SHORT PAPERS 



PRESIDENT HENRY CHURCHILL KING, D.D., of Oberlin College, presented the 

 following paper on " The Function of College Education ": 



HAS the American college a real function, a logical and vital place in a com- 

 prehensive system of education? or is it the blunder of a crude time and a crude 

 people, an illogical hybrid between the secondary school and the university, 

 that ought to hand over a part of its work to the secondary school and the rest 

 to the university, and to retire promptly from the scene with such grace as it 

 can muster? or, at best, is its older function now incapable of realization? 



Just because these questions concern the place of college education in a system 

 of education, they can be answered only in the light of a comprehensive survey 

 of the entire problem of education. 



The problem of education in its broadest scope may perhaps be said to be the 

 problem of preparation for meeting the needs of the world's life and work. Much 

 of the training belongs necessarily to the home and to the interactions of the 

 inevitable relations of life. Much of it, probably, can never be brought into any 

 organized system. But organized education must do what it can to insure, first, 

 that no men shall lack that elementary training and knowledge without which 

 they are hardly fitted at all for ordinary human intercourse or for intelligent 

 work of any kind in society, still less for growing and happy lives; second, that 

 there shall be those who can carry on the various occupations demanded by our 

 complex civilization, in the trades, in business, and in the professions; third, 

 that there shall be investigators, scientific specialists, extenders of human know- 

 ledge, in all spheres. None of these needs are likely to be denied not even the 

 last; for our age has had so many demonstrations of the practical value of 

 scientific discoveries that it is even ready to grant the value of the extension of 

 knowledge for its own sake. That, then, every man should have the education 

 necessary to render him a useful member of society; that the necessary occupa- 

 tions should be provided for; that there should be a class of scientific specialists 

 constantly pushing out the boundaries of human knowledge, we are all agreed. 

 And to this extent at least, the problems, first, of the elementary schools; second, 

 of the trade, technical, and professional schools; and third, of the university 

 proper, are recognized and justified. 



Our difficulties begin when we try to define more narrowly just what is to be 

 included in our first group of schools. Exactly what education is indispensable 

 that one may become a useful member of society? Virtually we seem to have 

 decided that indispensable education is covered in our primary and grammar 

 grades; for the majority do not go further, and compulsory education does not 

 require more. And yet, with practical unanimity, the United States have 

 decided that the state is justified in furnishing, and, indeed, is bound to furnish, 

 that smaller number of its children who are willing and able to take further 

 schooling, opportunity to continue for three or four years longer in studies of 

 so-called " secondary " grade. The state can justify this procedure only upon 

 the ground that such further study prepares still better for citizenship, and that 

 it is of value to the state that even a much smaller number should have this better 

 preparation; or, also, and perhaps more commonly, upon the practical ground 

 that the secondary education furnishes the knowledge and training which, if not 

 indispensable to citizenship, is indispensable to many of the higher occupations 

 and forms of service to the state. No sharp line, certainly, can be drawn between 

 the studies of the grammar school and those of the high school. And we all 



