The educational awakening included three things: First, a few men in the 1890’s, then scores and hundreds, went to the divinity schools and graduate departments of the great universities for further training after they had been graduated from the colleges of the Disciples. Second, these colleges themselves gained greater resources, raised their standards, and many of them became excellent institutions. Third, with well-trained men now available for faculties, there arose some graduate schools of sound quality in connection with a few of the Disciples’ colleges. This advance proceeded slowly and on an uneven front. Some colleges became better than others, and some became better sooner. Some died because they could not meet the more rigorous demands of the modern age, including those of the standardizing and accrediting agencies; and some with small resources and low academic standards continued to render valuable service in educationally retarded areas. Most of the improvement in the colleges came after the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1897 there were forty-five educational institutions, including five “universities” and twenty-five colleges; and the total of their endowments was $1,177,000. Six years later this amount had been doubled. Thirty years after that, these doubled endowments had been multiplied by ten—and seventeen of the forty-five schools had disappeared. The establishment of the first “Bible chair” at the University of Michigan by the Christian Woman’s Board of Missions was a piece of educational pioneering which led to great developments and became the Disciples’ most original contribution to American education. There was a touch of genius in the discovery of the obvious fact, hitherto apparently unnoticed, that the students in state universities, which were growing enormously, offered a constituency for religious education, and the further fact that there were more young Disciples in state schools than in their own colleges. Bible chairs were established at many other state universities, some under the auspices of state missionary societies, others under independent boards. Some developed into schools of religion in which several denominations cooperated. The one at the University of Virginia became an integral part of the university. The whole development showed that the education of the future lay leaders did not rest wholly with the Disciples’ colleges, indispensable as these were, but could be promoted by using also state or other endowed institutions.