Colleges in America

by John Marshall Barker

It is evident that higher education is more expensive in Eastern than in Western colleges. The difference arises from various causes. The tuition ranges from $100 to $150 in Eastern colleges, and from $30 to $50 in Western colleges. Again, the professors in most of the Western colleges receive smaller salaries than those in the Eastern colleges. In many of the smaller college towns the cost of living is low.

Then the student's personal and social habits play an important part in making up the general average. The large room rent and elaborate furnishings, expensive athletic sports, and costly fraternity life is much more manifest in the Eastern than in the Western colleges. The students are prone to follow the standards of home expenses, and fall in with the spirit of the wealthy social class, and indulge in elaborate living. Parents should discourage any display of wealth or extravagance in college if they wish their sons not to spend their time attending clubs, theaters, and questionable places of amusement, but to devote their attention to attaining true scholarship.

The student's manner of living varies according to location and circumstances. In Eastern colleges the students reside mostly in dormitories located on the college campus, or in fraternity chapter houses, and secure their board outside in clubs or restaurants. These rooms rent from $50 to $300 a year, and the price of board varies from $3 to $7 per week. The dormitory system does not prevail to any great extent among Western colleges. Students rent rooms in private residences, paying from 50 cents to $2 per week, and find board in families or clubs at a cost of $2 to $3 per week. The students boarding in clubs are comparatively free from restraints, and often fail to cultivate the social amenities and table manners which should characterize a cultivated gentleman. For this reason, boarding in private families, where a woman's presence usually lends grace and dignity to social life at the table, is better for the student. The college student cannot afford, for the sake of cheapness in club life, to become rude or coarse. The people look to the college-trained man for that inherent polish which reveals itself in good taste and refined manners. Success and usefulness in life often depend upon these small matters.

The students in American colleges are not measured by social and financial standards. The colleges sustain democratic ideals and methods by discouraging costly luxury, and encouraging simplicity of living without making life bare of all that is elevating and refining. They believe that "plain living and high thinking" is the way to call out the talent hedged about by financial difficulties, as well as to spur those gifted with fortune to higher aims and nobler efforts. The student who has the promise of a large inheritance has intimate social relations with those whose only capital is brain and heart. The true college test is thus expressed by President Thwing: "Brain is the only symbol of aristocracy, and the examination room the only field of honor; the intellectual, ethical, spiritual powers the only test of merit; a mighty individuality the only demand made of each, and a noble enlargement of a noble personality the only ideal." This is a healthful condition in college life, and tends to develop in the student self-respect and independence as an essential element in true citizenship.

Students of limited means are encouraged to secure an education. The young man of ability and perseverance, who commands the esteem of the college community, will receive encouragement and support to complete his course in college. There are many charitable foundations to help a needy young man in college. Harvard gives away annually to students nearly $100,000 in prizes, scholarships, and fellowships. Cornell has six hundred free scholarships, and other colleges deal generously with earnest and worthy students. The hesitating young man who desires an education would do well to follow Franklin's advice, "Young man, empty your purse in your head." If necessity requires that the student should go through college poorly dressed and with plain living, he can afford to face these apparent disadvantages when he is confident that within a few years, by force of application, he can win a position of honor and independence as the reward of true merit. It is a significant fact that the majority of the students in our American colleges come from homes of moderate means, and that fully one-third are earning their way through college.

VI.
THE PERSONAL FACTORS IN A COLLEGE EDUCATION.

One of the personal elements entering into a college education is the choice of a college to attend. This decision is a problem of the first importance, and should not be left to ignorance or caprice, but ought to be carefully considered, inasmuch as it largely involves the future type of character a student will have after the formative period of college life. The college puts a life-long stamp upon its graduates. It largely shapes their tastes, determines the company they keep, and greatly influences the serious work of their lives. There are a few principles by which we may test the excellence of a college without undue disparagement of any.

In the first place, a young man or woman should select a college where the standard of scholarship is high. The number and extent of studies in the college curriculum is not so important as the quality and tone of instruction. The world has come to require accuracy and thoroughness in instruction. What little a student knows he ought to know thoroughly, and then he can speak and act with assurance. A low intellectual tone or lack of critical work on the part of a college has a debilitating influence on the student. The professors should have a ripe scholarship, and be earnest and strong in their work, as well as inspire scholarly ambitions. Their bearing should be kind, courteous, and gentlemanly, in order that the students may come to possess more manly and womanly qualities of character as well as scholarship. Such teachers, in close personal contact with students, will awaken new powers, and help to discipline the mind to clear thinking, and impart noble impulses that will enrich manhood and womanhood.

Again, the college buildings, libraries, apparatus, and general equipment are important, but not as essential as the teaching force. President Gates says: "Harvard ranked as a small training college, and had no cabinets illustrative of science, when she trained Emerson and Holmes and Lowell, among all her gifted sons still her triple crown of glory. Bowdoin had no expensive buildings upon her modest campus when Hawthorne and Longfellow there drank at the celestial fount. Amherst, among her purple hills, boasted no wealth of appliances or endowment when she printed the roll of undergraduates rendered forever illustrious by the names of Richard S. Storrs, Henry Ward Beecher, and Roswell D. Hitchcock. Presidents Woolsey and Wayland, and Mark Hopkins and Martin B. Anderson, were trained for their noble and ennobling work in colleges which lacked rich appliances and thronging numbers." Such, however, has been the growth of the sciences and advancement in the methods of teaching, that in our modern schools for superior instruction the well-equipped college has a decided advantage over those with meager appliances.