While defending liberal education, it may be held that, especially while a four years’ college course is maintained, it should also look toward the world of active influence, and the filling of some vocation therein. The student’s duties toward society must take on the modern aspect, as contrasted with the self-centred interest of the mediæval recluse. That education should aim at mere serene enjoyment of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good is an idea of the past. The mere recluse to-day has no meaning and no use in the world. Educated men must join the march of progress; they must take part in the solution of ethical problems, in the bettering of government and society. The world demands of them altruism, public spirit, high ideals. They should mass the forces of the past for an onward movement in the present. Old knowledge should reach out toward new and useful applications.
To these ends the college should provide for a deeper knowledge of some subject or group of related subjects. This is an essential element of general education, and also has a practical aim. The principles of the philosophical and social sciences should find concrete illustration in the present. And above all, student life should be inspired with ideas of the duties and responsibilities of citizenship.
A public statement has been made that the seniors of a well-known university have less intellectual vigor and less moral power than the average man they might meet on the streets. If the charge be true, it is a matter for serious thought, but the statement should be swallowed with a large grain of salt. It may, however, serve as a text. The college must assume an amount of responsibility for the character of the undergraduate student. There has been a natural reaction against some of the unwise requirements of twenty-five years ago, but the reaction may have gone too far. One of our famous universities ten years ago adopted the policy of leaving the student to his own devices and the moral restraint of the policeman, but the plan was condemned by the patrons of the institution, and to-day it exercises a wise and friendly care over the student’s choice of studies, his attendance upon lectures, and his daily walk and conversation. Entire freedom in student life belongs only to the graduate schools, and to place both undergraduate and graduate students under one system can but prove harmful.
The ethical problems of college life are not to be solved wholly by perfunctory religious exercises, but by the spirit that pervades the whole teaching and student body, and by the many ways and means that the united efforts of earnest and devoted faculties may employ. It is a favorable circumstance that the student to an extent can choose subjects in accord with his tastes; that his powers may reach out toward some great intellectual interest. That the spirit of education is broader, more liberal, and scientific is significant; the fact makes for truth and honesty. The historical method succeeds the dogmatic in history, social science, philosophy, and ethics. Men are better because they are broader and wiser and are coming to a higher realization of truth.
No doubt the ethical life has the deepest significance for man. The great Fichte was right in claiming that, if this is merely a subjectively phenomenal world, it is a necessary creation of mind that we may have it wherein to work and ethically develop. That institution will turn out the best men where the Baconian philosophy is combined with the Platonic, the scientific with the ideal. By some means the student should constantly come in contact with strong manhood and high ideals. It makes a practical difference whether the student believes in his transcendent nature and possibilities or in mere materialism and utilitarianism, whether his ethics is ideal or hedonistic, his view of life optimistic or pessimistic.
If the question is made distinct, What should the university do for the student?—there are some additional considerations.
It is enough to say of graduate courses that they should be a warrant for extended and thorough knowledge of a group of related subjects, and for original power to grasp and deal with difficult problems. The candidate’s knowledge and power should be publicly tested by a good old-fashioned examination and defence of thesis.
The university should refuse to admit the student to the professional schools until he has received at least the equivalent of a complete high-school education. The faculties of the University of Colorado have made an investigation of the standard of admission to the professional schools, the length of professional courses, and the relation of the professional courses to the college. The results are of interest.[4] Very few schools of applied science in the universities require four years of preparation. Only three or four universities require that standard for their law or medical schools. Most catalogues read after this fashion: Admission to law or medical school—a college diploma, or a high-school diploma, or a second-grade teacher’s certificate, or evidence of fitness to pursue the subject. Less than half of the law schools require entrance qualifications, and only twenty of them require a three years’ course. All medical schools advocate a thorough scientific foundation, many of them in a very ideal way, and urge extensive laboratory practice in many special subjects. The most of them think the first two years of a medical course could well be spent without clinical work. Many colleges and collegiate departments of universities provide electives that are accepted by some schools of theology, law, or medicine for their regular first-year work. In rare instances, studies covering two years are made common to the college and the professional schools. But only a few universities have within their own organization a plan for shortening the period of college and professional study.