The American University
1113y J. G. LOCKHART TOUR of two months round some of the leading universi- ties of the United States discloses one element that sometimes ruffles the surface of Anglo-American rela- ons. The visitor from either country to the other has a pretty good idea of what he means by a university. Because he often ails to remember that he is in a foreign country, he uncon- ! ciously expects to see a faithful reflection of an institution amiliar to him in his own land, and is unreasonably critical when e discovers that nothing is quite the same. The visiting Briton, or example, will find that it is rather easier to get a Bachelor's degree at, let us say, Harvard than it is to get the same- degree t Oxford. He also finds that in most of the residential universi- 'es the students live in " dormitories," sleeping two or more in a room, and that colleges, where they exist, are but shadows of their British counterparts. The stadium suggests a bullfight 'rather than a football match, while a big ball game, if he sees ,one, goal-posts notwithstanding, is nothing like Rugby, and is incomprehensible without the services of an interpreter. Nor by any stretch of the imagination can the Briton conceive of a vast gathering of Oxford or Cambridge undergraduates singing a university song in praise of Alma Mater, especially one with such p last line as ' For God, for country and for Yale."
The American, on the other hand, probably thinks that the 3ritish university lacks not merely many of the facilities essential Ito a place of learning, but also any real corporate spirit. !Twickenham will strike him as a tepid affair and Lord's as an almost intolerable tedium. Again and again comparison turns to contrast, in organisation, curriculum, way of life and perhaps most markedly in the attitude of the past to the present.- The British alumnus thinks he has done his duty when he has entered his son for his old college. The American alumnus is an enthu- siastic benefactor who contributes regularly and munificently to the annual revenue of his old university.
The explanation may be that in many respects the American university takes the place occupied in Britain by the public school. The freshmen, in age and scholastic attainment, are equivalent to our fifth- and sixth-form boys, and even the -sophomores (or second-year men) have scarcely reached what Britons would regard as the undergraduate stage. The American, however, begins to catch up when he has taken his B.A., for a far higher proportion of American students go in for post- graduate work and read for a doctor's degree.
A visitor. to American universities is at once and powerfully impressed by the lavishness of the equipment. The Americans inot only believe in education ; they are prepared to pay for it, and no expense, it seems, is spared. The amount poured into buildings and equipment is fabulous, and so are- the results. Surely Britain has nothing to compare with the California or Massachusetts Institutes of Technology ; while State and inde- pendent universities vie with each other in their determination to have the best of everything that money can buy. The State universities, of course, are supported out of public funds. In the independent universities, on the other hand, the alumni are the chief benefactors. Men like the late Mr. Harkness (who was also the founder of the Commonwealth Fund. Fellowships) spent millions of dollars on his own university of Yale and, with a fine impartiality, also presented Harvard with money sufficient to start the college system.
The independent university, however, has entered upon difficult days in its competition with its brethren of the States. The freedom which it rightly prizes so highly is not as absolute as it may appear. It is true that the State university is at the mercy of a legislature which at any moment may take an im- perfectly informed interest in its activities and make inconvenient demands on its faculty. But the independent university has its organised body of alumni, who watch jealously over its doings, are often inclined to resist necessary innovations and cannot be disregarded, if only because they contribute so much to the university's income. Today the independent university is at a further disadvantage. Inflation has brought a rise in prices, of which any visitor is painfully aware. Salaries have had to be increased, and the cost of everything has gone up, without any equivalent rise in, revenue. The problem is to make ends meet. As one professor put the position rather ruefully, if a university were to approach one of the big trusts with a request for twenty or thirty thousand dollars towards running expenses, it would be met with a polite refusal. But if it were to go to that same trust with a grandiose scheme, involving a social scientist, a geo- political expert, a demographer, a statistician, a few research men and so forth, at a total cost of a million dollars, it would have a fair chance of getting the money. There is little difficulty in finning funds to start the new and untried. The trouble is to raise anything for the support of the old and tried.
The temptation, therefore, especially for the smaller universi- ties and colleges, is to play the packrat, that small animal with a tiresome habit of collecting objects like buttons or thimbles, which it does not really want and cannot possibly eat. In other words, a university or college is tempted to start various enter- prises of doubtful utility, which it cannot properly maintain in the future, simply because it can get the money to start them off ; while at the same time its regular activities, for which no such help is available, continue to be stinted and even starved.
Add _to this situation the probability that the day of gigantic bequests, even of handsome annual subscriptions, appears to be drawing to a close. The United States Treasury is now taking most of what once went by private benefaction to universities, schools, medical research and other socially desirable objects. The springs of American generosity, though still welling today, may dry up tomorrow. With this prospect before them the faculties have been looking rather doubtfully across the Atlantic to discover how the British universities are faring in an even greater stringency. These have lost their old independence in the sense that they are now accepting the financial aid of the State. The Universities Grants Committee, it is true, is working well, and so far the State has shown no desire to- tamper with academic freedom. The American, however, is unconverted, pointing out that what is happening now under the kind of Government Britain has is no criterion of what may happen in the future under a different sort of Government. Nor is it any criterion of what might happen in the United States. He may be right about us, and is probably right about his own country. Yet the time may come when the financial pressure will be too heavy for the independent universities to resist.
The independent universities will certainly fight stubbornly for their freedom, and will only surrender when they are con- vinced that no other course is open to them. Most Americans would agree that for them to cease altogether or to lose their independence would be an educational disaster. •They have al long and honourable tradition, which they proudly maintain, and provide a standard for the State universities which some, though not all, of these come near to reaching. We should give the \ independent universities sympathy in their struggle and not merely a smug exhortation to go and do as we have done. Until we know a little more about the price to be paid, we should be diffident about recommending the purchase to anyone else.
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