Chapter SIXTEEN: The Universities (2)

The graduate student always works industriously through the year, but the college student may be one of various types. Part of these men work no less industriously than the advanced students; while another part, and by no means the worst, would not for anything be guilty of such misbehaviour. These men are not in Harvard to learn facts, but they have come to college for a certain atmosphere—in order to assimilate by reflection, as they say. Of course, the lectures of enthusiastic professors and a good book or two belong to this atmosphere; and yet, who can say that the hours spent at the club, on the foot-ball field, at the theatre, in the Boston hotel, on the river or on horseback do not contribute quite as much—not to mention the informal discussions about God and the world, especially the literary and athletic worlds, as they sit together at their window seats on the crimson cushions and smoke their cigarettes? Harvard has the reputation through the country of being the rich man’s university, and it is true that many live here in a degree of luxury of which few German students would ever think. And yet there are as many who go through college on the most modest means, who perhaps earn their own livelihood or receive financial aid from the college. A systematic evasion of lectures or excessive drinking or card-playing plays no role at all. The distinctly youthful exuberance of the students is discharged most especially in the field of sport, which gets an incomparable influence on the students’ minds by means of the friendly rivalry between different colleges. The foot-ball game between Harvard and Yale in November, or the base-ball game in June, or the New London races, are national events, for which special trains transport thousands of visitors. Next to the historical traditions it is indeed sport, which holds the body of Harvard students most firmly together, and those who belong to the same class most firmly of all—that is, those who are to receive their A. B. in the same year. Year after year the Harvard graduates come back to Boston in order to see their old class-mates again. They know that to be a Harvard man means for their whole life to be the body-guard of the nation. They will stand for Harvard, their sons will go to Harvard, and to Harvard they will contribute with generous hands out of their material prosperity.

Harvard reflects all the interests of the nation, and all its social contrasts. It has its political, religious, literary and musical clubs, its scientific and social organizations, its daily paper for the discussion of Harvard’s interests, edited by students, and three monthly magazines; it has its public and serious parliamentary debates, and most popular of all, operatic performances in the burlesque vein given by students. Thousands of most diverse personalities work out their life problems in this little city of lecture halls, laboratories, museums, libraries, banquet halls, and club buildings, which are scattered about the ancient elm-shaded yard. Each student has come, in the ardour and ambition of youth, to these halls where so many intellectual leaders have taught and so many great men of the outside world have spent their student years; and each one goes away once more into the world a better and stronger man.

One thing that a European visitor particularly expects to find in the lecture room of an American university is not found in Harvard. There are no women students in the school. Women graduates who are well advanced are admitted to the seminaries and to scientific research in the laboratories, but they are excluded from the college; and the same is true of Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and Johns Hopkins. Of course, Harvard has no prejudice against the higher education of women; but Harvard is itself an institution for men. In an indirect way, the teaching staff of Harvard University is utilized for the benefit of women, since only a stone’s throw from the Harvard College gate is Radcliffe College, which is for women, and in which only Harvard instructors give lectures.

This picture of the largest university will stand as typical for the others, although of course each one of the great academies has its own peculiarities. While Harvard seeks to unite humanitarian and specialized work, Johns Hopkins aims to give only the latter, while Yale and Princeton aim more particularly at the former. Johns Hopkins in Baltimore is a workshop of productive investigation, and in the province of natural sciences and medicine Johns Hopkins has been a brilliant example to the whole country. Yale University, in New Haven, stands first of all for culture and personal development, although many a shining name in scholarship is graven on the tablets of Yale. Columbia University, in New York, gets its peculiar character from that great city which is its background; and this to a much greater extent than the University of Chicago, which has created its own environment and atmosphere on the farthest outskirts of that great city. Chicago, and Cornell University at Ithaca, the University of Pennsylvania, Ann Arbor in Michigan, Berkeley and Stanford in California are the principal institutions which admit women, and therein are outwardly distinguished from the large institutions of the East.

The male students from the West have somewhat less polish, but are certainly not less industrious. The Western students come generally out of more modest conditions, and are therefore less indifferent with regard to their own future. The student from Ann Arbor, Minnesota, or Nebraska would compare with the student at Yale or Princeton about as a student at Königsberg or Breslau would compare with one at Heidelberg or Bonn. Along with that he comes from a lower level of public school education. The Western institutions are forced to content themselves with less exacting conditions for entrance, and the South has at the present time no academies at all which are to be compared seriously with the great universities of the country.

Next to Harvard the oldest university is Yale, which a short time ago celebrated its two-hundredth anniversary. After Yale comes Princeton, whose foundation took place in the middle of the eighteenth century. Yale was founded as a protest against the liberal tendencies of Harvard. Puritan orthodoxy had been rather overridden at Harvard, and so created for itself a more secure fortress in the colony of Connecticut. In this the mass of the population was strictly in sympathy with the church; the free spirit of Harvard was too advanced for the people, and remained so in a certain way for nearly two centuries. Therein has lain the strength of Yale. Until a short time ago Yale had the more popular place in the nation; it was the democratic rallying-ground in contrast with Harvard, which was too haughtily aristocratic. Yale was the religious and the conservative stronghold as contrasted with the free thought and progress of Harvard. For some time it seemed as if the opposition of Yale against the modern spirit would really prejudice its higher interests, and it slowly fell somewhat from its great historic position. But recently, under its young, widely known president, Hadley, the political economist, it has been making energetic and very successful endeavours to recover its lost position.

The history of Columbia University, in New York, began as early as 1754. At that time it was King’s College, which after the War for Independence was rechristened Columbia College. But the real greatness of Columbia began only in the last few decades, with a development which is unparalleled. Under its president, Seth Low, the famous medical, legal, and political economical faculties were brought into closer relations with the college, the Graduate School was organized, Teachers’ College was developed, the general entrance conditions were brought up, and on Morningside Heights a magnificent new university quadrangle was erected. When Seth Low left the university, after ten years of irreproachable and masterly administration, in order to become Mayor of New York in the service of the Reform party, he was succeeded in the presidency by Butler, a young man who since his earliest years had shown extraordinary talents for administration, and who for many years as editor of the best pedagogical magazine had become thoroughly familiar with the needs of academic instruction. Columbia is favoured by every circumstance. If signs are not deceptive, Columbia will soon stand nearest to Harvard at the head of American universities. While Harvard and Yale, Princeton, Pennsylvania, and Columbia are the most successful creations of the Colonial days, Johns Hopkins and Chicago, Cornell and Leland Stanford are the chief representatives of those institutions which have recently been founded by private munificence. The state universities of Wisconsin, Michigan, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, and California may be mentioned, finally, as the most notable state universities.

Johns Hopkins was an able railroad president, who died after a long life, in 1873, and bequeathed seven million dollars for a university and academy to be founded in his native city of Baltimore. The administrative council elected Gilman as its president, and it is Gilman’s memorable service to have accomplished that of which America was most in need in that moment of transition—an academy which should concentrate its entire strength on the furtherance of serious scientific investigation quite without concessions to the English college idea, without any attempt to reach a great circle of students, or without any effort to annex a legal or theological faculty. Its sole aim was to attract really eminent specialists as teachers in its philosophical faculties, to equip laboratories and seminaries in the most approved manner, to fill these with advanced students, and to inspire these students with a zeal for scientific productiveness. This experiment has succeeded remarkably. It is clear to-day that the further development of the American university will not consist in developing the special professional school, but will rather combine the ideals of the college with the ideals of original research. But at that time when the new spirit which had been imported from Germany began to ferment, it was of the first importance that some such institution should avowedly, without being hampered by any traditions, take up the cause of that method which seeks to initiate the future school-teacher into the secrets of the laboratory. Since Gilman retired, a short time ago, the famous chemist, Ira Remsen, has taken his place. A brilliant professor of Johns Hopkins, Stanley Hall, has undertaken a similar experiment on a much more modest scale, in the city of Worcester, with the millions which were given by the philanthropist Clark. His Clark University has remained something of a torso, but has likewise succeeded in advancing the impulse for productive science in many directions, especially in psychology and education.

In the year 1868, Cornell University was founded in the town of Ithaca, from the gifts of Ezra Cornell; and this university had almost exactly opposite aims. It has aimed to create a university for the people, where every man could find what he needed for his own education; it has become a stronghold for the utilitarian spirit. The truly American spirit of restless initiative has perhaps nowhere in the academic world found more characteristic expression than in this energetic dwelling-place of science. The first president was the eminent historian, Andrew D. White, who was appointed later to his happy mission as Ambassador to Berlin. At the present day the philosopher Shurman stands at the helm, whose efforts in colonial politics are widely known. Senator Stanford, of California, aimed to accomplish for the extreme West the same thing that Cornell had done for the East, when in memory of his deceased son he applied his entire property to the foundation of an academy in the vicinity of San Francisco. Leland Stanford is, so far as its financial endowment goes, probably the richest university in the country. As far as its internal efficiency has gone, the thirty million dollars have not meant so much, since the West has to depend on its own students and it has to take them as it finds them. In spite of this, the university accomplishes an excellent work in many directions under the leadership of the zoölogist Jordan, its possibly too energetic president. While its rival, the State University of California, near the Golden Gate of San Francisco, is perhaps the most superbly situated university in the world, Leland Stanford can lay claim to being the more picturesque. It is a dream in stone conjured up under the Californian palms. Finally, quite different, more strenuous than all others, some say more Chicagoan, is the University of Chicago, to which the petroleum prince, Rockefeller, has deflected some twelve million dollars. The University of Chicago has everything and offers everything. It pays the highest salaries, it is open the whole year through, it has accommodations for women, and welcomes summer guests who come to stay only a couple of months. It has the richest programme of collateral lectures, of university publications and of its own periodicals, has an organic alliance with no end of smaller colleges in the country, has observatories on the hill-tops and laboratories by the sea; and, whatever it lacks to-day, it is bound to have to-morrow. It is almost uncanny how busily and energetically this university has developed itself in a few years under the distinguished and brilliant presidential policy of Harper. One must admire the great work. It is possible that this place is still not equal to the older Eastern universities as the home of quiet maturity and reflection; but for hard, scholarly work it has few rivals in the world.

Johns Hopkins and Cornell, Stanford and Chicago, have been carefully designed and built according to one consistent plan, while the state universities have developed slowly out of small colleges more like the old institutions of Colonial days. Their history is for the most part uneventful; it is a steady and toilsome working to the top, which has been limited not so much by the finances of the states, but rather by the conditions of the schools in the regions about them. The largest state university is that of Michigan, at Ann Arbor, not far from Detroit. In number of students it is next to Harvard. One of its specialties is a homœopathic medical faculty in addition to the allopathic.

It would be a great mistake to suppose that, with the blossoming out of the large and middle-sized universities, all of which have colleges as one of their departments, the small colleges have ceased to play their part. Quite on the contrary; in a certain sense the small college situated in rural seclusion has found a new task to work out in contrast to the great universities. It is only in the small college that the young student is able to come into personal contact with the professor, and only there can his special individuality be taken into account by his alma mater. One scheme does not fit all the students, and not only in those regions where the homely college represents the highest attainable instruction of its kind, but also in many districts of the maturest culture, the college is for many youths the most favourable place for development. Thus the New England States would feel a great loss to the cause of culture if such old colleges as Williams, Brown, Amherst, and Dartmouth should simply deliver over its students to Harvard.

These smaller colleges fulfil a special mission, therefore, and they do their best when they do not try to seem more than they really are. There was the danger that the colleges would think themselves improved by introducing some fragments of research work into their curriculum, and so spoiling a good humanitarian college by offering a bad imitation of a university. Of course, there can be no talk of a sharp separation between college and university, for the reasons which we have emphasized many times before. It is necessary, as we have seen, that there should be a long continuous scale from the smallest college up to the largest university. It is true that many of the small institutions are entirely superfluous, and not capable of any great development, and so from year to year some are bound to disappear or to be absorbed by others. Many are really business enterprises, and many more are sectarian institutions. But in general there exists among these institutions a healthy struggle for existence which prospers the strongest of them and makes them do their best. The right of existence of many of the small and isolated professional schools is much more questionable. Almost all the best medical, legal, and theological schools of this order have already been assimilated to this or that college, and the growing together of the academies which started separately and from small beginnings into organic universities is in conformity with the centralizing tendency everywhere in progress in our time.

Many of the smaller colleges are, like all the state institutions, open to both sexes. Besides these, however, there thrive certain colleges which are exclusively for women. The best known of these are Bryn Mawr, Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Radcliffe, and Barnard. Barnard College, in New York, stands in the same relation to Columbia University as Radcliffe College does to Harvard. Every one of these leading women’s colleges has its own physiognomy, and appeals rather to its special type of young woman. Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, and Bryn Mawr lie in quiet, retired little towns or villages: and the four years of college life spent together by something like a thousand blooming, happy young women between the years of eighteen and twenty-two, in college halls which are surrounded by attractive parks, are four years of extraordinary charm. Only Bryn Mawr and Radcliffe lay any special stress on the advanced critical work of the graduates. In Smith, Vassar, and Wellesley it is mostly a matter of assimilation, and the standard of scholarship is not much higher than that of the German Arbiturientenexamen, together with possibly one or two semesters of the philosophical faculty. In Wellesley, women are almost the only teachers; while in Bryn Mawr almost all are men, and in Smith the teachers are both men and women.

In statistical language, the following conditions are found to hold. If for the moment we put college and graduate schools together as the “philosophical faculty,” there studied in the year 1900 in the philosophical faculties, 1,308 students for every million inhabitants; in the legal faculties 166, in the medical 333, and in the theological faculties 106. Ten years previously the corresponding figures were 877, 72, 266, 112, respectively, and twenty-five years ago they were 744, 61, 196, and 120, respectively. Thus the increase in the last ten years has been a remarkable one; theology alone shows some diminution in its numbers. If we consider now the philosophical faculties more closely, we discover the surprising fact that in the last decade the male students have increased 61 per cent., while the female have increased 149 per cent. The degrees conferred in the year 1900 were as follows: college degrees of bachelor of arts—to men 5,129, to women 2,140. The degree of bachelor of science, which is somewhat lower in its standard, and requires no classical preparation, was given to 2,473 men and 591 women. The degree of doctor of philosophy to 322 men and 20 women. The private endowment of all colleges together amounts to 360 million dollars, of which 160 million consist in income-bearing securities. The annual income amounted to 28 millions, not counting donations of that year, of which 11 millions came from the fees of students, about 7 millions were the interest on endowments, and 7.5 millions were contributed by the government. Thus the student pays about 39 per cent. of what his tuition costs. The larger donations for the year amounted to about 12 millions more. The number of colleges for men or for both sexes was 480, for women alone 141. This figure says very little; since, in the case of many women’s institutions, the name college is more monstrously abused than in any other, and in the West and South is assumed by every upstart girls’ school. There are only 13 women’s colleges which come up to a high standard, and it may at once be added that the number of polytechnic and agricultural schools whose conditions for entrance correspond on the average to those of the colleges amounts to 43. Also these stand on many different levels, and at the head of them all is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Boston, which is now under the brilliant leadership of President Pritchett. Almost all the technical schools are state institutions.

There were, in the year 1900, 151 medical faculties having 25,213 students: all except three provide a four years’ course of study. Besides these, there were 7,928 dental students studying in 54 dental schools, and 4,042 students of pharmacy in 53 separate institutions. There were 12,516 law students, and 8,009 theological students. Out of the law students 151, and of the theological 181, were women.