The college courses include—arts, science, elocution and oratory, business, music, civil engineering, physical education. The graduates of the college course are admitted to the post-graduate courses of Pennsylvania, Yale, Princeton and Harvard on their diplomas. Students pass from any year's work of the college course to the corresponding course of other Institutions.
The preparatory courses are college preparatory, medical preparatory, scientific preparatory, law preparatory, an English course and a business preparatory course. Thus, if one is not ready to enter one of the higher courses, he can prepare here by night study for them.
The Business Course includes a commercial course, shorthand course, secretarial course, conveyancing course, telegraphy course, advertisement writing and proofreading.
There are normal courses for kindergarteners and elementary teachers, and in household science, physical training, music, millinery, dressmaking, elocution and oratory.
Special courses are given in civil engineering, chemistry, elocution and oratory, painting and drawing, sign writing, mechanical and architectural drawing, music, physical training, dressmaking, millinery, cooking, embroidery, and nursing, the last being given at the Samaritan Hospital.
All of these courses, excepting the Normal Kindergarten, can be studied day or evening, as best suits the student.
The kindergarten and model schools cover the work of the public schools from the kindergarten to the highest grammar grades, fitting the student to enter the first year of the preparatory department. These classes are held in the daytime only.
The power to confer degrees was granted in 1891. The teaching force has been greatly enlarged until at present there are one hundred and thirty-five teachers and an average of more than three thousand regular students yearly.
The number of students instructed at Temple College in proportion to money expended and buildings used is altogether out of proportion to any other college in America. Some idea of the breadth of study presented at Temple College may be had from a comparison with Harvard. Harvard has more than five thousand students, four hundred instructors, and presents five hundred courses of study. Its growth since 1860 has been wonderful. In 1860, while one man might not have been able in four years to master all the subjects offered, he could have done so in six. It was estimated in 1899 that the courses of study offered were so varied that sixty years would have been required. It would take one student ninety-six years to take all the courses presented by the Temple College.
From the time of the opening of Temple College up to the closing exercises of 1905, its students have numbered 55,656. If an answer is desired to the question, "Is such an institution needed," that number answers is most emphatically. That more than fifty thousand people, the majority of them wording men and women, will give their nights after a day of toil, to study, proves that the institution that gives them the opportunity to study is sorely needed.