574 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE FUNCTION" OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE 



By Professor A. K. ROGERS 



UNIVERSITY OP MISSOURI 



ALONG with the movement toward vocationalism in the lower 

 schools, there is at the present time apparent an equally power- 

 ful and not wholly unrelated trend in the higher toward intellectual 

 specialization. Any one who is acquainted with the situation knows 

 that in so far as the college and university teacher has to-day any dis- 

 tinct notion at all of what he is about, it is likely to be in the majority 

 of cases in terms of an exaltation of scientific scholarship. The busi- 

 ness which he conceives he is there to forward is to produce thinkers 

 and investigators of the specialized and technical sort that he is fa- 

 miliar with among his colleagues and in his scientific associations. And 

 the commonest justification of this is apt to be in the form of a claim 

 that the task of the schools is to produce leaders. In consequence the 

 teacher gets into a habit of considerable asperity toward the average 

 member of his classes in whom he sees no special promise of distinction. 

 His dealing with them becomes perfunctory, and all his enthusiasm he 

 reserves for the few who can be expected to go farther along the paths 

 of academic glory. The special ideal of the university is apt to over- 

 shadow the entire scheme of higher education. 



One result of this tendency is the anomalous position which the 

 college is at the present day coming to occupy in the American educa- 

 tional scheme. To one who is not content to see an institution simply in 

 existence, and doing work which has something to be said in its favor, but 

 who wants to adjust it to a principle, it is growing a very puzzling matter 

 to state with any approach to precision the function of this typically 

 American contribution to the forms of educational expression. The 

 original function of the college was professional preparation, which at 

 the same time came pretty close to a training for social leadership as 

 well, since the professions to which it led, including in particular the 

 profession of divinity, were looked to more consciously than at the pres- 

 ent day to provide the material for leadership in ideas. But if one 

 were to try to justify theoretically the college now on the same ground, 

 two facts at least would need to be recognized. In the first place the 

 college does not actually at present, except in the form of a pious 

 aspiration, base itself upon intellectual distinction, or aim at develop- 

 ing peculiar capacities for special kinds of intellectual service. And we 

 can the more readily admit this, inasmuch as in the university we have 

 a new type of institution which does have just this aim. Accordingly, 



