188 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



really good institutions suffer continual discredit. In education, as in 

 all other things, the realities are brought into disrepute by the shams. 



Suppose now that the college described above had continued through 

 several successive stages the career so auspiciously begun. It would 

 probably have opened with its clerical founder for president, and a 

 force of one or two professors (should not this be written professers ?) 

 to help him. It would have announced all sorts of courses of study a 

 classical course, a scientific course, a mixed literary or ladies' course, a 

 business course, a normal course, and so on, to the limit of its founder's 

 power of invention. These courses, having been organized with vari- 

 ous degrees of incapacity, would in due time be supplemented by de- 

 partments of art and music ; and, in short, there would grow up an 

 institution claiming to do all things, but unfit to do any one thing 

 decently. The classics would be taught by a mere grammarian unac- 

 quainted with modern philology ; the sciences by a teacher destitute 

 of special scientific training; the normal department by an amateur 

 educator; and book-keeping by somebody who had never attempted 

 actual business. Degrees would be given by the dozen to students 

 who had never learned anything but dilettanteism, and whose ideas of 

 scholarships would, as a rule, be limited by the attainments of their 

 teachers. 



Does anybody doubt the existence of such colleges as I have 

 sketched ? It would be easy to point out twenty institutions in differ- 

 ent parts of the county, any one of which w'ould answer tolerably well 

 to my description. Between these extremes and the respectable col- 

 leges there are many intermediate grades. There are some schools in 

 which thoroughly good work is done of a low order work which car- 

 ries the student to about the point where a fair junior year should be- 

 gin, and which is honest so far as it goes. The only objection to these 

 schools is, that they call themselves colleges, and confer college degrees. 

 That they have a great value, nobody can doubt. Many and many a 

 country lad who would otherwise remain ignorant gets in one or an- 

 other of them the foundations of an education. If they would but 

 abandon the college name, cease to grant diplomas, and call themselves 

 academies or high-schools, they would then deserve only praise. It is 

 their pretension to be more than they really are which is so damaging 

 to the cause of higher education. 



With all these lower institutions the true colleges have to com- 

 pete. Every college is directly impeded in its work by their existence. 

 The institution which provides low-grade courses for imperfectly pre- 

 pared students, actually encourages defects in the preparatory schools, 

 and every other college suffers in consequence. All or nearly all of 

 our universities are in part dependent upon the income received from 

 students. They must get students, or perish ; and hence the competi- 

 tion for numbers, which is continually tending to keep down the stand- 

 ards. Nearly every respectable college in America is hindered in this 



