In the American colleges, tutors are graduates selected by the trustees, for the instruction of undergraduates of the first three years. They are usually officers of the institution, who have a share, with the president and professors, in the government of the students.—Webster.
TUTORAGE. In the English universities, the guardianship exerted by a tutor; the care of a pupil.
The next item which I shall notice is that which in college bills is expressed by the word Tutorage.—De Quincey's Life and Manners, p. 251.
TUTOR, CLASS. At some of the colleges in the United States, each of the four classes is assigned to the care of a particular tutor, who acts as the ordinary medium of communication between the members of the class and the Faculty, and who may be consulted by the students concerning their studies, or on any other subject interesting to them in their relations to the college.
At Harvard College, in addition to these offices, the Class Tutors grant leave of absence from church and from town for Sunday, including Saturday night, on the presentation of a satisfactory reason, and administer all warnings and private admonitions ordered by the Faculty for misconduct or neglect of duty.—Orders and Regulations of the Faculty of Harv. Coll., July, 1853, pp. 1, 2.
Of this regulation as it obtained at Harvard during the latter part of the last century, Professor Sidney Willard says: "Each of the Tutors had one class, of which he was charged with a certain oversight, and of which he was called the particular Tutor. The several Tutors in Latin successively sustained this relation to my class. Warnings of various kinds, private admonitions for negligence or minor offences, and, in general, intercommunication between his class and the Immediate Government, were the duties belonging to this relation."—Memories of Youth and Manhood, Vol. I. p. 266, note.
TUTOR, COLLEGE. At the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, an officer connected with a college, whose duties are described in the annexed extracts.
With reference to Oxford, De Quincey remarks: "Each college takes upon itself the regular instruction of its separate inmates,—of these and of no others; and for this office it appoints, after careful selection, trial, and probation, the best qualified amongst those of its senior members who choose to undertake a trust of such heavy responsibility. These officers are called Tutors; and they are connected by duties and by accountability, not with the University at all, but with their own private colleges. The public tutors appointed in each college [are] on the scale of one to each dozen or score of students."—Life and Manners, Boston, 1851, p. 252.
Bristed, writing of Cambridge, says: "When, therefore, a boy, or, as we should call him, a young man, leaves his school, public or private, at the age of eighteen or nineteen, and 'goes up' to the University, he necessarily goes up to some particular college, and the first academical authority he makes acquaintance with in the regular order of things is the College Tutor. This gentleman has usually taken high honors either in classics or mathematics, and one of his duties is naturally to lecture. But this by no means constitutes the whole, or forms the most important part, of his functions. He is the medium of all the students' pecuniary relations with the College. He sends in their accounts every term, and receives the money through his banker; nay, more, he takes in the bills of their tradesmen, and settles them also. Further, he has the disposal of the college rooms, and assigns them to their respective occupants. When I speak of the College Tutor, it must not be supposed that one man is equal to all this work in a large college,—Trinity, for instance, which usually numbers four hundred Undergraduates in residence. A large college has usually two Tutors,—Trinity has three,—and the students are equally divided among them,—on their sides, the phrase is,—without distinction of year, or, as we should call it, of class. The jurisdiction of the rooms is divided in like manner. The Tutor is supposed to stand in loco parentis; but having sometimes more than a hundred young men under him, he cannot discharge his duties in this respect very thoroughly, nor is it generally expected that he should."—Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, pp. 10, 11.
TUTORIAL. Belonging to or exercised by a tutor or instructor.