departments of instruction. These State institutions also show great diversities in their means, ranging from Ann Arbor, with a yearly grant of $274,272 (in 1889-90), to others, in Nevada and Oregon, with ‍$30,000, and the teaching corps varies correspondingly from over 100 to 14 or 15, while the number of students varies from over 2,000 to a little over 100.

We do not mean to say that this diversity is in itself an evil. If it is due to a settled intention to develop one part of higher education in particular without neglecting the others it would be rather a good. Even when it owes its origin to circumstances it has the advantage of parceling out higher culture over the whole country. In France, where we are suffering from the contrary evil, we would like to have a little more flexibility and variety introduced into the rigid framework of our tradition-bound faculties. The question was proposed and answered favorably to such a proposition at the Lyons meeting in 1891. It must be said, however, that the excessive American decentralization presents grave drawbacks, and leads to a dispersion of effort and a real waste of force. Aside from a very small number of institutions, seven or eight at most, which really possess all the apparatus for high education, American universities are, generally, only the beginnings or fragments of universities. The different portions of superior instruction are scattered in a multitude of separate institutions so that both professors and students are in insufficient numbers in most of them. This is a necessary consequence of a system of excessive lil erty of initiative. Each State and each city wishes to have its university, and there appears the contrary of what happens in France, where we sometimes have the thing but not the name-they have the appearance and paraphernalia of a university without the solid and substantial reality. In America they first build a city, open its streets, lay the pavements and gas pipes, or light with electricity, and then the inhabitants come if they can. I ought to add that they generally do come, and in large numbers. But the same process applied to the foundation of universities does not always succeed. The buildings are erected, the programmes drawn up, the professors appointed, and then the students are awaited, but it sometimes happens that they do not crowd to the new institution.

LAW SCHOOLS AND MEDICAL SCHOOLS.

If we reflect that there are 52 law schools in the United States, it is not necessary to consult statistics to learn how prejudicial this excessive dissemination is to the study of law, there being neither a sufficient number of capable professors nor of students to constitute solid and vital centers of instruction. [The statistics quoted show that the number of students ranged from 1 to nearly 500, and the professors from 1 to 23.] Harvard and Yale had only 153 and 106 students, respectively, while there is no law school at Johns Hopkins, or Princeton, or Clark University. So with medical schools; the report for 1888-89 showed that aside from many nonregular schools there were 91 distinct institutions in that year, with a great range in numbers of students and professors.

DISPERSION OF EFFORT AND WASTE OF FORCE.

We can not too often repeat that, sustained by their enormous wealth, the Americans give themselves over to a veritable waste of force. They commit follies in the way of education. Carried away by local pride, or, rather, to speak more accurately, moved by the legitimate desire to put higher education within reach of the young in as many places as possible, they increase the number of foundations of the same kind without caring for doubling the expenditure of money for the same purpose or disturbing themselves about competition, so that it too often happens that their costly institutions, which have been established under unfavorable conditious on an unfruitful soil, languish painfully, and only make a problematical success. But how could it be otherwise when we find three or four schools of law or medicine not only in the same region but in the same city?

This is a luxuriant vegetation of which we can form no idea in our country of restricted activity and limited initiative, a vigorous growth which springs up on every side, and if it is impossible to disguise the bad features of this unrestrained fecundity, we can not repress our admiration at the extraordinary power of the sap which so profusely nourishes the numberless branches of the tree of knowledge even at the risk of their mutual injury from their varied superabundance and intergrowth.

THE IDEA OF THE UNIVERSITY.

From what has been said upon the schools of law and medicine, one might be tempted to conclude that the Americans have but little conception of the necessity of uniting or grouping side by side, like the different children of a family, the different branches of superior instruction, and that the idea of the university-that is to say, of an intimate association of all the higher studies-does not exist in the United States. Such a conclusion would not be absolutely exact. There is undoubtedly a marked disposition to regard the schools of law and medicine as capable of separate growth and function in the condition of professional schools, which is their official title. They have a separate place in the report of the Bureau of Education, under the head of professional instruction, by the side of the theological schools. In the same way, conformably to this spirit of special classification, the schools of pure or applied science (of technology, agriculture, and mechanic arts), some endowed by the State and the others private institutions, are placed separately under the head of schools of science, even when they are annexed to universities. The contrary tendency, however, is making its appearance in the opinions of some of the leaders of American pedagogy and is also becoming realized in fact. Thus, at the Chicago congress we heard Prof. Woodrow Wilson, of Princeton, announce his deliberate opinion that a professional school could not exist by itself. It must, he said, form part of a university, so that the university atmosphere may envelop and penetrate it. And, in fact, in most of the leading universities, those which, by their work of two centuries or more, have gradually enlarged their scope, like Harvard and Yale, and also in those which we see springing out of the ground at the magic call of their millionaire founders, like Leland Stanford, for example, the idea of the universality of instruction seems to prevail. Compared with so many other institutions which are, as we have seen, only fragments or portions of universities, the most renowned of the new institutions aspire, not without an evident exaggeration, to embrace and contain every thing in the nature of high instruction.

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Harvard and Yale disconcert our habits of measurement and surpass our mediocre imaginations by offering to the choice of their students fifteen or twenty distinct programmes of special studies. They resemble towers of Babel, where all languages are spoken, or rather scholastic caravansaries where one can provide oneself with all articles concerning instruction. The truth is that we are in the presence of two opposite conceptions of the development of the university, between which the leaders of American pedagogy have not yet made a final choice. On one hand is the tendency to particularization, as shown by the existence of so many schools of law and medicine, and independent and isolated scientific schools, as is shown also by the recent creation of universities really worthy of the name, which, expressly disclaiming a complete education, aim at excelling some parts only of the entire field of knowledge, such as Clark University, which is above all and almost exclusively a school of experimental sciences analogous to one of the sections of our Feole française des Hautes Etudes; such, also, as Cornell University, which is principally a school of agriculture and mechanic arts, the equivalent to both our Institut agronomique and our École centrale. On the other hand, there is the opposite tendency toward the excessive centralization of all these studies and the full application of the formula of Comenius, “omnia doceantur." M. Compayré then proceeds to follow the discussion, given in the "proceedings" of the Chicago meeting, of the question

whether universities should be of a uniform type, and concludes that if, even in France, where central authority has such weight, the effort to compel uniformity has been unsuccessful, still less is it to be expected that the dissertations of educational theorists could force uniformity in a country where each university corporation and each political community can dispose of its resources as it wishes.

FINANCIAL RESOURCES OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES.

The want of money alone can prevent the growth of American universities, which is an improbable event, says M. Compayré, in educational matters in the rich and generous American democracy. What, he continues, are our expenditures of ten or twelve millions [of francs] for higher education, obtained, too, with difficulty, compared with the sumptuous liberality, nay, the princely prodigality, for its universities of which America is constantly giving examples? We could not understand the situation of higher education in the United States if we did not consider, above all, how rich the universities are there, and how the dollars flow in to endow them and maintain them in a splendid condition. In the first place—and it is a circumstance which is hardly met with elsewhere and certainly exists nowhere else in the same degree-there is the extraordinary emulation among private benefactors-enriched individuals of the industrial and commercial classes-who believe that they can not make a better use of their fortunes than by devoting them partly, sometimes wholly, to the foundation, support, or development of schools of higher instruction. Sometimes, if they are particularly rich, they create at one stroke a new university, complete from top to toe. Sometimes, to increase the scope of an old institution, they present it with a department or faculty which it needs, or, at least, with a special chair; and, again, if they can do nothing more, they enrich libraries already existing with collections of books, or equip laboratories and museums with costly instruments and rare specimens. What is elsewhere only an accident or a rarity is a habit in America. The United States is the only country in the world where proper names are given to the universities, the names of the generous men to whom they owe either their existence or their aggrandizement. Harvard, De Pauw, Cornell, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, and Clark are at once the names of universities and of the free givers who have contributed more or less, in proportion to their means, to building up these different houses of study. Sometimes the benefactor conceals his identification with the university by suppressing his name. For example, the foundation of the Catholie University at Washington was due to the liberality of Miss Caldwell, of Philadelphia. So, also, Mr. John D. Rockefeller would certainly have a right to be called the godfather of the recently founded University of Chicago, since he presented it with more than $5,000,000 for its christening.

Of course the universities of the United States have not always had such splendid beginnings, such fortunate births. But even those which, like Harvard and Yale, had an humble origin and received only a moderate endowment from their original benefactor, have seen their treasury increase year by year, thanks to the incessant and continuous generosity of their former students, their protectors, and their friends. What the fanciful munificence of a Leland Stanford could do at one stroke in California an uninterrupted succession of small gifts has accomplished, or almost accomplished, at Harvard. In two centuries and a half Harvard has come to possess an annual revenue of $720,000. Who is to ask such wealthy institutions to moderate their ambition and contract the sphere of their activity? Their resources are enormous, nearly unlimited, and it is natural that their scope should be correspondingly great.

After giving a brief account of State institutions and State aid, including land grants, M. Compayré proceeds to the subject of degrees and their multiplicity in America. He continues as follows: American universities, therefore, are rich and even opulent from various sources, but it is not their popularity alone (whereof their riches are the proof) which will maintain and develop them. It must be said that

there is another cause, of an entirely different order, which tends to promote the excessive multiplicity of educational institutions, and that is the conferring of degrees. This prerogative, which is too easily accorded to institutions of all grades, is a power which those who possess it appreciate very highly and which they are not disposed to surrender; and this explains, in part, the great number of colleges and universities in America. We all know the extent to which the division and subdivision of degrees are pushed in the United States, and this fact would suffice to show, without any examination of the programmes, how fragmentary and scattered, and consequently how superficial, to some extent, much of the American education is. It is true that we suffer from the same evil in France to some extent, and there is the story of a candidate for a degree who presented himself before one of our faculties on the morning when he was to begin his written examination, perhaps a little sleepy or confused by the near approach of the dreaded ordeal, and who declared that he did not know exactly in what particular series of what particular section he was to begin his work. He was like a traveler who enters a railway station where there are many trains ready to start and asks anxiously for the proper train to which his ticket entitles him. I know that much can be said in favor of this system, and that just as it is fortunate that the network of railways by their multiplicity make communication casier, so it may be urged that by splitting up and diversifying the baccalaureates, licenses, and doctorates we facilitate success by augmenting the number of ways of reaching it. Nevertheless we must say that the object to be attained has been exceeded in the United States. We are far from equaling the Americans in this respect, with their endless nomenclature of diplomas of all kinds. Nowhere, except in the country of the mandarins, has the superstition of degrees been pushed to such an extreme; and it may be said in passing that in America it is not always well to refuse diplomas even to those who do not deserve them. With us the victims of the examinations content themselves with reviling their judges. Bad marks are rare, and the rage for obtaining diplomas is only equaled by the facility with which they can be obtained at least from certain institutions.

(The statistics quoted show that in 1889–90 some 400 colleges and universities conferred nearly 10,000 degrees of twenty-four or twenty-five different kinds.)

THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY.

We will not insist upon what is so strange from our European point of view, viz, seeing bachelors in music or painting, or doctors of veterinary medicine, nor upon other singular peculiarities such as that one can become a bachelor in philosphy after having followed a course simply of geology, chemistry, or architecture, nor upon the confusion which results from giving different names to the same degree. What merits our attention more, and what the Americans themselves most complain of, is the absence of guaranties, the insufficiency of the conditions under which the degree of doctor in philosophy is granted, a degree which assures to its possessors more consideration than any other. The question was discussed fully at Chicago and the evil was clearly defined. On one hand is the ardor with which the title of Ph. D. is sought if only for the sake of being called "doctor," and on the other is the culpable compliance of some institutions which lend themselves, unfortunately, to the unjustified pretensions of the seekers after diplomas. It is interesting to remark that while in France we aspire to a certain degree of diversity, the Americans would like to have a little more centralization. We complain of an excess of regulations, while they regret the absence of a common directing power. One of the speakers at the Chicago congress, Mr. Sproull, dean of the faculty of the University of Cincinnati, expressed the wish that there should be a general understanding in regard to the essential conditions to which the examination for the degree of doctor in philosophy should conform. As there could be no appeal in such a matter to a ministerial department or a central government, it was suggested to appoint a committee composed of the chiefs of the principal universities. It should be the duty of this

committee to draw up a list of the institutions which it should judge were qualified by their importance and the value of their studies to confer the degree. A journal, to be the organ of the committee, would publish this list, which might be extended or restricted from year to year. This proposition was accepted by the congress and a committeo was appointed, including the presidents of the Johns Hopkins, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Chicago, and California universities, with instructions to take the necessary steps to maintain the plane and protect the significance of the degrees of doctor of philosophy and of science.

This committee will have only a moral effect, as it has no legal sanction or authority.

Moreover, it is not only in itself and at the moment of conferring it that the high degree of doctor allows of criticism and is too easily acquired. On this point it is some defense to say that the evil is not general; that certain institutions maintain the dignity of this title, and that after all an enlightened public opinion can distinguish the tares from the wheat. A graver fault is that even the more serious universities open their courses of law and medicine to students who are insufficiently prepared. It is not yet a settled question in the United States whether an antecedent liberal education should be required of students in law and medicine or not. Americans are right in retaining the titles of professional schools for their schools of law and medicine. The instruction which is usually given in those schools, as it does not rest upon the solid base of a liberal, that is to say general, education, hardly merits the dignified name of higher education. As it is given to young men who have not received secondary instruction, and are therefore without sufficient preparation, who often leave college in their freshman year to enter the professional school, the instruction they receive in the latter can only form practitioners and empirics without breadth of mind or a wide scope, and who will be imprisoned closely in the circle of routine and daily business. The Americans are well aware of this defect, but are at a loss how to remedy it. Opposed to the interest of society, which demands better instructed physicians and lawyers, is the interest of the individual, who demands the shortest cut to the practice of a lucrative profession. There is no appeal to the law. "One of the principles the most intimately and tenaciously united with our conception of a democratic government is that admission to the different professions should remain almost absolutely free, and our legislators are unwilling to place any restrictions upon it." So it is public opinion, as usual, which must be convinced, and that is far from being won over. "Public opinion is not disposed to act summarily in this matter, because it has not yet learned that general education ought to precede professional instruction. A given community is proud that its lawyers were admitted to the bar after only six weeks of study." As long as the public is satisfied, doctors and lawyers without education will continue to multiply. Even if public opinion should reach the idea of reform it would not be easy to carry it out. "In America reforms can only be made bit by bit, by way of trial and example; there is no central authority which can impose them all at once and in their entirety." [The name of the author from whom M. Compayré takes these quotations is not given.] In short, the remedy must come from those universities which, like Harvard, are rich and strong enough to be severe, and demand from their students sufficient evidences of qualification, and if the mere conception of the ideal were sufficient to realize it, higher education in America would have nothing to desire.

The evil is aggravated by the short duration of the course of study; while primary and secondary studies are relatively long and slow in America, and are free from the feverish, dizzy rapidity which seems to whirl everything along, university studies are too much abridged and too hurried. By a kind of regrettable compensation, after the American student has loitered and reflected a little in the high schools and academies and then in the colleges, from which he emerges as a bachelor of arts at the age of twenty-one, two, or even three years of age, in the universities he is