The Organization of Higher Education

ALL associations of men which seek to deal with social, intellectual, and spiritual forces, live and move and have their being between the tendency to over-organization on the one hand, and the lack of effective organization on the other. It is clear that organization must play in such associations a somewhat different rôle from that which it fills in certain other agencies, such as those of business, for example. As we study the history of churches and of parties, we are often impressed with the fact that the period of their greatest efficiency as moral and social agencies came in the days before organization had run away with the living causes which gave them birth. Schools, colleges, and universities, like churches and parties, are simply human organizations seeking to deal with spiritual and intellectual forces. They, no less than religious and political organizations, stand in danger of the narrowness and rigidity which comes from formal administration. Human nature is quite the same, whether one considers priests, politicians, or pedagogues. For each organization tends to run away with the deeper underlying purpose which gave it birth. Devotion to church is confused with religion, devotion to party with statesmanship, and devotion to educational routine takes the place of true teaching.

Nevertheless, in great continuing movements, such as the education of a nation, organization is indispensable. In no other way can continuity and efficiency be had. Not only is this true, but organization which is wise, which respects fundamental tendencies and forces, which separates incongruous phases of activity, may not only add to the efficiency of a national educational effort, but may offer a larger measure of freedom than can be hoped for in chaotic and unrelated efforts to accomplish the same ends. Isolation and lack of coöperation are no less deadening than unthinking obedience to established routine. The practical problem in a civilized nation is to establish such an educational organization as will secure relation between the different kinds of schools, while at the same time preserving fair freedom of action and of development.

This conception of an educational system has come as the result of many centuries of evolution. In the older European countries, schools of one kind and another began, developed, and were gradually related the one to the other in a common educational system. In the most advanced European states, as for example Germany, the national system of education aims to deal with the individual citizen from the time of his first entrance into a school up to the completion of his vocational or professional training. While these schools have relation to each other, the accepted system of education recognizes certain clear divisions corresponding to distinctive periods in the life of the child or of the youth. The schools which are intended to correspond to these periods articulate, they do not overlap. The system of education consists, therefore, of a continuous series of schools from the lowest to the highest, and a school of given name does practically the same work in all parts of the kingdom.

In the United States we are younger. The pioneer stage of national development is so near to us in time that many of its habits still rule in social and political matters. This is particularly true in education. We can scarcely claim as yet to have a system, at least in higher education; or, if there is the beginning of a system, the inharmonies in it are more striking than the agreements.

To illustrate. The college is our oldest school of higher learning. In the United States to-day there are nearly one thousand institutions which call themselves colleges. The work offered by these institutions varies from that of a true college articulating with the standard high school and offering four years of fruitful study, to that of institutions so low in grade that their courses of study do not equal those of a good high school.

This confusion is the result of a number of causes, among which, especially significant, are the newness of our educational development, the lack of any intelligent supervision of higher education, and the tendency of colleges in the past to remain isolated schools unrelated to the general system of education. The first of these is a perfectly natural phase of our extraordinary national and industrial growth. Our institutions of learning have grown up under the most diverse conditions. The astonishing thing is that they have grown in such numbers. The essential thing to recognize to-day is that the pioneer days are over; and that the problem before us now is, not the building of more colleges, but the strengthening of those which exist, and the bringing of some measure of educational unity into our whole system of education.

The absence, in nearly all states of the Union, of any form of supervision over higher education is a singular feature of our educational history. The University of the State of New York (which is a board, not an institution) represents almost the only effective agency in any state in the Union which has the power to supervise, or even to criticise, institutions devoted to higher education and to professional training. In the State of New York the term college has a definite meaning; and an institution, whether for academic or professional training, must, before it can confer degrees, comply with certain standards, and must have certain facilities for education. In most states of the Union, at least until very recently, any body of men, who chose to do so for any purpose whatever, could incorporate under the general laws and organize what they called a college, a medical school, or a law school, to be conducted according to their own standards or ambitions, and without any relation to the general system of education. Under these conditions, denominational, professional, local, and personal rivalries have led to the establishment of more so-called colleges and professional schools than the country can possibly support. These may legally confer all the degrees of higher learning which the strongest and most scrupulous college can offer, — a right they are not slow to make use of. The District of Columbia has been prolific in paper colleges which scatter degrees far and wide, the distribution beginning usually with the members of their own faculties. Among the colleges chartered by the State of Maryland about 1900 is the “ Medico-Chirurgical and Theological College of Christ’s Institution.” The charter gave the school the right to grant all kinds of degrees, and it is needless to say that the organizers a few weeks later were able to attach to their names all the academic titles. The Fifth Annual Catalogue contained the following on its first page_ “ Fifth Annual Announcement and Catalogue, edited by the Rev. Dr. P. Thomas Stanford, A. M., M.D., D.D., LL.D., Ph.D., Vice-President.”

The absence of any rational supervision, or even of any provision for fair criticism or review, of our higher institutions of learning is, in part, due to the attitude of the colleges themselves. In the past, even the older and stronger colleges have been disposed to resent any official inquiry into their organizations, or into their methods of conduct. College professors have been not a little inclined to look down on those who supervised state schools. Such places have been considered inferior in importance to that of a college president or professor. This is partly due to the political prestige (using that term in a large sense) which the college president enjoys in the support of a large constituency. The superintendent of education has at his back no great body of alumni and students. He is not in the public eye in the same way as the college president. Nevertheless these places are of the highest educational value, and they should be made worthy of the best men. What college president has done for education in America what Horace Mann did for it? Furthermore, the good college has everything to gain by a scrutiny of higher education if carried out by able men under a system free of political interference. The time has come when, in all states, those who stand for sincerity in education should demand the passage of laws safeguarding the degree-giving power, and providing an agency for the expert oversight of higher education as well as of elementary and secondary education. Universities and colleges are to all intents educational trusts. They have the same advantages to gain from fair and wise oversight on the part of the state which other trusts have to gain by such oversight.

Underlying all other causes which tend to confusion in higher education is the fundamental one that American colleges have been in the past conducted as separate units, not as factors in a general educational system. Devotion to education has meant generally devotion to the fortunes of a single institution. There has been little effort to coördinate colleges with other institutions of higher learning or with the general system of education. To the want of a general educational consciousness more than to any other cause is due the confusion which to-day reigns among our higher institutions of learning.

It seems clear that the work of the next two decades in American education is to be a work of educational reorganization; and this reorganization must include elementary and secondary education as well as higher education, for the problem of national education is really one problem, not a series of isolated and unrelated problems. To-day our schools, from the elementary school to the university, are inefficient, superficial, lacking expert supervision. They are disjointed members of what ought to be a consistent system. The work of reorganization is so enormous that one is almost at a loss to answer the practical question, Where should such reorganization begin ? The answer to this question must come, in the end, from the intelligent leadership of teachers themselves, and from the cooperation of teachers in all parts of our system of national education. I venture to point out certain considerations which seem to me to be essential as forming the ground-work from which improvement and progress must proceed.

It is, I believe, admitted by those who are most familiar with the conditions of schools throughout the United States that the weakness and inefficiency of the elementary and secondary schools arise primarily from two sources: first, the effort to teach too many things to the neglect of the fundamental mental training; and, second, the lack of competent teachers. In other words, the elementary and secondary schools, like the institutions of higher learning, have attempted to teach too many subjects, to the neglect of the fundamental intellectual training which is common to all education. The remedy for this lies in a return to a more simple and thorough curriculum, and in a variation of the school type. We cannot teach all subjects in one school, but we can provide a wide variety of schools each of which may do its own work thoroughly.

It is clear that the lack of efficient teaching is one of the most expensive national weaknesses; and that the inefficiency of our school system is, in great measure, due to this lack is evident. For example, mathematics is a subject which has been a standard study in our schools from the beginning. Students who pass through our high schools and enter college spend in the nine years corresponding to the period covered by the German gymnasium, seventy-five per cent more of the time of instruction on mathematics, and yet receive a training vastly inferior to that of the gymnasium.

Progress has been made in the last two years toward equipping a larger number of competent teachers. The growth of the Teachers’ Colleges in connection with the universities is a most notable gain. Before the matter can be rightly solved, public opinion must be educated to appreciate the dignity and importance of the teacher’s work, and the absolute necessity for such strengthening of the security and recompense of the teacher as will a ttract to that calling able men and women in large numbers.

It is clear also that the elementary and secondary system of education must, in its reorganization, meet the present-day demand for industrial training. Our public-school system did not undertake originally vocational training. In the modern industrial state, that training is a part of public education; and one very serious problem to be met in the reorganization of education is the provision for vocational schools, and their relation to the elementary school system.

It is not possible at this day to outline a complete system of such schools. Clearly, the vocational school will vary with the locality, and will minister to local conditions. The experience of other nations would, however, seem to indicate that elementary schools will continue to be devoted to the general education of children up to the age of fourteen years, but that their last two years will see the introduction of certain industrial exercises and studies. The vocational schools, resting on the elementary schools, are likely to be two-year, and in some cases three-year, high schools. The high school, devoted to general training, is under such conditions likely also to tend toward a similar length of curriculum. In a word, the curriculum and the length of time spent in the high school would be materially modified by an increased efficiency in the lower schools, and by the effort to meet the demands of vocational training.

These transformations in the lower schools which time is sure to bring, demand the earnest attention of those engaged in higher education.

The method of transfer from the secondary school to the college is one of primary importance. It is generally admitted that, at present, neither the admission by certificate nor that by examination is effectively serving education or the interests of students.

Admission by certificate is necessarily a very indefinite thing in the absence of a rigid and impartial supervision of secondary schools. One great source of weakness in American schools would be removed by the adoption of the plan generally in use in foreign schools and in Canada, under which the examinations for promotion from one grade to the next are conducted by the supervisor of education, not by the teacher. The pressure brought upon teachers to promote ill-prepared pupils is thereby eliminated, and this pressure is a fruitful source of demoralization in American public schools.

Admission to college by examination has unquestionably served a useful purpose in American education, but it has also tended to make admission to college assume the form of doing certain “ stunts " rather than the attainment of a certain grade of intellectual culture. Its effect upon the secondary schools has been most disastrous from the standpoint of true education.

This result has no doubt been partly due to the attempt to recognize a large variety of subjects as college entrance requirements. Under such a régime, a boy is naturally inclined to glean a point for admission wherever it can be most easily picked up. This tendency, coupled with the low passing mark accepted for admission, has worked for increased superficiality in the preparation of boys entering college. As a result, in the colleges admitting by examination only, a minority of the students enter without conditions. From the report of the committee on admissions of Harvard College, it appears that in the last freshman class, out of 607 entering, 352, or 58 per cent, had entered below the requirements for admission.

The question of the right coördination of the college with the secondary school is one which should have at this time the most earnest consideration on the part of teachers, both in the college and in the secondary school. The first practical step would seem to be to secure uniformity in this matter throughout the country. For this reason the Carnegie Foundation has adopted a definition of a college which involves the placing of the college upon the standard four-year high school. Great progress is making throughout the whole country toward uniformity in this matter. Once this is attained, the question whether the dividing point between college and high school should be changed can be effectively taken up, and this question is one which is immediately involved in the consideration of any plan of national education.

Within the last three decades the field of the high school has been so enlarged that its last two years cover to-day the studies formerly given in the first two years of college. This has not been accomplished by an increase of efficiency in the lower grades. The boy who formerlyentered college at sixteen now enters at eighteen.

The whole subject of administration of higher education, no less than the determination of the functions of the college itself and its future, are contained in the inquiry whether the boy shall enter college at sixteen or at eighteen.

Is our system of higher education to consist of a secondary school surmounted by the college, and this in turn surmounted by the university with its graduate and professional schools ? Then assuredly the college must deliver students to the university at an earlier age than twentytwo and a half years, which is the present practice. The German boy enters the university to-day from the gymnasium fully two years younger than the American boy enters the American university from the college. No nation will endure so serious a handicap as this organization of education would involve.

Just what function does the college, which is our most distinctive institution, fill ? Is it a school for youths where both discipline and freedom are to play a part, a school in which the youth is brought out of the tutelage of the boy into the freedom of the man ? or is it a school for men in which they choose as they will the studies and the pleasures of the college life? If the first ideal is that which is to form the college, then the college years may well be those between sixteen and twenty; if the latter, eighteen is full young for such unrestricted freedom.

It seems clear that those who deal with American education must choose between these two distinctive conceptions of what the college is to be. If the first conception is to become general, then we may justly impose the university on the college, forming a consistent system of higher education, and insuring the permanent preservation of the American college. If the latter conception of the college is to prevail, either two years must be gained in preparatory education, or else the college must become, as it is now tending to become, a sort of parallel to the university, a school for the few and not for the many.

I venture to add that the needs of elementary education, the demands for industrial training, the claims of the professional schools, and the economic necessities of the situation, all seem to point to a solution of an educational organization in which the college would deliver its students to the university, or to business life, at twenty rather than at twentytwo.

Finally, those who have to deal with education, and with its organization, must make clear the distinction between college and university. Economic considerations, no less than educational efficiency, demand that the present confusion should be cleared away.

I question whether we have yet realized the effect of this confusion upon the American college in the transformation of teaching and of teachers. The old-time college teacher was a man who had, above all else, intellectual enthusiasm and intellectual sympathy; his learning touched many fields, and all with a sympathetic and friendly spirit; and his work consisted largely of bringing into the lives, and into the intellectual appreciation of his students, his own sense of learning and of civilization and of social relations. For this work there was needed, not primarily a man of research, but a man of large comprehension, of wide interests, of keen sympathies, and of discriminating touch. We seldom choose teachers today on such grounds. The primary requisite is that the teacher shall be a man of research, that he shall have indicated in some special direction his ability to advance human knowledge, or at least his readiness to make that attempt. When we choose a teacher on this basis alone, we surrender the essential reason for which the college exists; for if the college is to serve as a place for the development of character, for the blossoming of the human spirit and of the human intellect, it will become this only under the leadership of men who have in their own lives shown the fruitage of such development, and who have themselves broad sympathies and quick appreciations.

I am the last man to wish the spirit of research dulled. We need in our universities, above all else, the nurture of this spirit. What I wish to emphasize is this: the college and the university stand for essentially different purposes. These distinctions are almost lost sight of in the confusion of our educational organization. Research is a word to conjure with, but in the last two decades more sins have been committed in its name against good teaching than we are likely to atone for in the next generation. We must, if we are to retain the college as a place for general culture, and the university as a place for the promotion of scholarly research and for professional training, honor the college teacher for his own work’s sake, and honor no less the investigator in his own field. These two fields overlap; but in the college the primary function is one thing, in the institution for research, another.

Let me add one other word in this connection. If we will seriously undertake to discriminate between good teaching and poor teaching, we shall get far on the way to distinguish between true scientific research and its imitation, an inquiry which will be as greatly to the advantage of our graduate schools and universities as the first can be to our colleges. In both college and university we need to turn our faces resolutely toward simplicity, sincerity, thoroughness; to get a clear conception of what we are undertaking, and to call institutions of learning by their true names.