Questions of the Day
The College Idea—The Place of the College in the American System
by Dr. J. R. Wilson
The tendency of recent discussion is toward a fuller recognition of the value of the college principle in American education. It may be well to clear our notions of what the college principle is. The business of the college is not to make specialists; that belongs to the university. It is not to prepare a man immediately for any profession or occupation; that belongs to the technical and professional schools. It is not primarily the business of the college to make its students original investigators. The principles of investigation may be learned in the college, the fields where such work is to be done may be pointed out, the desire to do such work awakened, the college professor may himself be engaged in such work, but original research in any department is not the chief work of the college student, if, indeed, it can be said to be a part of his work at all. Laboratory work under the direction of a professor, collateral reading in history, inductive study of language must not be mistaken for original research. As these appear in college work they are simply of the nature of the verification of established principles, or of the study by actual experiment of processes. Their chief aim is to acquaint the student with methods and to give him a firmer grasp of ascertained principles.
It still remains true that the chief work of the college is general in its character, rather than special; it aims to ground the student in the principles of many subjects rather than to guide him to an exhaustive knowledge of one or two. The distinctively college idea is to introduce the student as widely as possible to the principles and processes of the circle of human knowledge, and through that to put him into vital relation to the world in which he lives, in its history and present condition. If the college courses have been wisely planned and faithfully followed out, the student ought to stand at its completion with powers of body and mind and heart so developed, trained and informed that he shall be fitted to enter upon his special work with a clear understanding of the relation of that work to the thought and life of the world, and with sympathies so wide and so permanent in their breadth that they never shall become narrowed to the compass and ends of his own profession or occupation. The man or woman of college training ought by virtue of that training ever to be an intelligent citizen of the world, and to be able to see the world of the present as vitally connected with the world of the past.
For such a training there are many who believe that there is still room in our American system. For men and women so trained there is a real need in American life.
College Education as the Means for Enlarging Experience
The best equipment for American citizenship, next to a sound mind and a good character, is a wide and well organized experience. The American college at its best is well fitted to furnish this equipment.
College training is a short method of acquiring such an experience. A college education, indeed, has been called condensed experience. If it be a training such as has been described, then the experience will be both wide and well organized. Some one has said that the four years' course of an American college is equivalent to forty years of
