Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1914-03-27

Vermont can not afford the needed
educational reform without use of
money heretofore expended for other
purposes.
1T is maintained in the Carnegie re-
port that Vermont is estopped from
any form of cooperation with the col
leges of the State because of the char
acter of their organization. The sug-
gestion means that our fathers have
placed the dead hand upon US, in their
sincere endeovor to provide for college
education according to their best abil-
ity and the best light of their times,
and brought about such a situation
with reference to higher education in
Vermont that we are precluded from
doing what all other States are doing,
viz, rendering assistance in some form
to higher education. That this west
tern method may be ideal may possibly
be true. That is a State which has
already organized and is in possession
of its own agency for higher education,
financial cooperation with other in
situations might be unwise, may be
freely admitted; but to assume from
that fact that State which does not
possess its own instrument for higher
education, and is not in position to as
sumo the exclusive financial support of
such an instrument, must sever COM
pletely its relation to higher schools, is
a wholly unwarranted disregard of local
conditions.
ITO pass over the practice of our
own State for the past thirty years, the
example of Dartmouth college in New
Hampshire, self-governing corpora
ton with an annual appropriation of
500, 900 from the State may be cited.
Other well known examples are Cornell,
Syracuse, st. Lawrence, and Alfred
universities in the State of New York;
the University of Pennsylvania and the
University of Pittsburg in the State of
Pennsylvania; Johns Hopkins university
in Maryland, which recently rec lived
from the State grant of 5000, 600 for
its medical school; Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology, which, notwith-
standing its State appropriation of
100000, has recently received gifts
amounting to over $4,000 Brown
university in Rhode Island, which has
been recently granted $4,000 for a de
partment of education very similar to
that at Middlebury; Connecticut is the
only State in New England which has
not recently contributed, or is not now
contributing, to institutions which
stand in precisely the same relation to
the State "a Middlebury college stands
to the State of Vermont today.
THE examples l have cited prove
that the fear lest State cooperation
may dry up the springs of private phil
anthropy is unwarrantcd. Such meas
ure of prosperity as has come to the
colleges Of Vermont has been achieved
almost entirely since the State began to
take an interest in them, and to re-
markable degree the amount of bene-
factions from outside has kept pace
with the amount of cooperation from
the State. When Mddlebury college
received its first State appropriation, it
was a struggling. starving institution,
with "a students, three old buildings,
no laboratories, library in a dark and
dismal den, and altogether weak and
inefficient college,"
In presenting the need of State
scholar hips President Thomas said:
81 ask you to realize my position few
years hence if the recommendation of
the Carnegie Foundation as to the with
drawal of all State scholarships should
be put in force. | would be obliged to
reply to letters from such applicants,
which come to me by the score from
every corner of our State, My boy, l
am sorry, but cannot help you The
State of Vermont has thought best to
withdraw all assistance from young
men desiring a higher education. If
you we've citizen of New Hampshire
could recommend you to Dartmouth
college, where New Hampshire provides
500, 900 annually for scholarships for
New Hampshire boys. If you were a
) resident of New York, | could suggest
) to you one of the 5000 scholarships
which the Empire State makes availa-
BILE for her youth, leaving them free to
, select any institution within her Dor
! ders. But you have the misfortune to
! live in Vermont, and can do nothing
: for you. If you lived in New Mexico OF
Arizona, you could get higher educa-
: ton at the expense of the State. II
J you lived in any other State of the
Union except this Green Mountain
commonwealth, you would find some
thing done for you to help you toward q