prepare young men for the ministry. Many colleges were founded with that design principally in mind, but an examination of the distribution of the early graduates shows what one would naturally expect, that they were quite normally divided among the various walks of life. College graduates soon became the leaders in all the professions. Few colleges, however, were content to remain simply schools for liberal culture. One reads repeatedly of the propaganda of restless professors in the interest of a wider conception. Their efforts were often unsuccessful. They frequently failed in winning the support of their colleagues or of the benefactors of their colleges. But they lookt for an education which should progressively embrace the learned professions, the mechanic arts, and all the industries of men.

As early as 1826, for instance, Amherst College undertook to establish a course of study parallel to the liberal course. This "Parallel course," to quote from Professor Tyler's history of the college,2 differed from the old, "first, in the prominence which was to be given to English literature; second, in the substitution of the modern for the ancient languages, particularly the French and Spanish, and should room be found hereafter, German or Italian, or both, with particular attention to the literature in these rich and popular languages; third, in mechanical philosophy, by multiplying and varying the experiments so as to render the science more familiar and attractive; fourth, in chemistry and other kindred branches of physical science, by showing their application to the more useful arts and trades, to the cultivation of the soil, and to domestic economy; fifth, in a course of familiar lectures upon curious and laborsaving machines, upon bridges, locks, and aqueducts, and upon the different orders of architecture, with models for illustration; sixth, in natural history, by devoting more time to those branches which are now taught, and introducing others into the course; seventh, in modern history, especially the history of the Puritans, in connection with the civil

2 Tyler, W. S., A history of Amherst College, pages 64 and 65.

and ecclesiastical history of our own country; eighth, in the elements of civil and political law, embracing the careful study of the American constitutions, to which may be added drawing and civil engineering." The announcement of this course attracted many students to the college, but it failed for lack of support and for lack of competent teachers. President Johnson's announcement of King's College affords another illustration. I quote it from Dean Keppel's book on Columbia.3 "A serious, virtuous, and industrious Course of Life being first provided for, it is further the Design of this College to instruct and perfect Youth in the Learned Languages, and in the Arts of Reasoning exactly, of Writing correctly, and Speaking eloquently; and in the Arts of Numbering and Measuring, of Surveying and Navigation, of Geography and History, of Husbandry, Commerce, and Government; and in the Knowledge of all Nature in the Heavens above us, and in the Air, Water, and Earth around us, and the various kinds of Meteors, Stones, Mines, and Minerals, Plants and Animals, and of every Thing useful for the Comfort, the convenience, and Elegance of Life, in the chief Manufactures relating to any of these things; and finally, to lead them from the Study of Nature, to the Knowledge of themselves, and of the God of Nature and their duty to Him, themselves and one another; and everything that can contribute to their true Happiness both here and hereafter." That announcement was made in 1754, but it is only within our own memory that Columbia University has actively entered on the realization of so extensive an undertaking.

Such visions of a promised land abound, but the college was not destined to enter it. Professional schools, scientific schools, technical schools, and schools for teachers were founded independently, and the college was confined to its programme of liberal studies. Its rivals soon began to influence it, and it began to influence them. They increasingly lookt to the college for their better-prepared students, and the college in its turn actively began to under8 Keppel, Frederick P., Columbia, page 64.

take this preparation. The result of this reciprocal influence is familiar. Professional schools, scientific schools, technical schools, and schools for teachers have been progressively becoming graduate schools. That is, they have become or are becoming schools which presuppose a college course either in whole or in part. Our colleges still offer courses of liberal study, but their chief function is rapidly becoming that of preparing their students to enter other institutions of learning. That is no small cause for the popular dissatisfaction with them. In perfecting a closer affiliation with graduate schools they have lost in immediate contact with the public. But the public is apt to overlook the fact that the change in the college has resulted in a significant advance in standards and quality of all professional and technical instruction.

The movement which I have thus briefly sketched culminates today in the university. Here we find a growing number of professional and technical schools grouped around a college. Here the college is primarily a feeder for the other branches of the university. Here it is more rapidly than elsewhere losing its position as an institution for liberal culture. But the university gains thereby in its own efforts to perfect the quality of its work. The public may be robbed of the college graduate of liberal views and philosophical training, but it receives instead better lawyers, physicians, ministers, engineers, chemists, teachers, yes, and even nurses and household managers. The public has lost, but it has also gained. The university can not rationally be blamed for what it has thus done.

It has, moreover, undertaken to do something more. Our universities have been not only advancing the standard of professional instruction, but they have also been providing an opportunity for advanced academic instruction. Their success in this direction evokes the astonishment and admiration of every one familiar with it. A quarter of a century ago they counted their advanced students by tens. Now they count them by hundreds and thousands. Then their equipment and resources were meagre and in

In this direction of

adequate. Now they are unsurpast. advanced academic instruction the university takes toward the college the same attitude that it takes in the direction of its professional instruction. It regards the college as a feeder. Its advanced work is graduate work, presupposing a college course and open only to students who have had such a course or an education which can be reasonably regarded as its equivalent.

By many, this advanced graduate work of the university, leading out, as it does, into all lines of literary, historical, philosophical, and scientific research, is regarded as the university's most important undertaking. By it the bounds of human knowledge are extended; the whole work of the university is stimulated and kept actively progressive; all that is new or invigorating or promising, the world over, is brought to the attention of inquiring minds to be seized upon, used, and evaluated. This work calls out the ablest scholars, creates the specialist, and gives distinction to the university. So important is it for the life of scholarship that the university looks with a jealous eye upon every research foundation which is made independent of university affiliations. So vital is it to effective and inspiring teaching that professional schools are no longer content simply to confine their work to the preparation of youth for the practise of the professions, but they are seeking ways and means to promote research work in all those branches of knowledge that are the foundations of successful professional practise.

This important work is largely hidden from the public eye. It has little publicity and excites little public interest. The world of scholars may take note of it. Eager students may search it out and choose their university as a result of their search. But the public has little direct access to it. Those who have access are graduate students; and it is the aim of the university to subject these students to a rigorous process of selection so that only those of demonstrated attainments may enter upon the best which the university has to give. Here, too, we may find a cause for popular

complaint. It may easily appear to the public that the university in its supreme undertaking has quite forgotten that the public exists. Who are these Masters of Arts and Doctors of Philosophy upon whom the university professes to expend its best resources? But ask these Masters and Doctors themselves, and they will say, however poor their own attainments have been, that they are men and women who have directly shared in the great enterprise of learning, and seen a vision of the conquest of nature by the mind of man. In helping to that vision the university has not been stupid or incompetent. It has been doing the public a very great service.

There is, however, a feature of the graduate work of our universities on which they may look with anxiety. That work is far less genuine research than it is professional training for teachers. If the colleges feed the university with students, it in turn feeds the colleges and schools with teachers. So general is this tendency that entrance upon graduate work is commonly considered as the deliberate adoption of an academic career. This result is not so much the outcome of any consciously adopted aim of the university itself as it is of the demand which the colleges and the teaching profession generally have made upon it. Colleges and institutions of higher learning have multiplied with remarkable rapidity, and have put upon the universities the responsibility of providing an adequate teaching force. University degrees are rapidly becoming indispensable prerequisites of good and well-paid positions even in our high schools. As a result, the noteworthy increase in the number of graduate students, which is recorded year after year, does not indicate a corresponding increase in the number of those who are devoting their energies to research or to extending the boundaries of human knowledge. It indicates rather that our schools and colleges are being provided with better-trained and more efficient teachers. The university is keenly alive to this situation. It does not shirk, it welcomes, the responsibility thus put upon it, but it is growing solicitous about