< Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu
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4

THE HIGHER EDUCATION

lent form of the university ought to be ; but one

would then have to show how our existing educa- tional institutions may be changed in order to bring them into conformity with such an ideal standard.

Now, in this country, up to the present time, there has existed no form of an educational insti- tution which we can call " the American university," if by this term we intend to designate something other and higher than " the American college," with its possible attachment of one or more pro- fessional schools. Any one possessed of the requi- site information knows at once what is meant by the university of France, the English universities, or a German university; but no one can become so conversant with facts as to tell what an American university is. It would by no means be fair, how- ever, to sum up the history of the development of this institution with the curt sentence: "There are no universities in America." To be sure, it is hardly twenty years since the rector of Lincoln College, Oxford (Mark Pattison), wrote: "In America scientific culture has never been intro- duced. It has no universities such as we under- stand by the term." But the same writer speaks of Yale University as "stated to be a poor and hard-worked seminary," and marvels at the extent and variety of its required curriculum. Since Mr. Pattison^s writing, a large number of schools have

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