35 o APPENDIX I 



Montpellier, Bordeaux, and Grenoble. But just what these insti- 

 tutions are, their relation to the State or to each other, whether 

 they receive foreign students, or if so, whether degrees are granted, 

 were questions not readily answered by those of us not making a 

 specialty of educational topics. The vicissitudes, moreover, 

 through which educational institutions along with everything else 

 in France passed during the French Revolution, have served to 

 make the status of higher education seem more complex than it 



really is. 



The Universite de Paris still exists, bearing at least the name of 

 the celebrated old seat of learning that came formally into existence 

 about the middle of the twelfth century. A century later, Robert 

 de Sorbon, the chaplain and confessor of St. Louis, founded in the 

 University of Paris a school of theology. This school became one 

 of the constituent parts, and the predominant one, giving its name 

 to the entire theological faculty in the University; and today the 

 University of Paris itself is everywhere familiarly known as the 

 "Sorbonne," although the latter school ceased to exist in 1790. 

 The provincial universities in France arose to meet the wants of the 

 districts where they were, at different epochs after the founding 

 of the University of Paris. There were twenty-five of them, of 

 which Toulouse, founded in the first part of the thirteenth century, 

 and Montpellier, in the latter part, were the oldest. The College 

 de France was founded by Francis I, in 1529. The king believed 

 that the University of Paris was devoting too much attention to 

 some subjects and not enough to others. It was designed to pro- 

 mote the more advanced tendencies of the time and to counteract 

 the scholasticism taught in the University. The Ecole pratique 

 des hautes etudes is a unique institution of comparatively recent 

 origin, dating from the Second Empire (1852). 



These names, then, so often heard in connection with the sub- 

 ject of education in France, have indicated institutions whose 

 status was clearly defined and easily understood. Why is it, then, 

 that these establishments do not stand forth clearly cut like 

 Oxford, Cambridge, Gottingen, and Bonn? Both the names of 

 the French universities, as well as the institutions of learning them- 

 selves, have a haze about them that is absent from similarly or- 

 ganized faculties of learning abroad. 



The principal reason for this vagueness is that at the time of 

 the Revolution the entire system of education was revolutionized. 

 The University of Paris, as well as all the provincial universities, 



