in 1909 the same magazine published an article on the “Bankruptcy of Education” which declared that the whole curriculum needed to be changed; the same year articles in Scribner's and Educational Review called education back to discipline; an article in the Nation harked back to Plato in pleading for state control of the future of each child by sending him to a manual training school, to college, to work, or to whatever task the State thought best for him; one in Educational Review the following year, on “Straws and Sticks and Dust,” railed against the elective system, the utilitarian emphasis and the “insistence on the money value of education;” as early as 1911 a writer in another magazine seriously questioned whether education enabled men to make more money and asserted that “If money is not the whole thing I think it is safe to say that it is probably seventy-five per cent of the whole thing,” and he made a plea to the colleges to keep alive the spirit of general culture and to provide more general education.

A writer in The Classical Journal in May of 1912 reported that the average minimum foreign language requirement for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 155 representative institutions studied was seven years. Only one institution out of five required Greek for that degree, the amount of that language averaging between three and four years. There was a classical language requirement (mostly Latin) in five institutions out of every seven, the average amount of the language being five years. The writer of the article suggested that the minimum requirement in foreign languages for the degree of Bachelor of Arts should be seven years with half of that requirement in the ancient classics.

During the early years of the present century protests were being made widely against emphasis upon the business preparation of college students and also against the increasing departmentalism and those professors who knew little outside their own specialties,—evidence of a definite influence of the graduate school. Preserved Smith, writing in Educational Review in 1913 charged that lack of coordination in instruction in the colleges and the disconnected way in which fragmentary information was imparted accounted for the unreality, unpracticality, and lack of inspiration in higher education. The professors should integrate their work instead of side-stepping for fear of treading upon another's subject. The Nation compared the university to a department store, saying that it was ceasing to be the home of idealism and perhaps of ideas, and bemoaned the tendency to early specialization in college due to the influence of the business world; an article and an editorial in The New York Times in early October of 1913 charged that the colleges were turning out flabby dilettantes and substantially said that the last two years should be professionalized because business men demanded that the graduates whom they employed should have more mettle and determination; and the same paper three years later charged that higher education had not done its part in providing intellectual leaders, bewailed the lack of insight among so-called educated men, and in a measure made direful prophecies as to the economic future after the World War; an article in Educational Review in April of 1917 urged the ideals of a liberal education as against “the insidious and baleful influences of these omnipresent, well-meaning, wingless-minded educators who unconsciously conceive young men and women as more or less sublimated beasts and who regard colleges and universities as agencies for teaching the animals the art of getting shelter and raiment and food;” and a few months later the “Bigotry of the New Education” was assaulted by the great classicist Paul Shorey in the Nation who protested against giving up all methods of education except those advocated by his former colleague at Chicago, John Dewey, and the latter's disciples; and in the year of the armistice William James made satirical war in Educational Review on “The Ph.D. octopus,” ridiculed the baleful domination of the American system of graduate instruction which insisted that professors must be decorated with a degree before they can teach in a college: “....the three magical letters were the thing seriously required. To admit a fox without a tail would be a degradation impossible to be thought of.” In this remarkable piece of satire the great psychologist was pointing an accusing finger at a tyranny that was to grow more and more modish in higher education and whose blind worship was to afflict undergraduate instruction.

These and many other discussions of higher education in this country prior to the World War seem to indicate the stubborn resistance of educational institutions to proposals for changes in their work. The explanation of this stubbornness since the days of the mediaeval universities may be found in the class or departmental struggles of the colleges.1

1 In his unpublished report, The College and Society, written for the General Education Board, President Ernest H. Wilkins, of Oberlin College, gives evidence of the conservative character of higher education. He notes that the American college today has a curriculum of four years because Harvard in the seventeenth century took form as a four-year college, and that Harvard apparently had followed the University of Cambridge which required a four-year course for the bachelor's degree in the seventeenth century; that Cambridge had followed the University of Oxford, which required four years for the bachelor's degree, and that presumably Oxford required four years for the degree of bachelor of arts because “the students of the English Nation at the University of Paris had followed such a course,” as shown by a statute of 1252. See also President Wilkins' paper, “The Relation of the Senior College and the Graduate School,” in Proceedings and Addresses, The Association of American Universities, Twenty-Eighth Annual Conference, pp. 59-60.

These struggles, which have waged since the stormy days of Abelard still wage in the sheltered American colleges and universities where earnest if sometime vague academic ideas continue to do battle among themselves as violently as that which has gone on among the economic forces that periodically drive men to despair. Moreover, in the story of these struggles may be seen a tendency of the colleges to lag behind movements for economic and social change until accumulated disaffection without or within the institutions compels readjustment, sometimes even by the methods of revolution.

Since 1929 the colleges and universities of the United States have been under severe criticism. Probably not all the cuts in their budgets have been made merely as economy measures. The ancient theory, so often invoked by the institutions of higher learning, that they are “free” may have appeared to the supporting public to carry the implication that they feel no responsibility to help the society that supports them to solve its economic, social, and political problems. But, unless all depression signs fail the relation of the work of these institutions to those pressing problems will become increasingly a matter of serious concern to the public which supports higher education and to which it must finally account.

It seems a social misfortune that so much of the super-structure of any worthy social institution must occasionally weaken or crash to meet the needs of changed conditions among the human beings that support and depend upon it. Higher education has often been called upon to respond to really human needs before being forced to do so. But even the adventurous and serene Eliot who refounded and enlarged Harvard was forced to turn “the place over as a flapjack,” as Oliver Wendell Holmes said of the young chemist-president, and in doing so he made out of a provincial college the most eminent university in the United States. This happened after 1869. And when Engineer Arthur Willard was elected president of the University of Illinois in March of 1934 he was reported to have promised the taxpayers of that State “a model of economy and service. This much I know,” he said, “the universities are going to have to do a better job of turning out men and women who can take care of themselves. The average college graduate.... has been prepared for everything but life.” This is substantially what Adams had said fifty years earlier. President Willard's stricture on higher education is not new in the United States. Nor was Adams's bold criticism of Harvard entirely new. For, many of the questions that have agitated American educational leaders particularly since the World War had been raised often in this country for nearly a hundred years before that catastrophe, as this chapter reveals.

In the next chapter an effort is made to indicate changes and tendencies in the undergraduate curriculum during the past two decades, which mark the third period in the history of higher education in the United States.

 Chapter II Some Recent Changes and Tendencies

As noted in Chapter I the curriculum of higher education in the United States since the World War has tended to swing away from freedom of election to a measure of prescription. This tendency has often taken the form of experiments with orientation, general, or overview courses especially in the social and the natural sciences, and of the establishment of groups requirements, major and minor sequences, and fields of concentration. During this period also there has been an increasing effort to guide students more intelligently than before and to adjust the work of the colleges more definitely to their needs, interests and abilities.

No attempt will be made in this chapter to appraise or even to describe fully those new college plans which have been so widely discussed in recent years. If time permits, however, after the present report is prepared an effort will be made, in a supplementary report, to discuss more fully than is possible here some observations made by studying in the Fall and Winter of 1933-34 some of the new plans, especially the Columbia Plan, the Chicago Plan, Sarah Lawrence College, Bennington College, and the General College of the University of Minnesota. The literature of other innovations in undergraduate instruction has been examined rather carefully. Although it is doubtful if any one of the plans here mentioned the University of North Carolina, it does seem clear to me after a visit to these institutions and after attending many classes in them that they have some valuable lessons for undergraduate instruction here. The purpose of the present chapter, therefore, is to consider those features of undergraduate work studied at other institutions which appear to have significance for such work in the University of North Carolina.

During the period since 1918 more serious consideration has been given to the problems of higher education than at any time in the history of this country. And yet, it seems partly within the limits of the facts to note that one of the greatest afflictions yet remaining in this area of education is that deadening habit of the academic mind that assumes that what is in the curriculum is what has been in it and is, therefore, best and must remain. The story of the present period reveals how definitely reverential are college faculties for their subject matter and how highly subject-centered are the colleges and universities. Many college faculties still appear to look upon their subjects as ends in themselves. And it is often justifiably charged that too few college faculties appear to view the work of the college as a social function, as a means of social evolution, and as a way toward the betterment of human society.

During the period under discussion there has been a definite tendency toward “general education,” however, especially in the first two years, for the purpose of relating the work of the college more directly than did the older curriculum to the life needs of the students. These changes have been made also in an effort to offset the obvious disadvantages that followed the rapid increase of courses during the past two decades under the influence of the elective system. An examination of the catalogue of any representative higher educational institution shows numerous new courses which cover only a limited section of a field of knowledge and which in most cases proclaim increasing departmentalization. This increase of courses was a natural result of conditions that appeared after the World War when multitudes of students crowded into the colleges and universities and governing higher educational authorities were zealous in expanding their plants and their educational facilities. This condition was conspicuous in the University of North Carolina as the next chapter will show. In due time, however, the economic crisis brought depression to education and college administrators and faculties were forced to re-examine and re-appraise their work.

Some consideration was being given here and there throughout the country to the improvement of college work even before the collapse in 1929. But during the past two decades the literature on higher education has enormously increased, as noted in Chapter I. Thousands upon thousands of articles have been written on various aspects of the subject, associations of college administrators and of college teachers have been more energetic than ever before, and numerous committees have labored almost incessantly over problems of the curriculum, improved methods of instruction and personnel work among students. And the relation of higher education to secondary education has been studied more thoughtfully than at any time in the past.

Courses in so-called general education appear, however, to have begun not from concern of the administration and faculty for the welfare of students but from the interest of the students themselves, from such organizations as fraternities and sororities and religious associations that sought to assist entering students to adjust themselves to campus life.1

1 See Thayer, V.T., Junior College Curricula and Courses in Colleges of Liberal Arts, an unpublished study made for the General Education Board, 1932.

The students, therefore, appear really to have taught the administration that they needed something that the colleges were not providing; and the responsibility for “orientation” of freshmen, for example, soon became a recognized function of the institutions.

As early as 1911 Reed College offered its freshmen a three-hour credit course known as “College Life Course” in which the history and purposes of the institution were studied. Brown University about the same time undertook to do much the same thing. A few years later Amherst developed and offered a course on “social and economic institutions,” one of the aims of which was “to teach freshmen to use the library, read newspapers and magazines, make reports and carry on discussions of live topics and issues.” Antioch College offered a course called “College Aims” in which instruction in methods of study was emphasized. These early orientation courses also treated problems of adjustment to college environment, offered advice regarding the choice of curriculum, in an effort to provide a program of guidance, a practice that has now been inaugurated in a great many of the most progressive educational institutions of the country. Some institutions now even go so far as to give advice to seniors in high schools through information furnished by the colleges to the high school principals. Ohio State University publishes and distributes such information for students who contemplate attending that institution; Oberlin and Colgate prepare bulletins on academic and vocational advice; and Yale has recently greatly increased its efforts to bridge the gap between the secondary school and that institution.

Just after the World War, whose aftermath stimulated colleges to provide orientation, general, or over-view courses, Columbia, Indiana, Williams and several other institutions began to pay serious attention to the problem of general as opposed to specialized undergraduate instruction. By 1922 forty-one colleges were making provision of this kind for their students as compared with only eleven institutions before the World War; and by 1926 seventy-nine institutions were offering orientation or general courses for standard college credit. Such courses are numerous now and are annually being introduced throughout the country by institutions that see the need for basic courses which promise to bring some order out of the chaos which followed the rampant elective system.

In 1918 Princeton established a course known as “Historical Introduction to Politics and Economics.” For sometime Dartmouth has had special required courses for freshmen which deal with an introduction to industrial society, with evolution and with physical education. The first of these is intended to acquaint the student with the materials and methods of the social sciences. After presenting a few of the more important forces which have produced the present civilization in the United States, there follows a discussion of some of the more important problems confronting American citizens at the present time. “As far as possible,” says the catalogue, “the presentation makes use of the subject matter and techniques of the various Social Sciences. Final judgments, based on the necessarily meagre data which the course presents, are actively discouraged; rather the course emphasizes the complexity of modern civilization and the necessity of long and painstaking study if an adequate understanding of modern American is to be attained. It is hoped that the course will demonstrate the necessity and desirability of further work in the various Social Sciences.”

The course dealing with evolution is intended “to acquaint the student with the nature of the universe in which he lives and the methods of science by which an understanding of this universe has been attained. Specifically the survey embraces the fields of physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, and biology. In each of these fields the subject matter is presented only to a sufficient extent to prepare a background which will be adequate for an understanding of their evolutionary phases. In addition an effort is made to give the student some acquaintance with the vocabulary of these sciences and some conception of the purpose and significance of scientific investigation.” The course is required for all members of the Freshman class in either the first or second semester.

Dartmouth places physical education on an equality with other subjects. The course is not regarded merely as a means of training the body but as a vital educational force which will contribute to the health of both body and mind. There are lectures on physical education and hygiene, the prevention of disease, gross human anatomy, physiology and muscular exercises, personal hygiene, dietetics. Attention is given to nutrition and medical gymnastics, to recreational activities, posture, correction of physical defects, underdevelopment and improvement of carriage and the like,—“in general, sanitary and moral prophylaxis.”

The Chicago Plan.

The new plan inaugurated at the University of Chicago in 1931 grew out of a long and careful study of conditions in that institution. Just as other important new plans in undergraduate instruction, the Chicago Plan has been widely publicized and rather high claims have been made for its merits. Improvement seems to have followed most of the changes that have been made in it from time to time and by 1934 it was possible for the dean of the college to assert that the plan, which represents a wide departure from the traditional undergraduate procedure, had been successfully proved.

The success of the plan is doubtless due in considerable part to the time that the institution took to formulate and inaugurate it. The report of the Senate Committee on the Undergraduate Colleges in May of 1928 represented long and laborious study by a group of distinguished faculty members. A reading of that report alone reflects a most careful consideration of the problems facing the University of Chicago and the determination of the institution to improve its work. Important guiding principles were set out in it. The essential educational requirements for admission called for “an appropriate degree of attainment in respect to general education” and 2a demonstration of the power of independent and informed thinking.” The report also asserted that in both general and special education ample opportunity should be given to the students in the first two years to receive “inspiration by work under, and by contact with, men who by their research work are contributing to the advancement of the boundaries of human knowledge.” Candidates for the upper two years of the college were to pass five examinations which were to be designed to test their breadth and depth of preparation for concentration after the first two years. Each candidate was to be required to show that he could write correct, clear and effective English; and performance in writing all of the examinations was to be the basis of judging whether the student had this ability in the mother tongue. The ability to read a foreign language was to be demonstrated; and whether the student had course credits in the language was not to be questioned nor taken into consideration, “since the method by which the student has acquired this tool skill is of little consequence so long as he can demonstrate that he has it.” The plan proposed by the report substituted fields of study for course units, made provision for the exceptional student to make more rapid progress, abolished the system of credits for a degree and substituted comprehensive examinations on fields of study or some other method of demonstrating accomplishments, and placed greater emphasis upon the student's opportunity and responsibility for his own education. Several survey courses were contemplated in the report and later established, and comprehensive examinations on three such survey courses were to be passed by each candidate for the bachelor's degree. One of these fields was to be selected by the student as his major for concentration in the last two years of his undergraduate work.

As already noted, this plan has been substantially followed since its inauguration in 1931, occasional changes, however, having meantime been made in it. In general, broad privileges have been given the students to pursue courses in accordance with their needs, to attend lectures and study as they think best, and to proceed toward the examinations for the bachelor's degree at rates determined by their own abilities. Great emphasis was placed upon substance rather than form. Moreover, the function of examination was separated from the function of instruction by the creation of a Board of Examinations, and this remarkable innovation appears to have greatly improved the relationship between the students and the instructor. It is claimed that greater reliability in the measure of the general intellectual achievements of the students has been attained by the new plan of examinations.

The distinguishing features of the Chicago Plan are fairly well-known, but they may properly be set out in summary here. The admission requirements are liberal and the requirements for the bachelor's degree are stated in terms of educational attainments which are measured by comprehensive examinations. One of these examinations is set at the level of the junior college and is intended primarily to test the general education of the student. The other examination is set at the level of the senior college for the purpose of testing the student's depth of penetration in a large but special field selected by the student. The conventional, time-serving, routine requirements of course credits and grades have been given up, attendance upon classes is not required, and the relation between the student and the teacher has been greatly improved, as already noted, by separating the function of teaching from the function of examining. Examinations are in the hands of a university examining board. A full year-course in each of four large fields has been established: one in the biological sciences, one in the humanities, one in the physical sciences and one in the social sciences. These courses are intended to meet the general educational needs of the students, who have access to carefully prepared syllabi with well selected bibliographies. A variety of instructional methods has also been adopted, such as discussion groups, personal guidance of students, and the like. A faculty adviser is also provided for each student, and is reported to take his responsibilities seriously, always ready to serve the student as “guide, counselor, and friend.” The difficulty with the discussion groups appears to be a lack of skilful lenders of discussion. Many of these groups, when observed in the fall of 1933, were in charge of younger and less experienced teachers. President Hutchins appeared to be in a mood to abandon this feature of the new plan.

Although the entrance requirements at Chicago were not increased, the institution has had more applicants than ever before from students who ranked in the top tenth of their classes in excellent preparatory and high schools. The average score of the class that entered in 1931 on a scholastic aptitude test was ten per cent above the average of the three previous freshman classes and that of the class entering in 1932 was ten per cent above that of 1931. Dean Boucher reported in January of 1933 that reports from instructors and advisers and from the physicians in the university health service showed that the freshmen of the past two years averaged “higher as interesting and attractive personalities” and better “as specimens of humanity than previous classes.”

Voluntary class attendance under the new plan is almost exactly what it was when class attendance was required. In some courses the attendance is even better while in other courses it is lower than under the old plan. Apparently the students attend the courses when they think that the class period is profitable to them. The attitude of the students appears in an informal statement which a group of them made, but not for publication: “So many able and distinguished lecturers and instructors have been provided for the Freshman courses that we would no more think of ‘cutting’ a class than we would think of throwing away a ticket for a concert or the theater for which we had paid good money. If we ‘cut’ we are sure to miss something of value to us for which we have paid a tuition fee, and the instructors are only interested in helping those who endeavor to help themselves.”

Particularly interesting is the increased demand made upon the library. Apparently the students are reading more under the new than they did under the old plan. The problem of the library is to provide enough books and enough attendants to give adequate and prompt service, according to a report of the library officials. Members of the faculty also report that the students show a greater breadth and wealth of reading as a result of the general courses.1

1 This problem of the library was found to be acute in the General College of the University of Minnesota in the fall of 1933.

It appears also that the general courses in the experimental sciences at both Chicago and at Minnesota answer those scientists who insist upon the necessity of an abundance of laboratory experimentation. These general courses in the experimental sciences are intended first to serve the general educational needs of the students and only secondarily to provide training for future specialists in science. Laboratory work is done by laboratory demonstration lectures; the students who are not planning further work in the subject are not required to spend long hours in the laboratory. But those who look to specialization are given intensive laboratory training in the second year course at Chicago. When faculty members protested against the arrangement for the course in the first year, laboratory provision was made for the members of introductory class who requested it. But the provision was made on a voluntary basis. About half of the introductory class thereafter reported regularly for the laboratory work. It should also be noted that extra discussion sections were provided for students who expressed a desire for additional provision for the discussion of current problems in the light of principles developed in the four introductory general courses. According to authentic reports, one effect of the new plan is clearly on the conventional extra-curricular activities, such as athletics, social affairs, dramatics, and publications. There is now a new competition for the time and interest of the student. Although the traditional activities are not faced with extinction, there is evidence at Chicago, according to the officials of the University, that some of the student activities that flourished under the old plan will die unless they are made to serve more adequately the needs of the students. Those activities which now make the widest educational appeal to the students seem to be dramatics, publications, and the symphony orchestra.

The report of Dean Boucher shows the following results of the examinations in June of 1932 when a total of 649 students wrote from one to five examinations each:

The total number of examinations taken was 1,699, an average of 2.6 examinations per student. Of the 649 students, three wrote five examinations, thirty-six wrote four, 361 wrote three, 208 wrote two, and forty-one wrote one. One hundred and forty-one students failed one examination or more, and 118 received at least one “A.” The letter marks of all examinations were distributed approximately as follows:A, 11 per cent;B, 19 per cent;C, 44 per cent;D, 14 per cent;F, 12 per cent.

“The returns from the four general-course examinations given in June, 1932, show that there were forty-eight instances in which a student passed an examination after having attended the corresponding course only two of the three quarters, sixteen instances in which a passing student attended the respective course for one quarter only, and fourteen instances in which a passing student did not attend the respective course at all,” reports Dean Boucher. “In these three groups were eight marks of ‘A’ and twenty-six marks of ‘B’. An impressive number of students also passed departmental sequence examinations without having been registered for all or, in some instances, even part of the year course offered to assist students in preparation for a given examination. It should be remembered that this was the first occasion the examinations were offered. We expect the number who will avail themselves of this opportunity to demonstrate achievement by examination rather than course credit to increase in the current and succeeding years. We know that a number of students, encouraged to do so by their advisers, spent much of the summer, though out of residence, in preparation for examinations given in September. The returns from these September examinations show that there were eleven instances of students passing an examination after having attended the corresponding course only two of the three quarters, six instances of one quarter attendance, and twenty-five instances in which a passing student did not attend the corresponding course at all. Of these three groups of students, nine received marks of ‘A’ and ten received marks of ‘B’.

“A few high schools have already begun to guide their superior students preparing for admission to the University of Chicago so that they may not only meet our admission requirements but may also anticipate some of our junior-college requirements and, by examinations at admission or shortly thereafter, satisfy some of these requirements. This we encourage the high schools and their better students to do. We anticipate that many of our best students, having been wisely guided through their high-school courses, may earn our junior-college certificate in one year or even less than a year in college, progress at once in the upper divisions of their choice, and there in turn save more time in ratio with the degree of their superiority. Last June one student, after having been in residence only one quarter, wrote four examinations and received two marks of ‘B’ and two of ‘C’. The passing mark is ‘D’. Honors and scholarships are awarded for superior performance in the examinations. Our academic mortality rate (students dismissed for unsatisfactory work) was no higher last year than in the previous three years.”

Of course it cannot be said that every student who enters upon the general courses at Chicago, Minnesota, Columbia, or elsewhere turns out to be ideal. Visits to each place and attendance upon these classes revealed a sprinkling of students who were not completely absorbed with intellectual interests. Some were seen to be talking, or reading newspapers, or otherwise paying little attention to what the lecturer was saying. In one class of freshmen a lad revealed to his instructor that the word “heretic”, which the student had grossly mispronounced, came from the word “Heredity.” Nor do these institutions lack “smart” undergraduates. In one discussion group visited the instructor was trying to make clear the causes of the vernal equinox. “What is the sun doing all this time?” the instructor asked. “Shining,” piped up a student. Nevertheless, it does appear that general courses, wherever intelligently conceived, properly planned, and properly directed, have been successfully tested, and that they are meeting the needs of the students more definitely than was the case under the old plan; the new plan at Chicago has also served to remove the affliction of departmentalism which was increasing under the old plan, under which every department was practically a school or college. Now a department or division must study its program and appointments to its staff in the light of the needs of other departments and of the University as a whole, as well as the needs and interests of the students. Departmental antonomy has yielded and the different fields of study are now more closely related to each other than formerly, in the interest of the general educational welfare of the University.

A student at Chicago may take one or more of the comprehensive examinations any time these are offered, whether he has attended all or part or none of the courses on which the examinations are set. Most of the students, of course, attend the courses before taking the examinations, but during the year closing June 1933, some 131 students took examinations after having attended the courses only two of the three quarters. Sixty-two students took the examinations after attending the courses only one quarter and seventy-eight took them without attending the courses at all. The average of these 271 students was well above that for all the students who took the examinations, according to a report of Dean Boucher.1

1 See The New York Times, April 29, 1934.

The percentages of the 271 and of all the students who received the different grades follow:

  A B C D F Faster group, percentage 14 30 36 12 8 All students, percentage 9 18 41 18 15

It will be seen that the proportion of failures in the faster group was about half that of the failures in the entire group. These figures indicate also that the superior students took advantage of the opportunities offered under the new plan and that they may not only save time by completing the degree requirements in less than four years, but that students are encouraged to work “on their own” and to save themselves from perfunctory repetition; and to engage in work that tests their utmost capacity.

The superiority of the better students was also shown in an analysis of the results of the four introductory comprehensive examinations given in September of 1933. The examinations written numbered 272, sixty being written by students who had not registered for any part of the course, fourteen by students who had attended one-third of the course, twenty-five by students who had attended two-thirds of the course, and 173 by students who had registered for the entire course.

The results are set out in a table showing also the high and the low marks of the students who took the examinations in June of 1933, when 1,961 papers were written. But the June examinations were more typical of the student body than were the September examinations. The September group contained some of the best students who had used the summer for independent study and took the examinations without attending the courses; and it also contained some of the poorest students, who had failed in some of the examinations in June and took them again in September.

The percentages of students in the various groups receiving the high and the low marks (with the number in each group in parenthesis) follow:

  Percentage Receiving A's Percentage Receiving F's Not taking course (60) 26.7 10.0 Taking part of course (39) 2.6 20.5 Taking whole course (173) 1.7 39.3 In the June group (1,961) 9.6 11.6

Stated differently, the sixty students (22 per cent) in the September group who had not registered for the courses wrote 80 per cent of the A examinations and 7.3 of the F examinations at that time.

In the first examinations offered, in June of 1932, one student who had been in residence only one quarter (three months) “passed five of the seven examinations required for the junior-college certificate. Under the customary time-serving plan of measuring student progress, he would have met only one-sixth of the requirements.

“The first of the new plan ‘guinea-pigs,’ who entered with the initial freshman class in the Autumn, 1931, to complete the requirements for the bachelor's degree, was awarded the degree at the March, 1934, convocation. Instead of being in residence the customary four years he was in residence only two and two-thirds years. Incidentally, he has been quite active in student extra-curricular activities......

“For many years we have given the American Council on Education psychological examination to all entering freshmen. The median scores registered a marked jump in the quality of these freshmen at the time the new plan was put into effect, and a rise each year since. The measuring figures for the years 1928 to 1930, inclusive, were .83, .83, .81, and for the years 1931—the start of the new plan—to 1933, .98, 1.04 and 1.14 respectively. In other words, the figure for 1933 is a 38.5 per cent increase over the average for 1928-29-30, the last three years of the old plan.”

 The General College at Minnesota.

In the General College of the University of Minnesota appear some values which the University of North Carolina may well consider. That institution has for many years carefully studied its program, the personnel of its faculty and students, and its facilities in an effort to perform its educational task better and to make a larger contribution in social service and scholarship. The studies which the institution has carried on for a long time have dealt with the “three major and constant factors—faculty, facilities, and students—” and also have paid much attention to the individual differences, abilities, and interests of students, with the result that a visitor to that campus is impressed with the immense amount of information that is at hand there concerning every student in it.

The cost of the General College seems very reasonable. The tuition charges are $20 a quarter or $60 a year for in-state students and $30 a quarter or $90 a year for out-of-state students. Seven hundred students would give a budgetary income, exclusive of certain fees, of about $42,000 if all the students were in-state. Out-of-state students add about $2,000, making a total budget of about $44,000. Because of the size of the classes and of concentration of the examinations in the hands of the Committee on Educational Research and the concentration of the visual education program in a single department under the management of the General College, this part of the University is operating this year on a budget of between $36,000 and $38,000. That sum includes all of the expenses of the office of the dean, the visual education program, the testing program, and the hour for hour proportion of the salary of each person who teaches in the General College. By and large, therefore, it appears that the General College is not only paying its way but is contributing to the general budget of the University in the sum of $5,000 or $6,000. This budgetary economy is one of the important features of the General College. There is, of course, opposition among some of the conservatives in the faculty to large classes, but that opposition is answered by pointing to the actual work accomplished. No matter what advantages come from small discussion classes, it is quite clear that there is no question between the value of having students take lecture-demonstration courses with large enrollments under a great teacher in preference to having them sit in small discussion classes with young and inexperienced instructors fresh from the graduate school. Some of the best teachers in the University of Minnesota are teaching freshmen and sophomores in large sections in the General College.

The General College is the result of studies made by university committees, one of which was charged with making a study of the educational problems in the several schools and colleges, and was known as the University Committee on Educational Research. Another committee, known as the Committee on Administrative Reorganization, was composed of seven of the deans of the institution, whose task was to propose an improved administrative arrangement. In 1930 a committee was established on special curricula for students who had particular life purposes “in their education that could be better served by eclectic freedom in making an educational program combining the offerings of several colleges but not meeting the degree requirements of any one.” The programs of the students in the special curricula vary somewhat from the standard course work of the various colleges. This special program is known unofficially as “The University College.”

The General College was established, first as a junior college to serve a different type of student, under a separate administrative control and by special curricula. Careful studies by committees of the institution had revealed that fifty per cent of the students who entered reached graduation, that in the first two years there were from 1800 to 2000 who would not become juniors, and that there were some students in the University who could spend four years there and even graduate, but “who would be equally well served and equally well prepared for the part they would play in their communities by two years of work so directed that it would serve this purpose.” The report of the Committee on Administrative Reorganization to the general faculty stated that such a change in the work of the institution would result in a saving of time and money to the students and to the State. In trying to secure these gains the institution recognized the fact of individual differences in students and declared that “no one profits by attempting the same college tasks, at the same pace, or by the same methods as everybody else who has graduated from any high school at any minimum level permitted by any high school.” The aim of the proposed reorganization was provision for the fullest and largest opportunity for every student. The students who were to go into the General College were to be those who were not expecting or expected to spend four years in higher education. They would include:

a. Those who desire to pursue courses or curricula in the new unit that are not offered in existing colleges or who for financial or other reasons have only a limited time to give to preparation for intelligent citizenship in their communities and to general orientation in their choice of, or general preparation for, a vocation.

b. Those who do not satisfactorily meet the entrance requirements of the existing colleges because of lack of training in specific subjects.

c. Students transferred from other institutions who do not meet the standards for advanced standing of the college to which they apply.

d. Students transferred by mutual agreement of the Junior College and the college in which they were first registered.

e. Those who might not be accepted by existing colleges because of an indicated lack of ability to pursue prevailing curricula.

Provision was also made to transfer from one school or college of the University to another during the two-year period of the General College those students who became adjusted and who showed ability to carry the work of any of the four-year schools or colleges. The administration of the General College was headed by a director, with the usual powers and responsibility of a dean in any of the other schools and colleges of the University, who associated with himself an advisory committee to consider matters of curricula, methods, and teaching personnel. The faculty was chosen from the general university faculty on the basis of fitness for and interest in instruction and guidance of students in the General College. President Goffman gave Director MacLean the authority to draw on the entire teaching resources of the university for the teaching staff of the General College. As a result, some of the most spirited teachers in the institution established and gave courses in the new unit. Some of these teachers now offer courses both in the new college and in the college from which they were drawn. Whenever the best educational purposes of the entire institution are better served, the entire time of a teacher may be given to work in the General College.

The courses offered in 1933-34 were designed to provide the highest service for the students, consideration being given to their general educational and vocational interests and needs. Through these courses an effort is made to assist the students in solving their own problems and those of their own communities. The courses, which are general, over-view, and orientation, in the main, are constantly being revised in the light of experience and demonstrated needs. Although the purpose of the General College is to provide broadening experience and training for those students who do not need and do not desire the conventional college curriculum, the new unit has in no way affected the standards of admission to any other school or college of the University.

Except for Military Science and Physical Education the courses in the University College are elective and without prerequisites to all students. The first of the courses listed is “How to Study.” Other courses deal with:

BASIC WEALTH: Natural Resources: Their Economic Utilization and Conservation.Plant Life and Its Economic Utilization.Animal Life and Its Economic Utilization. DESCRIPTIVE ASTRONOMY. HUMAN BIOLOGY: General Biological Concepts in Relation to Mankind.The Human Body, Its Structure and Operation.Personal and Community Health. OUR ECONOMIC LIFE: Problems of Consumption and Distribution of Goods.Problems of Production, Finance, and Credit.Problems of Government and Business Relations. CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS: The Physics of Sound, Light, Heat, and Motion.The Chemistry of Common Things.Practical Applications of Physics and Chemistry, Electricity and Its Fundamental Role. TECHNOLOGY: Raw Materials and Their Manufacture.Building, Transportation, and Communication.Technologic Agencies and Their Service. ENGLISH: Current Reading—Practical Writing.Collecting and Organizing Materials.Business and Social Forms. EUTHENICS: Food and Nutrition.House Planning and Furnishing.Textiles and Clothing.The Management of the Home.The Design, Building, and Financing of the Home. APPRECIATION OF THE FINE ARTS: Appreciation of Motion Pictures and the Theater.Appreciation of the Graphic Arts.Appreciation of Music. THE EARTH AND MAN. THE BACKGROUND OF THE MODERN WORLD: Development of the Great States of Modern Europe.Revolutions, Political and Industrial—the World War—Aftermaths.The Challenge of the Twentieth Century. FORMATION OF PUBLIC OPINION: Shaping Public Thinking.The Newspaper, Periodical, and their Function.Propaganda Campaigns. INTRODUCTION TO THE MATHEMATICS OF BUSINESS AND EVERYDAY LIFE: Everyday Statistics and Interest.Depreciation and Loans.Inv