is nothing magical or imperative in the term of four years, nor has it any natural relation to a course of study. It was adopted as a matter of accident; and can have, of itself, no important bearing on the subject in hand."

I want to retain the college not alone as the vestibule to the university where scholars are trained and where men master the elements of the professional knowledge required in the practice of law, medicine, teaching, engineering, and other similar callings, but as the school wherein men are made ready for the work of life. If the college is wisely guided these next twenty five years, its students who are looking forward to active business careers after graduation ought far to exceed in number those who choose scholarship or a learned profession as a career. For such students the college will be all in all; and with no university course or professional school to look forward to, the college will be the one center of their academic memories and affections. But to draw such students and to hold them in large numbers, and so to impress itself upon the country as effectively in the future as in the past, the college must be really a college and leave off trying to be a university. This means that it must come back into its own natural and most useful place.

Plans to bring this about have been proposed. Most of them aim at shortening the time devoted to the course of the new college, and so at getting rid of one or two of the extra years that have been put on to the course in liberal arts and sciences since 1860. The reasons why any lowering of the standard of admission to college would be against the public interest, I have already stated. Three different plans of getting through with the college course in three years instead of in four have been suggested. The first is to reduce the amount of work required for the degree so that it can be readily com pleted in three years. The second is to permit a student to take four years' work in three, if physically and mentally competent to do so. This plan seems to me objectionable, in that it throws upon the student rather than upon the college the necessity of meeting a new and involved educational situation. It also tempts some to overwork, others to loaf.

Vol. 1-11

The third plan, and the one which commends itself to my judgment, is to recast and remodel the college course entirely on a two year or a three year basis according to the standard set and upheld-for admission. The existing four year course cannot be squeezed and pulled into a two year or a three year shape. It cannot be offered to one student on one set of conditions and to others on another set. There must be an entire reconstruction, and the new course, whether it occupy two years or three, must have a unity, a proportion, and a definiteness of its own. It must be a pyramid with a new altitude, and not the old pyramid truncated. It must be built of the best of the old bricks with plenty of new ones added thereto.

It should be borne in mind, too, that, contrary, to the hypothesis of some critics, the new and shortened college course is not at all the result of the widely prevalent tendency to hurry or to hustle, nor is it suggested only by the needs of the professional schools in the great universities. It will, I think, displace the longer course because it is intellectually, ethically, and educationally better. It will train better men and render greater public service than will the present spun out four years' course with its inclusion of almost every subject of study known to man. There is no more obvious psychological fallacy than to suppose that the longer the time spent in getting an education, the better the results. The chances are that the contrary is true. Habits of dawdling, drifting, and incomplete and unconcentrated attention persisted in from sixteen or eighteen to twenty two years of age will weaken any but the very strongest minds and characters. Less time better used is a useful motto for the colleges to adopt.

In the reconstruction which is just beginning, in the effort to get back the American college and to keep it, much depends upon enforcing a sound and helpful standard for admission to college. This has been, and in many cases is yet, the most difficult part of the problem to deal with. But the progress of the past few years is astonishing and full of promise. Cooperation between colleges and between colleges and schools has given us the College Entrance Examination board, whose

uplifting and steadying influence is felt everywhere. Through it the secondary schools learn what to aim at, and the colleges learn what to expect and insist upon. The enormous educational advantages of an examination are gained, while the difficulties and dangers of examinations which repress good teaching are reduced to a minimum.

It will be seen, therefore, that I am hopeful that order is to come out of the present chaos, that the real facts of the existing complicated situation will be recognized, and that an educational reconstruction can be effected that will save the college for a new period of service to the highest ideals of the American people.

FUTURE OF THE SMALL COLLEGE.

BY WILLIAM R. HARPER.

William Rainey Harper, president of the University of Chicago; born July 26, 1856, in New Concord, O.; graduated from Muskingum college in 1870; in 1875 he became principal of the Masonic college, Macon, Tennessee; in 1879-86 he was professor of Hebrew, Baptist Union Theological seminary, Chicago; in 1886 he became professor of the Semitic languages at Yale; in 1889 he became professor of biblical literature at Yale in addition to the other professorship; in 1891 he was chosen president of the University of Chicago; in 1896 he became head professor of the Semitic languages and literature at the same university; he is the author of Elements of Hebrew Syntax, Elements of Hebrew, Hebrew Vocabularies, An Introductory New Testament, The Prospects of the Small College, and other books in co-operation with others; he is associate editor of The Biblical World, The American Journal of Theology, and the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature.]

In my opinion the two most serious problems of education which require to be solved within the next quarter of a century are, first, the problem of rural schools, which falls within the domain of lower education; and, secondly, the problem of the small college, which lies within the domain of higher education.

This second problem, which forms the subject of our consideration here, is at the same time serious and delicate; serious, because the greatest interests, both material and spiritual, are at stake; delicate, because there are involved special and peculiar questions of privilege and right. The study of the problem is a difficult one, because it deals with data insufficiently gathered and not yet properly tabulated; because, also, the territory covered is so vast and so differently situated.

I may be pardoned for mentioning my personal experience: My student life was divided, my undergraduate work being done in a small college, my graduate work in a large college or university. My life as a teacher has been almost evenly divided, twelve years having been spent in institutions termed small, thirteen in institutions which may be called larger. I approach the subject, therefore, with no prejudice born of lack of experience in one or the other kind of educational institution.

We shall consider

I. Some factors which would seem to guarantee the life and the growth of the smaller institutions.

II. Some factors which will be found to stand in the way of such development.

III. Some changes affecting the small colleges which are to be expected and which are to be desired.

Let us notice, first of all, as constituting one of these factors, the widely prevailing belief that the smaller institution has certain decided advantages over the larger in the character of the results produced. This belief is entertained so strongly and in so many quarters that, whether true or false, it furnishes a substantial element of strength to the cause of the smaller college. It cannot be said that, if this belief is false, its falsity will soon become apparent; for, in weighing evidence on both sides of so delicate a question, the number of points to be considered is very great, and the individual equation, in each case, is altogether different. Who can say dogmatically that it would have been better or worse for this or that boy if he had gone to the larger institution instead of to the smaller; or to the smaller instead of to the larger?

The student of the small college, it is urged, has greater advantage because of the closer contact into which he comes with the officers of the faculty. It is certainly true, everything being equal, that the student who knows intimately his instructor, and is himself intimately known by him, has a much greater chance of achieving satisfactory results than the student who has little or no personal contact with his instructor. But here two things should be noted. Is it a fact that in the larger institutions the student comes into less vital touch with his teachers? A study of this question extending over several years has convinced me that the student in the larger institutions not only comes into relationship with a greater number of instructors, but also touches in the closest possible way as many of this number as he would have touched in the smaller college. It is not, however, a question merely of close contact, but of receiving that incitement which stirs the soul to its very depths. I have known instructors in both large and small institutions, close touch with whom would deaden rather than quicken any higher life; and it is only fair to say that the number of such is as great proportionally in the small as in the large institution.