UNIVERSITY EXTENSION. 7 



students' associations, home reading circles, traveling libraries, 

 and the like, which are doing much to extend its influence and 

 render the movement permanent. One of these features, the 

 scheme of affiliating students to the universities, deserves special 

 mention. What the universities have been working for all along 

 is the promotion of serious and continued study. Where this 

 was out of the question, they did what they could, and tried to 

 stimulate the neighborhood to something better. The work has 

 now progressed far enough for them to offer a systematic course 

 of study covering four years, and having a definite end in view. 

 The students who take eight unit courses in related subjects ap- 

 proved by the management, and who do the home work and pass 

 the examinations successfully, receive the title of S. A. — affiliated 

 student — and have the privilege at any subsequent time of remit- 

 ting one year's residence at Cambridge, and so completing their 

 studies there in two years. In the majority of cases two years 

 would be quite as prohibitory as three, since the students are no 

 longer young, and are already pledged to some career in life. 

 Yet affiliation is held to be a great good, for it brings system and 

 continuity into extension work, and makes a closer and more vital 

 bond between the universities and the people. 



If we come now across the ocean to our own country we shall 

 find, considering the newness of the movement here, a develop- 

 ment of the university extension idea even more surprising than 

 in England. It is a large tribute to the catholicity of this idea 

 that it stands transplanting so admirably. The needs of the 

 human spirit are much the same in all countries. What is deep- 

 est in us and best is essentially cosmopolitan. The extension 

 scheme is distinctively English in its origin, yet it has needed 

 surprisingly little adaptation to fit it to American conditions. 

 Perhaps the chief differences in condition are geographical. Life 

 is more concentrated in England than with us, and the main 

 changes will have to be in deference to our magnificent dis- 

 tances. 



In certain quarters the importation of a British idea is resented 

 almost as warmly as if the article were a steel rail or a durable 

 cloth. In others, again, it is said that we have had university 

 extension in America for many years, and we are pointed to the- 

 lyceums of New England and to Chautauqua. These institutions 

 have undoubtedly done admirable work, but they are not uni- 

 versity extension, and it is no discredit to them to say so. I have 

 no particular desire to represent the movement as unique. It 

 would be seriously misrepresented, however, if the impression were- 

 allowed to become current that university extension is simply a 

 duplication of educational machinery already in successful opera- 

 tion. It is not. It is a movement with a new end, the popular!- 



