THE COLLEGE 147 



significant. Princeton, whose president, as a graduate student of 

 the Johns Hopkins University and a professor of Bryn Mawr College, 

 was familiar with the true group system, puts in operation this year 

 a modified group system, and the president of Columbia, in his report 

 for 1902, promises an early consideration of the group system recom- 

 mended by three members of the Columbia scientific faculty, two of 

 whom became acquainted with the working of the group system as 

 students in the Johns Hopkins University and professors at Bryn 

 Mawr College. 



It is, then, I think, clear that our four years' college course will 

 be, not a free elective course, but that wisely ordered combination of 

 freedom and authority known as the group system. In this respect 

 Harvard does not, I believe, represent the most enlightened educa- 

 tional opinion. 



The American college in its fullest perfection will be a residential 

 college. We are coming to see that the best results of college life are 

 only to be obtained when the college student lives an academic life 

 among his companions. The English college for men is unique among 

 the institutions of the world, and its finished product the English 

 gentleman, equipped beyond his fellows for social and political life 

 is the admiration and despair of other nations. In the two cities of 

 Oxford and Cambridge, isolated from the outside world, smong green 

 lawns and medieval buildings of wonderful beauty and charm, this 

 educational process has gone forward for hundreds of years, and has 

 given us the men of thought and -action who have guided the destinies 

 of the English-speaking races. The ineffable whole of English college 

 life cannot be attained without semi-seclusion in academic surround- 

 ings and intimate and delightful association with other youth of the 

 same age and with professors who are devoting themselves to scholar- 

 ship and research. 



There is no fear that in the future the larger colleges will absorb 

 the smaller. Colleges will multiply in the future as in the past, and 

 the more there are of them the better. It is impossible, and highly 

 undesirable if it were possible, to concentrate the youth of our vast 

 country into a few large colleges. Each college creates its own supply 

 of students, and two thirds of the students of all our colleges, large 

 and small, come from within a radius of one hundred miles. As 

 each student can, as a rule, attend but one college, each such college 

 must be educationally as perfect as possible. If we reduce our in- 

 dependent American colleges to glorified high schools, as has been 

 suggested, perhaps with questionable disinterestedness, by the 

 presidents of some of the larger universities, we thereby cut off the 

 majority of American students from a complete college educa- 

 tion. 



It is clear to me that the college of the future will be coeduca- 



