nize them here. We must cover the ground. No student can cover the ground, but the university must do so.

If a university were rich enough to cover the whole ground of learning with first-rate introductory courses on the freshman-sophomore level, and then to cover the whole ground again on the junior-senior level with a vast array of electives, and finally to support research in a correspondingly adequate measure, we might say let it be so; let this limitlessly rich university do by itself what it is really the business of all the universities and learned societies combined to do. It is fine to imagine an institution where every science and every art might be studied upon every level, with no lack of money or of men, or of leisure for the men who do productive work. It is not surprising that this splendid conception, which must be the ideal of the university world as a whole, should be more or less consciously the ideal of particular universities. But in point of fact, the whole university world is not at present rich enough for the full realization of this ideal. And when a single university, even the richest, attempts to do everything on every level, the inevitable failure of the undertaking is sure to appear in some way.

The failure does appear very generally in two well-known ways-first, in the cheapening of the elementary collegiate work; and second, in the restriction of productive research work. It is said that in the American university there is a necessary internal conflict between the collegiate interests and the university interests. My judgment is that in the larger American universities generally, the greatest enemy of both these interests is the excessive expansion of the course of study.

There are obviously two ways of cutting down the amount of work which the university shall offer. We may cut down the number of departments or we may cut down the number of courses offered by the several departments.

The first of these methods is radical. It is a grave matter to abolish a university department. Not really more grave, I think, than the establishment of a new department whose justification may be doubtful, but for many and obvious reasons a procedure which university authorities must hesitate to adopt. Nevertheless, even such radical pruning may be justified. It

can become a question between cutting off some large limbs and the languishing of the whole tree. I shall not be surprised if within the next generation the pressure of circumstances should force the universities to the adoption in a considerable degree of this extreme form of selection.

Meanwhile, we have at hand a much gentler and yet scarcely less efficient method of selection if the departments will cut down the amount and range of work offered by them. Let me put this method of reorganizing and concentrating the course of study in the form of definite proposals.

Let there be in each principal university department: 1. A fundamental elementary course. 2. A very strictly limited. amount of undergraduate work beyond the introductory course. 3. All the rest of the work offered by the department strictly graduate or research work.

1. The fundamental course-It should be a problem of maximum importance to make this course as good as college work can be made. There is the problem of determining what to do, what things out of the whole field to select which shall represent typically the present state of learning in the field and that on a level appropriate for the younger college students. There is the problem of finding men whose training and whose personal good temper and whose educational tact fit them to introduce young people to a great department of learning. Wherever possible, the head of the department should take part in this work.

It is in this work, as we know, that the small colleges have the chief advantage of their smallness and where they have the best chance of doing better work than the great university can do. I believe, however, that the university has great countervailing advantages. Above all things, it must have, on the average, professors who are stronger and in closer touch with the most recent learning. I believe, therefore, that in spite of the great numbers and the many sections, it is possible for the university to develop elementary courses which shall be better than are ordinarily possible in the small college. I wish to remark here that to plan and achieve such a course is of itself productive original work of a high order, as truly as the writing of a monograph.

2. The advanced undergraduate courses-Most of our universities have either the major subject system or the group system. The object of both these systems, as we know, is to furnish, in lieu of the old-time college curriculum, a number of curricula each of which has a substantial center. The essential requirement which we must make of every group and of every major is that a competent social consensus shall judge it to have the real internal unity together with the progressive grades of difficulty which fit it to be the center of a college curriculum. Both systems exclude a college course made up Both may, and I think should, admit a major or a group whose internal unity is assured by the fact that it leads: to one of the learned occupations.

of scraps.

What I wish now to urge is that, without affecting the number of majors or of groups or of departments, we may very decidedly reduce the number of undergraduate courses offered. Here, as I think, is the place for the pruning knife. The universities can cover the whole field of learning in typical introductory courses on the freshman-sophomore level. We cannot each of us by any possibility cover the ground on all higher levels. We must select. We must reject right and left subjects which have every argument in their favor except that we cannot do them all. We must weed out the suckers as a condition of having cornstalks.

There would result apparent hardships for the undergraduate and for some members of the faculty. The undergraduate would not be able, on the one hand, to take a large proportion of his college course within one narrow field, thus becoming a. specialist without becoming an educated man; and he would not be able, on the other hand, to browse far and wide over any and every field which modern learning has developed. He would find instead, however, an abundantly wide choice of majors or of groups each offering an austerely chosen list of representative courses so arranged as to make a substantial center for a college course. And this, whether or not he is to become a specialist, is, I believe, the best thing which the university of to-day can offer him.

I have considered in this connection also the possible hardship to the younger professors who want to have each at least

a small amount of advanced work to do.. I do not wish to slight this consideration, for it is an essential feature of the university life that the younger men should have the door of hope open. I have not solved this problem to my own satisfaction, but I say this: If an instructor can do important productive work, the university should try to offer him as much leisure as the value of his work appears to warrant, whether he is doing the work with students or alone. What the university cannot afford to do is to pay so dearly for elementary non-productive junior and senior work. These courses are the suckers.1

3. Productive work-The freshman-sophomore fundamental courses should be the first gainers from the resources of money and leisure saved by cutting off excessive expansion. The second gainers should be the graduate and research courses. I wish to consider this second gain as it might affect the larger universities and then as it might affect the smaller

ones.

1. Our greatest universities are very rich. They have great graduate schools. They have scholars who have proved to be productive men. And yet, when the total output of scholarly work done in them is compared with that done in Germany, for example, the result is generally conceded to be discouraging. In many cases, little is accomplished beyond the comparatively elementary research work which has its terminus in the doctor's degree. No explanation of this result seems so probable as the fact that the German professor has as a rule the leisure which the American professor only secures by exception. It is doubtful whether the German rule can or should become the American one while we have the college and the university united in one institution. We wish our greatest scholar to surrender a little of his time to the freshmen. But having asked this of him as a duty of religion,

'It should, of course, be remembered that conditions vary widely in the different departments. For example, first-year work in a foreign language is not really collegiate work at all, and if it must be done in college, the amount of possible collegiate work in the subject is lessened. On the other hand, such a subject as astronomy or geology presupposes collegiate work in other sciences. Good sense requires that such differences should be recognized, at whatever expense of superficial consistency in the treatment of departments.

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we should spare his leisure as the most precious asset of the university. We should count it a sin to require such a man to cover the ground." We should sacrifice the catalog, make it thin and full of holes, confine the students to a narrow range of typically good choices, and by these inconsequential sacrifices preserve for the great man his chance to do the work which he alone can do.

2. There is an evil suggestion in the air that a university should not attempt to do advanced graduate and research work unless it is very rich. I know of nothing to justify such a counsel of discouragment. The history of learning, the history of the little universities of Europe, the current history of scholarly work in America all show that the conditions which permit a man to do productive work may be created anywhere. At the worst, some men in the smaller universities, in the little colleges, and in whatever places may seem more unlikely, will continue to prove that creative work is free for all and is the one thing which can never be controlled by a monopoly. Wherever these men are they prove also, directly thru their pupils or indirectly thru their colleagues, the vitalizing effect of research upon teaching and so demonstrate the true bond of unity between the university and the college. No institutional conditions can wholly suppress these masters of the guild of scholars. It is, however, our main business to organize conditions which shall not tend to repress them but which shall enable them to give their whole services to society.

In conclusion I will say that the problem of selecting from all the things which might be done the things which shall be done is the most difficult and the most imperative problem confronting the entire school system. It is not an artificial problem. The school must represent civilization. When we have detected and dismissed the fads and frills there remains the great circle of sciences and arts which will not suffer dismissal, and yet for which our long and expensive school system has not yet found enough money nor enough time. This means simply that the school has forced upon it as never before the problem of selecting its course of study.

INDIANA UNIVERSITY

WILLIAM L. BRYAN