616 



SCIENCE, 



[N. S. Vol. XXII. No. 568. 



of admission to the university, and an ex- 

 tension of the scientific character and qual- 

 ity of the work done inside of the univer- 

 sity. And this development I consider 

 will be as inevitable as the ebb and flow of 

 the tides. My own idea is that the uni- 

 versity ought not to be engaged in second- 

 ary work at all; and by secondary work I 

 mean work which is necessary as a pre- 

 liminary preparation for the proper pur- 

 suit of special, professional, that is scien- 

 tific, study. Consequently, our secondary 

 schools, our high schools and our colleges 

 will be expected to take more and more of 

 the work which is done in the lower classes 

 of the various departments of the univer- 

 sity as at present constituted, until we shall 

 have reached a point where every student 

 coming into the university will have a suit- 

 able preliminary training to enable him to 

 take up, with profit and advantage, univer- 

 sity studies, in a university spirit and by 

 university methods. 



Every community in this country ought 

 to furnish the possibility of securing this 

 secondary training as near as possible to 

 the heart of the community itself. Cer- 

 tainly every town of fifty thousand inhabit- 

 ants, and, perhaps, every town of twenty 

 thousand in the United States— surely 

 every county in this state^should be 

 able, through the activity either of public 

 agencies or of private beneficence, to offer 

 the facilities for acquiring this secondary 

 grade of education which is appropriate 

 to the high school and the college. Surely 

 it is true that the work done at present in 

 the freshman and sophomore years at the 

 University of Illinois, and for that matter 

 in any of our American universities, may 

 just as well be done, so far as the quality 

 of the work is concerned, at any one of 

 fifty or one hundred centers in the state of 

 Illinois, as at Urbana; provided only that 

 adequate provision be made for giving this 



instruction. And this adequate provision 

 need not be very expensive. There comes 

 a time, in the growth of attendance at any 

 institution, when it reaches its maximum 

 efficiency. I have no doubt myself that in 

 another ten years, unless we should have 

 some great economic backset, there will be 

 ten thousand students in the state of Illi- 

 nois, who will want the kind of work and 

 the grade of work offered in the freshman 

 and sophomore years of the University of 

 Illinois. Now it is to my mind perfectly 

 apparent that it would be undesirable to 

 have ten thousand freshman and sopho- 

 mores in the State University at Urbana. 

 It would be far better to have them scat- 

 tered over the state at fifty other institu- 

 tions, provided we can get these institu- 

 tions to take care of them properly, and 

 then send those of them who may desire 

 the more advanced work up to the uni- 

 versity. 



So then, the institution must be lopped 

 off at the bottom and expand at the top in 

 order to become that true university of 

 the state of Illinois which will render the 

 largest service to the people of this com- 

 munity. We have, in the development of 

 our college of agriculture a very excellent 

 illustration of how, with the growing stand- 

 ard of this state, an individual professional 

 school will gradually change its entire char- 

 acter by the continued raising of its stand- 

 ards. Thus far, we have been practically 

 accepting in the college of agriculture any 

 young man who desires to avail himself of 

 the advantages for instruction offered here, 

 and who seemed to the faculty likely to be 

 able to do the work, without reference to 

 his formal preparation. At the present 

 rate of growth, in another ten or fifteen 

 years there will be five thousand young 

 people in this state who will want to pur- 

 sue these studies. It would not be possible 

 or desirable to take care of these five 



