EDUCATIONAL ENDOWMENTS. 549 



final upshot is, then, that the students are made the supreme judges 

 instead of the faculty ; and that the professors are put on the natu- 

 ral competitive basis. And though their salaries are still paid by 

 the corporation, the commercial principle is really in vogue, and its 

 nominally becoming so is only a question of time. I remember a sig- 

 nificant incident which took place during the last year of my attend- 

 ance at the University of Michigan. It happened, accidentally, that 

 two students published somewhat severe criticisms on the teaching of 

 the professors in political economy and philosophy. Immediately 

 afterward one of the professors, a very agreeable gentleman of the 

 old school, educated in Germany, and a philosophical imperialist and 

 absolutist to the core, delivered his sentiments on the subject. 

 Amid the mingled cheers and hisses of his pupils, he attacked the 

 presumption of the critical students. It was evident that in his mind 

 things were going very badly. To him there was something wrong 

 about a universe in which young men were permitted to have different 

 opinions from their elders ; and it is hardly too much to say that he 

 was enraged. I could not help sympathizing with the vain struggles of 

 an order which is rapidly passing away under the inevitable law of 

 competition, and which, indeed, ought to pass away. And the resist- 

 ance of President McCosh to any concessions to liberalism is an in- 

 stinctive recognition of the fact that when they are once begun there 

 is no ending. There is no stopping-place, no compromise, between the 

 ancient system and that wherein every student chooses his studies and 

 his teachers, and pays therefor. The small wedge of option being 

 once introduced, there are incessant change and disturbance till this 

 natural equilibrium is reached. If any one institution possessed an 

 overpowering influence, its authority might check the advance for a 

 time, but the competition for public favor between the five or six 

 leading universities is so keen that each one is forced onward ; and 

 individuals, however conservative, and however many the degrees and 

 titles that trail after their names, are unable to prevent the rapid ad- 

 aptation of educational establishments to the demands of the public. 



It has been the object of this paper to call attention to the facts 

 that great endowed institutions of learning have not been efficient in 

 the diffusion of knowledge, or as a means of intellectual progress ; 

 that, latterly, they have been useless and obstructive to the general 

 march of society toward improvement ; that the current system in 

 America is an importation from Europe, and bears a scant relation to 

 our requirements ; that our colleges resemble, in their retrogressive 

 characteristics and influences, their elder sisters in Europe ; that 

 their status in society is due rather to a superstition than to work per- 

 formed ; and that there is every reason to believe that educational 

 facilities offered on a purely commercial basis, to which the elective 

 system in the end inevitably comes, would be less costly to society 

 as a whole, perhaps even less costly to students, and far more satis- 



