November 9, 1905] 



NA TURE 



45 



to form the professors' estimate of tlieir fitness for the 

 degree. 



The universal length of the undergraduate course is 

 four years, not three as with us; and I am bound to saj 

 the lengthened period seems to me to have a decided 

 advantage in avoiding hurry and encouraging maturity 

 of growth. For several years the doubt has been grow- 

 ing in my mind whether our qualifying period of three 

 years can be regarded as satisfactory. We owe it, no 

 doubt, to the habit of mind inherited from the old London 

 University of regarding ability to pass a written examin- 

 ation as the true test of training. From this incubus 

 the American university is almost wholly free. A student 

 gets his degree for the regular work he does throughout 

 his university course, and though there is a test at the 

 end, that test hardly ever takes the form of a cumulative 

 examination in all he has been studying for two or three 

 years ; often it is a thesis. The effect of this on the course 

 of study is very marked. 



Post-graduate study is of comparatively recent growth 

 in the States, and largely the outcome of the foundation 

 and development of the Johns Hopkins University. 



Like the Owens College in Manchester, Johns Hopkins 

 owes its origin to the philanthropy of a wealthy merchant 

 of Welsh descent. Its peculiar character, however, is due 

 to the academic prescience and statesmanship of its first 

 president. He saw that there were plenty of universities 

 and colleges of the ordinary undergraduate type, and that 

 what the country really needed was a university for 

 "graduate study," which at that time could only be 

 secured bv going to Germany. 



The method of teaching is based on that of the German 

 seminar, of which it has adopted the name, but it provides 

 for more constant and systematic intercourse between 

 professor and student. While the German seminar meets 

 weekly, the American meets every day, and the student 

 receives far more individual attention. The course again 

 is more exacting, the minimum length being three years, 

 and the average four and a half, starting,, be it remem- 

 bered, from the completion of the B.A. degree. The aim 

 is to train in methods of original investigation — in short, 

 as it was well put to me by one of the professors, " to 

 transfer to literary studies the methods of higher work in 

 science." The work is based on the preparation of the 

 student's dissertation for the doctorate. At everv stage, 

 first in outline and subsequently in complete form, the 

 dissertation is discussed section by section, chapter by 

 chapter. Each department of study has its own seminar 

 room furnished with a departmental reference library. 

 The arrangement is not that of the lecture theatre, which 

 implies an orator and an audience, but rather that of the 

 committee room with a chairman and a ring of debaters. 

 The class, which would never exceed from twelve to 

 fifteen, sits at an oblong table, the professor, so to speak, 

 occupying the chair of the meeting at one end. Round 

 the walls at their backs are the shelves containing books 

 of reference, often running to several thousand volumes, 

 and these, it should be noted, are quite independent of the 

 central university library. 



This seminar study was at first the sole, and i's Mill 

 the main, work of the university, and that which has 

 made the name of Johns Hopkins famous throughout the 

 civilised world. An age more given to omens might have 

 seen in the remarkable fact that in the gigantic con- 

 Bagration which recently swept away the centre of the 

 city of Baltimore, the university was the onlv public insti- 

 tution the buildings of which escaped scot free, a tribute 

 of the powers of nature to the unique position it holds 

 in American academical life. Its influence on higher 

 study through the whole North American continent has 

 been rapid and profound. It is not merely that a large 

 number of distinguished specialists has been produced 

 whose labours have raised the level of American learn- 

 ing ; post-graduate study has become the ambition of the 

 American university, and more and more is being accepted 

 as that which differentiates it from tin- mere collegi 

 I here are few universities now which have not their 

 seminar rooms and departmental libraries, though it musl 

 be admitted that in many cases these are at present only 

 utilised for undergraduate study of the third and fourth 

 years. But the growth in post-graduate work since Johns 

 NO. 1880, VOL. ~li\ 



Hopkins was founded has been fairly staggering. In 

 1S71 there were only 198 post-graduate students in the 

 Mates; twenty-five years later the number had risen to 

 I'lio, or very nearly one quarter of the total number of 

 university students of all classes in the British Isles. 



The great bulk of those who win the Johns Hopkins 

 doctorate naturally become university professors and 

 lecturers. At the same time there is a rapidly increasing 

 demand for them from the high schools, which are all 

 organised on the basis of specialist teaching in each de- 

 partment. The evidence, both at the schools and the 

 universities, supports the view that the Ph.D. candidate 

 for a school post would have the advantage over a B.A. 

 who had also been through a course of training in teach- 

 ing, and would command a higher salary, and that this 

 tendency is on the increase. It is felt that the man whose 

 knowledge is deepest is likely to make the best teacher, 

 and that lack of pedagogic skill at the start will be made 

 up for in the long run by greater inspiration. 



The system of our own older universities — at least of 

 Oxford — is, it must be confessed, less favourable to post- 

 graduate work. The explanation is to be found largel) 

 in the difference of the undergraduate course. The 

 American university has no " honours " schools for the 

 initial degree in which the energies of the best men are 

 devoted rather to amassing the results of other people's 

 investigations over an immense area than to cultivating 

 the power of acquiring knowledge by their own. One 

 of my fellow commissioners, who had examined at Cam- 

 bridge in the law tripos, and bears a name of European 

 reputation, told me he was often perfectly " horrified " 

 by the amount the young men knew ; such a mass of 

 knowledge must have a most deadening effect on intel- 

 lectual vigour. Thus, while the actual attainment at the 

 initial degree is by no means so high as at Oxford and 

 Cambridge, at all events for the best students, there is a 

 far truer conception of learning, and an enormously larger 

 proportion of men go on to higher work and research. 

 In my visits to the universities the question was repeatedly 

 asked of me, " What kind of men should we select for 

 the Rhodes scholarships?" My answet has always been, 

 " By all means, send us graduates. Undergraduates will 

 do Oxford little good, and may get out of touch with 

 American life : graduates will gain a wider experience 

 without being de-amerioanised. Nothing, at the same 

 time, would do so much for the revival of higher study 

 at Oxford as a steady supply of picked graduates of .01 

 inquiring type." "But does Oxford want graduates?" 

 has been the usual reply. " The experience of many men 

 we know who have been there is that it is practically 

 impossible to get assistance for post-graduate work ; after 

 a short trial they have generally gone on to Germany." 

 The justice of the criticism it is difficult to question. 

 Though the University of Oxford has created special post- 

 graduate degrees in order to attract graduates of other 

 universities for advanced study or research, the Oxford 

 college with its pot-hunting instincts stands in the way. 

 It makes, or thinks it makes, its name by the number 

 of first classes won by its undergraduates, and will, there- 

 lore, give no encouragement to the higher learning which 

 our Philistine upper (lass neither understand nor care for. 

 I have known a case where the whole tutorial influence 

 of a college was used to prevent one of its scholars com- 

 peting for a university prize essay involving original re- 

 search. It was not denied that the work might be 

 intellectually better for him, but then it might endanger 

 his " first." The scholar, I am glad to say, had the 

 strength of mind to take his own line, and gained tie' 

 prize. 



Let me conclude with a word about the ideals of tin 

 students and their attachment to their old college or 

 university. I have said that the course is never less than 

 four cars ; when I add that there are hardly any scholar- 

 ships and that a large proportion of the students are 

 distinctly poor, you will doubtless ask how they manage 

 to do it? This brings me at once to what I unhesi- 

 tating!) affirm to be the most admirable feature of life 

 on lb'- other side of the Atlantic, whether in the States or 

 in Canada, viz. the entire absence of the feeling that 

 honest work of any kind can be derogatory to an educated 

 man. The American and Canadian siinl.nl whose friends 



