JAMES, PH.D., LL.D.

I from last week.)

, then, of our American system e hearty co-operation of state, t in the work of founding and nstitutions which, taken as a need of higher training. And of the country demands that ntinue, at least for an indefinite ot afford to let the interest of h, or of private individuals in h or die. It is a striking testieness of the American people, ss of our educational life that tions are working consciously that the fundamental qualities are developed in all alike and e various institutions in this rehe alert, wide-awake, conscienhis country and his kind, the th-loving scholar is the product

f American universities, distineir European counterparts in a form of government-the nonboard of trustees. . With gally, at any rate, entirely under tside of the faculty, outside of of the state departments of edte universities are usually diof a special board appointed se and not subject in any other constituted state authorities. - as in the case of state univere governor or elected by the -or appointed by the church or ctive, filling vacancies in the › board itself. These trustees ometimes not college graduates essional men-nearly always er connection with educational in their duties as trustees. rusted by law full authority to y, to appoint and dismiss pro> prescribe their duties in detail foreign student looks at this most important functions of en who can not be expected re of the subject with amazemusement. . . I think it I think it we were blocking out anew in nod of government for higher 10 one would think of resorting of a non-expert board of truscontrol. But to-day thru the onditions we have elaborated mind this fact has had a proeducational life.

ecome caste and class institume pharisaic in sentiment and ig bodies, if they have great regard themselves as existing f the people who happen to be English educationists tell us and Cambridge at one time in

organ must be developed which can bring the university and the world of outside activity together. This end has been attained in our American device of boards of trustees and I believe that a large part of the extraordinary development of our higher schools is due to the fact that thru these boards of trustees it has been possible to bring outside influences to bear on the internal management and spirit of these institutions. All this is aside from the very significant fact that they have been most important elements in securing that public interest which has turned such streams of wealth into the treasuries of our schools without which our recent progress would have been impossible. All this is aside, moreover, from the fact that many of these trustees have themselves provided the necessary funds out of their own resources.

When we add to this the circumstance that these trustees have often brought to the university in the management of its business affairs a devoted service which could not have been bought for any money you can readily realize what an important part in this magnificent development has been taken by the hundreds and thousands of public spirited men who have at great expense of time and effort given their best services to this cause.

Another unique institution characteristic of our American system of higher education is that of the presidency. The American university president bas ne exact counterpart in the educational scheme of any other country. He is a development peculiar to the United States, an outgrowth of peculiar educational and financial conditions. He is theoretically supposed to be an educational leader, a financial leader, and a practical business manager combined in one. He is not only expected to outline an educational policy in a broad way but also to keep au fait with the educational administration of the university even into its very details. It is ordinarily made his duty to enforce the rules and orders of the board of trustees and see that every instructor is performing his duty toward the institution and the students.

He is expected, moreover, to plan a scheme of financial support for the institution and devise methods of keeping its needs before the public. If he is president of a state university he must know how to impress the legislature; if, of a private university, he must be able to get the attention of the church or of private indi viduals who are able to contribute to the endowment r current support of the institution. He must also see that this money once obtained is wisely spent. He must be able to prepare a budget in which security is offered for the wise expenditure of every dollar and that the total outlay be kept within the total income. In many cases he must, furthermore, supervise and be generally responsible for the actual administration of the business affairs of the university.

In the public mind, at any rate, he is entrusted with responsibility for all the details of discipline from previding safeguards against the silly pranks of freshmen or the wild excesses of upper classmen engaged in celebrating athletic victories, to determining the attitude of the institution toward fraternities and sorosities.

In fact, the position in its functions and responsibilities has become an almost absurd one. No man, however able, however experienced can possibly per form all its duties. I have had the rare good fortuna

nia, the ablest native-born citizen of Philadelphia, n of extraordinary insight and far-reaching mental rs, and Pres. William R. Harper whom you all as facile princeps in this field. I have known al other able university presidents and I am sure I am not reflecting upon their ability or their good when I say that I have never known a university dent who fulfilled even approximately the funcwhich his position theoretically placed upon him; he simple reason among others that it transcends n ability.

eed not say that I have no hopes of succeeding e these men and such as they have failed. I mean iling that they failed to do the things which the of their positions forced upon them; which under ircumstances nobody else could do; which they no time or strength to do and which, therefore, undone.

elieve the time is rapidly approaching, if it is not Hy here when this office must be put into comon; when its functions shall be separated and the duties now entrusted in theory to one man be divided among several.

e office as said before is an outgrowth of our pecueducational conditions and will probably disappear present form when we pass from the pioneer to ettled state of society. Somebody has d the government of Russia to be a despotism ered by assassination. Somebody else has reed that this is almost an exact description of the nment of an American college or university. The dent of the institution backed up by the board of ees can drive out not only any particular professor an entire faculty or several faculties-such an rence is not unknown in our educational history. resident keeps on in his course of change-reforn or deformation as the case may be until the tide of opposition finally overwhelms him and a xperiment is made with another man. The comon of the function of an American university lent with that of a king or despot, is, however, an tunate and misleading one. Much more illuing would be the comparison with the responhead of an English cabinet. As long as he proplans which command the assent of his board of ees-representing in this case the Parliament wgiving authority-he is all powerful. He has d him the entire force of the country so to speak. In build and rebuild; extend and contract; raise

e and counsel.

nd cast down. But the instant he loses the cone of this board for any reason, good or bad, his is gone; his position becomes untenable. He to join the ever-lengthening list of ex-ministers 's willing to criticise, always willing to give their e American system of higher education would bly never have developed with such astonishing ity if it had not been for these two peculiar organs e and expression-the trustees and the president; t is hardly conceivable that either of them is hed permanently to play such an important part in ducational economy of the country as they have in the past and are doing now.

compelled attendance at universities as they do on continent. We have not made attendance at a uni sity a condition of admission to the bar, to the chu to medicine or other professions or callings. Wel left it free to our young people to attend these inst tions or not as they saw fit. What the government failed to do in this respect, private parties must do it, if the standards of education and culture are to b pace with our growing wealth and population. H the willingness on the part of our higher school preach this doctrine of the desirability, nay! neces of university training.

This campaign for higher education-we can re call it nothing else - takes on different forms in diffe parts of the country. The president in a small col not a thousand miles from Chicago told me of a miss ary tour he made one summer which doubled the att ance at his college. He hired a large covered wa and a strong team of horses for three months. loaded in his college Glee Club and a few cooking u sils and started across a section of country from wh as far as he could learn, no candidates for any col had ever emerged. He would drive into a village, te his horses, and, making arrangements for food and dr begin his campaign. The Glee Club would sing a se of all compelling college songs on the space in fron the wagon or on the village green. After a suit crowd had gathered the president would deliver address on the desirability of a higher education. would be followed up by a meeting in the church churches, by an address before the town schools, etc. Before he was thru with his three days' mee the whole town was as excited on the subject of coll and universities and higher education as it was in habit of becoming only over politics and religion.

This may be a somewhat crude form of preaching gospel of higher culture, tho it was doubtless effect It is the Salvation Army plan of getting into the ed tional depths. The greater institutions have purs more subtle methods-oftentimes with even gre effect. The system of accrediting schools with the odical visitation by a member of a university faculty; system of affiliating schools and making them to themselves a part of the university-thus leading m youths to look toward higher schools who would otherwise have thought of it; the building up of g alumni associations, with one of their chief objects increase of attendance at alma mater; the publica of alumni magazines and semi-scientific periodicals various kinds; the sending out of news letters to press; the organization of university extension worl all its various forms; the trips of the college asso tions, like glee clubs, football elevens, and baseball ni inter-collegiate debates, the annual tours of univer presidents thru the country, the offering of scholars and fellowships, etc., etc., all contribute to the same of popularizing the university and of accomplishing different methods, and methods more consonant with American life, the same end of bringing large num of people in contact with higher education as the pulsory methods of European countries do for them.

Some critically-inclined people have called this e gelistic work by the cruel term of advertising and denounced it as unworthy the institutions and ed tional policy of a great country, have referred, in sc ing terms, to the strenuous competition of our univ ties and colleges for students. Such a conception to grasp the vital elements in the situation.

Higher Education of Women.

iversities, as might be expected, of co-education in the fullest lute equality and similarity of s in all respects, practically no ex requires or would care for its peculiar wants or needs. In most of the church institutions non-state control have, natuthe example of the state univeris a principle, anyhow, the comin higher education. universities, like Harvard, Yale, , etc., have adopted a somewhat g as a mere scheme of private er a certain supervision of the have worked out into a system of ed with or annexed to the uniof the facilities accorded to the the women. And finally the And finally the eges, pure and simple, has been nning with Vassar, now numbers, han half a dozen institutions of we may well be proud.

orm of female education is to be

no wise man would venture to ence. It is safe, however, to say he various forms now in existourish and other forms may be velops. The typical form, howtimately embrace the vast majorstudents, will be, in my opinion, e, at any rate in the Mississippi co-education, simple, complete, for no other reason, for the simcomplete education of women as conceives it, the entire range of s must be provided and for a long not be able, financially, to build rely different systems of educand one for men. Nor, I may add, of educational faculties ever be 1 evils of co-education. nical Education.

r feature of our American system hich ought not to be omitted in the subject. That is the peculve combined the work of techniat of the humanities and the proution. We have united, to use a olytechnicum and the university. effect upon instruction in both tution. The technical school has I more practical, compelled it to w and healthful standards, and into much of its activity. The zed the technical work. bodies forth in its very aim and at times in danger of being lost science and the humanities, viz.: of all knowledge is being good for elf. The presence of the professors in a faculty where all other subversity instruction are represented healthful and inspiring influence. ture side of education has, in its e technical instructors, and thus a mutual action and reaction of s in education, much to the benefit sting improvement in spirit and

om

that every man should have an adequate conception of Greek and Roman civilization. It is very necessary, however, to national welfare, that some members of our society should give time and attention to these things; that some scholars should give strength and power to the mastery of this ancient civilization and thus interpret for our day and generation the imperishable experiences of Greece and Rome, live over for us their history, and be able to rewrite and reinterpret it for us all.

Now there has never been a time in this country when the facilities for the study of the humanities have been greater, or the ardor in their pursuit more intense than to-day. Never has the study itself been more practical and useful than at present. And it seems to me apparent that the very emphasis which pure and applied science has received in our modern educational system by the union of technical school and university has made its contribution to the revolution in the study of the humanities which has marked the last generation in this country. Technical students leave our universities defenders of the importance of the study of the humanities-a justification in itself of the union of the polytechnicum and the university.

As a result of all these things and many more which time does not permit me to discuss I believe that the American system of higher education is nearer to the people, commands more completely their sympathy, is better understood by them and consequently more admired and loved than ever before.

The general public is far more interested in everything relating to our colleges and universities; our newspapers give more space to chronicling the events in the academic world, take a livelier interest in the discussion of college and university policy than ever before. All these things point to the firm hold which this department of education has taken of the average man, developing in him an interest in and affection for, our higher institutions which argues well for their future.

And this has come about among other things because we have secured the co-operation of state, church, and private initiative, thus bringing in all classes of the community; because we have secured a close contact with the community in our very scheme of organization, because our institutions have conceived it to be a part of their duty to beget by conscious activity an interest in the great public for their work, because we have cared for the education of women and thus enlisted the support of an enormously large and even more important element of our society; and because we have emphasized the great departments of applied science in our scheme of higher education as well as the traditional training for the learned professions.

Wide-awake teachers in America have long since recognized the importance of securing, preserving, and promoting by every means within their power a helpful co-operation with parents. When parental co-operation is neglected the school cannot realize its full purpose, whatever its reputation may be. Live parents' meetings aid the development of the social possibilities of the school.

Parents' evenings are also a very popular and most beneficent feature of many schools in Germany. They are usually social gatherings in which parents and teachers meet together with the object of promoting cordial relations between them, and chatting and 'conswīting with each other about the children.