While the movement making for the elimination of the college from below has been taking place in the West, another movement having the same effect has been taking place in the East, only the pressure has been from above. The tendency is spreading for the professional schools of the strong universities to demand a college degree for admission. If the full four years of the college are demanded in addition to the four years of the secondary school and the eight years of the elementary school, the great majority of students will begin their professional education at twenty-two and their professional careers at twenty-six, and they will hardly be self-supporting before thirty. This seems an unreasonably long period of preparation compared to that required in other progressive countries. The German student, for example, begins his professional studies immediately upon graduation from the gymnasium at eighteen. Hence the demand has arisen for a shortening of the college course. This demand has been met in several ways. In some colleges the courses have been arranged in such a way that the bright and industrious student may complete the work required for graduation in three years. In others, as at Harvard, the student may elect in his senior year the studies of the first year of the professional school. Another tendency in the same direction is to permit students in the junior and even in the sophomore years to elect subjects of a vocational nature. This has been bitterly contested by those who hold that the minimum essentials of liberal culture should be acquired before vocational specialization begins. Columbia permits a student to complete his college and professional studies in six years, and at the end of that time he receives both the bachelor's and the professional degrees.
It is to be noted, however, that these solutions of the problem and, in fact, most other solutions that have been suggested, apply only to a college connected with a university; they could not be administered in the independent college. But a movement has developed in the Middle West which may result in another solution; i.e., the Junior College. It can be best understood by reference to the policy of the University of Chicago. That institution divides its undergraduate course into two parts: a Junior College of two years, the completion of whose course brings with it the title of Associate in Arts, and a Senior College of two years, the completion of whose course is rewarded with the regular bachelor's degree. There have become affiliated with the University of Chicago a considerable number of colleges throughout the Mississippi Valley which have frankly become Junior Colleges and confine their work to the freshman and sophomore years. And this has become true of other universities. It would seem inevitable that the bachelor's degree will finally be granted at the end of the Junior College and some other degree, perhaps the master's, which has an anomalous place in American education in any case, at the end of the Senior College. This has, in fact, been suggested by President Butler. The University of Chicago has also struck out in another new direction. Provided a certain amount of work is done in residence at the University, the remainder may be completed in absentia, i.e., through correspondence courses.
The Junior College movement has had the excellent result of inducing many weak colleges to confine their work to what they really can afford to do. Many parts of our country have a surplus of colleges, chiefly denominational. Ohio alone has more than fifty. The cost of maintaining dormitories, laboratories, libraries, apparatus, and other equipment and paying respectable salaries cannot be met by the tuition fees in any college. The college must either have a large income-producing endowment, which few have, or must receive gifts sufficient to meet expenses. Gifts to colleges and universities form one of the finest evidences of interest in higher education in the United States, and reach really colossal proportions. In the past fifty years, during which this form of generosity has prevailed, over 600 million dollars have been given, and in 1914 gifts from private sources amounted to more than 30 million dollars. Most of this money is given to the non-sectarian institutions and not to the small denominational colleges scattered over the country. As they are in addition unable to compete with the state universities, they are for every reason justified in becoming Junior Colleges. But this does not apply to the old independent colleges, such as Amherst, Williams, Dartmouth, etc., which have loyal and wealthy alumni associations. They have the support necessary to retain the four-year course and seem determined to do so.
Just what the outcome of the whole question of shortening the college course may be is not now evident. That concessions in time must be made to the demand for an earlier beginning of professional education seems certain. That the saving should be made in the college course is not so certain. A sounder pedagogy seems to indicate that one year, if not two, can be saved in the period from the sixth to the eighteenth year. It is probable that the arbitrary division of American education into elementary, secondary, collegiate, and university, each with a stated number of years, will give way to a real unification of the educational process. Most Americans would regret to see the college, the unique product of American education, which has had such an honorable part in the development of our civilization, disappear in the unifying process.
Stephen Pierce Duggan
College of the City of New York
The bibliography on the American college is almost inexhaustible. The list here given is confined to the best books that have appeared since 1900.
Angell, J. B. Selected Addresses. New York, 1912.
Association of American Universities. Proceedings of the Annual Conference.
Butler, N. M. Education in the United States. New York, 1900.
Cattell, J. M. University Control. New York, 1913.
Crawford, W. H. (editor). The American College. New York, 1915. (Papers by Faunce, Shorey, Haskins, Rhees, Thwing, Finley, Few, Slocum, Meiklejohn, Claxton.)
Cyclopedia of Education, article on "American College." New York, 1911.
Dexter, E. G. History of Education in the United States. New York, 1904.
Draper, A. S. American Education. Boston, 1909.
Flexner, A. The American College: A Criticism. General Education Board, New York, 1908.
Foster, W. T. Administration of the College Curriculum. Boston, 1911.
Harper, W. R. The Trend in Higher Education. Chicago, 1905.
Kingsley, C. D. College Entrance Requirements. United States Bureau of Education, 1913.
MacLean, G. E. Present Standards of Higher Education in the United States. United States Bureau of Education, 1913.
National Association of State Universities in the United States of America. Annual Transactions and Proceedings.
Risk, R. K. America at College. London, 1908.
Snow, L. F. College Curriculum in the United States. New York, 1907.
Thwing, C. F. History of Higher Education in the United States. New York, 1906.
—— The American College; What It Is and What It May Become. New York, 1914.
—— College Administration. New York, 1900.
West, A. F. Short Papers on American Liberal Education. New York, 1907.
Footnotes:
[1] W. T. Foster in N.E.A. Reports, 1915.
Were this chapter to be a discussion of schemes of training, now in operation, that had been devised to prepare teachers for colleges, it could not be written, for there are no such schemes. Many elementary and secondary teachers have undergone training for their life work, as investigators have, by a different regimen, of course, for theirs. But if college and university teachers do their work well, it is because they are born with competence for their calling, or were self-taught, or happened to grow into competence accidentally, as a by-product of training for other and partly alien ends, or learned to teach by teaching.
There are able college men, presidents and others, who view this situation with equanimity, if not with satisfaction. Teachers are born, not made, it is said. Can pedagogy furnish better teachers than specialized scholarly training? it is asked. If we train definitely for teaching, we shall diminish scholarship, cramp and warp native teaching faculty, and mechanize our class procedure, it is objected.
Had the subject of training for college teaching been discussed, no doubt other objections would have been advanced. But it has not been discussed, as will be seen from the very scant bibliography at the end of the chapter. No plan of training for college teaching is in operation, and no discussion of such a plan can be found. Each of a half-dozen men has argued his individual views, and elicited no reply.
This state of facts notwithstanding, the subject is well worth discussing, and one may even venture to prophesy that in a decade, or at latest two, the subject will have a respectable literature, and enough training plans will be in operation to permit fruitful comparisons.
When specific training is first urged for specialized work, there always is opposition. The outgoing generation remembers the opposition to specialized training for law, medicine, and engineering, to say nothing of farming, school teaching and business. But in spite of obstructive and retarding objections, specialized types of training for specialized types of work have grown in number and favor, and today we are being shown convincingly that nations which have declined to set up the fundamental types of special training find themselves able to make effective only a fraction of their resources. The majority of the personnel in every higher calling has about average native aptitude for it, and it is just the average man who can be improved in competence for any work by training directed to that end rather than to another. This is, of course, true of college teaching.
In early days in this country the great majority of college teachers were clergymen, trained in most cases abroad. Later bookish graduates came to be the chief source of supply, their appointment in their own colleges, and infrequently in others, following close upon their graduation. Well into the third quarter of last century college faculties were selected almost exclusively from these two types, representatives of the former decreasing and of the latter increasing in relative number. Neither type was specifically trained for teaching in colleges or elsewhere.
With the founding and developing of Johns Hopkins University a new era in higher education opened in this country. The paucity of exact scholarship came to be known, and the country's need of scholarship to be appreciated. In colleges grown from English seedlings we sought to implant grafts from German universities. Independent colleges and colleges within universities, while still called upon by American traditions and needs to prepare their students for enlightened living by means of a broadening and liberating training, came to be manned preponderatingly by narrowly specialized investigators, withdrawn from everyday life, with concentrated interests focused upon subjects or parts of subjects, rather than upon students. Little thought was, or is yet, given to the preparation of college teachers for their duties as teachers, and that little rested, and still in large measure rests, satisfied with the assumption that by some unexplained and it may be inexplicable transfer of competence a man closeted and intensively trained to search for truth in books and laboratories emerges after three or more years well equipped for divining and developing the mental processes and interests of freshmen.
Once fairly examined, this assumption lacks plausibility. "We consider the Ph.D. a scholar's degree and not a teacher's degree," says the dean of one of our leading graduate schools, and yet preparation for this scholar's degree has been and is practically the only formal preparation open to college teachers in this country.
It goes without saying that scholarship is one of the basal needs of college teachers, a scholarship that keeps alive, and is human and contagious. But it should be remembered that there are several kinds of scholarship, and it is pertinent to ask what kind college teachers need. Should they, for instance, model themselves on the broad shrewdness and alluring scholarly mellowness of James Russell Lowell or on the untiring encyclopedic exactitude and minuteness of Von Helmholz? Or is there an even better ideal or ideals for them? I would suggest that the teacher's knowledge of his subject should, essentially, be of a kind that would keep him in intellectual sympathy with the undeveloped minds of his students, and this means chiefly two things. The more points of contact of his knowledge with the past experience and future plans of his students the teacher has at his command, the better teacher he will be; for he can use them, not as resting places, but as points of departure for the development of phases of his subject outside the students' experience. And secondly, the teacher should see his subject entire, with its parts, as rich in number and detail as possible, each in its proper place within the whole. For the students' knowledge of the subject is vague and general; he is trying to place it, and many other new things, in some kind of a coherent setting; in fact, he is in college largely for the very purpose of working out some sort of rudimentary scheme of things. The duty of the college teacher is to help him in this quite as much as to teach him a particular subject. And, besides, each particular subject can be best taught if advantage is taken of every opportunity to attach it to the only knowledge of it the student has, vague and general though it be. Highly specialized and dehumanized knowledge is not as useful for the college teacher as broad and vital knowledge, which is, of course, much harder to acquire. Even in the case of "disciplinary" subjects, there is no gain in concealing the human bearings. The teacher should be trained to seize opportunities in the classroom and out to help the student, through his subject and his maturer life experience, to see the bearing of what he is learning on the life about him and on the life he is to lead. This is the college teacher's richest opportunity and the opportunity that tries him most shrewdly. If he is to rise to it, his entire equipment, native and acquired, must come into play.
What else does the teacher need? So that he may select the best and continue to improve them, he needs a knowledge of the different methods and aims in the teaching of his subject, and, so far as possible, of the results attained by each. Too much of college teaching is a blind groping, chartless and without compass. Instead of expecting each inexperienced teacher to start afresh, he should set out armed with the epitomized and digested teaching experience of those that have gone before him.
Finally, the teacher needs a sympathetic and expert understanding of the thinking and feeling of college students. This should be his controlling interest. The teacher, his interest in his subject, and in all else except the student, should be instrumental, not final. Every available strand of continuity between studenthood and teacherhood should thereafter be preserved.
This need suggests a capital weakness of the training for the doctorate in philosophy as a preparation for teaching. As it proceeds it shifts the interest from undergraduate student to scholarly specialty, and steadily snaps the ties that bound the budding investigator to his college days. It also explains the greatness of some college teachers and personalities before the eighties. Their degrees in arts were their licenses to teach. They suffered no drastic loss of touch with undergraduate thought and life. In the early years of their teaching this sympathetic and kindly understanding was fresh and strong, and they used it in their classroom and wove it into the tissue of their tutorial activities. A discerning observer of college faculties can even today discover in them men and women who entered them by the same door as these great ones of old, irregularly as we would say now,—without the hallmark, and whose good teaching is a surprise to their doctored colleagues. In one institution I know of, the best five teachers some years ago were all of this type. The training of college teachers might well, it therefore seems, include an apprenticeship, beginning with, or in exceptional cases before, graduation from college.
But the duties and opportunities of the college teacher do not stop at the door leading from his classroom. In addition to dealing directly with students, individually and in groups, and even, if possible, with their families, as he grows in service he becomes, as faculty member and committeeman, a college legislator and administrator. In exercising these important functions he needs the equipment that would aid him to take the central point of view, a background of scholarly knowledge of what education in general and college education in particular are in their methods and in their social functions and purposes. There is too much departmental logrolling, as well as too much beating of the air in faculty meetings, and too many excursions into the blue in faculty legislation and administration arrangements. The educational views of faculty members greatly need to be steadied, ordered, and appreciably broadened and deepened by a developed and trained habit of thinking educationally under the safeguards of scientific method and on the basis of an adequate supply of facts. That pedagogy has made but the smallest beginning of gathering and ordering such facts and developing a scientific method in this field is not a valid objection. These tasks are no more difficult than others that have been compared, as they will be, the sooner for being imposed.
It is significant that coincident with sharp and widespread criticism of the American college (justified in part by what college teachers have been made into by their training), appear demands on the part of faculties for more power. In this connection it may be remembered that autocracy is the simplest and easiest form of government, and that history shows that it can at least be made to work with less brains and training than are required for the working of democracy. As American colleges and universities have grown in complexity and responsibility, their faculties have lost power because they did not acquire the larger competence that was the indispensable condition of even reasonably successful democratic control. It is highly desirable that the power of faculties should increase to the point of preponderance. But the added power they will probably acquire will not be retained unless faculty members learn their business much better than they now know it in most institutions. Thomas Jefferson, when asked which would come to dominate, the states or the federal government, replied that in the long run each of the opposed pair would prevail in the functions in which it proved the more competent.
To outline a scheme of such importance without any experience to examine as a basis is a very bold undertaking, and one that can hope for but partial success. What I shall propose, however, is similar to the proposals of Pitkin (5), Horne (11), and Wolfe (14), my only predecessors in this rash enterprise. The general spirit and purpose of our proposals are the same. But we disagree more or less in details—which is fortunate, as it may encourage discussion of the subject, which is the thing most needed. Indeed, a lively sense of this need has led me to venture some unpopular assertions. It may also be admitted that the desiderata for teachers mentioned above are not likely to be all insured by any system of training.
The proposal submitted for discussion is that a three-year graduate course be established, its spirit and purpose being to train young men to become college teachers. This course should lead to a doctorate; e.g., to the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, or of Doctor of Philosophy in Teaching, or of Docendi Doctor. What degree is selected is, in the long run, relatively unimportant, provided the course is soundly conducive to its end.
The course might well be divided into three parts, having the approximate relative value in time and effort of two fifths, two fifths, and one fifth. These parts should proceed simultaneously throughout the three years, the first being an apprenticeship—under supervision, of course—in the functions of the college teacher, the second a broad course of study and investigation of the subject to be taught, and the third a course of pedagogical study and investigation. Let me suggest a minimum of detail within these outlines.
The apprentice teacher would, naturally, do the least classroom teaching during his first year, and the most during his last. He would also each year "advise" a group of freshman in studies and in life, or coöperate with students in the conduct of athletics, dramatics, publication work, or other "activities." On all this apprentice work he would report, and in all he would be guided and supervised appropriately by the department whose subject he was teaching, by the department of education, and by other departments concerned. This and other parts of the training would attract others in addition to narrowly bookish graduates, something much to be desired (other parts would eliminate those not bookish enough), and would tend to keep alive in all apprentices an interest in students, especially in student character, and to prevent them from thinking of students as disembodied minds.
The course of study and investigation in the subject to be taught should be based on adequate undergraduate work in the same and allied fields, and should be something like the honor course in Oxford or Cambridge (or our old M.A. course) in its conduct and purpose; it should hark back to our collegiate origin in England. The work should be in charge of a don, a widely and wisely read and a very human guide, philosopher, and friend. Stated class meetings and precise count of hours of attendance should receive little emphasis. But wide reading of the subject, in a spirit that breeds contagion, running off into a study, in books, laboratories, and meetings, of the human and practical bearings of the subject, should be required, and enough conference with the don should be had to enable him to judge and criticize the student's plan and amount of work, to test his mettle in handling the subject, and to aid him to grasp it as a whole and in its chief subdivisions, and to get glimpses of its bearings on and place in human life. This part of the training should lead up to and culminate in a thesis dealing with some major phase of the subject comprehendingly in its setting and connections. Naturally this program could be carried out most successfully with the social subjects, which lend themselves easily to culture, like history or philosophy, and less completely with the exact subjects, which are better fitted for precise discipline, like mathematics. But if treated, as far as possible, after the manner indicated, even the latter could be made better instruments for the training of college teachers than they are now in narrow specialization for the Ph.D. degree. Among returning Rhodes scholars some excellent material for dons could be found.
The fifth of the course directed to pedagogy should include a very brief study of the methods of teaching the chosen subject, with glimpses into teaching methods in general; and courses in the history and philosophy of education, with emphasis on, but by no means exclusive dealing with, the educational and social functions of the college. It might include an intensive investigation of some relatively simple college problem in preparation for future faculty membership. All this should, of course, be intimately articulated with the student's apprenticeship work. Such a course of pedagogical study should furnish a basis for better teaching methods and for helpful self-criticism therein; should encourage the formation of a habit of thinking and working out educational problems scientifically with eyes open to the purpose of the college as a whole; and should discourage departmental selfishness in legislation and administration.
The college would, under this plan, have some of its teaching done at minimum cost by student teachers, who should receive only the graduate scholarship or fellowship now customary for Ph.D. candidates. Care would be necessary to prevent the assignment to them of mere routine hackwork without training value. It is safe to say that, though slightly less mature, their services, being supervised, would be more valuable than those rendered during their first few years of teaching by most better-paid winners of the doctorate of philosophy, who, if they do so at all, grope their way to usefulness as teachers, with little aid from others more experienced.
With good teaching prepared for, required, and adequately rewarded (a point to be developed later), somewhat longer schedules could properly be assigned and further economy effected. Schedules would, of course, have to be kept short enough to allow ample time for reading, for some writing, and for faculty and committee work in later years. But time would not be required by college teachers for specialized research, and the freedom from such tasks resulting for them would be a blessed relief to many who are now compelled to assume a virtue they have not, and to conceal the love of teaching they have. And when we bear in mind the heavy mass of uninspired and unimportant hackwork that is now dumped on the scholarly world, we shall welcome the prospect of a lightened burden for ourselves.
The need of students, especially of freshmen, for advisers is widely recognized. They come into a new freedom exercised in a new environment. This makes for bewilderment that involves loss of precious time and opportunities, and presents perils which involve possible injuries to many and certain injuries to some. Efforts, many and various, to constitute a body of advisers chosen from among faculty members have met with but little success. With few exceptions the task is not congenial to those who now man our faculties, and for that and other reasons they are ill fitted for it. But a greater measure of success has been attained, even under present conditions, when the coöperation of volunteers from among seniors and graduate students has been had. This suggests that the problem might come nearer solution when some dependence came to be placed upon the services of apprentices. Such service would be a part of their regular work having a bearing on their future career, and would therefore be supervised and rest on sustained interest and the consciousness that it was counting.
Finally, young student teachers would, under proper encouragement and arrangement, help materially to bridge the gulf, that is broader than is wholesome, between a faculty of mature men and young students. The mixing of these different generations, so far as possible, is much to be desired, difficult as it is to accomplish.
This is not the place to discuss the details of appointment and promotion plans, interesting and important as they are. But it is evident that the scheme of training outlined, if adopted, would call for changes in present practices.
The appointing authorities of colleges looking for young teachers could ascertain their strong and weak points as they developed during their apprenticeship in classrooms and in other educational activities, as well as the quality and trend of their scholarship. They would not rest satisfied with ascertaining the minute corner of the field of philosophy, history, or physics in which a man recommended had done research. Records could be kept throwing much-needed light on the teaching ability, scholarship, and personality of candidates for appointment. In selecting college teachers, appointing authorities would value this evidence and would come to prefer teaching power to investigating ability.
Moreover, the record keeping, and, no doubt, some of the supervision begun during the apprentice years would continue during the early instructorial years. This would render it possible to evaluate and to value effectiveness in teaching in making promotions. Ambitious teachers would no longer be practically forced, as their only resort, to neglect their students and give their best energies to publication in order to make a name and get a call, in the interest of promotion. The expert teacher would have a chance and a dignity equal to that of the skilled investigator. The individual could follow, and not be penalized for so doing, his own bent and the line of his highest capacity.
The training now given in graduate schools here and elsewhere for the doctorate in philosophy will, of course, continue, and increase rather than diminish. Investigators will be preferred in research, in universities, and in some colleges and college departments. They will be increasingly prized in the government service and in important branches of industry. The recent terrible experiences burn into our minds the imperative need strong nations have of exact knowledge and of skill that has a scientific edge. And the specific training for these great tasks will be stronger when it is based on a college course in which highly effective and whole-hearted teaching is valued and rewarded.
Sidney E. Mezes
College of the City of New York
Anonymous. Confessions of One Behind the Times. Atlantic, Vol. 3, pages 353-356, March, 1913.
Canby, H. S. The Professor. Harpers, April, 1913.
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Bulletin No. 2, May, 1908, pages 55-57.
Flexner, Abraham. Adjusting the College to American Life. Science, Vol. 29, pages 361-372.
Handschin, C. H. Inbreeding in the Instructional Corps of American Colleges and Universities. Science, Vol. 32, pages 707-709. November, 1910.
Holliday, Carl. Our "Doctored" Colleges. School and Society, Vol. 2, pages 782-784. November 27, 1915.
Horne, Herman H. The Study of Education by Prospective College Instructors. School Review, Vol. 16, March, 1908, pages 162-170.
Pitkin, W. B. Training College Teachers. Popular Science, Vol. 74, pages 588-595. June, 1909.
Report of the Committee on Standards of American Universities. Science, Vol. 29, page 172. November 17, 1908.
Robinson, Mabel L. Need of Supervision in College Teaching. School and Society, Vol. 2, pages 514-519, October 9, 1915.
Sanderson, E. D. Definiteness of Appointment and Tenure. Science, Vol. 39, pages 890-896, June, 1914.
Stewart, Charles A. Appointment and Promotion of College Instructors. Educational Review, Vol. 44, 1912, pages 249-256.
Wilczynski, E. J. Appointments in College and Universities. Science, February 28, 1909; Vol. 29, pages 336ff.
Wolfe, A. B. The Graduate School, Faculty Responsibility, and the Training of University Teachers. School and Society, September 16, 1916.
The investigator of educational practices and methods of teaching is impressed with an unmistakable educational anti-climax, for the conviction grows on him that elementary school teaching is on a relatively high plane, that secondary school teaching is not as effective, and that collegiate teaching, with rare exceptions, is ineffective and in urgent need of reform. A superficial survey of educational literature of the last ten years shows that while the problem of the high school is now receiving earnest attention, elementary education continues to absorb the earnest efforts of an army of vitally interested investigators. The field of college pedagogics is still virgin soil, and no significant or extensive program for improved methods of teaching has yet been advanced.
Three earnest and intelligent students representing three colleges of undisputed standing were asked informally about their instructors for the current semester. Nothing was said to make these students aware that their judgment would hold any significance beyond the friendly conversation. The summary of opinions is offered, not because the investigation is complete and affords a basis for scientific conclusion, but because it reflects typical college teaching in three recognized institutions of more than average standing.
The student of scientific and statistical measurements in education may object to attaching any importance to these informal characterizations of college teachers by undergraduates. College teachers interested in the pedagogical aspects of their subject, and college administrators who spend time observing class instruction will concede that these young men were not at all unfortunate in their teachers. The significance of these characterizations is not that college teachers vary in teaching efficiency, but rather that inefficient college teaching is general, and that the causes of this inefficiency are such as respond readily to simple remedial measures very well known to elementary and high school teachers.