Bedford inquirer. [volume] (Bedford, Pa.) 1857-1884, 1869-10-01
PETROLEUM Y. NAsBY,
(Wich wuz Postmaster)
AT HOME AMI
ABROAD.

UNIVERSITIES AT HOME AND
ABROAD.
The North German Correspondent an
English paper published in Berlin, states
that there are now sixty American students
attending lectures at the universities of that
city alone, and that those Of Heidelberg,
Bonn, Jena, Leipzie and the Mining Shool
at Freiberg, have quite as many more ma
triculants. Every year the number of Ameri-
can students increases in Germany, and the
reason is clear, for the advantages offered
by the German universities are nowhere
equaled by any in this country. Yet there
is no country on the face of the globe whose
people are so vauntiugly vain of its educa-
tional facilities as our own. There never
was an emptier boast, nor one more disas-
trous in its results, for if we set aside our
common school system-and even that is a
system only in name-our colleges and
universities, with less than half dozen ex-
ccptiOns, are incapable Of fitting a student
for matriculation even in one Of the higher
German schools. A diploma from German
university, or even from that Of Oxford
Cambridge or Dublin, is a guarantee of
scholarship, but If it be issued by one of our
colleges it means nothing more than thatthe
recipieps -~-~ collegian. 1t is quite possible
Ior him to be in nine out of ten col
leges in America, and yet be an ignoramus.
Yet this condition Of affairs, which drive our
young men abroad to seek educational IA.
cilities denied them at home, is due not so
much to the large class Of coIlegians as to
the controlling faculties of the colleges
Students have long since learned that the
diploma is given, not at all for devotion
to their studies, but simply and purely be-
cause parents or guardians have paid the
necessary fees for a certain number of years,
including so many lectures. 1t is nothing
against granting the diploma that the
lectures have been neglected, 50 that the
fees, including that of graduation, have
been paid Every student who procures
tickets for the regular courses of the col
lege knows that his degree viii follow, as a
matter of course, whether he has studied or
not
In the German schools all this is changed
There the student buys his tickets, which
entitle him to attend the lectures of the par
ticular university he has selected If his
object is really to learn, he has purchased
the chance to do so, but it allrests with him
self and if, after a regular course, he finds
that he is ignorant Of what he has had an
opportunity to acquire, he also finds him
self without diploma. Having paid for
the privilege of attending the lectures, he
can do it or not, but when the day of ex-
animation arrives, and the professors dis
cover that he has not been a student in the
real, true sense, he is mercilessly turned
away without recognition. If, on the con
trary, he has aYailcd himself of the noble
scholastic chances afforded him by German
university, the degree is bestowed, and the
student who has won it knows that it car
ries weight with it, and that it is worth in
the eyes Of thoughtful men more than the
biz of parchment on which it is written. 1t
means that the winner Of it is a scholar, and,
until cur own colleges and universities be-
come more anxious about the qualifications
Of their graduates than their numbers, these
institutions viii remain uusought by those
who seriously wish to be educated. .-Pbila-
deIphta Inauaer