THE

HARVARD GRADUATES' MAGAZINE.

VOL. VII.-MARCH, 1899.- No. 27.

PROBLEMS OF THE HIGHER EDUCATION.1

IN 1897-98 more than 2300 graduate students were in attendance at ten leading universities in the United States. They gathered there for the advanced pursuit of some special subject of human knowledge in the schools of liberal arts and sciences. What was their ultimate aim? Statistics show that, with the exception of an inconsiderable part, they were fitting themselves to teach their chosen branches. In the years 1873-1898 inclusive, Harvard University conferred the degree of Doctor of Philosophy or of Doctor of Science on 212 men. The noble word "teacher" is added to the names of 168 of these in the catalogue recently issued by the University. Four fifths of the men who have received these degrees at this University during the past 26 years have adopted the profession of teaching, and the like fact holds true in other universities. This, then, is to be the profession of most graduate students. But these men and women, wherever they may be pursuing their studies in the United States, cherish a high and noble hope, - that, in their appointed places, they may by their researches push forward the frontiers of knowledge. All round about us, even as the great unknown stream of Ocean encompassed the men of Homer's day, lies the region of the unexplored. To penetrate this region, and to add a little to the sum of human knowledge, — this is the lofty ideal that the true scholar sets himself.

1 Extract from an address on "Graduate Instruction in the United States," delivered before the Federation of Graduate Clubs, in Cambridge, on Dec. 28, 1898. This address will be published in full in the next number of the Handbook for Graduate Students.

If he succeeds what sort of a man will he be ?

His portrait has been taken. Seven years ago, in a public address, a man of recognized authority on all questions that relate to the higher education spoke as follows: :

"In this function of truth-seeking by scientific research in every field of human knowledge, the university develops a very peculiar and interesting kind of human being the scientific specialist. The motives, hopes, and aims of the investigator - I care not in what field of knowledge — are different from those of ordinary humanity. He must have a livelihood; but he is almost completely indifferent to money, except as it secures simple livelihood and opportunity for his work. He is wholly indifferent to notoriety; he even shrinks from and abhors it; and his idea of fame is different from that of other men. He would indeed like to have his name favorably known, not to millions of people, but to five or six students of the Latin dative case, or of the Greek particle av, or of fossil beetles, or of meteorites, or of starfish. He much dislikes to see his name in the newspaper; but he hopes that a hundred years hence some student of his specialty may read his name with gratitude in an ancient volume of the proceedings of some learned academy. He is an intense and diligent worker; but the masses of mankind would think he was wasting his time. He eagerly desires what he calls results of investigation; but these results would seem to the populace to have no possible human interest. He is keen-scented, devoted, and enthusiastic, but for objects and ends so remote from common topics that he rarely possesses what is called common sense. The market-place and the forum are to him deserts, and for the common pursuits of men he would say impatiently that he had no time."

An ideal embodied in the life and work of a man, under the hard conditions imposed on the race when our first parents sorrowfully took their way out of Eden, rarely finds its perfect realization. The specialist, after all, is a human being, with mortal needs and with clearly defined duties, at least to those immediately about him. He is a part of the world, and the modern world is very big and complex and urgent. One hundred and fifty years have brought great changes into the lives of university men; but even in the eighteenth century the mechanical regularity of the life of Immanuel Kant at Königsberg was so singular as to provoke unseemly jest, and Kant lived and died a bachelor. Nevertheless, the portrait of the scientific specialist that I have quoted is faithful, although it must be conceded that it is the portrait of

the ultimate product in its highest and rarest type. Few will exemplify perfectly just this ideal in their own lives and work. The ideal, however, must be essentially realized if the authority of the universities as seats of learning and centres of enlightenment is to be maintained; for in the universities chiefly must be made that patient and persistent search after new truth on which depend the intellectual and material progress of the race. The immediate influence of such a man upon his colleagues is profound and permanent. We have recently suffered in this University, the irreparable loss of such a scholar, Frederic Allen, a man of great learning, of creative and discriminating mind, of sure intellectual judgment, of gentle and generous nature, indifferent to common fame and simple in his ways, but eager, keen, and devoted in his search after truth.

χαῖρ ̓, ὦ φίλε· κούφα σοι χθὼν ἐπάνωθε πέσοι.

American universities, with a single exception, comprehend a college as well as a graduate school. The two are closely related in many ways. Graduate students in their first year are apt to find some studies best suited to their needs in the college list; the teacher in the graduate school is generally a teacher also in the college. This system of higher education has come into existence within the past generation. It is far from having reached its perfect form; it presents many problems difficult of solution. In this system most of the men and women who are now students in the graduate schools hope to find their place, and there to do the work that years hence some student of their specialty will remember with gratitude. They expect, of course, to come as teachers. All the world over, the specialist who is a member of the staff of a university is also, with few exceptions, a teacher. Rarely does the university furnish him with a livelihood, and the needed facilities for his work, and not offer him at the same time the opportunity to teach. Relief from the duties of the lecture room comes to few, and to them only after years of faithful discharge of these duties. Still further, during the first years of employment, the amount of teaching done by an instructor is often heavy, and generally it is elementary in its nature. Teaching is a delight, but the most enthusiastic teacher has felt at times that it was an interruption of what he believed to be his real work in life. So felt the German professor at the end of the long vacation, during

which he had been conducting his philological investigations undisturbed and happy. His good wife touched him on the shoulder, and gently reminded him that the next day his duties began again at the university. "Ach Gott!" he replied, "eine furchtbar unangenehme Unterbrechung meiner Studien !"

In a complex organization such as the modern American university, which has been developed in a short time from the simple college of a former day with its fixed curriculum and small faculty, there must remain many parts not yet properly adjusted.

I beg to call your attention briefly to four questions that merit the consideration of our governors, for they relate to matters that lie beyond the control of the faculties.

1. When a graduate student has completed his preparation for work, under guidance, he often encounters perplexing and discouraging difficulties in placing himself in the position for which he is fitted. The country is big; the colleges, though many, are not united; and our devices for giving and receiving information are clumsy. Some plan should be adopted by which the candidate could give evidence, under trial, of his ability as a scholar and of his skill as a teacher. In Germany the mode is simple and effective. Two years after he has received his degree the young doctor may apply for admission as teacher in the university. He submits a scientific dissertation, passes an oral examination before the faculty, and delivers a public address. If approved, he receives the right to lecture, for life. In rank he is the youngest teacher in the system, but he may choose his own subjects, and enter into direct competition with professors. Such competition must tend to improve the quality of instruction. The younger man strives to do his best; the older man does not dare to rest on his oars. This period of apprenticeship offers real advantages to the beginner: he learns the art of teaching under conditions where mistakes do not count heavily against him, and may be retrieved; he is in age not far removed from those he teaches; he develops as a scholar, and has every stimulus to make distinguished achievements in scholarship. Meanwhile he receives the fees of those who attend his courses. The way to promotion is open to him. Promotion may not come, but the subjective misery of those who fail tells for the general good; for the universal law of nature

holds here as well as elsewhere, and the fittest survive. Competent judges believe that no other single agency has been so powerful as this in giving German universities their commanding position. Attempts have been made to introduce this system into America, but they have been feeble and over-cautious. We have adopted the impossible imported name of "Privat-docent" for this instructor, and as yet this is the most substantial evidence we have given that we desire the real man. It ought not to be difficult to make him a part of our system.

2. When a university position is to be filled in this country, the teacher is appointed by governing boards; but these boards seldom have such knowledge of available candidates as would justify them in making an independent selection, and they commonly accept the nomination of their president. Rarely have the faculties a voice in the matter, either as a whole or as individuals, and their advice is never binding. This mode places an oppressive responsibility on an individual, the president, and denies the right of nomination to the body most competent to make it, the faculty. The French, realizing the danger of lodging the right of appointment in the hands of governmental officials, are now endeavoring to apply in their system the principle of coöptation which has secured excellent results in Germany. There the faculty, which consists only of the full professors, nominates three candidates, from whom the government must choose one. The faculty nominates with great care, after long correspondence and a diligent search for the best three men in the whole empire. A certain artistic fitness characterizes this manner of choice: the professor is selected by his peers.

3. In our universities we aim to unite research and teaching. Each teacher is, or should be, a specialist, carrying forward research in some part of his subject, however small, and the investigator is inevitably at the same time a teacher of youth. He should not be burdened with classes. College teaching in the days of our grandfathers seems not to have been very difficult. A text-book was used in almost all subjects, and lessons "were heard." Times have changed; to-day the students, if anybody, constitute the leisure class. There is a trustworthy tradition in this place about an eminent professor who here revealed the beauties of Demosthenes to Juniors fifty years ago. The class met for an hour, according