The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-02-20
ANOTHER DAY'SCONFERENCE
COLLEGE PRESIDENTS HEARD
 SPLENDID PAPERS.

DIornfng session Devoted to Discus-
 sion of "Thc Actual and Proper Lines
 University work"-To-day,s Pro-
 grnmmo.
 Dr. w. R. Harper, who is president of both the Association of American Universities and of Chicago university, presided at the sessions of the dele gates to the Association of American Universities yesterday. At the morn ing's session a change was made In the programme. Instead of adhering to the schedule the addresses listed for this morning were delivered yesterday be- cause of the fact that President David Star Jordan, of Leland Stanford uni versity. was oblived to leave town last night.
 Yesterday mornings session was de- voted to the discussion of the subject, The Actual and Proper Lines of Dis { tinction Between College and Univer- sity Work The paper presented by President Jordan was as follows:
 The college in America with it's four year courses covers, with the average well prepared student, the educational period from the age of seventeen to twenty-one. The university, using the term in the sense demanded for the purposes of this discussion, begins where the college leaves off. It fur nishes professional training, the in- struction of the lawyer, the physician, the clergyman, the engineer the teach CT, the scholar or the investigator. That there Is now no actual boundary be- tween the college and the university in America, excepting the artificial one of the certificates or degrees on comple- tion of a four-years' course, may read fly be granted; that there can be and therefore should be none in our educa- tional system will perhaps appear from the discussion which follows:
 In America we have no national edu- eationaI system Our colleges are Eng fish in birth, German in training. Our state universities are an outgrowth of the public school system. Our actual universities are half native to the soil, s half German-half arising from the oversoul of the colleges, half modelled by foreign methods and experience. Our professional schools have been un- til lately almost wholly commercial lectures and license to practice ex- changed for advertising. The colleges between the public schools and the uni versailles, elementary work encroaching on the time at the one end of the course and professional work crowding it out at the other, have adjusted themselves, each as well as 1t might, and in such final fashion that we can say with pride that of ali the number of our colleges no two are a1ike-with pride, I say, for freedom and fitness are of more impor- tance in education than theory or tra- dition.
 The American college stands between the gymnasium and the university It Is place for broadening outlooks, for the training of the will In the west the average college junior has been more seIf-dependent, has seen more of the actual stress of life, than the aver age German doctor of philosophy. This is because he was early released from the discipline of others.
 To sum up. In my judgment, with ' the fullest freedom of action each un- dergraduate should pursue some major subject chosen by himself and in some way related to his future life. He should follow this with reasonable dil- igence, doing his work from day to day, those not meeting these requirements being allowed to "bask and ripen" out side the institution, where the infiu- ences of idle men can do less mischief.
 Under these conditions the student is ready in his senior year to do some in dependent work, or undertake the be- ginning of professional training. The traditions of senior idleness where they exist should be overcome-a matter easily accomplished if the professors themselves are in earnest. For those students who have no real serious in- tsrest in their studies it is a matter of