Education

THE Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College, 1876—77 (John Wilson & Son, Cambridge, 1878), are very far from the dry reading one might expect. President Eliot gives life to everything he does, and his business report of the great institution of which he is the head and heart bears throughout the glow of his practical enthusiasm. This record of a single year may not exhibit to those unacquainted with Harvard’s history the great advance made in the last decade, — a longer and stronger stride, probably, than ever before taken in several times ten years, — but it will show the high, broad ground she now occupies. President Eliot is a man possessing those active qualities seldom found with distinguished scholarly attainments,— force, address, physical energy, executive efficiency in details, and a remarkable talent for administration. His plans have advanced without reaction, and, so far as time has sufficed, have proved successes beyond general expectation. Under his management, Harvard has, first of all American institutions of the class, come into the line of European universities. She has emerged from the college state. The college proper (that is, the undergraduate department) and the associated schools of law, medicine, science, etc., are now coordinates of one body, the university. Formerly, those schools were looked upon rather as appendages of the college proper. “ During the current year,” says the president, “ the attention of the college faculty will be especially given to strengthening and systematizing the instruction for graduates. In all probability, it will ultimately be found desirable to organize a department or faculty of philosophy, which shall bear to the college, as regards the age and standing of its students, the same relation which the professional schools of the university would bear to the college if (as will be the case at no very remote day) only Bachelors of Arts were admitted to them,” — a consummation most devoutly to be wished; for then here, as in much of Europe to-day, the uneducated or but partly educated cannot stand in the professional ranks with men who have labored for and won titles of efficiency.

Before 1872, there was no provision in Harvard University for advanced students in art, though the scientific school did something for advanced students in science; but in the spring of 1872 the corporation and board of overseers adopted the plan to give the degree of Master of Arts, and the two new degrees of Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Science, on certain conditions of residence, study, and examination. The statistics show up to this time much progress made (owing to the adoption of that plan) towards the organization of a department in which Bachelors of Arts may pursue advanced studies in a systematic way, with definite aims. In 1872 there was a total of but fifteen (A. M., Ph. D., and S. D.), but in 1875 there were forty, and in 1877 we have fifty one. These results prove both that there are many who desire to continue their studies in arts or science at the university for a few years after attaining the Bachelor’s degree, and that these advanced degrees, gicen upon examination, “ seem desirable distinctions and objects of reasonable ambition to an excellent class of young men.” But this department still leaves much to he desired; for it is imperfectly organized and has no distinct faculty, and its members, not feeling that they belong to an organized body like the college or law school, do not hold themselves, as they should, “ a collective body constituting the highest and most precious department of the university.”

Harvard has secured another important advance in the adoption by the corporation and board of overseers (January, 1877) of sixteen statutes, a compact body of fundamental rules, in lieu of all existing statutes and laws of the university, after discussions extending over seven years. Now the practical working and limits of every part of the various academic bodies, except as regards the definition of powers intrusted to the several faculties, are concisely and comprehensively defined.

One apparent improvement is immediately seen from the eighth statute, whereby the various departments are made one in the disposition of terms and vacations; and the former errors of one long, unbroken stretch of work from January to the end of June, and the difference of date and continuance of labor and recess between the departments of Boston and Cambridge, are corrected. “ This external unity,” President Eliot says, “ is only one manifestation of the common spirit which animates the several departments; it is an evidence that the several departments, once isolated and almost hostile, are becoming more and more alike in methods and aims, and feel themselves to be coordinate members of one body, — the university.”

It is a principal function of a university, as he further remarks, to train leaders, — “ men who have originating power, who reach forward, and in all fields of activity push beyond the beaten paths of habit, tradition, and custom ; ” but how large measures of liberty should be intrusted to students to insure that aim is a problem that Harvard must continue to work upon while she and the country grow. The subject of voluntary attendance—practiced with seniors, and at one time tried with the juniors — appears in that problem, and so, but with far less uncertainty, does the system of elective studies. Upon the former the faculty is divided. The college dean, who treats of it very comprehensively in his report, concludes that the best way to regulate the matter would be to make the privilege the reward for a certain degree of scholarship. Upon the latter there is less disagreement, and the dean’s tables and reasoning therefrom lead to the clear conclusion “that the average student, with the help of his instructors, friends, and natural advisers, makes a more judicious selection of studies for himself than the faculty could make for him ; . . . a much better selection than the old prescribed curriculum of this college, or the present prescribed curriculum of any other colleges would be.”

An important point of general interest, and to which President Eliot calls attention, is that of the asserted growing incapacity of the students to recite well. The importance of this faculty he insists upon ; the ability “of making a clear, oral statement, one of the most useful powers which an educated man can possess, no matter what his profession.” It would seem that the custom of written examinations, of lectures instead of recitations, and the general use of notes, are tending, while they induce ready expression with the pen, to weaken that of speech.

The report of the Dane Law School is exceedingly gratifying. It increases in numbers, in the quality of its students, and in growth of money capital. The establishment of an examination for admission, and the extension of the course of study from two to three years, have not caused the predicted decrease of its numbers; but, on the contrary, there are two more students this year than last, though the number of non-graduates entering has fallen off, —— a good promise this last, we think, for the profession. The dean protests righteously against the fact that the law school has not only no control over admission to the legal profession, but that it receives no countenance from those who exercise such control. The single privilege it has enjoyed is having the time actually spent in the school considered as an equivalent for the same length of time passed in a lawyer’s office, and nowhere has there been any recognition of its degree or of its examinations. The president, referring to the dean’s report, expresses a summing up in these plain words : “ The Harvard law school does not desire to have its graduates admitted to practice, either in Massachusetts or elsewhere, on the diploma of the school, and it asks no favors for its graduates at any examinations for admission prescribed by competent authority; but it feels justified in asking that its graduates, who have spent two or three years in the study of law, under the guidance of learned and faithful teachers, should not be placed, as regards admission to the bar, on a level with persons who have never opened a law book, as is now the case under the rules of the New York Court of Appeals.” One more reference we would make to the report of the dean of the law school, and that is to the distinction therein set forth between the profession of attorney and that of counselor, which is not intelligently recognized in this country, where the States commonly treat the legal profession as if its members were attorneys merely. In England, the barrister, that is the counselor, can become such only, first, by entering one of her four constituted colleges ; secondly, by procuring a “call” to the bar from the governing body of one of these colleges. The barrister is absolutely subject to the authority of the college, and to that alone, and the courts have no more authority over him than they have over litigants who conduct their own causes without counsel. Attorneys in England are distinctly apprentices, without the rights and selfgovernance of barristers. In this country all lawyers are treated as attorneys, responsible to the courts alone, and possessing no rights from or appeal to their profession, as is the case with clerical, medical, and scientific men, but are controlled by the State. “ Therefore,” as the dean of the law school states, ” the fundamental reason why this law school has always been at cross-purposes with the State upon the subject of legal education is that the former has found its mission in training young men for the profession of counselor, while the State, backed by the opinion of the legal profession, has insisted upon the traditional training of an attorney, and to a greater or less extent has refused to recognize anything else. . . . The law school has no means nor facilities for the education of attorneys, while its means and facilities for educating counselors are unrivaled. . . . The functions of a counselor or advocate are, it is true, both scientific and practical, but the practical part must be acquired in courts of justice, not in lawyers’ offices; nor is there any opportunity to practice it in courts of justice until one does it on his own account. — that is, until one becomes an advocate.”

A portion of the reports of much service to those purposing to avail themselves of the Harvard course is that treating of the cost of such education, — a matter of much discussion and serious concern. The officers of the university have taken the most exhaustive means of obtaining trustworthy data from 1873 to 1877, and the results represent all classes of students, — the rich, the poor, and those of moderate means. The range of annual expenditure is very wide, from one case of the son of a mechanic, himself having a trade which more than supported him during the summer, to another, the son of a man of large fortune, and having property in his own right. These cases are presented with accurate details, and include every item of cost. In these instances — the extremes — the expenses were, severally, $471 and $2500. But a table is given exhibiting four scales of annual expenditure, with much minuteness of specification. The expenses of the long vacation are not included in the table, which our space does not permit to give in detail, but its summary is this, in totals : least, $499 ; economical, $615 ; moderate, $830; ample, $1365. In the least, board was had in the Divinity Club, where the cost was $140. In the economical and moderate, the board was that of Memorial Hall, cost $175. And in the case of ample, it was a private club board, $304. The majority of students, with parents neither rich nor poor, spend from $650 to $850 a year, the expenses of summer vacation being omitted in every case. Above $850, the question is “ only of unnecessary and extraordinary expense, which may still be perfectly suitable to the circumstances of the student or of his father.” “ The number of students who spend more than $1500 a year is very small, and a considerable proportion of this small number make absolutely no wrong or indiscreet use of their money.”

The dining hall association, which has commons in the splendid Memorial building, is mentioned in a very interesting manner. The moral effect of that dining hall upon the students who resort to it is, as the president says, “ strong, — none the less so because often unnoticed at the moment by those who are benefited. . . . The young men who daily use this superb building are, for the most part, those whose previous lives have been least enriched by familiarity with artificial objects of dignity and beauty, and whose enjoyments are always restricted by an imperative economy.”

The cost of this board is $4.20 a week, and the diet is ample, wholesome, and served with taste and neatness. Extras, at card prices, are furnished to those who are able to live luxuriously.

President Eliot does not tell us — as the report is intended for officers, graduates, and students of the university—that to enter the dining-room the students pass through the main hall, where on mural tablets are preserved the brief but eloquent records of every one of Harvard’s heroes who fell in defense of the Union.

A useful and certainly the most graceful possession of the university now is the Sanders Theatre, which is part of Memorial Hall. Beautiful to the eye, it is also a model of good ventilation and acoustics. Here, during the year, Professor Paine has conducted a series of six concerts, the Thomas Orchestra has performed twice, and free lectures on scientific subjects have been enjoyed by large audiences.