The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1890-08-22
COLLEGE TRAINING.
It Is No Longer Inimical to Success in
RrrSiuass

business Lite.
A good deal of discussion has been
excited by Mr.. Andrew Carnegie's decla-
ration that, so far as his observation.
goes, college-bred young men are not
apt to succeed in business. Assuming
that the purpose of business is to make
money, he says that college graduate
does not fulfill it SO quickly or so surely
as one who goes into business immedi-
ately upon leaving school. There was
time, no doubt, when no one would
have disputed the assertion. The origi-
nal aim of universities was to fit Young
men for the church, and up to the be-
ginning OF this century, such colleges
as Harvard, Yale and Princeton SO far
contormed to the medieval conception
OF their functions, that majority of
their graduates were intended for the
ministry and entered upon it's duties.
Even those who chose the professions
OF medicine or law were largely impelled
by other than pecuniary motives, and
did not contemplate rivalry with busi-
ness men as regards the accumulation
of property.
In the days when college curricu-
lum was mainly confined to Greek,
Latin and the higher mathematics, it
was generally acknowledged that lad
looking forward to business life would
do better to enter a store or counting
room at an early age than to spend at
college the seven important years be-
tween fourteen and twenty-one. Not
only would the graduate find it difficult
to make up for the long start acquired
by his Intercollegiate competitors, but
he would be handicapped by habits,
tastes, predictions and points of view,
but i'll adapted to success in business.
1t was, perhaps, the belief once current
in the disqualification of highly edu-
Gated young men for business pursuits
that led the elder James Gordon Ben
nett to say to Mr.. George w. Childs (as
the latter tells us in his "Recollec-
tions'0:
'Childs, how unfortunate it is for boy to
have rich parents. If you and had been born
that way, perhaps we wouldn't have amounted
to much.''
In this country, however, and to a
considerable extent in England, the
purposes and methods of college educa.
ton have undergone process of read
adjustment during the present genera
ton. The results of the changes in the
aim and the curriculum of universities
are not yet so ma nifest as they will be
later, but we may already predict with
confidence that the Carnegies of the flu
ture will have comparatively little
ground for pronouncing college train
ing unsuited to business success. To
make clergymen has ceased to be the
primary purpose of our chief institu-
tions of learning. They are rather de-
signed to qualify young men for effect
i've exertion in whatever vocation they
may choose to enter.
Their present function is twofold |;
first to effect a general stimulation and
discipline of the mental faculties: and,
secondly, to supply instru ction through
elective courses in subjects specially
adapted to secure advancement in the
particular vocation to which young
man looks forward. The time which
formerly lad must have expended
upon Greek, he can now devote to civil
engineering or to electricity and chem
istry, whose relations to industry are
manifold, direct and obvious. Moreover,
the spirit of undergraduate life, as
might be expected, now that studies are
adjusted to postgraduate intentions,
has become less academical and more
practical. Instead of being, what. it used
to be, microcosm sequestered from
prosaic bread earning existence and
having sea rely any points of contact
with it, the college has become vesti-
bule of the outdoor world. Universities,
in fine. have recognized the necessity Of
such radical reco Instruction of their pro-
grammes and processes as shall make
education not merely an intellectual
gymnastic but a specific and substan-
tial promoter of advancement in any
career.-N. Y. Ledger.