WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 151 



WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 



By Professor A. B. WOLFE 



OBERLIX COLLEGE 



FEW aspects of present educational thought are more striking than 

 the persistent and telling criticism it is bringing to bear on the 

 American College. The universal demand for efficiency in our national 

 life has put the college on trial — and has caught it in a state, of un- 

 preparedness to make a consistent defense in its own behalf. Presi- 

 dents and professors differ among themselves not only in holding widely 

 diverse ideas on the difficult questions of college administration, but 

 also with regard to the fundamental purpose of the college, but until 

 this question is settled, and settled correctly, it is hopeless to look for 

 well-founded and certain improvement in college efficiency. A wrong 

 conception of the function of the college — an erroneous aim — may rob 

 otherwise most ideal educational processes of their value and adapta- 

 tion to our real needs. 



The aim of the college must change with changing social needs. 

 Failure to recognize this fact and to act upon it with sufficient de- 

 cision and promptitude is precisely the reason why the American col- 

 leges have been caught napping. They have not kept pace with the 

 needs of a nation undergoing an unprecedentedly rapid evolution. 



A glance back at the motives and conditions which led to the es- 

 tablishment of most American colleges will make this clear. Most of 

 the colleges — those not integral parts of great universities, at any rate 

 — were established from religious motives by religious institutions. In 

 the great middle west, where the greater portion of the colleges are 

 situated, and where religious conviction and moral decency have been 

 for decade after decade considered inseparable, the great bulk of the 

 people have considered religious education an indispensable foundation 

 for " character," and character as the be-all and end-all of education. 

 " Character " has thus been announced everywhere and always the end 

 of education, and the task of the college, " character-building." Col- 

 lege faculties have gone to work at character as if it were an edifice to 

 be built up brick by brick, stone by stone, very much in accordance with 

 the flowery formulas so often, in the olden days, sounded forth from the 

 college oratorical platforms. We now distrust the character and char- 

 acter-building formulae a little. The terms have had too narrow a 

 meaning, have too commonly lacked a rich and concretely significant 

 content, to serve as really effective watchwords for the twentieth-cen- 

 tury college. They have become, long since, catch phrases, to save us 

 the need of reconstruction in educational thought. We need to set up 



