134 THE COLLEGE 



deprived him outright of the last and supreme year of his growth; 

 and that even now a howling pack of high schools is at his heels, 

 snatching at the first year of his budding strength. It is too true 

 that within the past decade two mighty university foes have come up 

 against him one from the greatest city of the East, and one from 

 the greatest city of the West menacing his life itself with whirling 

 swords, to cut him asunder at the belt-line, leaving him a two years' 

 torso, casting the last two 3- ears, the heart and brains of him, in part 

 to the professional school, but in greater part to outer darkness and 

 destruction; and yet, although all this is true, and although the 

 combat is still raging, it is not, I think, too soon to assert that the 

 prisoner at the bar will continue to be in the future, as he has been in 

 the past, four years of age, four whole, happy, fruitful college years 

 no more, no less. 



Finally, as to the name of the accused. His name is " the college," 

 the name that has come to be applied by universal consent to a four 

 years' course of liberal, non-professional study, superimposed on the 

 course of the high school, private school, or academy, pursued by 

 young men (and, since 1870, by young women) from eighteen or nine- 

 teen to twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, who have, as a rule, 

 left their homes and come to reside in the college itself, or in the town 

 or city in which it is situated. The name and the thing are purely 

 Anglo-Saxon, brought over by our forefathers from the mother 

 country. The college as an institution is unknown outside the 

 United States and Great Britain and her colonies. The name is 

 ingrained in our thought and history and should be retained so long 

 as the thing itself remains. It is a real obstacle to clear thinking to 

 call a " college course " a " university course," as is constantly done 

 in the West. There is absolutely no difference in the methods of 

 instruction of a properly organized college, whether it be detached 

 like Amherst or Bowdoin, or part of a group of professional and 

 technical schools, like Michigan or Chicago. Even eminent university 

 presidents have been betrayed by this loose terminology into assum- 

 ing that the instruction in the detached college and in the college 

 of a university should differ essentially, forgetting that the mind of 

 the boy or girl does not change with the change of name, and that 

 students of the immaturity of the American student between eighteen 

 and twenty-two years of age cannot with advantage to themselves 

 pursue college subjects by university methods. 1 



It seems to me vain to hope to displace the term " university," 

 which is now so firmly established throughout the entire West, and 

 recently also in the East as well. And, after all, is there any good 

 reason why we should use the word in its foreign German or French, 



1 See, e. g., President's Report, University of Chicago, 1898-99, reprinted in 

 the decennial publications of the University of Chicago, series i, pp. 94, 95. 



