Chapter IV: Part 4

We are inclined to consider efficiency only as expressed along social, economic, industrial, or mechanical lines. It is not strange in a period when financial standing bulks large in the minds of a comparatively new people that the recognition of the learned classes should be less noticeable than formerly. Yet reactive tendencies from strictly utilitarian education are evident. Individual and ideal aims of education are beginning to emerge above the commercial and mechanical aims. Already the salaries of college presidents and college teachers are increased, offering additional incentive for men of brains and scholarly achievement. Masters of industry who have been slaving for industrial and social progress are now becoming eager to push their accomplishments onward to mental and spiritual satisfactions. How otherwise can we explain such establishments as the Carnegie Foundation, the millions of Mr. Morgan for art, the vast sums contributed to religion and education in this and other lands? The ethical and social ideals of to-day are attaching thousands of our best youth to far-reaching endeavor. There is a new quest for that philosophy of life which, as Novalis stated it, could indeed bake no bread, but would give us God, freedom, and immortality. These are the signs of a new age of mental productivity--an age in which scholarship and learning will have a value for themselves; when people will appreciate that it is not merely the book one studies, but how he studies it that counts; that if we can produce a man of scholarly, thoughtful ability, we are sending into the world a person who will be proficient along any line in which he may engage.

In a Harvard address a few years ago, it was remarked by Mr. Owen Wister that America possessed only three men of unquestioned preëminence to whom students could turn for academic tuition in their respective lines. I believe it was Edmund Gosse who said that America had not produced a single poet deserving to rank with the unquestioned masters of English poetry. While these statements may be questioned, one realizes the general truth behind them when we contrast the marvelous and expensive architectural equipment of American universities with the paucity of great men and teachers.

The trend of the times, however, is slowly but certainly toward a new individualism. Attention is being focused more and more upon the values of life rather than upon the volume of life. The college graduate may not be able to deliver an oration in Hebrew in the morning and in Latin in the afternoon, but he is able to think through and around his problem, and this is mental resourcefulness, truly a chief aim of collegiate education and one of the first necessities for success. Emerson’s prophecy may be realized in our day:

Perhaps the time has already come, when the sluggard
intellect of this continent will look from under its iron
lids and fill the postponed expectation of the world with
something better than the exertion of mechanical skill.
Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the
learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions
that around us are rushing into life cannot always be fed
on the sere remains of frozen harvests. Who can doubt that
poetry will revive and lead in a new age, as the star in
the constellation Harp, which now flames in our zenith,
astronomers announce shall one day be the pole star for a
thousand years.

The challenge is to our undergraduates. And it will be accepted. The colleges will teach men to think, to be mentally alert and resourceful, and then the man will count in the leadership of modern life, in the sense intended by Dr. Simeon who, upon seeing a trained graduate approach, exclaimed, “There comes three hundred men.”

In order to accomplish this, however, the college must make it a point to teach principles rather than dogmatic methods. Too often our systems of learning are too bookish. The boy is inclined to get the impression that there is only one way to do a thing, and that is the way he has learned from his professor or his text-book. A business man told me that he was recently obliged to dismiss one of his college graduates because the young man could not see or think of but one way to work out a mechanical proposition. His training had circumscribed him, cramped, limited, and enslaved him instead of freeing him. He was unable to move about easily in his sphere of chosen activity. He had gained a prejudice rather than a principle. He still lived in a classroom, though out in the world. His progress was water-logged in academic conservatism.

LIFE-WORK PROPAGANDA

It is, moreover, time for constructive action on the part of both college and alumni in the matter of directing students to their proper calling. While it is impossible for our colleges to make great men out of indifferent raw material, it is possible to assist undergraduates to discover their inherent bent or capacity. Until the student has made such a discovery, the elective system which is now general in our American institutions is something of a farce. The lazy student, undecided in his vocation, uses it as a barricade through which he wriggles and twists to his degree, or at best is tempted in a dozen various directions, selecting disconnected subjects, in no one of which he finds his chief aptitude. The elective system to such a student is an art-gallery without a key, a catalogue without the pictures. He does not know what he wishes to see.

This undergraduate ability or inclination is not easily grasped either by himself or by others. It requires study and discriminating sympathy, to extricate a main desire from many incidental likings. Frequently the desire itself must be virtually created. It is a common remark among American undergraduates, “I wish I _knew_ what I was fitted for.” The college is under deep obligation to serve the nation not merely by presenting a great number of excellent subjects, which, if properly selected, will land the young man in positions of leadership and usefulness; but it may and must go beyond this negative education, and assist the student actually to form his life purpose.

American institutions of learning are at present neglecting an opportunity _par excellence_ for presenting different phases of life-work to undergraduates, especially emphasizing the relation of this life-work to the great branches of leadership and modern enterprise. There are hundreds of students being graduated from our institutions to-day who have not decided what they are to do in after life. Even if we assume that these men are prepared in an all-round way for life, it must be realized that they are severely handicapped by the necessity of trying different lines of work for years after graduation before fixing upon their permanent vocation. They not only miss the tremendous advantage of enthusiasm and impulse of the young, but they are also in danger of drifting rather than of moving forward with positive and aggressive activity.

A NEW COLLEGE OFFICER NEEDED

I see no possibility of bringing undergraduates to a decision of their proper life-work without the assistance of a new office in our educational institutions. A man is needed who can treat with students with real human interest, as well as with teaching intelligence. He should not be the college pastor, who is looked upon as a professional religionist, and therefore shunned by many students who need him most, but one definitely and actively responsible for the development of leadership. He should be a close student of college affairs, sympathetic with students, human, high-minded, natural, and keenly alive to humor and social interests. In some institutions this man might hold the leadership in philanthropic, religious, and social-service interests. It might be his privilege to arrange lectures by leading men of the country who were filled with zeal for their callings. The man who could make possible the endowment of such a chair in a great university would be doing a great work for his country.

LEARNING AND INVESTIGATION

But while the American undergraduate may consistently look to the college to furnish him with ideals and with the methods of making these ideals effective, the world looks to the college for definite and advanced information. The college, with its accumulated stores of intellect, its apparatus, and its unusual means for observation, owes the world a debt that none but it can pay. And this is the gift which the college has given, and is still giving, to the world so quietly, so unobtrusively, that the world scarcely dreams of the source of its gain. Let one think of the myriad signs of modern progress by which society is being constantly carried forward. Behind the scenes you will find some quiet, hidden worker in a laboratory or library, an unpractical man perhaps, but one through whom a new realm of possibilities in science or industry or letters have been revealed.

What is the world’s interest in these men--men who are so generally underpaid that much of their best work is made impossible by the necessary outside labors to support their families, who, beyond their own personal satisfaction, have as little recognition as perhaps any workers of modern society? When the world demands expert knowledge in industry, science, literature, and art, the college may well reply, “When are you going to show your gratitude for the self-sacrifice and far-reaching labors of thousands of devoted men whose work is both a challenge and an example to the world to-day?”

And this example of the man who learns to devote himself to one thing is not lost upon the undergraduate, to whom example is ever stronger than precept. Indeed, it is this tendency to learn how to do one thing well that is bringing the colleges into the attention of the modern world. The secret of genius is to be able to seize upon some concrete, near-at-hand piece of work, to see it with unobstructed and steady vision, and then, out of the rich treasure of knowing how to do one thing thoroughly, to draw by insight and expression the general principle.

For, after all, the contribution of the college to the world is often one which cannot be fully analyzed. It is not discovered in a thorough knowledge of a curriculum or in the statistics of athletics any more than a foreign country is discovered in a guide-book or in a hasty recital of its industries. There is no master word to express what a college career may mean or should mean to American youth who in years of high impression experience with a multitude of their fellows.

Days that flew swiftly like the band
That in the Grecian games had strife,
And passed from eager hand to hand
The onward-dancing torch of life.

After we have said much concerning the life and the work of the American undergraduate, there is still a valuable thing which the college should impart to him, and through which he should become enabled to present with greater charm and with greater force the message which is in his soul. This valuable thing, at once both idealism and incentive, is the undergraduate’s _individual_ message to the world. It may be composed of knowledge, the ability to think, the faculty of relaxation, and the power to do faithfully and successfully some given task. These things, however, are all dependent upon the _spirit_ of the actor, upon his vision, his determination, his ambitious and unflagging attempts. The true modern university contributes to the world a great-minded and a great-hearted man, to whom college life has been a soul’s birth as well as a mind’s awakening. It gives to its youth that peculiar but indispensable thing which burned in the heart of the young art-student who stood before the masterpiece and said, “I, too, am a painter.”

END

INDEX

A

Action the Gospel of the Undergraduate, 130

Agricultural Colleges, Attendance at, 56

Alden, Henry M., 40

Alien Influences in College Life, 101

American Undergraduate Life, 8

Amherst College honor system, 109

Amherst College, value of fraternity property, 117

Amherst College, plan proposed to abolish the B. S. degree, 52

Analysis of attitude of the Undergraduate, 6

Anecdotes, humorous, 19-20

Anecdotes of the working of college honor systems, 110-111

Appleton Chapel, 16

Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 4, 84

Athletics fifty years ago, 38

Athletics in colleges, 31

Athletics over-emphasized in American colleges, 33

Attendance of students at state and representative universities, 56

B

Bacchic element among undergraduates, 26

Barrie, James, 135

Base-ball game, an exhibition of honor, 146

Bennett, Arnold, 105

Benson, A. C., 74

Bible classes, attendance, 25

Bible study, great organizations for, 125

Bible teaching, inadequacy of, 85

Billings, Josh, quoted, 78

Bismarck, quoted, 154

Book-binding as a relaxation, 184

Book-life in college, 158

Books and the undergraduate, 159

Books, influence of, 164

Boston University, 139

Branford, Conn., 159

Bryce, James, quoted, 72

Bushnell, Horace, 40

C

Cambridge, old life at, 102

Campus and schoolroom, 98

Carnegie Foundation, 143, 188

Carlyle, Thomas, 4, 89, 169

Chesterton, Gilbert K., 122

Chief end of an American college, 58-62

Choosing a college, 140

Church history, inadequately taught, 85

Church membership, 25

Classroom presentation of the professor, 77

Clay, Henry, 144

College, a means to the larger life, 169

College and the immigrant question, 186

College clubs responsible for large part of undergraduate life, 117

College, constructive action of, 191

College develops individual initiative, 147

College fraternities, dangers of, 120

College graduates in the missionary field, 26

College graduates of fifty years ago versus those of to-day, 71

College journalism, 154

College men and the world, 173

College men as leaders of reform movements, 29

College men should be makers of public sentiment, 60

College slang, 15

College spirit, 39

College teachers, what they lack, 75

College traditions, 102

College work and college relaxation, 93

College Y. M. C. A., 25

Colleges and the requirement of modern business life, 174

Colleges, dates of founding, 153

Colorado School of Mines, 139

Columbia University, 31

Columbia University, financial statistics, 57

Columbia University, report of plan to establish the university
system, 66

Columbia University, value of fraternity property, 117

Commercialism in American universities, 58

Cornell University, financial statistics, 57

Cosmopolitan life at college, 100

Courses of study, tendency towards the practical, 51

Criticisms of American colleges, 3

D

Dangers of modern college fraternities, 120

Degrees, radical plan proposed at Amherst college, 52

Dickinson, L. Lowes, 178

Discipline emphasized by athletics, 39

Disraeli, quoted, 168

Dodge, Cleveland H., 125

Dodge, W. Earl, 125

Drummond, Henry, quoted, 16

Dyke, Henry van, 24

E

East Indian student’s description of his daily routine, 101

Eastern universities, attendance at, 56

Editors of _The Rake_ suspended, 105

Education the secret of American success, 153

Education to meet popular demands, 65

Elective studies, 63

Eliot, President of Yale, 154

Emerson, Ralph W., 40, 46, 181, 190

English literature, inadequately taught, 85

Enrollment in agricultural and mechanical colleges, 56;
in Johns Hopkins University, 56

F

Faculties’ attitude towards fraternities, 118

Faunce, President of Brown University, 118

Fish-hatching as a relaxation, 184

Financial statistics of various colleges, 57

Foot-ball in colleges, 37

Foot-ball, instance at a Harvard-Yale game, 131

Foreign students in American colleges, 100

Forms of relaxation, 183

Fraternities, membership, 116

Fraternity alumni, coöperation of, sought, 119

Fraternity houses, 117

Fraternity houses, problems connected with, 118

Fraternity life in college, 116

G

Garfield, James H., 144

German universities, research work in, 70

Gilman, Daniel Coit, President Johns Hopkins, 73

Gosse, Edmund, 189

Government by Undergraduates, 150

Graduate testimony concerning college, 138

Grant, Gen. U. S., 147

Greek-letter societies, 116

Growth of practical education, 55

H

Hadley, Arthur Twining, President of Yale, 146

Harkness, Albert, 75

Harper, Dr. William R., 55

Harvard University, date founded, 153

Harvard faculty authorized to inflict corporal punishment, 149

Harvard University, financial statistics, 57

“Hasty Pudding, The,” of Harvard, 117

Heine, Heinrich, 18

Hibben, John G., 187

History, two ways of teaching, 79

Honor and square dealing, 145

Honor of the college men, 108-112

Honor systems, 13, 109

Hopkins, Mark, 144

Humor of the collegian, 105-107

Humor, sense of in undergraduate, 17

Humorous anecdotes, 19-20

I

Ideals joined to action, 145

Immigrant question, the, 186

Individual character, the need of, 62

Individual training, 146

Influence of professors with students, 87

Influences on student life, 99

Irving, Washington, 27

J

Johns Hopkins University, 139

Johns Hopkins University, financial statistics, 57

Johnson, Owen, 4

K

Kipling, Rudyard, 93, 131, 163

L

Lawlessness in college, 108

Learning and investigation, 196

Learning to think, 152

Lectures, making interesting, 78

Literature, new realism in, 159

Locke, John, 153

Longfellow, Henry W., 40

Lowell, Abbott Lawrence, President of Harvard, 31

Lowell, James Russell, 46

Loyalty to leadership, 150

M

McLean, President of Princeton, 144

McKinley, William, 147

Mabie, Dr. Hamilton Wright, 152

“Mask and Wig, The,” of University of Pennsylvania, 117

Mechanical colleges, enrollment in, 56

Membership of Greek letter societies, 116

Mental resourcefulness, 187

Micah, quoted, 127

Mission contributions, 25

Mission of the university system, 66

Missions, origin of the student volunteer movement, 126

Missionaries, college graduates as, 26

Monroe, James, 147

Mount Hermon, Mass., conference resulting in organization of The
Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 126

N

Naturalness of the undergraduate, 14-17

Need of leaders in the world, 59

New college officer needed, 195

Northrup, Cyrus, ex-president of University of Minnesota, 76, 121

O

Oxford University, opened to American students by Cecil Rhodes, 70

P

Palmer, Professor George H., 152

Parallel courses, first conceded, 69

Parental sacrifices, 8

Paulding, James K., 27

Personality of great teachers, 73

Philadelphia, U. of P. settlement house, 128

Pierpont, James, 159

Pioneer spirit, 167

Practical courses of study the tendency, 51

Practical education, growth of, 55

Pranks of college undergraduates, 106

Predominant traits of college man, 11

Presidents who were college men, 147

Princeton University, date founded, 153

Princeton University, financial statistics, 57

Princeton honor system, 109

Princeton inception of World’s Student Christian Federation, 125

Princeton-Yale foot-ball anecdote, 45

Professor in the lecture room, 77

Provincialism as a result of college traditions, 103

Puritan influence on American college life, 149

R

Reasons for going to college, 135-169

Reform movements, led by college men, 29

Relaxation, the art of, 177

Religion and the college man, 23-26

Research work in German universities, 70

Responsibilities of college fraternities, 119

Rhetoric versus ideas, 13

Rhodes, Cecil, 70

Rossetti, D. G., 161

Rules of a New England athletic leader, 14

Ruskin, John, 176

S

Settlement house of the University of Pennsylvania, 128

“Silence” insubordination at West Point, 94

Slang in college, 15

Slosson, Professor Elwin E., 32, 57

Social organizations in colleges, 112

Social service, promotion of, 128

Society life among undergraduates, 112

Soldiers’ Field, Cambridge, memorial shaft, 45

Specialistic training, 63

Spencer, Herbert, 178

Spirit of college play life, 41

Stanford University, financial statistics, 57

State institutions, growth of, 57

State universities, attendance at, 56

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 157, 160, 168

Student individualism, 151

Student, the “for popular” reasons class, 99

Student Volunteer Movement of Foreign Missions, origin of, 126

Students, and their relationship to teachers, 74

Students’ passion for reality, 12

Studies, choice of, 64

Studies, elective, 63

Systems of learning too bookish, 190

T

Tablet-talk in Columbia commons, 101

Taft, William H., 29

Teachers, for undergraduates, how to train, 85

Teachers, need of, 73

Teachers’ relationship to students, 74

Teaching a calling, not a means of livelihood, 88

Technical institutions, growth of, 55

Tennyson, quoted, 76, 164

Thackeray, W. M., quoted, 160

Town versus gown, 5

Training of the Individual, 146

U

Undergraduate life of a century ago, 148

Undergraduate life, two divisions of, 93

Undergraduate, perversity of, 4-11

Undergraduate philosophy, three stages of, 126

Undergraduate--his naturalness, 14-17

Undergraduate, his passion for reality, 11-14

Undergraduate, his sense of humor, 17-20

Undergraduate life, influences on, 99

Undergraduates and the temperance question, 27

Undergraduates as readers, 161

Undergraduates, book-life of, 158

Undergraduates, gaiety of, 105

Undergraduate’s philosophy of life, 122

Undergraduate’s philosophy of serviceableness, 130

Undergraduates, play life of, 29

Uninteresting lectures, 78

University of California, Chinese students at, 101

University of California, financial statistics, 57

University of Chicago, financial statistics, 57

University of Georgia, 139

University of Illinois, financial statistics, 57

University of Iowa, faculty discussion, 86

University of Louisiana, 139

University of Michigan, chapter houses, 117

University of Michigan, financial statistics, 57

University of Minnesota, anecdote of ex-President Northrup, 76

University of Minnesota, financial statistics, 57

University of Pennsylvania, settlement house in Philadelphia, 128

University of Pennsylvania, financial statistics, 57

University of Virginia honor system, 109

University of Wisconsin, financial statistics, 57

University system, its mission, 66

V

Value, Prof. Washington, anecdote of, 15

Vanderbilt University, 139

Vocational versus classical education, 55

W

Walking as a relaxation, 183

Ward, Artemus, 31

Washington and Lee University Mission students, 26

Wesleyan University, 146

West Point, an incident at, 94

William and Mary College, date founded, 153

Williams College, 146

Wilson, Woodrow, 32, 77, 121

Wishard, Luther D., 125

Wister, Owen, 189

Wright, Dean Henry P., 115

World’s Student Christian Federation, organization of, 125

Y

Yale anecdote, 12

Yale Mission in China, 26

Yale University, date founded, 153

Yale, early foundation of, 159

Yale University, financial statistics, 57

=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE=

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

Bold text is denoted by =equal signs=.

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.

Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

Many words with hyphens, or without them, have been silently
adjusted to be more consistent. For example, instances of ‘Football’
have been changed to ‘Foot-ball’.

Pg xi: ‘Aften ten years’ replaced by ‘After ten years’.

Pg 33: ‘unforgetable sensation’ replaced by ‘unforgettable
sensation’.

Pg 42: ‘unforgetable scenes’ replaced by ‘unforgettable scenes’.

Pg 175: ‘both finacially and’ replaced by ‘both financially and’.

Pg 208: ‘college graudates as’ replaced by ‘college graduates as’.