Colleges in America

by John Marshall Barker

Bearing in mind these restrictions in regard to the idea of success, we offer a few suggestive facts to show the number of college men who have made a record in the annals of the country.

The college has been the open doorway to positions of eminence and usefulness in all countries. Lord Macaulay, in one of his speeches in Parliament, said: "Take the Cambridge Calendar, or take the Oxford Calendar for two hundred years; look at the church, the parliament, or the bar, and it has always been the case that men who were first in the competition of the schools have been first in the competition of life."

Speaking of the advantages of a university education in Germany, Professor J. M. Hart says: "I am warranted in saying that the majority of the members of every legislative body in Germany, and three-fourths of the higher office holders, and all the heads of departments, are university graduates, or have at least taken a partial course—enough to catch the university spirit. All the controlling elements of German national life, therefore, have been trained to sympathize with the freedom, intellectual and individual, which is the characteristic of the university method."

It is estimated that only one-half of one per cent. of the male population in America receives a college education, and yet this small contingent of college men furnishes one-half of the Senators and Vice-Presidents, two-thirds of the Presidents and Secretaries of State, and seven-eighths of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Rev. W. F. Crafts says: "I have examined the educational records of the seventy foremost men in American politics—Cabinet officers, Senators, Congressmen, and Governors of national reputation—and I find that thirty-seven of them are college graduates; that five more had a part of the college course, but did not graduate, while only twenty-eight did not go to college at all. As not more than one young man in five hundred goes to college, and as this one-five-hundredth of the young men furnishes four-sevenths of our distinguished public officers, it appears that a collegian has seven hundred and fifty times as many chances of being an eminent Governor or Congressman as other young men."

The college graduate generally has the pre-eminence among professional men. The proportion of successful men in the professions is difficult to obtain, but if a wide reputation be regarded as the criterion of success, the college-bred men take the lead.

President Thwing has carefully estimated that, of the 15,142 most conspicuous persons of our American history, whose record is sketched in "Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography," 5,326 are college men. Among the latter, the percentage found in the various callings is as follows: "Pioneers and explorers, 3.6 per cent.; artists, 10.4 per cent.; inventors, 11 per cent.; philanthropists, 16 per cent.; business men, 17 per cent.; public men, 18 per cent.; statesmen, 33 per cent.; authors, 37 per cent.; physicians, 46 per cent.; lawyers, 50 per cent.; clergymen, 58 per cent.; educators, 61 per cent.; scientists, 63 per cent." He further estimates that one college man in every forty attains recognition, to one in every ten thousand non-college men; and a college-bred man has 250 times the chance of attaining recognition that the non-college man has.

Dr. Channing says: "The grounds of a man's culture lie in his nature, and not in his calling;" and, in keeping with this, the primary aim of a college is to train men. Yet, it should be the door of approach to all professions. The studies pursued in college are the foundations of the practice of the various professions, and a young man does himself and his profession no credit when he neglects to master a college course because of his impatience to rush into a professional career, and thus help to swell the army of poorly-equipped professional men.

"To practice law or medicine in France," says Matthew Arnold, "a person must possess a diploma, which serves as a guarantee to the public that such a person is qualified for his profession. A licentiate of law must first have got the degree of Bachelor of Letters; have then attended two years' lectures in a faculty of law, and undergone two examinations, one in Justinian's Code, and the Codes of Civil Procedure and Criminal Instruction. The new bachelor must then, in order to become licentiate, follow a third year's lectures in a faculty of law; undergo two more examinations, the first on the Institutes of Justinian again, the second on the Code Napoleon, the Code of Commerce, and Administrative Law, and must support a thesis on questions of Roman and French Law. To be a physician or surgeon in France, a man must have a diploma of a doctor either in medicine or in surgery. To obtain this, he must have attended four years' lectures in a faculty of medicine, and have two years' practice in a hospital. When he presents himself for the first year's lectures, he must produce a diploma of Bachelor of Letters; when for the third, that of a Bachelor of Sciences, a certain portion of the mathematics generally required for a third degree being, in his case, cut away. He must pass eight examinations, and at the end of his course he must support a thesis before his faculty."

Young men with talent and ambition are led to believe that the professions are so over-crowded that there is very little opportunity, in these days, for a collegian to succeed in a professional career. A comparative study of the number of students in the professional schools in Germany, France, and the United States, for 1890 reveals the following facts: