Americans -- England -- Oxford; Education -- United States; Education, Higher -- England -- Oxford; University of Oxford
The system at Harvard may be different in
detail from that at other American universities; but wherever a large
body of undergraduates are living under a single administrative
system, it can scarcely be different in kind.
Enough has been said to show that the only office which an
administrator can perform is a police office. Where the college and
the university are identical, the element of personal influence is
necessarily eliminated. But if the college were divided into separate
administrative units, the situation would be very different. The seven
general and two special offices I have indicated might be discharged,
as regards each undergraduate, by a dean and a few proctor-advisers;
and as the students and their officers would be living in the same
building, personal knowledge and influence might become the
controlling force. The solution of the administrative problem is
identical with the solution of the social and athletic problem, and in
both cases a movement toward it is begun. If the student body is
eventually divided into residential halls of the early mediæval type,
much good will result, and probably nothing but good, even if the
tutorial function proper is absent. As to the addition of the
tutorial function, that is a question of extreme complexity and
uncertainty, in order to grasp which it is necessary to review the
peculiar educational institutions of American universities.
III
THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM
As regards the American teaching system, the fact that the college so
long remained identical with the university has caused little else
than good. At Oxford and Cambridge, when a demand arose for
instruction in new fields, the university could not meet it because it
had little or no wealth and had surrendered its teaching function; and
the score of richly endowed colleges, by force of their inertia,
collectively resisted the demand. The enlargement in the scope of
instruction has been of the slowest. In America, each new demand
instantly created its supply. The moment the students in theology
required more than a single professor, their tuition fees as well as
other funds could be applied to the creation of a divinity school; and
the professorships in law, medicine, and the technical professions
were likewise organized into schools, each fully equipped under a
separate faculty for the pursuit of its special aim. Thus the ancient
college was developed by segregation into a fully organized modern
university. American institutions are composed of a reduplication,
not of similar colleges, but of distinct schools, each with its special
subject to teach. This fact makes possible a far higher standard of
instruction. The virtue of the administrative and social organization
in the English university, as has been pointed out, results from
division of the university into separate communities,--distinct
organs, each with its separate activity. The virtue of the American
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