A broader view of extension.-So, too, for the scientist, the scholar, and the man of affairs, university extension has gradually come to mean something definite and fine. He sees in the colorless phrase a rich implication of truth seeking and truth dissemination, the application of universal science and art to universal living. He sees in the newer university a central plant with great resources of investigation and research, a central group of scientists and specialists in technology, put at the service of the State, working for the whole citizenship and for each citizen who desires.

Academic views. Some there are, academicians within the universities themselves, who, taking too literally the popular interpretations of university extension, rate the movement at ignorant par and decry the opening of the college gates to the people anywhere. They fear the effect of extension activities, not of course on the people, for even the most exclusive professor of the humanities or abstract mathematics is usually a thorough democrat, but on the seclusion and dignity and strength of the university itself. They wonder how a research professor can at the same time read, study, search, attend committees, and give "popular" lectures. They believe in detachment, undisturbed seclusion, freedom from practical pressure, as a sine qua non to the cultivation of science and art. Their misgivings have justification, but only in so far as the conception of "university" is too limited and narrow.

"University.”—The true university should have both open gates and cloistered libraries, both practical, itinerant messengers and theoretical, isolated servants. Ivied walls and dusty laboratories may be legitimately, and picturesquely, part of the same university building that houses the office of the correspondence study department. A short course for Boy Scout masters may be held on the same campus where a learned conference of sociologists is discussing the theory of mob psychology. At the same institution there may be, and in many cases there are, groups of administrators concerned with a dozen different problems of resident instruction or extension work, while hundreds of teachers meet routine classes or correct correspondence study papers and prepare for community meetings. One faculty member may be testifying before a public utility commission, another conducting a social survey of a distant city, another preparing simple written lessons on prenatal care for mothers, another giving vocational guidance to students, and still others may be buried in historical files or seeking for a Greek hiatus or for missing data on a geological epoch.

The university is coming more and more to live up to its name. The ideal university and the practical institution growing toward the ideal take a high ground and look over a wide field of human endeavor. "The phenomenal growth of university extension in the United

States in the past 10 years may be looked upon as indicative of a new interpretation of the legitimate scope of university service," wrote Dean Louis E. Reber, of the University of Wisconsin, in 1916.

Nevertheless, it is still maintained in many of our learned institutions that higher education should be removed from any possible intimacy with the common things of life. These institutions repudiate the idea that organized extension of their services may become a worthy function among their acknowledged activities-worthy not only in enabling them to reach greater numbers than the few who may assemble within their gates, but essentially so in its influence upon their own life and growth. Though with these, as with the more liberal, pursuit of the truth is the fundamental and all-embracing object of existence, they apparently fail to realize that truth does not belong to the cloister more than to the shops and homes or to the streets and fields, but is inseparably of them all.

The return of power to the institution is not, however, the main justification of university extension. Such justification exists primarily in the fact that the university is the one great source and repository of the knowledge which the peopleall, not merely a few, of the people-need in order to reach their highest level of achievement and well-being.

Is it not a very uncharacteristic view of the field of the university which seems to limit its functions to those of a sealed storehouse, with facilities for giving out its invaluable contents only to the few who may be able to learn the cabalistic passes that unlock its doors? More in keeping with the modern spirit is the new slogan of unlimited service, which lays upon the university a command to retrieve to the world its losses from undiscovered talent and undeveloped utilities and to give freely to humanity the pleasures and profits of which so many are deprived by ignorance of the work of the masters of art and learning, and of the laws of sane living. For such purposes as these the university, in the fullness of its possessions and powers, must inevitably be acknowledged to be, in the words of President Van Hise, "the best instrument." 1

The principle of extension accepted.- In the four years since 1915, the adverse criticism on the part of members of university faculties has materially diminished, partly because of the new impulse toward adult education received from the war, and partly through the momentum of growth; even in the period before the war it was confined to comparatively few men, usually in departments which had little occasion for actual participation in extension work. With only two or three exceptions the administrative heads of State universities now accept without question the central idea of university extension, the principle that the State-owned institution has definite duties to perform for the people of the State, duties which are in addition to the task of educating the resident students. All State universities do perform such duties even when they have not secured substantial funds to organize a distinct extension machinery. Most private universities and colleges recognize a similar obligation to put their resources at the service of the community. The men who determine the policies of the institutions are in the great majority committed to recognition of extension and are in most States actively promoting it.

1 Reber, L. E., "University Extension," Annals, American Academy of Political and Social Science, Philadelphia, Sept., 1916, Publication reprint No. 1061.

Frequently the State legislatures, even where the institutions of higher learning are not presumably in favor with the politicians, have backed substantially with public funds their belief in university extension. But no doubt the best approval is that which comes from the growing numbers of professors and instructors who have found new inspiration in successful community service.

HISTORY OF UNIVERSITY EXTENSION.

The possibility of developing the university into something more than the traditional institution of higher learning was thought of many years ago. The beginnings of university extension date back as far as the middle of the nineteenth century. George Henderson, formerly secretary of the Philadelphia Society for the Extension of University Teaching, wrote in one of his reports of a still earlier time: The idea of expanding the influence of the university so as to meet the needs of a rapidly growing and progressive people dates back several centuries. Dr. Roberts, secretary of the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching, tells us: "In a fourteenth-century college endowment deed at Cambridge it is recorded how the college was founded out of a desire to see the number of students increased, to the end that knowledge, a pearl of great price, when they have found it and made it their own by instruction and study in the aforesaid university, may not be hidden under a bushel, but be spread abroad beyond the university and thereby give light to them that walk in the dark by-ways of ignorance." 1

Beginnings in the United States. The movement first took form as a result of the pioneer work of Prof. Stuart, of Cambridge, from 1867 on, when several English universities took up his lecture method with growing success. This early "aristocratic form as yet unmodified" was brought to the United States in 1867, and in the years of 1888 to 1892 showed a rapid development. From then on the movement declined until about 1906, when new methods were adopted and a slow but systematic growth set in. The organized extension services established in this period-the majority in State universities-held their "First National University Extension Conference" in 1915. At that time representatives of 28 leading colleges and universities of the country organized the present National University Extension Association. Included in the membership were three institutions Columbia, Chicago, and Wisconsin-which had consistently developed their extension work from the time it was begun in 1889 and 1892. The association is composed of the general extension divisions (institutional memberships) and is not concerned with agricultural extension, which has developed independently.

1 Report upon the university extension movement in England, by George Henderson, secretary Philadelphia Society for the Extension of University Teaching, in Columbia Papers, "University Extension Pamphlets," New York State Library.

* For full treatment of the early period, see Reber, L. E., “University Extension in the United States," Bull. 1914, No. 19, U. S. Bu. of Educ.

Present status.-The movement in its newer phase had a sounder basis than the earlier phase which had adopted in a superficial fashion the methods of the English universities. Extension work in both countries is now on a stable footing, but the extent and possibilities of the movement in this country are as yet barely comprehended. The extension divisions of Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, Iowa, and Massachusetts are widely known. In these States and in New York, North Carolina, Michigan, Indiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, and Washington the divisions have attained a considerable development. These divisions are in most instances administered by State universities. In addition, numerous extension services are well developed in these States and in practically all of the others by private institutions and State agricultural colleges.

On the basis of incomplete figures collected by Dr. John J. Schlicher,1 it is estimated that university extension is reaching about 120,000 students through classes in branch centers and through correspondence study, together with an estimated number of about 2,026,000 through semipopular lectures; 5,553,000 through motion pictures and stereopticon lantern slides; 936,000 through outlines, bibliographies, and pamphlets used in debates and public discussion; 308,000 through institutes and conferences; 1,265,000 through bulletins and circulars. The States are spending over $1,513,000 directly on extension work entirely apart from the money spent for agriculture, in addition to putting at the disposal of the divisions the resources of the whole university plant-such resources as the services of faculties, libraries, laboratories, and the university publications.

RELATION BETWEEN THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN MOVEMENTS.

The most striking characteristic of the English extension movement is its vital relation to the labor movement. University extension in England is actively cooperating with the workingmen's societies. Indeed, the whole rejuvenated educational movement which secured the enactment of the liberal Fisher bill in the war year of 1918 owes much to labor. Says Mr. I. L. Kandel:

It is not too much to claim that the representatives of labor and the Workers' Educational Association have played the most important part in stimulating public opinion, which only three months before the outbreak of the war received with very little interest the announcement of the chancellor of the exchequer that plans were being prepared for “a comprehensive and progressive improvement of the educational system."

Mr. Kandel points out that the reform of education in the island is "fundamentally a movement of the people." "

2

1 The Federal Division of Educational Extension, leaflet published by the National University Extension Association, June, 1919.

2 Education in Great Britain and Ireland, by I. L. Kandel, Bul., 1919, No. 9, U. S. Bu. of Educ.

The readiness of the university authorities and of the labor leaders to work with each other, the give-and-take character of their relationship, and the rapidly growing interest on the part of the industrial classes in cultural education, are facts which no American educator can afford to ignore. In spite of the social, political, and educational differences between England and America, these facts have an immense significance in our movement for extending higher education to the masses. To the extension worker they give a glimpse of new realities-realities that make the American movement seem relatively undemocratic and condescending. Here the university gives all; the students give little except their fees. In England the tutorial classes are actually controlled by the students, though they are taught according to university standards and by university men.

University extension in England has not always been wholly democratic in spirit. As Herbert W. Horwill said, it regarded labor "as clay in the potter's hand." But a new spirit has manifested itself, chiefly through the Workers' Educational Association, which, according to Henry Seidel Canby, is the training school whence many of the most alert political and economic thinkers in England have sprung or been inspired." The adult education promoted by this association, with the full approval and sanction of the universities, is "distinctly a meeting of minds, designed to train the less skilled but with advantages for both (student and teacher).”2

2

The Workers' Educational Association. The Workers' Educational Association, which was founded in 1903, has secured labor representatives on the governing bodies and committees of 60 universities. Its aim is to articulate the educational aspirations of labor." It consists of a federation of about 2,700 working-class and educational bodies, banded together for the purpose of stimulating the demand for higher education among working people, to supply their needs in cooperation with universities and other educational authorities, and to act as a bureau of intelligence upon all matters which affect the education of working people.

Tutorial classes.-The best known part of its work is that of the University Tutorial Classes. The tutorial class "is really the nucleus of a university established in a place where no university exists." It consists of a group of not more than 30 students who agree to meet regularly once a week for 24 weeks under a university tutor, to follow the course of reading outlined by the tutor and to write. fortnightly essays.

1 The Nation, May 10, 1919.

2 Education by Violence, Harpers, March, 1919.

3 Pamphlet of the Workers' Educational Association, "Its Aims and Ideals," William Morris Press, Manchester.