A CIVIC INVESTMENT 251 



modern types of education for the purpose of practical efficiency. With 

 the examples of the great state universities ever in mind, it has realized 

 that the highest mission in its field lies in service to its community. 

 Since the services which education may render to a city are somewhat dif- 

 ferent from those which it may render to a state, the municipal univer- 

 sity has had a new problem to solve or rather should I say — lias a new 

 problem to solve, since both the conception of the problem and the at- 

 tempts at its solution are still in their infancy. 



Our country to-day possesses only half a dozen municipally sup- 

 ported institutions of higher education. As a matter of fact, in the 

 old sense of the word, we have only one municipal university — the Uni- 

 versity of Cincinnati. Other municipal institutions of collegiate rank 

 (my own among them) have assumed the title "municipal university,"' 

 in the face of educational disapproval of the term, largely for the rea- 

 son that our language offers no name to characterize a school which 

 has outgrown the limits of the old fashioned college, which has actually 

 established other schools than that of liberal arts, but which does not 

 possess all the professional faculties. For such institutions, in view 

 of their close cooperation with various city departments and in further 

 view of the fact that a development along practical and technical lines 

 has multiplied the number of their schools to a greater or less extent, 

 the name " municipal university " seems not ill chosen. 



The keynote of a municipal university must ever be public service — 

 not that somewhat indefinite public service which gives young people a 

 "broad, general education" (too often a euphemism for a mere smat- 

 tering of many subjects) — but rather that public service which will 

 awaken in our young people a consciousness of their relation and re- 

 sponsibility to the community and which will actually train them for 

 life and for civic duties. 



The recent meeting held in New York at the call of Mayor Mitchel 

 under the auspices of the American Political Science Association's 

 Committee on Practical Training for Public Service discussed as its 

 main topic the service of the university to the community. The same 

 topic engaged the attention of the Urban University Association at 

 "Washington last November. This meeting marked an epoch. For years 

 it has been growing more and more apparent that every collegiate insti- 

 tution which exists tax free in the midst of a large community does owe 

 an actual debt to its city. This feeling has doubtless been strengthened 

 by the attitude of a few municipal universities, notably Cincinnati, who 

 have been trying to make some practical return for the money which tax- 

 payers have given them. Just how this can be done is one of our most 

 important modern problems. With the feeling that New York offers an 

 unparalleled field for such activities the New York conference adopted a 

 resolution calling upon the College of the City of New York to institute 



