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CONFERENCE

OF

COLLEGE PRESIDENTS AND DELEGATES.

FIRST SESSION-THURSDAY MORNING.

COLUMBUS, OHIO, December 27, 1877.

The conference of the presidents and other delegates of the State universities and colleges, held at Columbus, Ohio, December 27 and 28, 1877, arose out of a correspondence, undertaken by direction of the trustees of the Illinois Industrial University, in regard to the appropriate academic and professional degrees to be conferred upon the graduates of the several courses of study-classical, scientific, and technical — taught in the State colleges and universities. Eighteen institutions having pledged themselves to be represented, the call was issued.

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The conference assembled in the portrait room of the Ohio State Capitol, Thursday, December 27, at 9 A. M., and was called to order by President Edward Orton, of the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College.

On motion of President SLAGLE, of the Iowa State University, a committee consisting of President Runkle, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vice President McKee, of the Pennsylvania Agricultural College, and Prof. G. W. Atherton, of Rutgers College, New Jersey, was appointed to nominate permanent officers. The committee reported the following names:

For president, J. M. Gregory, president of the Illinois Industrial University.

For vice president, S. S. Laws, president of the Missouri State University.

For secretary, Prof. J. R. Smith, of the Ohio Mechanical and Agricultural College.

These gentlemen were unanimously elected, and Dr. Gregory accepted the chair with a short speech expressive of his sense of the interest of the occasion.

Professor ATHERTON moved that, in order that the meeting might be properly understood and its true character maintained, it should be termed a conference and not a convention. This motion was concurred in. Presidents Orton and Slagle and Professor Atherton were appointed a permanent committee on the business of the session.

While the committee was absent, President GREGORY stated briefly the origin and purposes of the conference and the interest which had been expressed in it by the presidents of the several State institutions throughout the country. The topics on the printed programme presented

had been suggested by different presidents in several sections of the Union as of personal or local interest to them.

The business committee recommended that the programme be followed in the first two topics, and that throughout the conference the several topics, after discussion, be referred each to a special committee with instructions to report to the conference by resolution or otherwise. The report was adopted.

COLLEGIATE DEGREES.

President GREGORY, calling Vice President Laws to the chair, then proceeded, according to programme, to present his paper on the subject of college degrees. The following abridgment includes its most important points.

In discussing the subject of college degrees three principal questions confront us:

1. Ought our American colleges to continue the use of degrees? 2. What degrees, if any, ought to be granted?

3. On what conditions ought these degrees to be given?

1. After stating some of the objections to degrees, the paper showed that their use is so interwoven with our entire system of higher education that no college can easily dispense with them. The writer represents an institution in which the experiment has been tried, and the result has been unsatisfactory. It was our alumni themselves who, finding themselves embarrassed by their lack of the usual symbol of graduation and convinced that the university was suffering loss in students and in pub. lic respect from this cause, petitioned the State Legislature to give to the trustees authority to bestow the usual and appropriate degrees.

Counting that the usage must go on, we need only consult for the means to render these degrees more truly significant and trustworthy as symbols of scholarship and as evidences of literary or scientific attainments. The present usage is often confused and unintelligible, and sometimes dishonorable and degrading. We need not enumerate the abuses: they are unfortunately too well known already, and to no one better than to our college faculties.

Propositions for reform have not been wanting. It has been proposed to take away from all colleges the power to grant degrees, and to lodge it in a State board of regents or examiners, to whom all candidates must apply. This would virtually make all the colleges of a State parts of a State university. This plan would doubtless cure many of the evils from which we are suffering, and might afford many special advantages; but I fear the time is far distant when the smaller and poorer institutions will consent to surrender a privilege so profitable, if not so necessary, to their existence.

2. The second question, that which touches the number and kinds of degrees to be granted, is more difficult. In the Middle Ages, when edu cation was much briefer in its courses and much narrower in its aims;

when the old trivium and quadrivium constituted the studies of an entire university, and the chief use of education was to prepare divinity students for their work-the simple degrees of bachelor of arts and master of arts, and the doctorates of divinity, philosophy, and of laws, filled all the requirements. For centuries these, with some modifications of meaning to meet new studies, covered the whole field of the higher education. But with the modern enlargement of science and learning, and with the rise of new courses of study to prepare for new professions and avocations, our leading colleges have been driven to the introduction of new symbols to represent their work and reward their graduates. These new degrees have been chosen without concert or harmony, and their use is accordingly confused and irregular. For the sake of the great public concerned, and for the sake of the cause of learning itself, this confusion ought if possible to be arrested and a harmony of usage introduced.

Our college and university courses of studies are now of two classes, scholastic or educational, and technical or professional. We may assume that the scholastic or proper educational courses embrace (1) the old classical course, with its several modifications; (2) the scientific course, the staple studies of which are the natural sciences, the mathematics, and some studies in literature, history, and philosophy; and (3) a medium course, variously constituted, but made up chiefly of extended studies in the English and other modern languages and literatures, including often the Latin also and some due proportion of history, science, and philosophy. This last course already shows signs of parting into two distinct courses, each of which looks more or less directly toward a field of practical life. The first course coming from this cleavage includes a large proportion of linguistic studies, especially a full and critical study of the English literature, such as that taught by Professor March and already in use at several leading institutions. It includes also a fuller and more critical and effective study of the modern languages, for practical use, and a due measure of mathematics, science, history, and philosophy. This course is especially valuable to the student who seeks to prepare himself for the work of the press, as editor, publisher, or author. The second course already appearing in some institutions from the cleav age is made up in a large measure of social science studies, history, political philosophy, constitutional and international law, logic, and metaphysics, without omitting languages, mathematics, and science. This seems adapted to the wants of the future lawyer and statesman.

It happens that the four degrees which are most appropriate to these four courses of study have already come into use, though not always with the same application and significance. These degrees are B. A., bachelor of arts; B. S., bachelor of sciences; B. L., bachelor of letters; and PH. B., bachelor of philosophy. The PH. B. is in use in Yale and in several other prominent colleges, and the B. L. in Cornell and in the State universities of Wisconsin and Missouri.

These four degrees would cover the strictly educational courses thus far known in the better American colleges. But besides these courses there are several technical courses for which some appropriate symbol seems to be demanded. Leaving out of sight the older studies of law, medicine, and theology, we have civil, mining, and mechanical engineering, architecture, agriculture, and chemistry. The usage most favored at present gives to all these technical and scientific courses the simple B. S., and reserves the full degrees of civil engineer, mining engineer, &c., to be conferred as a master's degree, after additional professional studies and practice.

3. The third and the most difficult of the questions to be met in this matter of degrees is that of the conditions on which they ought to be granted. The usage is diverse, and it will be difficult to establish and maintain any uniform standard. Similarity of courses is by no means a sure guarantee of equality of attainments: to make a course of study on paper is as easy as it is insignificant; some better test is needed than a pretentious catalogue. It is at this point that the State universities and colleges may work together for a great public good. If they can agree upon some uniform standard, it will go far toward the estab. lishment of a general standard for all of the respectable colleges of the country.

There are two distinct bases on which college degrees may be granted: 1) the satisfactory completion of some prescribed course of studies, and (2) a final examination and the ascertainment of prescribed attainments of knowledge. The latter of these is in use in European universities; in America, college degrees represent uniformly the completion of prescribed courses of studies. It may be doubted whether any change in this respect would be accepted.

In fixing a general standard, it may be assumed, in the first place, that some amount of preparatory study will be required between the common school studies and the college studies proper. These preparatory studies may vary in kind, but should be equal to the work of two years in amount. It may also be assumed that the college studies shall be equal to the work of four academic years, and shall contain some due amount of linguistic studies, a fair proportion of mathematics, and some studies in history, science, and philosophy. Beyond this nothing is fixed, unless it be that the degree of A. B. shall be given only for the so called classical course in the two ancient languages. In making up its several courses each institution must be left free to consult its own limiting conditions, internal and external. What is essential is equivalency, not identity, of studies.

The reading of the paper was followed by a discussion.

President C. L. C. MINOR, of Virginia Agricultural College, said he desired to hear the question discussed, though his institution was not as yet interested in it.

Professor ATHERTON said that at Rutgers College the two degrees of A. B. and B. S. are in use; PH. B. is given as an honorary degree. The

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