Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1917-09-08
v. VA. i. HAS 50
YEARS. HISTORY
THAT MARKS THE SUCCESS OF
GREAT STATE EDUCATIONAL
INSTITUTION.

MORGANTOWN, Sept. O. Sep.
TENDER seventeenth West Virginia
University will open her doors for
the fifty-frst time to the youth of
the Mountain State. Last June it
was intended to celebrate in fitting
manner the fiftieth anniversary of
the institution, but the great interest
in the war, the withdrawal of stu
dents and the demand for economy
in the conduct of the affairs of the
institution caused the authorities to
give up this plan
In its fifty years of service to the
State West Virginia University has
graduated with degrees more taaa
| sixteen hundred men and women.
The 1917 class, in fact, places the
the number OF graduates above the
eighteen hundred mark. 1t is indica-
| tive of the growth of the University
that previous to 1900 only about six
hundred men and women had been
graduated although the Institution
| had been in existence total of thir-
ty-three years. Since 1900, however,
the increase in enrolment and the
| consequent increase in the number
Of graduates has been remarkable
and the result has been that ap-
proximately twelve hundred men and
women have been graduated in the
seventeen years since that date, or
more than twice as many as in the
first thirty-three years of the life of
the University
Reasons of Growth
The reasons for this remarkable
growth are not difficult to point out.
| The main reason, of course has been
the wonderful tendency toward high
err education in West Virginia as
State. The population of West Vir-
ginia, too, has increased more than
forty per cent in these seventeen
years and the increase in liquid
wealth has been enormous due ito
the exploitation of the unlimited nat
uraa resources such as coal, oil and
gas. Sixty men graduated in 1900
and lao in 1917, or an increase of $50
per cent.
One other reason stands out prom
inently in any list of the causes for.
this remarkable growth of the Uni
versity. Before 1900, or whereabouts,
1t was customary for large number
of the young men of the State who
We're prominent and whose people
had the means, to go to the larger
and older institutions of the east.
The cause of this migration is diff
ticult to determine because the Uni
versity for the past two decades has
offered the very best obtainable in
the way of teachers and equipment,
so that the most plausible excuse
for these well-to-do young men leav-
ing the State was that the Uliver-
sity did not have the prestige" the
older and better known institutions
outside the State possessed.
In recent years, however, this
opinion has entirely vanished and in
the rolls of the University Registrar
each session can be found the names
of the sons and daughters of practi-
cally every leader in the business,
political and profes sional life of the
| Commonwealth.
Has Reputation.
The University of West. Virginia,
too, has gradually established repu.
tation for doing work that is the
equal of that offered by any Univer-
sity in the country Men who grad
uate here in Law, Engineering, Agri-
culture, and in the other colleges of
the University receive training
that is practically suited to the con
ditiCns that exist in the practice of
| law, the profession of engineering,
and the pursuit of agriculture. The
West Virginia soil, the practices at
the bar that are peculiar to the
State, and other State conditions are
studied and the courses of study pre-
scribed in the various colleges of the
Uniersvity are adapted to give the
very best of training for the work a
| young West Virgiaian will have to
do, and the peculiar conditions he
will have 10 deal with.
some Facts.
One hundred and ninety three
deans, professors associate profess
| -snra instructnrs and eIndan4 nccis-