The Americans

by Hugo Münsterberg

Inasmuch as everything really technical is still excluded, and the majority of college students even to-day come for nothing more than a liberal education, it remains true that the college is first of all a place for the development and refinement of personal character; a place in which the young American spends the richest and happiest years of his life, where he forms his friendships and intellectual preferences which are to last throughout his life, and where the narrow confines of school life are outgrown and the confines of professional education not yet begun; where, in short, everything is broad and free and sunny. For the American the attraction of academic life is wholly centred in the college; the college student is the only one who lives the true student life. Those who study in the four professional faculties are comparable rather to the German medical students of the last clinical semesters—sedate, semi-professional men. The college is the soul of the university. The college is to-day, more than ever, the soul of the whole nation.

We have to mention one more factor, and we shall have brought together all which are of prime importance. We have seen that the professional and the collegiate schools had at the outset different points of view, and were, in fact, entirely independent. It was inevitable that as they developed they should come into closer and closer relations. The name of the college remained during this development the general designation. Special faculties have grouped themselves about the college, while a common administration keeps them together. There are certain local difficulties in this. According to the original idea, a college ought to be in a small, rural, and attractively situated spot. The young man should be removed from ordinary conditions; and as he goes to Jena, Marburg, and Göttingen, so he should go to Princeton or New Haven, or Palo Alto, in order to be away from large cities in a little academic world which is inspired only by the glory of famous teachers and by the youthful happiness of many student generations. A medical or law school, on the other hand, belongs, according to American tradition, in some large city, where there is a plenty of clinical material at hand, and where great attorneys are in contact with the courts. It so happened that the college, as it grew up into a complete university, was especially favoured if it happened to be in the vicinity of a large city, like Harvard College in Cambridge, which had all the attractions of rural quiet and nevertheless was separated from the large city of Boston only by the Charles River bridge. In later times, to be sure, since the idyllic side of college life is everywhere on the wane, and the outward equipment, especially of laboratories, libraries, etc., has everywhere to grow, it is a noticeable advantage for even collegiate prosperity to have the resources of a large city at hand. And, therefore, the institutions in these cities, like New York, Baltimore, Chicago, and San Francisco, develop more rapidly than many colleges which were once famous but which lie in more isolated places.

At the head of the administration there is always a president, a man whose functions are something between those of a Rektor and a Kultus-Minister, most nearly, perhaps, comparable with a Kurator, and yet much more independent, much more dictatorial. The direction of the university is actually concentrated in his person, and the rise or fall of the institution is in large measure dependent on his official leadership. In olden times the president was almost always a theologian, and at the same time was apt to be professor in moral philosophy. This is true to-day of none but small country colleges, and even there the Puritan tradition disappears as financial and administrative problems come to be important. The large universities have lately come almost always to place a professor of the philosophical faculty at their head. Almost invariably these are men of liberal endowments. Mostly they are men of wide outlook, and only such men are fit for these positions, which belong to the most influential and important in the country. The opinions of men like Eliot of Harvard, Hadley of Yale, Butler of Columbia, Shurman of Cornell, Remsen of Johns Hopkins, Wheeler of California, Harper of Chicago, Jordan of Leland Stanford, Wilson of Princeton, and of many others, are respected and sought on all questions of public life, even in matters extending far beyond education.

The university president is elected for a life term by the administrative council—a deliberative body of men who, without emoluments, serve the destinies of the university, and in a certain sense are the congress of the university as compared with the president. They confirm appointments, regulate expenditures, and theoretically conduct all external business for the university, although practically they follow in large part the recommendations of the faculties. The teaching body is composed everywhere of professors, assistant professors, and instructors. All these receive a fixed stipend. There are no such things as private tuition fees, and unsalaried teachers, like the German Privatdocenten, are virtually unknown. The instruction consists, in general, of courses lasting through a year and not a semester. The academic year begins, in most cases, at the end of September and closes at the end of June.

During his four years’ college course the student prefers to remain true to some one college. If this is a small institution, he is very apt, on being graduated, to attend some higher institution. Even the students in professional schools generally come back year after year to the same school till they finish their studies. It is only in the graduate school—that is, the German philosophical faculty—that migration after the German manner has come in fashion; here, in fact, the student frequently studies one year here and one year there, in order to hear the best specialists in his science. Except in the state institutions of the West, the student pays a round sum for the year; in the larger institutions from one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars. In the smaller colleges the four years’ course of study is almost wholly prescribed, and only in the final year is there a certain freedom of choice. The higher the college stands in the matter of scholarship, so much the more its lecture programme approaches that of a university; and in the foremost colleges the student is from the very beginning almost entirely free in his selection of studies.

A freedom in electing between study and laziness is less known. The student may elect his own lectures; he must, however, attend at least a certain number of these, and must generally show in a semi-annual examination that he has spent his time to some purpose. The examinations at the end of the special courses are in the college substituted for a final examination. Any man receives a degree who has passed the written examinations in a certain number of courses. The examinations concern not only what has actually been said in the lectures, but at the same time try to bring out how much the student has learned outside in the way of reading text-books and searching into literature. Originally the students roomed in college buildings, but with the growth of these institutions this factor of college life has declined. In the larger universities the student is, in matters of his daily life, as free as the German; but dwelling in college dormitories still remains the most popular mode of living, since it lends a social attraction to academic life.

To go over from this general plan to a more concrete presentation, we may perhaps sketch briefly a picture of Harvard College, the oldest and largest academy in the country. The colony of Massachusetts established in 1636 a little college in the vicinity of the newly founded city of Boston. The place was called Cambridge in commemoration of the English college in which some of the colonists had received their education. When in 1638 a young English minister, John Harvard, left this little academy half his fortune, it was decided to name the college for its first benefactor. The state had given £400, John Harvard about £800. The school building was one little structure, the number of students was very small, and there were a few clergymen for teachers. On the same spot to-day stands Harvard University, like a little city within a city, with fifty ample buildings, with 550 members of the teaching staff, over five thousand students, with a regular annual budget of a million and a half dollars, and in the enjoyment of bequests which add year by year millions to its regular endowments.

This growth has been constant, outwardly and inwardly; and it has grown in power and in freedom in a way that well befits the spirit of American institutions. Since the colonial régime of the seventeenth century gave to the new institution a deliberative body of seven men—the so-called Corporation—this body has perpetuated itself without interruption down to the present time by its own vote, and without changing any principle of its constitution has developed the home of Puritanism into the theatre of the freest investigation, and the school into a great university of the world.

Now, as then, there stands at the head this body of seven members, each of whom is elected for life. To belong to this is esteemed a high honour. Beside these, there is the board of overseers of thirty members, elected by the graduates from among their own number. Five men are elected every June to hold office for six years in this advisory council. Every Harvard man, five years after he has received his degree of bachelor, has the right to vote. Every appointment and all policies of the university must be confirmed by this board of overseers. Only the best sons of the alma mater are elected to this body. Thus the university administration has an upper and lower house, and it is clear that with such closely knit internal organization the destiny of the university is better guarded than it would be if appointments and expenditures were dependent on the caprice and political intrigues of the party politicians in the state legislature. Just on this account Harvard has declined, for almost a hundred years, all aid from the state; although this was once customary. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to suppose that, say in contrast with Germany, this self-government of the university implies any greater administrative rights for the professors. The German professors have much more administrative influence than their colleagues in America. If, indeed, the advice of the professors in matters of new appointments or promotions is important, nevertheless the administrative bodies are in no wise officially bound to follow the recommendations of the faculty.

The president of the university is Charles W. Eliot, the most distinguished and influential personality in the whole intellectual life of America. Eliot comes from an old Puritan family of New England. He was a professor of chemistry in his thirty-fifth year; and his essays on methods of instruction, together with his talents for organization, had awakened considerable attention, when the overseers, in spite of lively protestations from various sides, were prompted by keen insight in the year 1869 to call him to this high office. It would be an exaggeration to say that the tremendous growth of Harvard in the last three decades is wholly the work of Eliot; for this development is, first of all, the result of that remarkable progress which the intellectual life of the whole land has undergone. But the fact that Harvard during all this time has kept in the very front rank among all academic institutions is certainly due to the efforts of President Eliot; and once again, if the progress at Harvard has resulted in part from the scientific awakening of the whole country, this national movement was itself in no small measure the work of the same man. His influence has extended out beyond the boundaries of New England and far beyond all university circles, and has made itself felt in the whole educational life of the country. He was never a man after the taste of the masses; his quiet and distinguished reserve are too cool and deliberate. And if to-day, on great occasions, he is generally the most important speaker, this is really a triumph for clear and solid thought over the mere tricks of blatancy and rhetoric. Throughout the country he is known as the incomparable master of short and pregnant English.