The third type of liberal college education is the intermediate course labeled with the degree of bachelor of letters or bachelor of philosophy. It differs from the other courses mainly in its treatment of the classical languages. To placate the practical spirit it drops Greek, but retains Latin both as an aid to general culture and as a help in learning the modern languages. Although indeterminate and intermediate, it serves a valuable end by providing many stu dents, who do not care for the classical lan guages in their entirety, with a sufficiently lib eral form of education to be of great service. Judged from the' standpoint of the historical bachelor of arts course, it is a less general but still valuable culture. Judged from the standpoint of the bachelor of .science course, it appears to escape the unhappy conflict between the technical and liberal impulses.
Some colleges, following the example of Harvard under President Eliot, dealt with the bachelor degree very differently. The mean ing of the degree was radically altered, so as to represent the free selections made by the stu dents themselves out of the range of liberal studies. In such a plan it no longer stands for the completion of a definite curriculum com posed of a few clearly related central studies constituting a positive type. What it does stand for is not easy to define, because of the varia tion of practice in different colleges and the wide diversity of selection on the part of the student. In the undergraduate college con nected with the Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore choice is regulated by prescribing moderately elastic groups of cognate studies, the student being required to say which group he will •choose. In Harvard College the stu dent has been allowed to choose what he pre fers, subject to such limitations as the priority of elementary to advanced courses in any sub ject, and the coincidence in time of various courses. But the so-called ((free-elective sys tems inaugurated by President Eliot has been definitely abandoned by Harvard and a system requiring concentration in one leading division of studies, with some work in each of the three other leading divisions, has been introduced.
Other Phases. of To what ex tent the undergraduate collegian has become a university student is the real question around which a controversy of vital importance is raging.
The profound change indicated by external symptoms has been in progress since the Civil War, and is still working along toward its con summation. The difficult thing in analyzing this change is not merely to understand the change from a uniform to a multiform mode of life and organization, but to understand that what is changing is the old-fashioned Ameri can college. But even the old-fashioned col leges, while aiming to follow out a single course of study ending in a single degree of single meaning, did not succeed in exhibiting such close individual resemblance to each other as is to be found among the lycees of France, the public schools of England or the gymnasia of Germany. Many colleges really served as pre paratory schools for larger and stronger col leges, and many so-called universities did not attain and in fact do not yet attain to the real though less pretentious dignity of the better colleges. For the sake of simplicity then we
discard from our consideration all except the better colleges which, when taken together, exhibit the dominant tendency.
How, then, have these better colleges changed? Speaking generally, they have changed in a way which reflects the diversified progress of the country, and yet they have had an important influence in leading and or ganizing the national progress. Then, too, the change is not merely a change of form, hut of spirit. In the older days scarcely any col lege had as many as 400 or 500 students, and the range of studies was limited. The faculty of the college exercised a strong paternal enxiety and oversight on behalf of the morals and re ligion as well as over the studies of the stu dents. The authority of the president was al most patriarchal in character. Not highly de veloped insight into the problems of education i but plain common sense in governing students was the condition of a successful presidency. The range of studies has increased. With the strengthening of preparatory courses, the school preparation of students has improved, and at the same time their average age at entrance has risen. The number of professors has multi plied. The old-fashioned college professor, the man of moderate general scholarship and of austere yet kindly interest in the personal wel fare of those he taught, still remains; but at his side has appeared the newer type of Ameri can college professor, the man of high special learning in some one subject or branch, who considers it his primary duty to investigate, his next duty to teach and his least duty to exercise a personal care for the individual stu dents. Perhaps the old type will be replaced by the new. Such a result, however, would not be an unmixed gain, and our finest college professors today endeavor to combine high special attainments as scholars with deep inter est in the personal well-being of their students. The authority of the faculty is still sufficient, but is exercised differently. Student self-gov ernment is the order of the day, and the more this prevails the less is exercise of faculty au thority found to be necessary. The presidents of our larger colleges, and even of many of the smaller, are becoming more and more ad ministrative officers and less and less teachers. It is no doubt something of a loss that the students should not have the intimate personal acquaintance with the president enjoyed by stu dents a generation ago, but mere numbers fre quently make this impossible. Out-of-door sports have also entered to modify and improve the spirit of our academic life. They have de veloped their own evils, but at the same time have done wonders for the physical health of the students, the diminution of student disorders and the fostering of an intense esprit de corps. In the reaction from the asceticism of early college life there is little doubt athletics have gone too far. But the abuses of college athletics can be corrected, and are to some ex tent self-correcting.