PROBLEMS OF THE UNIVERSITY 171 



nical and professional schools to be viewed and treated as undergrad- 

 uate or as graduate schools? That is to say, shall they or not 

 admit students who have not had a preliminary training indicated 

 by the possession of a bachelor's degree? Hardly any two institu- 

 tions in America are answering that question in the same way. 

 Some of the Eastern institutions have made the schools of medicine 

 and law " graduate " schools in that sense, but none has yet had the 

 courage to take the same step with regard to the technical schools 

 of chemistry, engineering in its many forms, and architecture. 

 Here is, it seems to me, an exceedingly great opportunity for the 

 larger and more powerful institutions of the United States to serve 

 the ultimate welfare of the country, by putting all their technical 

 and professional schools on a graduate basis. Probably no one 

 now alive will see the abolition in this country of technical and 

 professional schools unconnected with any university. These, so 

 far as not controlled by the state, will go their own way, for the most 

 part (of course there are honorable exceptions) aiming to " fit for 

 practice " in the shortest possible time, and taking little or no ac- 

 count of the ideal emphasized above, the ideal of research, of train- 

 ing in methods of research, of encouragement and inspiration to 

 research, as the proper ideal of the university, whether that be done 

 in connection or out of connection with training for professional 

 practice. The university's technical and professional schools should 

 be put and maintained on a higher plane. If in the course of time 

 they drive the others out of existence, so much the better the 

 fittest will have survived; if not, it will surely be better for us to have 

 the higher ideal and its partial realization before the eyes of the 

 country and the world than to see the lower one everywhere pre- 

 vailing. For here is the point of contact with other lands and other 

 civilizations, and we shall be measured by the best of what we have 

 accomplished. The professions are steadily assuming a more and 

 more important and commanding position in the world. The 

 universities, to keep their hold on the nation, to be the leaders which 

 their duty calls them to be, must identify themselves with the pro- 

 fessions as never before, but with only the very highest forms of 

 professional education. For them to lose their traditional hold on 

 the older professions, or to fail to secure a firm hold on the newer 

 ones, would be for them to lay the ax to their own roots. To keep 

 and secure this hold they must make themselves everywhere in the 

 world recognized as the centres of research. Paulsen said, some 

 years ago, that some of England's greatest lights in science would 

 be inconceivable as members of an English university. That is a 

 terrible indictment to bring against a university; fortunately it is 

 less true now than in 1893, when he said it; and it is becoming less 

 true every year. 



