Almost every conceivable problem that can arise in college life and college work, is discussed in the following pages. It is now coming to be understood that the health of the college student is as much a matter of concern as his instruction, and that a college is not doing its full duty by those who seek its doors, when it merely provides libraries, laboratories, and skillful teachers. It must also provide for such conditions of residence, of food, of exercise, and of frequent medical examination and inspection, as shall protect and preserve the health of those who come to take advantage of its instruction.
There is one other point which should not be overlooked, and that is the literally immense influence exerted in America by that solidarity of college sentiment and college opinion which is kept alive by organizations of former college students scattered throughout the land. This, again, is a peculiarly American development, and it serves to unite the college and public sentiment much more closely than any formal tie could possibly do. Indeed, it illustrates how completely the American people claim the college as their own. The man or woman who has once been a college student never ceases to be a member of that particular college or to labor to extend its influence and to increase its usefulness.
Every reader of this volume should approach it in a spirit of sympathetic understanding of American higher education, and of the college as the oldest instrument of that higher education and still one of the chief elements in it.
Nicholas Murray Butler
Columbia University
PART ONE
| The Introductory Studies | |
| CHAPTER | |
| [I] | History and Present Tendencies of the American College Stephen P. Duggan |
| [II] | Professional Training for College Teaching Sidney E. Mezes |
| [III] | General Principles of College Teaching Paul Klapper |