June 28, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



993 



Each of them was in her own way a pioneer 

 in education. Each of them stood for an 

 idea, and was in her early years radical, 

 aggressive and militant, a condition that 

 tends to attract persons of a like way of 

 thinking wherever they may live. It is, 

 of course, impossible to estimate the effect 

 of conditions of this kind, or to allow for 

 them in making a computation of results. 

 Nor is it easy to select endowed and state 

 universities whose circumstances have been 

 so completely identical as to make compari- 

 son absolutely fair. 



Perhaps the best example to be found 

 is that of the two great universities on the 

 Pacific slope — Leland Stanford, Jr., and 

 the state university in California — and a 

 comparison of these two is instructive. 

 The University of California has been in 

 existence more than twice as long as Leland 

 Stanford, and is nearly twice as large; so 

 that she ought to have an advantage on the 

 score of both age and size, and both insti- 

 tutions virtually admit citizens of the state 

 free, and charge fees of $20 a year to non- 

 residents. Yet the University of Cali- 

 fornia draws over 90 per cent, of her stu- 

 dents from the state alone, while Leland 

 Stanford draws 62 per cent, from that 

 state. The students at the University of 

 California came, according to the catalogue 

 of 1901-2 from which these statistics are 

 compiled, from only 29 states all told, while 

 to Leland Stanford they come from 42. 

 Moreover, less than 3 per cent, of the stu- 

 dents at the former came from parts of 

 the country outside of its six chief tributary 

 states, as against 13 per cent, in the case 

 of Leland Stanford. Some slight allow- 

 ance must, no doubt, be made for the fact 

 that Leland Stanford limits the number of 

 women to 500, while at the University of 

 California they form a decidedly larger 

 proportion of all the students. But this is 

 a trifling matter that could hardly affect 

 the result seriously. 



If all this ai*ray of figures does not war- 

 rant any precise quantitative comparison 

 of the distribution of students in the dif- 

 ferent kinds of institutions, it is surely 

 definite enough to prove that, so far as 

 drawing from a wider area is concerned, 

 the endowed universities are doing a more 

 fully national work than those which are 

 supported by state governments; and it 

 suggests, at least, a probability that in the 

 future they will continue to do so. There 

 are a number of reasons why this should be 

 the case. About half of the state univer- 

 sities now make some distinction in fees be- 

 tween citizens of the state and other people ; 

 and with the continual increase in the cost 

 of instruction the practise is likely to grow 

 rather than decline, for it seems unreason- 

 able that taxpayers should be burdened to 

 provide education for outsiders. They 

 have been certainly extremely liberal hith- 

 erto, and a young man can go to-day more 

 cheaply to a state university in another 

 state that charges a differential fee, than 

 to one of the eastern colleges. 



Then there is the matter of state pride. 

 If a boy intends to go to any state univer- 

 sity there is a motive of local patriotism 

 for going to his own. Is not his own as. 

 good? Is it not established, paid for and 

 conducted, for just such as he? Is it not 

 striving to swell its numbers? Finally, 

 there is the question of the allegiance to his 

 college of the graduate living in a distant 

 state, the affection with which he looks back 

 to it, and the eagerness with which he sings 

 its praises. This sentiment is said to be 

 less strong in the case of the state, than of 

 the endowed, universities. Such a differ- 

 ence, if it exists, may be due to the fact 

 that a state university. Like a high school, 

 is taken as a matter of course, as one of 

 the regular organs of the government, and 

 not as an institution in which a member 

 has acquired a privileged proprietary right. 

 Something may be due to the more common 



