COLLEGE STANDARDIZATION 539 



sought, even if the facts were attainable. In such matters there is 

 probably no resource but the assurance that the reputation of the in- 

 stitution is obliged in time to suffer if its dealings with the public are 

 not what the public wants. If a high standard of admission is pro- 

 fessed and violated, students are quick to detect the fact and to 

 circulate their impressions; and no prying is needed to learn what is 

 generally thought to be the truth. They are the most wide awake 

 and relentless critics that the college can have, and they are more 

 efficient than catalogues, bulletins or commissions in determining the 

 public estimate of its character. 



No national law for the protection of genuine educational institu- 

 tions can be secured, because the control of education is not among the 

 political powers delegated to congress by the constitution of the United 

 States. The case in America is quite different from that in Germany, 

 where professors are commissioned by the imperial minister of educa- 

 tion. But within the last few years a national agency of great im- 

 portance has been brought into existence by the organization of the 

 Carnegie Foundation. The Carnegie board has adopted the New York 

 law as an initial aid in classifying the American educational institu- 

 tions that seek to secure the benefits of the foundation. The grant- 

 ing of retiring pensions to those who have grown old in the work of 

 college teaching is an uplift that benefits the general cause of educa- 

 tion quite as much as the individual beneficiaries of the fund. The 

 annual reports and bulletins of this board have been among the most 

 important contributions to educational progress that have ever been 

 published in this country. In a study of the financial status of the 

 professor in America and in Germany the data were secured by which 

 an illuminating comparison is made between about 160 of our leading 

 educational institutions, including at least two thirds of all those to 

 which the name of college, university or technical school is properly 

 applicable. Although the first wish of the donor was that the fund 

 should be limited to institutions that are not under the legal control 

 of church or state, this limitation has been interpreted with the utmost 

 liberality. The fund has been enlarged to include state institutions of 

 high standard. A college, originally sectarian, may retain with its 

 denomination a relation of " traditional friendship and sympathy, but 

 not one of control." About sixty institutions are already on the ac- 

 cepted list, and others are striving to throw aside denominational 

 shackles or to improve up to the standardized requirements. To at- 

 tain an end by causing competitors to strive for a prize is better than 

 to make them obey what they may deem a repressive law, even if the 

 law is judicious. The Carnegie Foundation is quietly preparing all the 

 states of the union for improvement in their laws about the chartering 

 of colleges, and it is to-day the most effective agency that tends toward 

 college standardization. 



