The officers chosen Sept. 4, 1888, were as follows: OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION. 1888-1889. President, ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, Ithaca, N.Y. First Vice-President, CARROLL D. WRIGHT, Washington, D.C. FRANCIS WAYLAND, New Haven, Conn. Mrs. JOHN E. LODGE, Boston. Vice-Presidents. Miss MARIA MITCHELL, Poughkeepsie, N. Y. HENRY HITCHCOCK, St. Louis, Mo. General Secretary, F. B. SANBORN, Concord, Mass. Treasurer, ANSON PHELPS STOKES, 54 Wall Street, New York. DORMAN B. EATON, New York. CHARLES A. PEABODY, New York. F. J. KINGSBURY, Waterbury, Conn. I. Directors. H. L. WAYLAND, Philadelphia. D. H. CHAMBERLAIN, New York. Department Officers. Education.-SYLVESTER F. SCOVEL, Wooster, Ohio, Chairman; HORACE G. WADLIN, 20 Beacon Street, Boston, Secretary. II. Health.-H. HOLBROOK CURTIS, M.D., 118 Madison Ave., New York, Chairman; GRACE PECKHAM, M.D., 25 Madison Avenue, New York, Secretary. III. Finance.-W. L. TRENHOLM, Washington, D.C., Chairman; JOHN P. TOWNSsend, 59 Broad Street, New York, Secretary. IV. Social Economy.-F. B. SANBORN, Concord, Chairman; Prof. E. J. JAMES, Philadelphia, Secretary. V. Jurisprudence.- Prof. FRANCIS WAYLAND, New Haven, Chairman; Prof. WILLIAM K. TOWNSEND, New Haven, Secretary. Executive Committee. ANDREW D. WHITE, President; F. B. SANBORN, General Secretary; ANSON PHELPS STOKES, Treasurer; H. G. WADLIN, Education Secretary; Dr. GRACE PECKHAM, Health Secretary; Prof. FRANCIS WAYLAND, Jurisprudence Chairman; W. L. TRENHOLM, Finance Chairman; Prof. E. J. JAMES, Social Economy Secretary. MEDICAL AND GENERAL EDUCATION. The discussion of this subject in the Health Department at Saratoga, fully printed in this number of the Journal (pages 15 to 58), will be found timely and instructive. Not less so is an essay in the Chicago America, a weekly journal of high aims, by President C. K. Adams, of Cornell University, N.Y., published Sept. 27, 1888, from which extracts may be made in further illustration of the subject. President Adams says:— We cherish the supposition that we are doing more for education than the people of any other country; and yet it would be difficult, if not impossible, to mention a single branch of instruction in which we are not very greatly excelled on the other side of the Atlantic. There are certain tests by which an education system is to be judged. Roughly speaking, these are the prevailing illiteracy, the condition of the common and the secondary schools, the general standard of the higher institutions of learning, the qualifications of the primary and secondary teachers, the terms on which applicants are admitted to the professions, and the general condition of the professional schools. No one of these tests can be applied to education in America, at the present time, without showing our inferiority. There is one other test that indicates another result: it is the amount of money voluntarily contributed for purposes of education. The latest report of the Commissioner of Education reveals the fact that gifts amounting to about six millions of dollars have been made for educational purposes in the course of the preceding year. As an evidence of patriotic generosity, and of general interest in the subject of education, this showing is altogether creditable. But the educational significance of this fact depends, of course, upon the wisdom with which the money has been generally appropriated; and, when the subject is contemplated from this point of view, we are obliged to make a very large deduction from the result that would follow a wise expenditure of the money. By far the larger part has been given to found new colleges that have not been needed, and thus has only added to the difficulty of making the colleges already in existence what they ought to be. It is universally admitted that the number of institutions of collegiate or university rank is already greater than it should be, and yet the process of multiplication goes on unabated. While, therefore, we are priding ourselves, as a people, upon the amount of money we are giving for higher education, we are constantly increasing the difficulty, through the multiplication of new institutions insufficiently equipped, of putting education upon a high plane of excellence. There is also prevalent a similar optimism in the matter of collegiate buildings. It was only the other day that an eminently respectable city newspaper, describing a new collegiate building now in process of erection, said that it is to be the finest in the country, and in the world. The writer was simply putting into the definite form of positive assertion an impression that is more or less prevalent throughout the country. Here is a statement made in regard to an eminently respectable building, erected at a cost, say, at most, of $300,000. Local satisfaction regards it as one of the most imposing, perhaps the most imposing, without exception, in existence. With what sublime audacity does this patriotic journalist fly in the face of facts! and yet his assertion has not only passed unchallenged, but in all probability it has been believed by a majority of his readers. How many of our people know that one of the minor universities of Great Britain has recently completed a collegiate building at a cost of more than five hundred thousand pounds sterling? Not to speak of the four millions that were put into the Polytechnicum, at Charlottenburg. How many have had their attention called to the fact that the little Republic of Switzerland, with a territory not a third as large as the State of New York, has recently, from its public treasury, built a chemical laboratory for the polytechnic school at Zürich, at a cost of 1,337,000 francs, and that it has more recently contracted for the building of a physical laboratory at a cost of 994,000 francs? And of those who suppose that needless sums are expended by Harvard, Yale, and Cornell, how many know that the little kingdom of Saxony, only half as large as Vermont, gives from its public treasury, annually, $400,000 to its university, although the institution itself has great wealth, and the professors are mainly supported by the fees of students? Let us indulge in no extravagances and no illusions; let us realize that we are young and vigorous, and that we are growing at a rapid rate; but let us not cherish the erroneous supposition that there is a single well-endowed university in America. Let us remember that the richest of our institutions has an income not much larger than that of a single one of the twenty-four colleges at Oxford. Above all, let us never forget that, while it is necessary for our institutions to depend so largely upon the fees of students, it will be impossible for them to put themselves into the condition of real universities. Until individual endowments are in one way or another very largely increased, the greater part of the work of education must be of the rank of preparatory schools; and consequently, until that day arrives, our young men will continue to flock to Germany for the completion of their training. The real poverty of our institutions shows itself as well as anywhere, perhaps, in the condition of our schools of law and medicine. It is a fatal defect that a vast majority of these are entirely dependent upon the fees of students. This fact makes it impossible very generally to raise the standard requirements, either for admission or graduation. The consequence is that all over the country there are schools that give the professional degree for about one quarter of the amount of study that is required for a corresponding degree in any one of the countries of Europe. Take, as the most conspicuous examples, the case of the medical schools. Probably a majority of them give the degree in medicine after two courses of lectures of from four to six months each. There is, perhaps, an additional requirement that the student shall have devoted himself, nominally, for two years to the study of medicine. For admission to the school, almost absolutely no education is required. It is no exaggeration to say that a boy of ten years of age, with fair intelligence, could pass the examinations required for admission at a majority of the medical schools in the United States. After two years of study, including from eight to twelve months in the hearing of lectures, students by the thousand are turned loose to practise their ignorance upon the community. It is true that in a very few colleges, perhaps four out of the whole vast number, an effort to improve this state of affairs has been made; but, so long as the material equipment and the salaries of professors are entirely dependent upon the fees of students, obviously no very great success can be reached. While in great Britain, in France, in Germany, even in Spain and Italy, from four to seven years of hard professional study are required before a student can be admitted to the practice of medicine, we are welcoming annually into the professional community hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of young men who are not qualified for admission to a decent European medical school. Now the difficulty in the way of reform is not the fact that the community does not appreciate the necessity of thorough education. It is in the fact that the means for such education are not at hand. That there are young men enough in the country desirous of a most thorough education in medicine is sufficiently apparent. But, until there is at least one medical college in the country that is sufficiently endowed to make the salaries of its professors independent of the fees of students, how can a school be expected to pursue a course which will diminish very greatly the number in attendance? What is needed is not the multiplication of medical schools, but the endowment of at least a few institutions with so large sums as to make them independent. And so, in general, we may say that, wherever we look, we find that the most pressing necessity of higher education is not an increase in the number of our institutions, but such an endowment as will enable a few of them to enlarge the scope and thoroughness of their advanced work. This is in accordance with reason as well as with the history of education the world over. The line on which advances are to be made is not difficult to trace. The colleges will best fulfil their functions by keeping, in the main, to what may fairly be called elementary and disciplinary work. In the way of this there are, indeed, grave difficulties. The most serious one is the fact that the requirements for admission have been made so numerous and so exacting that the student, at the time of entering college, is so far advanced in years that he is hardly content not to be engaged in what will have a definite bearing upon his future vocation. There is, in my judgment, no other step which would do so much to advance the cause of higher education in America as the reduction of the course of study for the bachelor's degree to three years. The present collegiate course is everywhere abnormal in character, for the reason that it is partly preparatory and partly advanced. No school can do the two kinds of work perfectly well unless a clearly defined distinction is made between the two. The colleges ought not to raise the standards for admission. On the contrary, they ought, perhaps, even to lower them. If, for example, the New England colleges, in distinction from the universities, would accept pupils who have simply mastered the elements of Greek, Latin, English, and the mathematics, and then would give the bachelor's degree after three years of good, solid, disciplinary work, say when the student is at the average age of twenty, the change would be the greatest service that could possibly be rendered to the cause of higher education. We could then hope that our professional schools and real universities would be filled with pupils prepared to do creditable work. The change, however, ought to be accompanied with another change of corresponding significance. Harvard and Yale, and Columbia and Cornell, and Michigan, and possibly a few others, ought then to say that they would take no pupils but such as have had the preliminary collegiate course. At the end of three years of successful work, the degree of master should then be given, with such additional specific degree in philosophy, in law, in medicine, in science, or in letters, as the attainments of the student call for. This would correspond with the German custom of including the master's degree in the doctorate. If such a change were to be made, two advantages would result. In the first place, the number taking a collegiate course as a preparation for a professional course would be greatly increased. Thus the students now deciding to omit the preliminary course, simply because their entrance upon professional work will be too long postponed, would be enabled to take a full course of study, and end it with the proper professional degree at the age of not more than twenty-five. The colleges at once would be much fuller than they are to-day, and the legitimate work of preparing students for the higher grades of education would, for the first time in the history of this country, be properly provided for. JUDGE DEXTER'S WORK ON CO-OPERATIVE SAVINGS BANKS. This volume, of which mention is made on page 147, and which will be published in 1889, is so important that a further account of it may here be given. It will contain nine chapters and an Appendix, the latter giving in full the laws governing co-operative banks and building associations in the great States of New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, which together have more of these organizations than all the rest of the United States. In the Appendix will also be found all the forms needed for the transaction of business. The first chapter is brief and general, describing Co-operation, whether direct or indirect. The second chapter exhibits this particular method of direct co-operation (the Building Society or Savings and Loan Fund), and shows the benefits to the social body which may flow from it. After this introduction, which is more or less theoretical, the third chapter gives in outline the scheme of a typical Savings and Loan Association, such as the volume deals with. In the fourth chapter there is a brief history of building societies and co-operative banks, their growth and spread in the United States, and their present number and character. The fifth and sixth chapters treat, with care and fulness, the evolution of the principal schemes now in use out of the simple and original association conducted on the "terminating plan," and express positive opinions as to the best scheme now to be followed in America. The seventh chapter considers in detail how associations should be organized under the New York Act of 1887 or any similar law; while the eighth chapter takes up the old law of New York (passed in 1851), and considers the framing of articles of association under that and similar laws,- this discussion being applicable to any State which does not incorporate a definite scheme of organization in the law itself. Forms are here given for such articles of association. Each section is considered by itself, and the changes needful to adapt this law to any of the leading schemes are here pointed out. The final chapter before the Appendix will treat of keeping accounts, and will give forms and explanations of them, and finally will carry through the books an entire set of entries that should be made, giving special prominence to the entries that are exceptional and liable to confuse the inexperience of book-keepers. It thus appears that this will be a very complete text-book on the subject. It will contain fuller information than we have been able to give concerning the number of building associations in several of the States. |