Omaha daily bee., 1889-07-07
Our American Colleges.

Boston Globe: This is the sea-
son when public attention is di-
rected to our institutions of learn
ing, and especially to those which
graduate the men land women) who are
to largely shape the thought and liter
ary character of the nation in coming
years. The past week has witnessed
the harvesting of a large academic crop,
and that upon which we. have entered
livered of their classic progeny.
Harvard college, founded in 1886, is
only six years younger than the settle
ment of Boston. 1t was many years
before it dared to risk comparison with
any of the old universities of Europe,
which were looked up to as the vener-
able mothers of learning. Today 1t may
boldly challenge comparison with any
of the establishments of the Old World,
and for purposes that belong to our
American civilization it is superior to
any of them.
Few people are aware of the extent of
our higher educational machinery.
There are now in the United States
361 colleges devoted to the liberal arts,
with 4, ,442 instructors and 70,024 stu
dents. OF these colleges, 275 have an
annual income of $7,375, 200. Besides
these, we have 159 institutions for the
higher education of women, with 1854
instructors, and property amounting to
over $l2, 900, 900. There are also ninety
distinct schools of science, having
14,S9S students, and endowments reach
ing upwards of $3,000,000. This does
not include las schools of theology and
fifty schools of law. having over 10000
students, and property amounting to
over $20,000, 900.
Besides these 1914 institutions of
higher learning, we have l ,476 schools
for secondary learning. OF the leading
colleges, 4S have received grants of
land from the public domain, while the
Michigan university and some others
are supported entirely by the state.
Taken as a whole, our American col
leges are so literally endowed that stu
dents are enabled to get an education,
on the average, at One-tenth of its ac-
tual cost. The liberality of our rich
men to the colleges stands as very
gratifying rebuke to the aspersion that
we are wholly sordid, material people,
and is not equalled in any country in
the world. AS resultth colleges have
most of them passed out of the state of
miserable poverty that formerly
hemmed in their usefulness, and some
of them are even af1luent. According
to the report of the United States COM
missioner of education for the year
1SS6-S7 we find that 304 of our colleges
have property to the amount of $45, ,94S,-
77S, while 206 report funds amounting
to $44, ,416lSS.
In our higher institutions of learning
there are constantly about Ia, 900 stu
dents in training for the profe ssional
and literary walks of life. or these the
proportion of women IS constantly on
the increase, and we have set to the
world the example of education which
knows no sex aud no previous condition.
1t is true that Old-time prejudices still
linger stubbornly, as to perfect equality
of the sexes in education, butithey are
gradually surrendering before the spirit
of progress, and are surely doomed to
disappear entirely in due time.
The organization of educational insti-
tuions in any given country will natur-
ally conform to the drift and genius OF
Its civilization. We do not achieve the
scholarship and itechn cal proficiency in
special directions that are found in the
European colleges, but we send out the
kind of men that are fitted to the needs
OF our rounded progress and cultivation
as citizens of this republic. We are on
the wing, and have no time to linger
around the moss-growh haunts OF an
tiquists. We are after learning that
points forward to the future instead of
back to the past, and the Paris exposi-
tion to-day bears witness of how well
we have succeeded.
On the whole, we are proud of our in
stitutions of higher learning. Though
we have our share of the rust of con-
servatism clinging to us, with much
that is faulty, and even frivolous in
education, we are none the less in the
vanguard of progress, and give every
promise of remaining there. Every
Commencement in every college leaves
behind some concession of the dead past
to the living present and the foreshad-
owed future. HENRY APPLETON.