THE COLLEGE MAN AND THE WORLD
“How crooked can a modern business man be and still be straight?”
This question was propounded at a college dinner in New York by a young lawyer who, in behalf of the recent graduates of an Eastern university, had been asked to give utterance to some of the first impressions of a young alumnus upon his entrance into the life of the world. The question was not asked in a trifling manner, but it represented the query which inevitably arises in the mind of the graduate of ideals and high desires who to-day leaves his alma mater to plunge into the confused business and professional life of our times.
The question awakens the inquiry as to whether the colleges of America are to-day sending into the world trained leaders or subservient followers; whether graduates enter their special careers with a real message and mission, or whether, however optimistically they may begin their work, their high purposes are buried or not beneath the rush of practical and material affairs.
More than half a million students are to-day studying in our secondary schools and institutions of higher learning, with a money expense to the nation involving many millions dollars. Tens of thousands of teachers and trained educators are devoting years of hard and faithful service in preparing these American youths for life. Are these students, after graduation, assuming real leadership? Are they contributing vision, judgment, and guidance in great national enterprises sufficiently definite and valuable to compensate the country for the sacrifices in time, money, and life that are made for the support and continuance of our educational institutions?
There seems to be a difference of opinion concerning this subject even in these times of vast educational enterprises. A business man of high repute wrote to me recently as follows:
I do not consider that our colleges are meeting the requirements of modern business life. From your own observation you must know that the most conspicuously successful people in business were conspicuously poor at the start, both financially and educationally. Grover Cleveland, who was not a college graduate, once said that the perpetuity of our institutions and the public welfare depended upon the simple business-like arrangement of the affairs of the Government.
This is the frequently expressed opinion of men of business and affairs, who present the successful careers of self-made men as an argument against collegiate education. This argument, however, fails to take into account that the same dogged persistence which has brought success to many of our present-day leaders in industrial and national life would have lost nothing in efficiency by college training.
Ask these masters of the business world who have risen by their individual force what they most regret in life. In nine cases out of ten the answer will be, “The lack of an opportunity for education.” And they will usually add: “But my sons shall have an education. They shall not be handicapped as I have been.” For the practical proof of the genuineness of this feeling, one has simply to read over the names in the catalogues of the great universities and colleges of America, where the names of the sons of virtually all the great business and professional men will be found.
While, therefore, we must take it for granted that Americans generally believe in a collegiate education, we may still question whether the colleges are really equipping for leadership the young men whom they are sending into our modern life. What, after all, do the colleges give? Out of one hundred graduates whom I asked what they had gained in college, twenty-one said, “Broader views of life,” or perspective. Long ago John Ruskin said that the greatest thing any human being can do in the world is to see something, and then go and tell what he has seen in a plain way. To make the undergraduate see something beyond the commonplace is still the purpose of education. This enlarged vision is often the salvation of the individual student. It furnishes the impulse of a new affection. It attaches him to some great, uncongenial task. It gives him a mission great enough and hard enough to keep his feet beneath him. It saves him by steadying him.