Central States from nine and ten to twelve and a half. The difficulty of securing uniformity for a high grade of admission lies in no small degree in the desire for numbers, a desire common and strong among colleges. Colleges are inclined to yield to the temptation of scholastic looseness in order to attract students.

One noble result of the establishment of the Foundation lies in the promotion of the community interests of the higher education. The higher education in the United States and Canada has been centred in institutions which have usually had only or chiefly local relationships. They represent rivalry. They have been founded to serve a small community. Their development has been made along narrow lines. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has served as a force unifying institutions now existing, lifting the individual institution up to a higher level of service, seeking to consider the progress of higher education, not from the point of view of the single institution, but upon the basis of national and human betterment.

When the Foundation was laid, fears were expressed that the institution might prove to be a too great centralizing power, that it

vested in the keeping of a small number of men too large powers. These fears have proved groundless. The Carnegie Foundation has sought to further the interests of all institutions and of every state. It has not refrained from criticism, as in the case of the University of Oklahoma. It has not been loath to refuse requests from colleges and individuals to become its beneficiaries. The petitions it has denied are far more numerous than those it has granted. But on the whole it has become recognized that its vision has been large, its motives high, and its discriminations true, regarding the development of the higher education. It has sought to put an end to the multiplication of unnecessary institutions, it has endeavored so far as was right to unite those that are weak, to reënforce those whose place and work deserve recognition, and to give to our educational force unity, breadth, uplift, coherence, and efficiency.

The first four years of its work, of very great service to the cause of the higher, and so of all, education in the United States and in Canada, give promise of highest usefulness as long as the American college and university exist.

CHAPTER XIV

THE UNITED STATES AS A WORLD-POWER IN EDUCATION

THE world daily becomes smaller. Its unity increases. The relations of nation to nation, of individual foreigner to individual foreigner, grow more numerous and more intimate. Commerce, industry, steamship, cable, mail, bind the different parts of the globe together into closer oneness.

In these augmented relationships the United States bears an enlarging part. In no field of endeavor or effort are these relationships so important, so significant, so impressive as in education. These educational relationships are twofold: The United States receiving as students the men of foreign countries, and the United States going out into foreign countries with its teachers, for the purpose of establishing schools and colleges.

The record of the students who have come to America covers somewhat more than two score years, and embraces several nations,

but especially China, Japan, India, and our Philippines.

The first delegation of students sent from Japan came, however, not to America, but to Holland. The year was 1859. These men engaged in the study of navigation, shipbuilding, and law. The number rapidly increased in the course of the next decade, and as early as 1875, within five years of the accession of the present great emperor, not less than two hundred Japanese students studied under the care of the home government in England, France, Germany, Russia, Austria, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, and Holland. The first delegation that entered the United States landed in Boston in the year 1868. In the succeeding five years, at least one hundred were found pursuing courses of study either under private tutors or in the schools of New England and of Pennsylvania. With the coming of those who were formally accredited by the government, entered not a few matriculating at their own charges.

These men were the precursors, both in their private and in their governmental relations, of a still larger immigration. From year to year, from decade to decade, scores of students

have come to the United States from Tokyo, Kyoto, Kobe, and other capitals and parts of Japan to be educated. They have come for diverse purposes. In the year 1880 the Japanese commissioner of education to this country, Tanetaro Megata, wrote me, describing the government students who had studied or were at that time studying in this country:

Two of them were graduated at Boston Law School and are studying the practice of law. One of them was graduated at Cambridge Law School, and is also studying the practice in New York. One of them was graduated at Columbia Law School, and got another degree from the Yale Law School, where he is studying now. Three of them were graduated at Columbia School of Mines, and they are studying the branch by practical investigation there. Two of them were graduated at the Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, and are studying now practically.

Yale College has been one of the chief points, if not the chief, of attraction for Japanese students; and in Yale College George Trumbull Ladd has possessed the largest attractive force. In the year 1892 Professor Ladd paid a visit to Japan, invited by two of his former pupils, Nakashima, now professor of ethics in the