From the standpoint of material re sources we may recognize several distinct types of colleges. First, there is the small college with a faculty of 8 or 10, a student body of less than 200, and a limited election of work. Then there is the large college, still detached, with larger resources of every kind. Then there is the university college—a college still—the center of a university that of fers professional work of the most varied character. Apparently the student trend is toward these large institutions.
2. General Purpose: Long ago the college ceased to be vocational, as were the earliest institutions in America. The next rallying point was the call for intel lectual discipline. This end and aim of the college course was elaborately de fended in 1827 in a report made by the Yale faculty. With this argument every college defended its rigid technical course of study. With the expansion of the curriculum, made necessary through the expansion of knowledge and made possible through the expansion of mate rial resources, the college relaxed its claims for the supremacy of mental dis cipline and abandoned its rigid curricu lum for securing the same. For disci pline it substituted "culture," returning to the humanitarian ideas of the renais sance. This ideal of culture has been weakened by attacks from two sides. A report of the Harvard faculty in 1904 says: "The easiest way to induce stu dents to take a subject for culture is to make it not too difficult." There has also been a demand that the college course relate itself to the life purposes of the students. This has been heeded, espe cially by colleges attached to large uni versities, so that the college course is again becoming vocational.
3. The Curriculum: Perhaps the greatest academic struggle of the past generation has been carried on over the college curriculum, the introduction of new subjects, the adherence to old re quirements, the adoption of a system of free electives or parallel courses, the length of the course and the degrees that should crown it. The whole question is older than 1870. It was brought distinct ly to the front in the founding of the University of Virginia in 1825. Harvard, under the leadership of President Eliot, was the center of the liberal influence. Out of the confusion and strife there are some broad conclusions that may be stated: (a) The rigid college course is gone and will not be restored. (b) New subjects and new courses are introduced by every college to the extent of its financial ability, and beyond. Limitations
are financial alone, not of educational theory. (c) Free election is making lit tle progress at present. A corrective is applied by some form of parallel courses or group studies or requirement of ma jors and minors. (d) Admission require ments become constantly more liberal with the ultimate goal that no student is to be rejected—at least by the larger State universities—who has finished an acceptable high school course. (e) The typical course is to occupy four years, but some students will accomplish it in three and most professional students will have their first year credited as part of their college course. (f) The degree of A. B. will be the usual degree for any course. Some institutions will continue to give B. S., but other degrees, as B. L., or Ph. B., will be abandoned.
4. Extra Curriculum Activities: These cannot be omitted in any account of the present American college. There has been a tremendous and not altogether de sirable growth of non-scholastic interests in college life. These interests attract students more than scholarship. As yet they have not been properly organized and vitalized with the spirit of culture. Athletics, fraternities, and social life are now ahead of any study in the curricu lum.
From the foregoing it appears that no definition of the term "college" has yet secured general acceptance. At the same time influences are working from many quarters looking to the establishment of certain minimum attainments, financial, and educational, that every college must possess. These are an endowment of at least $200,000, or an annual income from taxes of $40,000, not less than eight de partments, each having at least one full time professor, regular appropriations for laboratories and library, and satisfactory salaries. Some States limit the granting of charters by some such provisions and educational societies have urged such limitation as a universal requirement.
The future of the American college has been much discussed. The college is threatened by the high school and junior college on the one side and by the uni versity and professional schools on the other. None the less the American col lege—even the detached cultural college —survives to-day and is being strength ened. It has no counterpart either in England or on the Continent of Europe. It has inherited respect and affection ac cumulated through hundreds of years and in spite of many changes still re mains in some respects our most typical American educational institution.