The American College

Front matter

Google to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

Preface

The object of this little book is to give to the general reader a fair idea, hiding neither blemishes nor virtues, of that peculiarly national institution, the American college, as distinct from the university and technological school. This college has no exact counterpart in the educational systems of other countries. It has grown up partly perhaps as the result of certain accidents of history, but mainly because it satisfied peculiar needs and conditions of American Hfe. Its lack of fitness to articulate with schools of other grades has often been urged against it, and its extinction from the system has been prophesied and advocated. But it seems to retain its hold upon its patrons with undimmished vigor, and there are few signs of any lack of prosperity in its best representatives. It undoubtedly has had and will have a large influence upon national life and character, and while it probably would not.

viii Preface

just as it is, find a place in a system created anew to suit ideal conditions, it is so firmly rooted that the future tendency will be rather to strengthen it and adapt it to the new wants which are certain to arise. The American college is not likely to be crowded out of its niche between the high school and the university, though this fate may await certain of its weaker members. It has been the case in Germany that the college has disappeared, and the secondary schools keep the boys and girls till they are ready for the highly specialized work of the universities. While this may happen in America, it does not seem probable at the present time.

A sketch of the growth of the system may throw light upon its ability to resist the same tendency here.

A brief bibliography will show some of the sources from which the material of the book has been derived. The author, however, has for years been living with the subject, and has had the advantage of intercourse with many collegiate friends of better judgment and wider information than himself. He cannot hope that his statements of facts, still less his opinions, will go unchallenged, but the book may be

Preface ix

something of a way-mark in the history of a rapidly developing movement.

I. S.

Haverfordy Pa, Novembety 1914.

Contents

PAGE

I. History of the American College . 3

III. The Courses of Study .... 94

Chapter I History Of The American College

The early American colleges were founded by men who had no model but the English colleges from which they came. The new world schools were products of the inextinguishable love of learning and the belief in its necessity for both State and Church, which filled the minds of the Englishmen of the Puritan Age. The strongest stimulus was at first the need of the church for educated mmisters, and those bodies which did not strongly feel this need were the slowest to take up higher education. In time political, industrial, and other secular motives came to the aid of the ecclesiastical impulse, and finally almost engulfed it.

The growing love of freedom of the new world found its best expression in the lives and utterances of college men. While the subject matter of the curricula seemed to have little relation to the demands of a pioneer and experimental age, the training resulted in the creation of a line of colonial and Revolutionary fathers most admirably fitted to meet and solve its problems. Without this leadership it is hard to see how the early American attempt at nation-making could have succeeded. At the best a very different product would have resulted.

Learning easily perpetuates itself. They who have it will desire it for their children. It was well for the country that the fathers did not allow a generation to pass without giving the children a chance to have something of their own opportunities. Once engrafted upon the life of the nation it was sure to grow. The magnificent zeal and the vast provision for higher education which we see to-day we largely owe to our pioneer ancestors who in the midst of the struggles for a living under crude conditions found the time and the motive to institute a spiritual movement of tremendous significance.

Colonial Colleges

HARVARD

Harvard College was founded in 1636 by a vote of the "General Court of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay/' which agreed "to give 400 Pounds toward a School or College.** Two years later John Harvard, a clergyman who had been a year in the colony, died and left to the new school one half his property and a library of 300 volumes. These riches enabled it to open at once, and it took the name of its greatest benefactor.

In 1643 an old account explains the purpose of the foundation: "After God had carried us safe to New England and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, rear'd convenient places for God's worship, and settled the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust."

The principal object of the college was frankly theological. The settlers had among their number learned ministers who had degrees from the English universities. These institutions would henceforth be closed to them, and if the standards were to be maintained they must keep up their own supply. The curriculum was prepared largely with respect to this purpose, but others than divinity students who were ambitious for a similar training were admitted, and Harvard College became the centre of the intellectual Hfe of the colony.

The number of students during the first half century of its existence probably never exceeded twenty, but upon this little group was expended much mental and spiritual care. The President, a learned as well as a godly man, was sometimes the sole teacher, sometimes a tutor aided him. But the aristocracy of scholarship of Massachusetts gathered around the little college, and a steady stream of learned men came out from it.

John Harvard was a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Of the one hundred university men who came to New England between 1620 and 1640 about seventy were from Cambridge, and a goodly number from Emmanuel. This college was Puritan from its origin in 1583. The Calvinists of England made it their headquarters, and not a few of the New England colonists had their inspiration and education within its walls. To found a new Emmanuel in the new country, to maintain its theology and its traditions, its rigid Calvinism and its devotion to human rights, its demand that a commonwealth must be godly and its religion orthodox, that dangerous heresies must be crushed and the truth upheld by the civil power, this was the spirit of the Harvard of the first generation. With varying ideals and methods to suit the age and the denomination, Harvard may be said to be the precursor of a long Une of small colleges which, if less professional in aim, have felt it part of their mission to maintain and promulgate religious truth along with mental training and sound knowledge.

It was probably in the minds of the Harvard founders to gather around the Httle college other colleges of coordinate grade after the fashion of the English universities. They had no other model. But succeeding benefactors instead of creating new colleges strengthened the original institution. It grew constantly larger. New foundations were created in other parts of the country, and were independent in their powers. So the English type of a group of colleges closely related in function and locality was departed from, and the American school of higher learning became largely a type of itself. Had some one about the year 1700 erected in Cambridge another college under the same general government, but standing for a slightly different idea in education or religion, and had the example been followed by others, a university on the English plan with a central degree-giving authority would have resulted.

But for good or ill each college in America is independent of the others, grants its ovra degrees, and sets its own standards.

By the year 1700 the college had become liberalized both in politics and religion. Its growth in numbers was slow and its teaching force remained small. There were fifteen graduates in 1700; in 1770, thirty-four, and in 1800, forty-seven. It identified itself with the American cause in the Revolution. Besides the President, its three professors during the latter part of the century were those of divinity, mathematics, and foreign languages. Latin, Greek, Hebrew, philosophy, oratory, history, and a little natural science were the subjects studied, and were required of all. The addition of professional schools and the establishment of Harvard University were of later date.

During colonial days the published list of students was arranged in the order of the social and political standing of their families. It was not till about 1770 that this was changed to an alphabetical order.

WILLIAM AND MARY

While the Virginia College represented a different phase of Christian theology and church government, it was in its avowed purposes equally ecclesiastical. The charter of 1693 gave as its objects: "That the church of Virginia may be furnished with a seminary of Ministers of the Gospel, and that the youth may be properly educated in good manners, and that the Christian faith may be propagated among the western Indians to the glory of Almighty God." Then it indicated the subjects to be studied: "divinity, philosophy, languages, and other good arts and sciences."

As a matter of fact studies related to law and pohtics were more prominent from the start than theology, and the college produced a few learned divines of the Episcopal Church and an unusual number of men of prominence in the state. Three Presidents of the United States^ Jefferson, Monroe, and Tyler — were educated there. So were five of the signers of the Declaration of Independence from Virginia, a large proportion of the Virginia Representatives in the Continental Congress and other Revolutionary bodies, and the great Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall; these date back their enthusiasm and training to this centre of patriotic sentiment, the little college at WiUiamsburg.

lo The American College

By charter and legislation it received considerable money directly, including the fees of the surveyor-generars office and one penny per pound on all tobacco exported from Virginia and Maryland. It therefore during its early history went through none of the financial suffering of the Massachusetts college. Through the eighteenth century it was easily the leading institution of Virginia. But endowments did not flow into it as they did to the northern colleges. Until the Civil War it had, however, an important place, though rival competitors took some of its patronage. When in this conflict its buildings were burned and its constituency impoverished, its resources were almost wholly cut off. Its little endowment of less than $150,000 was insufficient to sustain it, and it sank relatively in importance. The state has subsidized it rather as a normal school, however, than a college.

YALE

Yale College owed its origin to the same impulse that founded Harvard, now tempered and liberalized by sixty-five years of development. Two Harvard men in 1701 decided that the time had come for a second New England

History of the American College x i

college, and invited a meeting in New Haven. Each brought a bundle of books, and on this endowment a charter was secured. For a number of years the Collegiate Institute, as it was called, had a precarious existence. The number of students was small and they appear to have waited on the convenience of the rector where it pleased him to reside. There was no money endowment and no building, the main resource being the fees of students. Several towns sought to have the college within their borders, and it was not till 1717 that it permanently went to New Haven. About this time Elihu Yale began his benefactions. He was not a college man nor a clergyman, but was interested in the general cause of education. He sent over from England valuable goods to be sold for the college which yielded some £600. About the same time the first building was erected^a wooden structure which was library, chapel, schoolroom, and dormitory for some forty students.

It was chartered as Yale College in 1745. Through all the colonial days it worked along as a small college with very close paternal relations between the teachers and students. In 1770 there were about 100 students, and in

1800, 217. Rigid rules governing student conduct, especially on the part of the freshman, were enforced. By the end of the century there were four teachers besides the President. Its students were being trained in the studies of the day, the ancient languages being of course the mainstay of the curriculum.

The War of the Revolution again scattered the college. Like most of the Congregational leaders of New England, its officials warmly sympathized with the American cause, though they stuck to their post of duty as instructors in the different towns into which the students could be collected. It was about the year i8cx5 that Yale College entered upon the great development in resources and numbers which made it a national institution. The departments of medicine, theology, and law were established early in the century, though it was not till 1886 that it took the title of Yale University.

PRINCETON

Harvard and Yale were established under Congregational influence, and William and Mary under Episcopal. The Presbyterians felt the same desire for learned ministers of the he American L-oUege

Gospel, and needed them even more; for a large number of emigrants from the north of Ireland, commonly called Scotch-Irish, leaving behmd them the settled portions of the eastern seaboard, had pressed for the frontier, and by their militant aggressiveness were becoming a strong factor in the colonial life. Many of them were uneducated, though in general they felt a strong respect for education, and almost always established a little school in the woods alongside their church. Their numbers were great and they had not as the Puritans any large supply of university men coming from the English universities.

This need was attempted to be in part supplied by William Tennent, who was the pastor of a Presbyterian Church in eastern Pennsylvania, He had sons worthy of following their father's career, and by his influence had drawn around him a few other young men to whom he was earnest to give instruction in divinity and languages. He started about 1730 the "Log College" in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and himself was the only teacher. After a decade or more Tennent died and the Log College disappeared, but it had developed in the minds of his church a desire for a supply of learned ministers. The fruition came in 1748 in a college in New Jersey to carry on the work. Latin, Greek, and mathematics, logic and rhetoric, a little astronomy and mental philosophy, with a profound study of the Bible, in its original languages, constituted the curriculum, and Princeton College started on its beneficent career.

After the usual dispute about the site, the town of Princeton succeeded in outbidding New Brunswick, and in 1754 Nassau Hall, still standing, was commenced, and occupied two years later. It was the most extensive college building at that time in the colonies. During the campaigns of 1776 and 1777 it was occupied alternately by the British and American armies, and suffered greatly. The students were scattered, the books and physical apparatus were seriously damaged, and some of the funds disappeared.

The college had, about 1750, some seventy students. By the end of the century this had increased to 200. Afterward the numbers receded, and it was not till about 1830 that its memorable growth in resources, numbers, and national reputation, which still continues, was inaugurated.

Much attention during colonial days was given to political and historical subjects. James Madison there drew in the inspiration which made him the able champion of the new Constitution, and made possible the distinguished politicat career which ended in the Presidency of the United States. Up to the Civil War Princeton was the favorite Northern college for Southern people, and has been always prominent in political and economic studies.

UNIVERSITY or PENNSYLVANIA

An institution whose foundation was largely due to Benjamm Frankhn was not likely to be ecclesiastical in its nature. The province of Pennsylvania from its earliest days was strikingly free from denominational preferences and control. The Friends in 1689 had founded a school in Philadelphia for the general education of the city. In time branches were estabUshed for boys and for girls, some free for the poorer children, some with varying grades of charges, and all feeding into the Central Latin School. When in 1749 a new institution was considered by Franklin, Logan, and their associates, it naturally followed the model already in existence, and the "Academy and Charitable

I

School" was founded. Money was raised by subscriptions from all sects, and Franklin in 1750 wrote a paper stating the objects of the school. There was to be an academy for the well-to-do and a free school for the poor. The youth were to be kept at home rather than seek their educational facilities in England or the other colonies. Men competent to act as public leaders were to be trained here. School teachers were also to be educated, and trade drawn to the city by the tendency of population to gather around a good school. The Latin language was to be taught, but schools of mathematics and of English were to be equally prominent.

To these departments a college was added in I7SS> which rapidly grew in numbers and influence. In two years there were 300 students, of whom 100 were in the college. A number of lotteries gave large returns. Men came from the West Indies and red men from the interior. The first great Provost, William Smith, an Episcopal minister, was a man of large ideas. "No such comprehensive scheme of education as the plan he laid out then existed in the American colonies." He went to England and brought back £6,000. He quarrelled with the

Quaker legislature and heard his classes in the jail. He was a potent factor in the troubled times before and during the Revolutionary War, siding with the Proprietors against the people, and during the war with the British interests. His probity, learning, and character made him generally respected. After a rival institution had been set up, and the resources of the university had been scattered by the war. Dr. Smith came into possession again in 1791. The succeeding years for nearly a century did not show much growth in the college, and until the Civil War it never recovered relatively the high position it had before the Revolutionary War. The first medical school and the first law school of the country were associated with it, and these have always had a high reputation.

COLUMBIA

In 1754, on the basis of a lottery. King's College in New York was founded. For several years the President and one or two tutors did all the teaching. Like the similar institution in Philadelphia, it was to be unsectarian, though certain religious exercises as presented by the Church of England were adopted for daily worship, and each student on Sunday was allowed to attend such place of worship as his parents directed. The curriculum was not different from that of the other colonial colleges and was to contain "the learned languages and the liberal arts and sciences." Men who were afterward distinguished — ^John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, Gouvemor Morris, and others — found here their early training.

During the war the college was suspended and the building used as a hospital. Immediately afterward a new charter was sought, and in response to the changed conditions the old name was dropped and Columbia was substituted. The state appropriated money for its support, and new standards and increased numbers followed. The course continued to be largely classical, with higher mathematics and philosophy, rhetoric, and logic. In recent times there has been great expansion, with the addition of professional courses, until it has become the largest and richest of the American universities.

BROWN

An institution especially for Baptists was chartered in Providence, R. I., in 1764. The President must always be a Baptist and so

History of the American Gillege

must a majority of the Board of Trustees. The minority was composed of members of other bodies in definite numbers, and so it remains. These charter limitations, intended to secure it against denominationaHsm, have prevented it from coming within the scope of the provisions of the pension plans of the Carnegie Foundation. In accordance with the spirit of Roger Williams, It was enacted: "That into this liberal and catholic institution shall never be admitted any religious tests. But on the contrary all members hereof shall forever enjoy full, free, absolute, and uninterrupted liberty of conscience." As with the other colonial colleges, the movement was on a small scale. A very few learned men constituted the teaching force, and the first graduating class, in 1769, was composed of seven men. The initial impulse for the university came from Rev. Morgan Edwards of Philadelphia, who afterward collected money for it in England, but the name was a shrewd bid for other support. Originally it was "The College or University in the English Colony of Rhode Island," and Hberty was given to the trustees to give "such more particular name to the college in honor of the greatest and most distinguished benefactor." This suggestion brought fruit in 1802, when Nicholas Brown by a large donation made himself eligible for the honor.

As with the other colleges, the Revolutionary War temporarily closed its operations. The building was used as barracks for the American soldiers.

Brown, while developing its general courses greatly in recent years so as to pass out of the list of "small colleges,** has never added much in the way of professional schools. A medical school existed for a few years, but was discontinued.

RUTGERS

The charter for Queen's College was granted in 1766 to members of the Dutch Reformed Church. After a contest New Brunswick, N. J., secured the locadon. It was originally intended to fit ministers of the denominarion for their duties, but has since become a college for general higher education, the neighboring theological seminary being afterward established as an independent institution. As the result of a gift of $5,000 after the Revolution by Colonel Henry Rutgers of New York the name was changed in his honor.

The college is now associated with the governr ment of the State of New Jersey in scientific work, but has no professional schools of law or medicine. Its charter still requires that its President and two thirds of its trustees shall be members of the Dutch Reformed Church.

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE

The only other colonial college had an entirely different origin from those which preceded it. Rev. Eleazar Wheelock in 1754 started a school in Connecticut to educate and Christianize Indian boys. The number seeking its opportunities increased on his hands, the assemblies of Massachusetts and New Hampshire made appropriations, and a number of sympathetic friends added their donations. He finally concluded that in order to succeed he must be nearer the frontier, and after attempts to secure a site in Virginia and numerous suggestions from New England towns, he selected Hanover, New Hampshire, as on the line of travel between the settled parts and the Indian country and in the midst of beautiful surroundings. In the year 1769 he secured a charter from George III, and in recognition of the aid Lord Dartmouth had given him in rais-

g funds, the institution was named Dartmouth

College. The Revolutionary War put an end to the Indian patronage, and the college, freed from the demand for any special or denominational purposes, developed into an institution for higher general learning.

The great trial which came in 1815 when Daniel Webster, a graduate, defended the old charter against an attack by the New Hampshire Legislature, a contest which was carried to the United States Supreme Court and which resulted in a final victory for the college, is important in its general significance as well as for Dartmouth College. The New Hampshire Legislature had sought to change its name and make it a state institution. The decision rested on a clause in the Constitution of the United States forbidding a state to impair the obligation of contracts. The question of the rights of states was involved and also the sacredness of a contract however secured. The decision has been greatly criticised, and undoubtedly has produced some undesirable results, but for Dartmouth College and its able advocate it brought much cause for congratulation and secured the continuity of its history.

After the Revolutionary War, John Wheelock, the son of the founder, who was President for thirty-six years, went to England with letters from Washington, Franklin, and John Adams, and obtained large donations of money and philosophical instruments, William Prince of Orange being a donor. Nevertheless, it had a difficult time with its finances for many years. At one time it was announced that all its property if sold would not produce enough to pay its debts.

Its recent history has placed it on a par with other New England colleges in its resources and curriculum. Its medical school dates back to 1798, and a school of science gives technical instruction in engineering and other practical arts. Its growth in numbers in recent years has been unusually rapid.

These nine colonial colleges gathered together their resources after the demoralizing results of the Revolutionary War and set the standard for the development of the American college of after years. They were all small colleges, none of them probably exceeding about 100 collegiate students at any time before the. war. They had fixed courses of study which did not vary much from each other and which all students were required to follow. Each gave its own degrees without much regard to others.

except that they would recognize the bachelor's degree given by others, and confer on the basis of it the higher degree of master. Their freshmen were boys from twelve years of age upward and needed and received much personal supervision and control. The rules of conduct were rigid and rigidly enforced. The program of the day was laid out in great detail from rising to bedtime, and strenuous work was expected and probably in the main obtained. Their degrees stood for the liberal education of the times, much ancient language and history, considerable mathematics, a severe course in logic, some philosophy, and a touch of physical science with side excursions into rhetoric and oratory. This line of studies faithfully pursued made well-trained, straightthinking, mentally honest men, the statesmen and the divines who laid the foundations of our Government and shaped the policy upon which our political, social, and religious development has been carried on. The attention drawn to America as the result of the Revolutionary War and the establishment of a stable republican government was largely the tribute the world paid to the work of our leaders as produced by the mental and moral training of the college graduates of the day. Adams of Harvard,

Jefferson of William and Mary, Hamilton of Kings, and Madison of Princeton were but a few of the great men who fearlessly met the problems of the day, and on the basis of an available knowledge of past history and the capacity to think and plan wisely and bravely for the future, gave us intelligent and lasting solutions. But for these struggling institutions, where a very few great teachers met boys in their teens and trained them in the ways of Christian virtue and sound learning, the history of America would have been greatly different. In many details we have departed from the methods of these institutions in their early days, but in general our present colleges are what they are as a result of a legitimate inheritance from the past, and we cannot appreciate them except in the light of history.

For years after the Revolution there was little change in the character of collegiate education. The old colleges continued their methods and ideals except that they grew larger and richer. The new ones, of which there were hundreds, followed sometimes rather slavishly in the beaten paths. The most of them knew no other form of higher education than that they had inherited from the past, uniform in scope for all students, based on ancient languages, mathematics, and philosophy, paternal in government, independent of each other in degree-giving and internal arrangements.

In the quarter century just prior to 1800 some dozen colleges were started. Some of these, and this is true of all periods, were not colleges but academies for years after their foundation. Thus Washington and Lee, which claims an origin in 1749, was hardly a college during colonial days. The most important of these were Bowdoin in Maine, Williams in Massachusetts, Union in New York, Dickinson and Washington and Jefferson in Pennsylvania, St. Johns in Maryland, Hampton Sidney in Virginia, and the University of North Carolina.

In the sixty years following 1800, 187 colleges for men and for both sexes were added to the list, the number of new ones increasing in each decade after 1820. In the *5o's alone there were eighty-two new foundations.