SCIENCE, INDUSTRY, AND EDUCATION 



fessor Butler, of Columbia University, " the combination 

 of collegiate and university instruction under one executive 

 administration is distinctive of higher education in the 

 United States, and its chief source of strength." The 

 candidate for the highest degree, Ph.D., must spend at 

 least two years, after obtaining his Bachelor degree, in 

 carrying out an investigation in the field of his main object 

 of study, and then submit the dissertation, which embodies 

 the results of his research, preferably in printed form, to 

 the authorities for their approval and acceptance as a 

 condition of receiving his degree. A similar plan of uni- 

 versity study has been pursued in Germany with success. 



Into the dry bones of the present academic system of 

 reading and examination must enter the living breath of 

 the spirit of research, that is to say, of the individual efforts 

 of each mind, for itself and in its own way, to seek to 

 extend our knowledge in the direction most suited to its 

 powers, by means of original observation and reasoning, 

 and aided by the imagination it may be in the field of 

 science, of history and literature, or of art. 



One way of bringing about reform in this direction 

 would be to make individual research an indispensable 

 condition of proceeding to degrees higher than the B.A. 



It is scarcely necessary to point out that individual 

 training of this kind would arouse and encourage intellectual 

 independence of thought, and especially the power of 

 initiation and of original enterprise ; and further, those 



creative habits of mind and that facility of resource which 



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