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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXV. No. 652 



custom of endowed universities of lodging 

 their undergraduates in dormitories, thus 

 giving them a real community life; and 

 something to the practise, common, though 

 not universal, of allowing the alumni a 

 voice in the selection of the governing 

 board. If such a difference in sentiment 

 exists, whatever the cause may be, it will 

 exert a potent influence in favor of recruit- 

 ing the students of endowed universities 

 from a wider area. But the state universi- 

 ties have already astonished and delighted 

 the world too much to make safe any pre- 

 dictions about what they will or will not 

 achieve in the future. 



It would appear, however, that bringing 

 young Americans together for a common 

 education from every section of the country 

 is at this present day preeminently the 

 problem of the endowed universities, and 

 especially of the larger ones; for, while 

 some of the smaller colleges draw their stu- 

 dents from a wide area, the larger institu- 

 tions are peculiarly fitted to work on a 

 national scale. Their very size means a 

 wider constituency, and hence a more com- 

 plete mingling of young men from all over 

 the country. They are best adapted for 

 the great function of helping to form a na- 

 tional type of manhood, because they have 

 a better chance of drawing students in 

 large numbers from every part of the land. 

 But if size gives opportunities, it involves 

 also difSculties. In a small college the 

 individual is in less danger of being lost; 

 the young man without aggressive person- 

 ality is less likely to be ignored or sub- 

 merged. Character and self-reliance are 

 more developed by being a man of mark 

 in Kavenna than by belonging to the mob 

 in Rome ; and what is more to our purpose, 

 a body that is too large for general per- 

 sonal acquaintance tends to break up into 

 groups whose members see little of one 

 another. The citizen of a good-sized town 



has usually a wider acquaintance than the 

 dweller in a big city. 



In the social life of a college, as in other 

 things, there is for any one form of organ- 

 ization an economic scale which gives the 

 best results. Beyond that the social body 

 becomes fissiparous, and thereby loses the 

 benefits of size. What is worse, the lines 

 of cleavage naturally follow the associa- 

 tions formed before coming to college ; and 

 hence a man from a distance, who has no 

 friends already there, may well fail to be- 

 come intimate with the men whom it is 

 most important that he should know both 

 for their sake and his own. In many places 

 the social life of the students is regulated 

 by fraternities, to some one of which almost 

 every undergraduate belongs; and such a 

 system may work well enough in a small 

 college, or in one where the students come 

 from a limited area, so that every one has a 

 chance of being known. But in the large 

 endowed universities that system, or any 

 system of societies or clubs, is incapable 

 of supplying an opportunity for the best 

 kind of social life to the great mass of 

 students. Nor if it could include them all 

 woiild it be a fortunate arrangement, be- 

 cause here again we should be met by the 

 tendency to divide on the lines of previous 

 association, and one of the chief advantages 

 of the great university, that of throwing 

 together men from every part of the coun- 

 try, would be in great part lost. 



Now, the larger colleges grow, the more 

 pronounced this difficulty must inevitably 

 become. In the largest of them it is al- 

 ready felt ; in others it can be foreseen ; and 

 before many years have passed it will pre- 

 sent a very pressing problem. With the 

 rapid growth of the number of people who 

 can afford to send their sons to college, with 

 the ever greater need of education as a pre- 

 requisite to getting a good start in life, and 

 with the tendency to require a college de- 

 gree before beginning the study of a pro- 



