regarded as fundamental with other instruction that is regarded as less so, the fact is that all these are simply different kinds of attempt to meet a new condition which is the natural result of intellectual and economic changes. Just now the college is in a state of transition. It is not at all clear precisely what its status will be a generation hence, or how far present tendencies may continue to increase, or how far they may be counteracted by a swing of the pendulum in the opposite direction. Therefore this is a time to describe rather than to dogmatize, and it is description which is the characteristic mark of the important series of papers which constitute the several chapters in the present volume.

A careful reading of these papers is commended not only to the great army of college teachers and college students, but to that still greater army of those who, whether as alumni or as parents or as citizens, are deeply concerned with the preservation of the influence and character of the American college for its effect upon our national standards of thought and action.

American colleges are of two distinct types, and it may be that the future has in store a different position for each type. The true distinction between colleges is according as they are separate or are incorporated in a university system, and not at all as to whether they are large or small. A separate college, such as Amherst or Beloit or Grinnell or Pomona, has its own peculiar problems of support and administration. The university college, on the other hand, such as Columbia or Harvard or Chicago or the college of any state university, has quite different problems of support and of administration. It is not unlikely that the distinction between these two types of college will become more sharply marked as years go by, and that eventually they will appear to be two distinct institutions rather than two types of one and the same institution.

Meanwhile, we have to deal with the college as it is, in all its varied forms, but characteristically American whatever its form. The American college has little or no resemblance to the English Public School or to the French Lycée or to the German Gymnasium. It is something more than any one of these, and at the same time something less. It differs from them all very much as the conditions of American life differ from those of English or of French or of German life. The college may or may not involve residence, but when it does involve residence, it is at its best. It is then that the largest amount of carefully ordered and stimulating influence can be brought to bear upon the daily life of growing and expanding youth, and it is then and only then, that youth can get the inestimable benefits which follow from daily and hourly contact with others of like age, like tastes, like habits, and like purposes. Indeed, it has often been said that the college gives more through its opportunities which attach to residence, than through its opportunities which attach to instruction.

Almost every conceivable problem that can arise in college life and college work, is discussed in the following pages. It is now coming to be understood that the health of the college student is as much a matter of concern as his instruction, and that a college is not doing its full duty by those who seek its doors, when it merely provides libraries, laboratories, and skillful teachers. It must also provide for such conditions of residence, of food, of exercise, and of frequent medical examination and inspection, as shall protect and preserve the health of those who come to take advantage of its instruction.

There is one other point which should not be overlooked, and that is the literally immense influence exerted in America by that solidarity of college sentiment and college opinion which is kept alive by organizations of former college students scattered throughout the land. This, again, is a peculiarly American development, and it serves to unite the college and public sentiment much more closely than any formal tie could possibly do. Indeed, it illustrates how completely the American people claim the college as their own. The man or woman who has once been a college student never ceases to be a member of that particular college or to labor to extend its influence and to increase its usefulness.

Every reader of this volume should approach it in a spirit of sympathetic understanding of American higher education, and of the college as the oldest instrument of that higher education and still one of the chief elements in it.

Nicholas Murray Butler
Columbia University

PART ONE

I

HISTORY AND PRESENT TENDENCIES OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE

1. THE COLONIAL PERIOD