CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOLS, schools in which instruction is given by mail to those students who are unable to attend schools and college, either be cause they cannot afford to stop remuner ative labor or because they are too far distant from any good school. Under the system the student, after the payment of fees, receives textbooks and lessons by mail from the institution, returns the completed exercises, and receives them back, corrected and marked. This type of instruction presupposes on the part of the student a conscientious desire to learn and a willingness to work. Such students have been greatly benefited by the correspondence schools. In 1868 the University Extension move ment was started in England, the object being to give to mature men and women, who had been deprived of any education in early life, some op portunity to acquire knowledge of science and literature. Probably from this in stitution, adopted in America in 1873, arose the first correspondence university at Ithaca, N. Y. For a time the Chau tauqua, under President William Rainey Harper, undertook to educate by corre spondence, but abandoned it when some of the Western universities, such as Wis consin and Chicago, took over this task.
Many of the great Western universities have courses which can be taken by cor respondence, and by adopting this method of instruction the State universities gain a hold upon the people of the common wealth, which in part accounts for the generous support given them by State Legislatures. One of the most successful correspondence schools in the United States is a private institution, the International Correspondence Schools, lo cated at Scranton, Pa. Not only are the regular college courses offered by this school, but virtually every vocation or trade can be learned by correspondence with this school. In fact, the larger proportion of its students are learning trades, the number of its students who are doing college work being compara tively small.