We have said that, in the University of Virginia, the selection of studies by the student is free and uncontrolled. An indirect influence is, however, exerted by the graduation of the fees paid to the professors. If the student attends but one professor, he is required to pay $50; if two, $30 to each; if three or more, $25 to each. A similar effect is produced by the enactment which requires that the student shall enter three classes, unless his parent and guardian shall authorize him, in writing, to attend fewer. Such regulations are favourable only to diffusion of studies over three subjects; the evil remains—of permitting the student to employ his own unassisted judgment in the choice. Such a rule must, however, be generally inoperative. If the collegiate regulation be known, the student will take care to provide himself with the necessary authorization from his parent or guardian; and if not known, it would be hard that the rule should apply. But let us suppose that he arrives at the university without any such authorization, and desires to join the elementary departments of ancient languages and mathematics. When he discovers that he is required to attend three schools, he will necessarily select one that may afford the greatest attractions, and the attention to which may be esteemed recreation rather than study. In such a case, the law, independently of being productive of no clear advantage except that of adding to the emolument of a greater number of professors, has the evil of compelling an elementary student to adopt a more advanced subject of study, or, at all events, an additional study to the disadvantage of the main object for which he joined the university. Less objection would have existed, if the regulation had required the student to attend two schools under such circumstances. He might then devote himself exclusively to elementary studies; or, if more advanced, he could readily find a collateral subject, which would not distract his attention from the main department, and might form an agreeable and useful alternation.
The truth is, however, that the law is liable to all the objections which apply to the old collegiate regulations, which make time the only element of qualification for distinction. The board of visiters of that university should have gone a step further, and instead of stating the number of schools which a pupil should be compelled to attend, unless his parent or guardian wished otherwise, they should have recommended, not enforced, a particular system of study for those desirous of attaining high literary distinction, or of becoming well educated; still retaining the valuable feature, that they, whose opportunities, tastes, or capacities, do not admit of their following the recommendation, may choose their own subjects.
What this system ought to be, we will now inquire into. It will enter naturally into the consideration of the latter part of the question canvassed before the Convention—"ought students to be confined to their classes, or allowed to receive degrees when found prepared on examination?" The affirmative of the proposition, as regards graduation, seems to be the natural view; yet there are few institutions at which this course is permitted. If the pupil be constrained to follow a prescribed and unbending series of studies, as is the case in most of the universities of this country and of Europe, it would appear to result as naturally that the negative view should be adopted.
In the Convention, the most opposing sentiments were here again elicited; and, as on other topics, they seem to have arrived at no fixed conclusion; all that we are informed being, that "the discussion of the topic was discontinued."
As regards the requisites for graduation in the different colleges of the Union, they are as various as the colleges themselves. This circumstance has, indeed, given occasion to the little estimation in which the degrees are in general held. It often happens, in truth, that the degree of Bachelor of Arts is conferred at one institution, on such as would be utterly incapable of acquiring it at another; and, at the close of his college career,—which differs in length in different institutions,—every individual receives the first degree in the arts: the examinations instituted being a matter of form, and, too often, of farce. We cannot be surprised, then, that a degree, thus obtained, should be contemned; and that, even in legislative assemblies, members should be found to declare themselves totally unworthy of the honours thus conferred upon them. This is not the case in the universities of Europe. In the English universities, the Baccalaureate is made the test of severe devotion to particular studies; and, whatever objections may be made to the plan followed in those institutions, of requiring accurate classical and mathematical knowledge, to the exclusion of every thing else, the degree is, at all events, an evidence that the possessor is unusually well instructed in those matters. Hence, we find in that country the initials B. A. and M. A. proudly appended to the names of the Bachelor or Master, and received by all as emblems of literary distinction. How rarely do we see the title thus added in this country? This comes from the causes already alluded to;—the degree is too easily attained; and, when attained, is such an insufficient evidence of learning, that it is discarded; and the parchment and the seal and riband, and the pomp and ceremony of the day for the distribution of honours, which excited so much juvenile exultation, are, in after life, esteemed no criterion of literary distinction. We cannot, then, be surprised, that one of the topics which engaged the Convention, was, "whether the title of B. A. should be retained?"
To the title Bachelor of Arts, unmeaning as it derivatively is, we have but little objection, provided certain definite ideas are attached to it. In the University of Virginia, the term graduate seems to be considered more appropriate. We do not think it an improvement upon the ancient appellation:—
"Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well— Weigh them, it is as heavy."
But few appellatives, in their received acceptation, would be found to correspond with their derivative meaning. The French have their "Bachelors" and "Masters of Sciences," but these terms are not more significant; whilst "Doctor" too often means any thing rather than doctus—"Qui dit Docteur ne dit pas un homme docte, mais un homme qui devrait être docte."
Every well devised system of education should combine an attention to language; to the sciences relating to magnitude and numbers; and to those that embrace the phenomena of mind and of matter.
Little doubt, we think, can exist in the minds of the intelligent, that the ancient languages should form one element. Much has been said, and much will continue to be said, on both sides of this question, into which we do not propose to enter: admitting, however, that the Latin language, for example, is less necessary now than when it was the exclusive language of the learned, and that the modern languages have emerged from their then Patois condition, and risen in relative importance, a certain knowledge of that tongue, as well as of the Greek, ought still to form part of the education of every gentleman. The mind of youth cannot be better engaged, during the early period of their university career, than in becoming acquainted with the classic models of antiquity, and practised in the habits of discrimination which the study engenders. Whether it should be prosecuted to the extent inculcated at the English universities, and to the comparative exclusion of other subjects, is another question. In this country, at least, the course would be injudicious and unfeasible, and has been canvassed by Mr. Gallatin with that gentleman's usual felicity of exposition. The illustrious founder of the University of Virginia appears, however, to have had different views on this subject from those we have expressed; and views which appear somewhat inconsistent with freedom of graduation in the separate schools.