The New York herald., 1874-08-07
President White on Natfonal Univer-
sities.

President White on National Univer-
stiles.
The unsatisfactory condition of our colleges
and the absolute failure of our higher edu-
cational system to give us university worthy
of the name are becoming generally acknowl-
edged Il is only within recent years that pub
lie attention has been directed to this subject
but even at this day few of the professors in
our leading institutions join in the discussion.
One reason of this is that too many Of them
are mere blockheads, who were made college
presidents and professors because they were
dull preachers Occasionally, however, one
of them, quicker than his fellows, finds out
what everybody else knows in regard to the
backwardness and defects of the system. An
instance is found in an address which Presi-
dent White. of Cornell University. has just
delivered before the National Educational As
sociation OF Detroit.
In this address President White points out,
at starting, two nations which have pursued
with equal success q like policy with regard
to primary and secondary education-Ger-
many and the United States-but he argues
that we have failed in obtaining better sys-
tenn of higher education because unlike Ger
many, we have not carried out the funda-
mental principle logically. Though some of
the German universities, he says, "are on
very old foundations they have been re-
modelled to suit modern needs and are in
reality new the greatest of all, the Univer-
citu ofR 10 fhon fha
majority Of our American colleges which have
any reputation" And then he goes On to
argue further that the American failure is
owing to the great number of our colleges,
their sectarian character, their poverty and
the absence Of State support and super
there is much force and in regard to
Mr.. Whites facts there cannot be two opin-
ions. But his reasoning is at fault-at fault
in the first place, because the American people
are not in all respects the highly intelli-
gent community they claim to be. Culture is
confined to the rich and intellectual acquire
ments to the poor. Until within dozen
years the need for great university was not
felt. The people were too poor and the popu-
lation too widely scattered to make the policy
which Germany pursued successful in this
country, even if the people had compelled the
States to adopt it. Sectarian schools of
higher class than the State afforded were on
the other hand q necessity. They were the
propaganda of the sects and without them
we should have had no higher educational
institutions at all. All the conditions in the
New World were different from those in the
Old In Germany, for instance, society is
settled. The population is not scattered over
continent. Eight universities there are
nearer to the body of the people than
eighty would be in the United States There
is more wealth and more leisure to enjoy it.
1t is comparatively easy in every way to equip
o university-easier, perhaps, to build up a
great institution like the University of Berlin
than to remodel old foundations to suit mod
ern needs. Germany surpasses us in higher
education simply because Germany is done
with telling trees and hewing timber and max
ing roads and building bridges and bringing
the wilderness under the subjugation of civil
zation. To expect America to rival Germany in
higher education is to expect that which is inn
possible, and it is impossible on the very prin-
ciples President White enumerates as axioms
s'The main condition Of primary education"
be says, sis diffusion of resources; the main
condition of advanced education is concentra-
ton of resources" We were always able to
build schoolhouse on every hill we are
just about getting ready to found great uni
versity, and this is the reason why we rival
Germany in our public school system, but fall
SO far behind her in higher education.
Considering everything our sectarian col
leges have done nobly. None Of them, not
even Harvard, is university, but they have
made o university possible. Their usefulness
has been hampered by their sectarian charac-
ter, their narrowness and their blunders.
All of them are very poor and some Of them
too ostentatious. One reason why some Of
the universities, and particularly the Catholic
they devote too much of their means to the
addition of acres to their landed estates.
What they need is not land, but facilities for
instruction professorships, libraries and uni
versity equipments In time they will learn
the lessons Of experience, and some of them
will rival, perhaps lead, the national universi-
ties which are surely coming as an outgrowth
Of our common school system.
The great number of feeble colleges now in
this country is matter of very little conse-
quence for in the great contest which is yet
to be made in the interest of higher education
the sectarian colleges win find that they must
be tried by Herbert Spencer's doctrine of the
survival of the fttest But while the sec
tartan colleges, including Harvard and Yale
and Columbia and Princeton, will be COM
pelled to contend with the national universi-
ties, we do not think it would be wise to begin,
what President White seems to demand, o