im BOSTON UNIVERSITY BULLETIN VOLUME II NOVEMBER, 1913 No. 6, PART ,1 BOSTON UNIVERSITY AMERICAN UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN THE BIRTH- YEAR OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS PUBLISHED BIMONTHLY BY BOSTON UNIVERSITY 688 BOYLSTON STREET Entered as Second-Class Matter at the Post Office, Boston, Massachusetts ttowgraph DIRECTORY OF OFFICERS LEMUEL H. MURLIN, LL.D. PRESIDKNT OF THE UNIVERSITY 688 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. HON. JOHN L. BATES, LL.D. PRESIDENT OP THE CORPORATION 934 Tremont Building, Boston, Mass. SILAS PEIRCE TREASURER OF THE UNIVERSITY 688 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. WILLIAM MARSHALL WARREN, Ph.D. DEAN OF THE COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS 688 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. F. SPENCER BALDWIN, Ph.D., R. P. D., Dean EVERETT WILLIAM LORD, A. M„ Associate Dean THE COLLEGE OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 688 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. LAURESS J. BIRNEY, D.D. DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY 72 Mt. Vernon Street, Boston, Mass. HOMER ALBERS, A.M., LL.B. DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF LAW 11 Ashburtbn Place, Boston, Mass. JOHN P. SUTHERLAND, M.D. DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE 1 East Concord Street, Boston, Mass. WILLIAM E. HUNTINGTON, Ph.D., LL.D. DEAN OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL 688 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. Ciis The University DEC 15 1313 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN THE BIRTH-YEAR OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY BY WILLIAM FAIRFIELD WARREN, Ph.D., LL.D., S.T.D. President Emeritus WILLIAM FAIRFIELD WARREN Born at Williamsburg, Mass., March 13, 1833; son of Mather and Anne Miller (Fairfield) Warren; A. B. Wesleyan University, 1853; Andover Theol. Sem., 1854-56; U. of Berlin, 1856-57; U. of Halle, 1857-58; (S. T. D. Ohio Wesleyan, 1862; LL.D. Wesleyan, 18 74) ; married Harriet Cornelia Merrick of Wilbraham, Mass., April 14, 1861. Ordained M. E. Ministry 1855; professor systematic theology in Mission Inst., Bremen, Germany (which later became Martin Inst., Frankfort), 1860-66; acting president Boston Theological Seminary, 1866-73; president Boston Uni- versity, 1873-1903; professor comparative theology and phil- osophy of religion since 1873; member Royal Asiatic Society, American Oriental Society; Author: The True Key to Ancient Cosmology, 1882: Paradise Found — the Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole, 1885; the Quest of the Perfect Religion, 1886 (also editions in Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and German); In the Footsteps of Arminius, 1888; The Story of Gottlieb, 1890 (translated in Arabic and German) ; Constitutional Law Questions in the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1894; The re- ligions of the World and the World-Religion, 1900; The Earliest Cosmologies — The Universe in the Thought of the Ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, etc., 1909; Editorial contrib- utor to Deutsche Literaturzeitung, Leipzig, Babylonian and Oriental Record, London, Journal American Oriental Society, and other learned periodicals. Club: University. Home: 131 Davis Avenue, Brookline, Mass. Office: 72 Mt. Vernon Street, Boston. AMERICAN UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN THE BIRTH- YEAR OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY The motives which led to the founding of Boston University can never be rightly appreciated nor its early plans correctly esti- mated without an understanding of the quality of American uni- versity education in the year 1869. At this day few persons have any adequate idea of the need then existing in New England, and in the country at large, for new resources and for new leader- ship in the whole range of liberal and professional study. There were then in the United States but two institutions maintaining the four regular university faculties of divinity, law, medicine and the liberal arts. These, of course, were Harvard and Yale. The latter of these had only 17 students in its law department, 23 in its medical and 25 in its theological. Harvard in its divinity department was yet weaker, having but 19 students, though stronger in the law and medical schools, which had 138 and 308 respectively. In both institutions the so called academic de- partment was the only one respectably housed and equipped. Indeed, not until eighteen years later, in January, 1867, did "Yale College" obtain from the legislature of Connecticut the right to call itself Yale University; and to this day the strictly legal title of the Harvard corporation is "The President and Fellows of Harvard College," which title is regularly used in the official reports of the president and treasurer. One of the most eminent of educational authorities for the period, Daniel Coit Gilman, says: "In the middle of the century the word university was cautiously used in Cambridge and New Haven. ... To speak of 'our university' savored of pretense in those old colleges." In the liberal arts the instruction in both institutions was creditable, although elective studies were almost unknown and little regard was had to varying individual needs or aims in the student body. In neither college was there as yet a professorship 3 for the German language and literature, nor indeed was there one whose occupant was to give his whole attention to French, or to any other modern language. Even in history, philosophy, and the natural sciences, the offered courses, compared with those of today, were meager, and to a notable extent elementary. In the range of professional education the state of things was far worse. The theological seminaries of the country were mostly young and as yet struggling for recognition. The strongest of them were unrelated to the schools for other professions. Their pro- fessors were few and the students poorly qualified for their work. In Harvard not one in four of its nineteen students of divinity had had a collegiate training. A decade earlier the corporation, after years of deliberation, definitely voted to discontinue its feeble divinity school as a department of the university, and se- cured from the legislature an enabling act looking toward this end. An extremely small percentage of the churches in the United States had ministers who had ever seen the inside of any school of theology. Even the religious periodicals seldom had for editors men who had enjoyed a training in theology. It would be difficult to name a half dozen of our biblical scholars of the period whose works were read or known beyond the Atlantic. The need for a new ideal and for new appliances was exigent. The condition of the law schools of the land was even more discreditable than that of the schools of divinity. These latter had as a rule a course of instruction of three years, and two or more professors giving their whole time to the work. Most of the law schools on the contrary had a course of twenty or thirty weeks only, and in place of full-time teachers only busy law practi- tioners, preoccupied with their ordinary duties in office or court. At Harvard only half of the courses were given in one year, the other half being reserved for the year following. This arrange- ment was, of course, economical, but it was fatal to any discrim- ination between fundamental and other studies and to an ordi- nary progress from the one group to the other. "Which half the student should take first was determined by the accident of his entering in an odd or even year." Even so, a residence of only eighteen months was required. Furthermore, the circular of both schools, the Harvard and the Yale, announced year after year: "No examination, nor any particular course of study is necessary for admission." At Yale, in the early fifties, the law school had a faculty consisting of two teachers, Governor Dutton 4 and a colleague; but on the death of the colleague in 1855 Governor Dutton "conducted its affairs without assistance until his death in 1869." This is the statement of Francis Wayland, later an ornament and historian of the school. At Harvard, as President Eliot has often stated, there was at this time no ex- amination for admission to the law school, none for promotion from term to term, and none for graduation. The only thing obligatory was the prompt payment of the fees for one school year and a half. Such was the easy process by which the degree of bachelor of laws was then earned. What shall be said of American medical schools of the same date? Let an expert answer. The following statements are from an article on medical education in Munroe's Encyclopedia of Education, and they relate to the period we are here studying: "The schools were thus nothing more than money-making ven- tures unrestrained by law. A school that began in October would graduate a class the next spring. No educational re- quirement was made for entrance. Any applicant who could pay his fees was accepted. Against these demoralizing con- ditions little progress was made until the early eighties." (Vol. iv. 178.) Both in Cambridge and in New Haven the medical school was not so much the creation of the institution now known as the university as it was of the medical practitioners in the neighbor- hood organized into a professional society. Even their original names show this. In 1869, and for some time thereafter, the name "Massachusetts Medical College" still lingered in the Harvard catalogue. In the year 1880 Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: — "It is only in recent times — perhaps within twenty-five years — that the institution has been called the Harvard Medical School." Not until the charter changes of 1879 did the New Haven school receive the name "The Medical Department of Yale College." Indeed, it was not until 1884 that the Yale College Corporation acquired more than one-half control in the administration of the school, the other half having been retained and exercised from the beginning by the Con- necticut Medical Society.* Not until 1879, ten years after the founding of Boston University, were the medical students at Yale "required to attend any full college year." (President * The Harvard Divinity School had a similar origin, and from 1816 to 1830 it was tinder the joint supervision and control of the "Society for Promoting Theological Education in Har- vard University " and the Harvard College Corporation. 5 Porter.) In both schools the physician teachers fixed and di- vided among themselves the revenue obtained from the students' fees. Even at ancient Harvard less than one-half of the students possessed a college training. Such is a glimpse of the educational situation in 1869. No wonder that at the annual meeting of the National Teachers' Association, held in Cleveland, in August, 1870, Dr. J. W. Hoyt, reporting as chairman of a Committee appointed by the same body the previous year, pronounced the condition of higher edu- cation in the United States "absolutely deplorable." He added as " a statement no well informed citizen will venture to deny," "We have as yet no real approach to a real university."* As to provision for the higher education of women at the date here under consideration there was in all New England not one college of liberal arts to which women could resort, either for sharing the privileges provided for their brothers, or to be in- structed in a collegiate community of their own. The school sys- tem of Boston had no provision for so much as a preparation of girls for college. The old-fashioned private "finishing school" was supposed to be the all-sufficient provision for the daughters of the wealthy; the town academy or select school, the crowning privilege to which their less favored sisters ought to aspire. Apart from certain hopeful beginnings of better things in Ohio, the same dearth prevailed throughout the country. The Uni- versity of Michigan did not admit women until 1870. Even Oberlin in her theological department discriminated against women and could offer nothing in law or in medicine. It was left to Boston University to be the first in the world's his- tory to open to men and women on equal terms, not only the en- tire circle of the liberal arts, but also at the same time the entire circle of the post-collegiate professional schools. (Kiddle and Schem, Cyclopedia of Education, p. 148.) One peculiarity of the university life of the New England of 1869 is seldom mentioned by historians and can be mentally pictured by men of the present day only by protracted effort. In their inmost nature and function Harvard and Yale were two theologically diverse Congregational Churches engaged in teach- ing and learning. Each had its legally adopted "Creed and Covenant." In each the men who constituted the Corporation were, as in other churches, the trustees of the property used, and * See Report of the United States Commissioner of Education, 1870, p. 419. 6 as such provided the place of worship, Cared for the lighting, heating, repairs, etc. The members of the faculty with their families made up the relatively permanent resident body of the church's membership. Students bringing from their home pas- tors letters of church membership were received into the college church precisely as they would have been into any other of the corresponding Congregational variety, Unitarian or Othodox^ in Cambridge or New Haven. The President (or other Faculty member) , officiating as pastor and aided by lay deacons, admin- istered the sacrament of the Lord's Supper at stated times ac- cording to the custom of the old time New England churches> the laity remaining in their seats. To students closing their connection with the college the president or pastor gave letters of dismission and recommendation to other churches of the same faith and order. Amherst College, many years younger, was not considered "fully organized" until it had a formally adopted "Creed and Covenant," an ordained minister as pastor, and a suitable number of lay deacons. (Tyler's History, p. 194.) Even the officers and students of the Andover Theological Sem- inary were organized into a church and had a creed and covenant and a pastoral service of their own. The chief differences between these Harvard and Yale churches and the corresponding variety in the cities where they were situ- ated were, (1) the necessarily fluent make-up of their transient undergraduate membership; (2) their maintenance of daily as well as Sunday worship ; and (3) the rules respecting attendance on the daily and weekly worship. Under these rules every stu- dent, whether a member of the college church or not, was held to regular chapel attendance daily, as well as to the Sunday ser- vices, and this under academic, instead of ecclesiastical, penalties. Now whatever one may say in commendation of the New England college church in its ideal, or in recognition of its accom- plished personal, social, or denominational service in former days, there was certainly one great infelicity inseparable from it. That infelicity was that no student conscientiously debarred from ac- cepting the particular "Creed and Covenant" of his college could ever feel that in the eyes of his instructors his status in the aca- demic community was really normal. He could not hope to be in their eyes a persona altogether grata. However sincere and consistent he might be in his own religious life, he was a Dis- senter in the presence of an Established Church and had to ac- 7 cept the disabilities of a Dissenter. Harvard disbanded its church early in the eighties; but in Yale the college church still lives on, though at present no longer reported annually in the Congrega- tional Year Book. The churches in Amherst College, Williams and Dartmouth are still reported; and at last accounts the senior class at Williams, under the tutelage of the president, was each year conducted through that palladium of Calvinistic Orthodoxy, the Westminster Catechism. In 1869, in Harvard, despite the wishes of many of her noble representatives, direct and indirect influences were freely employed to win students to the Unitarian Communion, while in Yale like influences were at work to win to the Orthodox Congregational fellowship. In the light of the foregoing it is easy to see why truly intelli- gent friends of the higher education in 1869 believed that the time had come for a new university and why the Legislature of Massachusetts with great unanimity incorporated it. In the whole Commonwealth there was not one college of liberal arts which in its rules and administration was free from inherited dis- criminations with respect to religious creeds. There was not one which opened the higher education to women. There was not one school of law or of medicine which was not thoroughly un- worthy of so enlightened and just a Commonwealth. Thus at its birth Boston University faced great opportunities and felt the inspiration of a call to leadership. Fortunately the Civil War was over and the educational forces of the country were now organizing and co-operating in a manner . more effective than ever before. Financial resources vastly in excess of any previously possessed or even hoped for speedily became available. Men of wide vision and rare execu- tive ability appeared in unanticipated numbers East and West. Every grade and form of education in America, from lowest to highest, felt a new access^of life. The fifty years following 1869 can never cease to have significance in the history of American institutions of learning. Harvard and Yale became for the first time true universities. The Johns Hopkins, the Leland Stanford and the University of Chicago came into being with means ade- quate to new and costly experiments. The state universities began to win students by the thousands and appropriations by the hundred thousand. One institution, the Military Academy at West Point, came at the close of the period to command a revenue of two million dollars in one year. Among American 8 Universities, however, despite the destruction of its endowment in the great fire of 1872, Boston University remains historic by- reason of the following among other notable particulars: 1. Its chief founder, Isaac Rich, devoted to it a fortune larger than had ever been given at that date by any one American citizen for the promotion of the higher education. He thus stimulated the public spirit which in its manifestations in recent years has amazed the Old World. 2. Its plan of organization was at the time new and was recognized as original and valuable advance over the distinc- tively English and the distinctly German type, securing at the same time the advantages of each. (See George Gary Bush, History of Higher Education in Massachusetts, pp. 341 ff., pub- lished by the United States Bureau of Education.) 3. In its early negotiations and agreements with the Na- tional University of Athens and Royal University of Rome it was the first in all history to point out and to arrange for secur- ing the advantages of university co-operation on an interconti- nental scale. Today's arrangements for exchanges between American professors and those of Germany and France, as also the establishment of the American schools of Archaeology in Athens and Rome, were due in a measure not yet fully recognized to Boston University's initiative in the early seventies. (See Thirteenth Annual Report of the President, pp. 5-17. Uni- versity Year Book, vol. ii, pp. 17-23. Bostonia for January, 1903. Also Boston — Athens — Rome. A Documentary History of the Earliest Experiment in University Reciprocity on the International Scale.) 4. As already noted, this university, without waiting for the pressure of public sentiment from without, was the first in the world to lift every traditional scholastic bar and ban against women as women. It was the first in America to confer upon a woman — Helen Magill, later wife of President White of Cornell University, American Ambassador to Germany — the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Upon the gifted Anna Oliver, A.B., the University also conferred what is believed to have been the first degree in theology ever won in course, or in any way, by a woman. 5. It has never conferred an honorary degree. 6. It was the first university in America to present with suitable entrance requirements a three years' graded course in 9 medicine, and to require its completion in residence. Later it was also the first to require a four years' course. 7. It was the first institution in America to present and to require the mastery of a graded course in law with suitable en- trance requirements. For some years it was the only one main- taining three years' course of instruction in this field. 8. Its academic faculty was the first in America to be made up exclusively of professors who had pursued post graduate studies in Europe. At one time in the eighties its requirements for admission to the College of Liberal Arts included successful examinations in four languages besides English. This advanced standard was maintained until the New England colleges agreed to unite in an effort to fix for all of them uniform entrance re- quirements. 9. The School of Theology was the first in the country to present regular courses of lectures by eminent scholars represent- ing different religious denominations. Also the first to estab- lish a professorship for the study of all religions. Also the first to make the theory, history, and present state of Christian Missions, studies required for graduation. (See New Schaff- Herzog Encyclopedia, vol. XI, pp. 365 f.) 10. Despite all financial disasters and drawbacks it gave such impulse to reform in professional education that already in the early seventies it led both Harvard and Yale in the number and the scholastic standing of its students in the professional de- partments. In the third annual report of the President it was statistically shown : — (1) That last year (1874-75) the number of professional stu- dents in Boston University was 42 more than in Harvard, and 197 more than in Yale. (2) That, counting all departments, the number of tributary collegiate and professional institutions was the same as in Har- vard, and five more than in Yale. (3) That, counting the entire membership of the University, its percentage of graduate students was six higher than Harvard and nine higher than Yale. (4) That, counting out the academic elements — three classes only having as yet entered — and comparing the remaining de- partments common to the three, Boston's percentage of graduate students was but two below Yale's, while it was two more than double the percentage of Harvard. (Cited in Bush, p. 349.) In the year 1879 the University closed its first decade of his- tory. Some indication of the impression it had made upon the 10 country is given in the annual report of the United States Com- missioner of Education for that year. The document begins as follows : — "The present condition of superior education in this country is, on the whole, encouraging to all lovers of sound learning and solid culture. Institutions of long establishment are broadening and deepening their plans; institutions of recent foundation are pushing into the field untrammelled by tradition and full of the spirit of the age with which they are solely identified. Promi- nent in the highest degree among the latter institutions stands Boston University, rich in endowment, imbued with advanced ideas of impartial and universal education, brought into closest competition with older institutions, and able, by virtue of the conditions which have called it into existence, to combine exact scholarship and severe tests with elastic methods and eclectic courses; it is unquestionably destined to exercise a determining influence in the new methods of education which the time de- mands, and for which it is expectantly waiting." (Report p. cviii.) The beneficent effects of Boston University's initiatives on the older universities, and on later ones of richer endowment, no man has ever estimated or ever can. Under the conditions which prevailed many of those initiatives were venturesome in the extreme, and some of them impracticable. Enough that all of them have played their part in working the profound change for the better by which American university education in this happy year of grace is distinguished from American university education in 1869. WILLIAM FAIRFIELD WARREN. 11