138 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 605, 



It is said that in the American university there 

 is a necessary internal conflict between the col- 

 legiate interests and the university interests. My 

 judgment is that in the larger American univer- 

 sities generally, the greatest enemy of both these 

 interests is the excessive expansion of the course 

 of study. 



There are obviously two ways of cutting down 

 the amount of work which the university shall 

 offer. We may cut down the number of depart- 

 ments, or we may cut down the number of courses 

 offered by the several departments. 



The first of these methods is radical. It is a 

 grave matter to abolish a university department — 

 not really more grave, I thinlc, than the establish- 

 ment of a new department whose justification may 

 be doubtful but for many and obvious reasons 

 a procedure which university authorities must 

 hesitate to adopt. Nevertheless, even such radical 

 pruning may be justified. It can become a ques- 

 tion between cutting off some large limbs and the 

 languishing of the whole tree. I shall not be sur; 

 prised if within the next generation the pressure 

 of circumstances should force the universities to 

 the adoption in a considerable degree of this ex- 

 treme form of selection. 



Meanwhile, we have at hand a much gentler and 

 yet scarcely less efficient method of selection if 

 the departments will cut down the amount and 

 range of work offered by them. Let me put this 

 method of reorganizing and concentrating the 

 course of study in the form of definite proposals. 

 Let there be in each principal university depart- 

 ment: 



1. A fundamental elementary course. 



2. A very strictly limited amount of under- 

 graduate work beyond the introductory course. 



3. All the rest of the work offered by the de- 

 partment strictly graduate or research work. 



Without affecting the number of majors or of 

 groups or of departments, we may very decidedly 

 reduce the number of undergraduate courses 

 offered. Here, as I think, is the place for the 

 pruning knife. The universities can cover the 

 whole field of learning in typical introductory 

 courses on the freshman-sophomore level. We can 

 not each of us by any possibility cover the ground 

 on all higher levels. We must select. We must 

 reject, right and left, subjects which have every 

 argument in their favor except that we can not do 

 them all. We must weed out the suckers as a 

 condition of having cornstalks. 



There would result apparent hardships for the 



undergraduate and for some members of the 

 faculty. The undergraduate would not be able, on 

 the one hand, to take a large proportion of his 

 college course within one narrow field, thus be- 

 coming a specialist without becoming an educated 

 man; and he would not be able on the other hand 

 to browse far and wide over any and every field 

 which modem learning has developed. He would 

 find instead, however, an abundantly wide choice 

 of majors or of groups each offering an austerely 

 chosen list of representative courses arranged so 

 as to make a substantial center for a college 

 course. And this, whether or not he is to become 

 a specialist, is, I believe, the best thing which the 

 university of to-day can offer him. 



I have considered in this connection also the 

 possible hardship to the younger professors who 

 want to have each at least a small amount of 

 advanced work to do. I do not wish to slight this 

 consideration, for it is an essential feature of the 

 university life that the younger men should have 

 the door of hope open. I have not solved this 

 problem to my own satisfaction, but I say this: 

 If an instructor can do important productive 

 work, the university should try to offer him as 

 much leisure as the value of his work appears to 

 warrant, whether he is doing the work with 

 students or alone. What the university can not 

 afford to do is to pay so dearly for elementary, 

 non-productive junior and senior w^ork. These 

 courses are the suckers. 



3. Productive work. The freshman-sophomore 

 fundamental courses should be the first gainers 

 from the resources of money and leisure saved by 

 cutting off excessive expansion. The seqond 

 gainers should be the graduate and research 

 courses. I wish to consider this second gain as it 

 might affect the larger universities and then as it 

 might affect the smaller ones. 



(a) Our greatest universities are very rich. They 

 have great graduate schools. They have scholars 

 who have proved to be productive men. And yet, 

 when the total output of scholarly work done in 

 them is compared with that done in Grermany, for 

 example, the result is generally conceded to be 

 discouraging. In many cases, little is accom- 

 plished beyond the comparatively elementary re- 

 search work which has its terminus in the doctor's 

 degree. No explanation of this result seems so 

 probable as the fact that the German professor 

 has, as a rule, the leisure which the American 

 professor only secures by exception. It is doubt- 

 ful whether the German rule can of should become 

 the American one while we have the college and 

 the university united in one institution. We wish 



