TO THE BOARD OF OVERSEERS:
The President of the University has the honor to submit the following report for the year 1913-14:
During the past academic year the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has lost by death Benjamin Osgood Peirce, Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, a physicist eminent in all eyes but his own, the simplicity and elevation of whose character have left as keep a mark on his students and colleagues as his fruitful labors for thirty-two years. The Faculty of Medicine has lost death Thomas Morgan Rotch, Professor of Pediatrics, who taught that subject in the Medical School continuously for thirty-six years, and led the way for this country in scientific feeding of children. The beautiful Infants' Hospital close by the School is a memorial to him, as well as to his son whose name it bears. Since the opening of the present academic year Charles Sedgwick Minot, James Stillman Professor of Comparative Anatomy, has also died. A teacher in the School since 1880, his fame as an embryologist rose steadily throughout his life in this country and abroad.
The only resignations of professors during the year have been those of Bruce Wyman, Professor of Law, who had been a teacher in the Law School ever since his graduation therefrom in 1900; and Myles Standish, Williams Professor of Ophthalmology, who had taught in the Medical School more than twenty years.
In the course of the past year there have been thirteen appointments to professors' fairs. Nine of these have been cases of promotion of men who had already served as assistant professors. Austin Wakeman Scott was made Professor of LAW; Robert Williamson Lovett, Professor of Orthopedic Surgery; George Andrew Reisner, Professor of Egyptology Rd Edward Murray East, Professor of Experimental Plant Morphology; while Frank Lowell Kennedy was appointed Associate Professor of Engineering; Carles Wilson Killam, Associate Professor of Architecture; Charles Leonard Moulton, Associate Professor of Mathematics; Simon Burt Wolbach, Associate Professor of Bacteriology, and Heinrich Conrad Bierwith, Associate Professor of German. The other four professors were appointed from outside the University. Kirsopp Lake was made Professor of Early Christian Literature; William Ernest Hocking, Professor of Philosophy; Felix Frankfurter, Professor of Law, and Roger Irving Lee, Professor of Hygiene.
Interesting Exchange Professors.
The exchange professors sent by us during the year were: to Berlin, Archibald Cary Coolidge, Professor of History and Director of the University Library; to Paris, Maxime Bocher, Professor of Mathematics; and to the Western Colleges, Clifford Herschel Moore, Professor of Latin. From abroad we received singularly interesting men: from France, Fernand Baldensperger, Professor of Modern Comparative Literature at the Sorhonne; from Germany, Ernst von Dobschutz, Professor of the New Testament at the University of Halle; and from the Western Colleges three men of professional rank: Harry Waldo Norris, Professor of Zoology at Grinnell; Erastus Gilbert Smith, Professor of Chemistry at Beloit; and Homer Edwards Woodbridge, Professor of English at Colorado. The new provision for a professor from Japan brought us Masaharu Anesaki of the University of Tokyo, who bears here the title of Professor of Japanese Literature and Life.
In regard to the Western exchange two facts are noteworthy. At the request of the other four colleges, Carleton College in Minnesota has been added to the group; and it has been found that older men, of more advanced academic standing than had at first been contemplated, desire to come here for a half-year. This is both significant and gratifying.
Number of Students Unchanged.
As usual the report upon the condition of the University begins with Harvard College, the centre upon and about which the other schools are grouped; and the report for the College begins properly with the Freshman class, since that year more than any other determines the tone of college life. For some time the size of the entering class has remained substantially the same, a fact which does not appear clearly from the figures in the annual Catalogues, because the basis of class rating has been changed. Until a couple of years ago all undergraduates who had not removed their conditions at entrance were rated as Freshmen, under the impression that a dislike of appearing in the Catalogue in that guise would provide a strong stimulus to making up conditions early. But students care little about the rating in the Catalogue, and, short of sending a man away, probation has proved to be the only effective form of penalty for neglect of duty. In view of a marked rise in the minimum standard of work in College, any immediate increase in the number of students entering could hardly be expected. It is enough that there has been no falling off. Experience, however, appears to show that a demand for more work does not permanently reduce, but in time tends to enlarge, the attendance, and it is gratifying to report a growth in the size of the class entering in September, 1914. The number of new Freshmen is 664, being 83 larger than last year. The increase is in part due to the fact that the percentage of rejections, which was excessive last year, has been reduced to the normal for the last few years. Perhaps the growth in size is due in part also to the opening of the new Freshman Halls.
Younger Men Better Students.
The report of the Chairman of the Committee on Admission contains much that is interesting, and among other things a statement of the average age of candidates. It appears that those who were admitted averaged about eighteen and a half years old, while the rejected were about nineteen. The difference ought not to surprise anyone familiar with the problems raised by the age of students. Carefully compiled statistics referred to in the report of last year show that the men entering College young are on the average better, both in their studies and their conduct. On the whole they are the more intelligent and industrious youths; and this appears in the examination for entrance, as well as in college work. Yet even those who are admitted come too late. This subject was discussed in the last annual report, but it will bear repetition. With the long period of special training now required in every profession, there is a universal cry that men are beginning their careers in life too old, and that the period of education is too long. Disease and death are not postponed because a man starts upon the practice of his profession a year or two later than is necessary. His period of active life, his achievements and his usefulness, are simply curtailed to that extent; and a part, at least, of the time wasted could be saved in the school days before coming to college. Boys of ordinary capacity could, by beginning young enough, be ready to enter college a year earlier than most of them do now, and they would be perfectly competent to pursue the courses even of the best colleges. The advantages, indeed, would seem to be almost wholly in favor of entering college young. Seventeen is a more appropriate age than eighteen to begin the life of college. The real pleasures are more fully and innocently enjoyed. Under a proper environment the moral dangers are in fact less. The means of education are quite within the reach of the youth who is well prepared for admission at that time; and, paradoxical as it may appear, he is in fact more likely to take advantage of them. He is at the period of life when his intellectual powers are growing rapidly, and when it is a natural process to develop those powers by exercising them without too much regard for the direct use to be made of the knowledge acquired. In short, there is a normal time for general education. A man who is too old, if a serious student, seeks to prepare directly for his career to study his profession: or if not, is in danger of treating his studies lightly. Much has been said about maturity, but that is the result less of age than of environment and responsibility. Maturity may easily become over-ripe. Finally the boy who enters college older begins life later; unless, indeed, he cuts down his time in college. If twenty-one is the best age to begin the study of a profession,--and the signs of the times seem to point to this,--then one must enter at seventeen or remain only three years. In the last analysis the practical problem for the community at the present day is narrowing itself down to shortening the college course or entering younger, to the question whether it is better to stay longer in school or have a fourth year in college. The question needs no answer for those who believe that the Senior year is the most profitable, not only because it is the last, but because it is the fourth.
489 in Freshman Halls.
A hope was expressed last year that one of the objections of parents to sending their sons to college young,--a fear of the sudden transition from school and home to college,--would be in great part removed by the new Freshman Halls. Three of these halls, holding 489 students, have been completed and were filled at the opening of the academic year. As all Freshman not living at home or specially excused were required to reside there, the assignment of rooms involved much labor and discretion. Save that students coming in considerable numbers from any one school were required to distribute themselves among three halls, and that the cheapest rooms were reserved for men of limited means, the Freshmen were assigned rooms, so far as possible, in accordance with their preferences. Professor Yeomans, the Assistant Dean in charge of the Freshmen, and Mr. Brandegee, the Regent, succeeded in doing this in a way that is highly satisfactory. Owing to the increase in the entering class the halls cannot contain all the Freshmen, in spite of the large number of them who live at home. A score of men have been given rooms in other college dormitories with the privilege of taking their meals at, and being in other respects members, of one of the halls; while there are a few more wholly outside. It is probable, moreover, that a number of those who live at home would now be in the halls if there had been room for them. It is highly important, therefore, that the original plan should be completed as soon as possible by the construction of a fourth hall.
As yet it is too early to form a final opinion on the effect of these halls upon the student body; and in fact their complete influence cannot be measured until a class entering them has passed through its whole college course, for their object is not merely to improve the Freshman year, but to fit the men more rapidly to make a good use of their life in college. So far the halls appear to be producing the results for which they were designed. Many of the present Freshmen were prejudiced against them from a dread of freedom and of school-boy regulations. This has disappeared, and the men as a body are well pleased, looking upon the halls as a privilege. There is, however, no benefit in life without some corresponding loss, and complaints are heard that while the Freshmen mix freely in their several halls, they see little of the men in the other halls and nothing of upper classmen. This is true; but as a rule Freshmen have in the past seen little of most of their classmates, and still less of the older classes, while those men with whom they have been chiefly brought into contact have had antecedents similar to their own. A man does well if in the first three months of college he makes the acquaintance of one hundred and fifty classmates of all kinds, almost all unknown to him before, and with experiences quite unlike his. That the Freshman Halls have enabled him to do. There ought to be time enough in the rest of the year for men in the different halls to draw together, and later to come into close contact with upper classmen. We can rely on the Freshmen not to neglect the abundant opportunities there will be for this. By being more gradual the fusion ought ultimately to be more complete. In fact, it was mainly to prevent immediate segregation on the basis of similar origin that the halls were built.
Early Warnings Effective.
On the whole, the Freshmen seem to be taking college life distinctly more seriously at the outset, and the November grades show that they are certainly not less studious than before. The scholarship of many Freshmen suffers from the sudden transition from the prescribed daily tasks of school to the larger freedom of college. Accustomed to constant supervision, they do not, when left to their own devices for regulating their hours of study, realize the need of self-discipline and systematic work, and are inclined to put off exertion until an examination is near. An experiment was therefore made last year of getting from the instructors reports in the early weeks of the term, and warning the delinquents. This proved very effective, as may be seen by the figures given in the report of the Dean of Harvard College for the subsequent failures on the part of these men, as compared with others who had not been warned. Such a policy is in accord with the principle that the duty of the college consists not only in providing large opportunities for education, but also in making all students feel the importance of taking advantage of them. That can be done by disciplinary measures only in small part, and in the main only for the idle. Far more can be accomplished by personal contact, and by an improvement of the general attitude toward college work. For this reason it is gratifying to refer again to the remarks of Dean Hurlbut on the effect of the rules about the choice of electives upon the seriousness with which the students regard the selection of their courses.
But faithfulness and ordinary proficiency in scholarship are not enough. During the last generation a tendency to disparage the high scholar has run through the educational system of America. It has been the fashion to say that he is generally passed in later life by the man of mediocre intellectual achievement in school or college,--an idea as irrational as it is contrary to the evidence derived from actual statistics. This is the only country where it is popularly believed that superior diligence and aptitude for knowledge are poor preparations for success in life. Keen competition in examinations may, or may not, have been carried too far in Europe; but we have certainly disregarded it too much here. No means ought to be neglected to encourage a desire and respect for excellence, and for this purpose the element of competition ought not to be left out of sight. Much may be done by drawing attention to the records of scholars and of schools. An example of this is the recent publication of the honor grades achieved at our entrance examinations by the boys from the different preparatory schools, which has attracted no little attention, and will help encourage the teacher to set his aim above merely getting candidates for admission through with a pass mark. To raise the respect for scholarship at school raises it in college, and vice-versa. Conditions have in fact improved; and one hears far less of "C" as "the gentleman's mark," or of derogatory epithets for high scholars.
To Supervise Written English.
After an investigation of the writing of English by students the Board of Overseers adopted on the eleventh of May last the following vote:
"In view of the various and convincing proofs brought to the attention of the Board of Overseers that the students both in their entrance and college examination papers, especially in courses other than English courses, fail to write correct, coherent and idiomatic English: Resolved, that the Faculty of Harvard College be requested to devise suitable measures to remedy this condition of affairs, and to report to this Board not later than January first, 1915, a definite plan for bettering the written and spoken English of Harvard students."
In pursuance thereof the Faculty on May 19th voted to appoint a committee to examine the subject, and in accordance with the recommendations of that committee it adopted on December 15th the following resolutions, which seem well devised to promote the object in view:
"1. A permanent Committee of the Faculty on Students' Use of English shall be appointed, such Committee to be made up of members of several Departments, and to have general supervision of our students' written English.
"2. The executive officer of this Committee shall be its Secretary, who shall be a member of the Committee and of the Faculty. It shall be a part of his duty to inspect, from time to time, the written work of students and to report to the Committee on its quality.
"3. Instructors in all departments, especially men recently appointed, shall be invited to confer with the Secretary concerning our students' usual faults and the best methods of correcting them.
"4. All instructors shall be expected to refer students who seem to them deficient in English to the Secretary, who shall advise these students, and who may impose on them special tasks, such as outside reading and reports, or additional prescribed work in English Composition, such work not counting for the degree." In this connection it is interesting to observe that the School of Business Administration has found itself confronted by the same problem; for American students, even if quite capable of writing good English, are very apt to forget to do so in ordinary work. They regard it as an ornament assumed on occasion, not a habit of life. The Faculty of the School has felt the need of insisting on good English so strongly that they have employed a special instructor to examine the theses and confer with the students.
The generosity of an ananymous benefactor has enabled the College to take better care of its students in another respect. The gift is for a Professorship of Hygiene to be held by a physician who must give up his private practice, and, except for hospital work, must devote his time to the students as their medical adviser and friend. The influence on the health, conduct, and character of young men that a man in such a position can exert is incalculable, and the selection for the post of Dr. Roger Irving Lee was made after very careful consideration. It so happened that last winter the Faculty of Arts and Sciences made a new departure in the case of students' health at Harvard by providing, with the approval of the Governing Boards, for a physical examination of all Freshmen at the opening of the year. Such an examination, which has been in use in other colleges, was conducted here for the first time this autumn by Dr. Lee and his assistants. It was justified at the outset by the discovery of many cases of irregularity in the heart or kidneys, perfectly curable but needing to be watched.
Budget Growing Larger.
The most serious difficulty confronting the College, the Graduate School, and, infact, the University as a whole, is financial. The amount of instruction under the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has been very much increased during the last score of years by the appointment of a large number of young instructors, and as they have grown older their salaries have increased. A steady growth of the budget has therefore taken place and will continue until a normal distribution of age in the staff has been reached. The result of this and other causes has been a deficit for several years in the join account of the College, Library, and University, which for last year was $52,009.29. We are thus faced with the alternative of increasing our income, or of cutting down instruction severely, which would be most unfortunate. In view of the improbability at the present time of raising any large additional endowment the only resource would seem to be an increase of the tuition fee. In 1869 it was suddenly raised from one hundred and four dollars to one hundred and fifty and, except for the addition of four dollars for the Infirmary fee, it has not been raised since that time, although prices have increased, and the purchasing power of money has declined, very much in the interval, especially within the last few years. Other colleges and universities have felt the pressure, and many of them have recently raised their tuition fees, until our charges, instead of being distinctly higher than in almost all other institutions, are on a level with those of the smaller endowed colleges, and are on the whole lower than those of the larger institutions not supported by the State. The figures for a number of leading colleges are given in the table of the opposite page.
Harvard cannot compete with the State universities in providing education cheaply, but only in the quality of the instruction offered. We must strive to offer the best, even if it costs the student more. This matter has been considered by committees of this Board twice within a score of years, and it now under consideration in the various faculties, for although the subject to most pressing in the College and Graduate School, the same questions aries to all the professional schools except the Medical School, where the tuition fee for already two hundred dollars, and the Divinity School, which by its connection with other theological schools is debarred from increasing its fee at resent. Under the agreement with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology the fee for instruction in engineering will hereafter be $250.
Law School Still at Top.
The past year has been one of notable interest for the professional schools, The Law School maintains its well recognized position; and in spite, or in consequence, of increasing severity in eliminating students who do not reach a satisfactory standard, the number of the entering class has grown. Nor is the School satisfied with having created a method of instruction that has been adopted by all the leading schools of law in the country. The establishment of the fourth year, with the collection of a great library on all kinds of law, signifies an increased attention to the production of jurists as well as practitioners; and the report of Dean Thayer tells of an important change worked out by the Faculty in the traditional classification of the different branches of law for the purposes of teaching the first-year class.
In the Medical School the year has been marked by the opening of the Children's and Infants' Hospitals, which, with the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and the Cancer Hospital, complete the group of clinics upon the land originally purchased for the School. It is expected that within a few years more hospitals will be built nearby, and this ought to be done without impairing the close connection with the other great hospitals of Boston. The clinical resources in the city are unsurpassed, and if wisely used will present very extensive opportunities for teaching and observation. A note-worthy addition to the clinics, which although remote is highly important, has come from the appointment by the United Fruit Company of Dr. Strong as Director of its hospitals in the West Indies and Central America; for Tropical Medicine offers a rich field for the study of diseases caused by protozoa.
Among the immediate problems of internal organization before the School are the perfecting of the system of general examinations, and above all a closer cooperation between the various departments. No man today can be wholly master of all branches of medical science, yet every branch overlaps others, and can neither be taught nor investigated in isolation. It is peculiarly important, therefore, that each department should be in touch with all the rest. The staff is well aware of this and working toward that end. There is also the ever-present financial problem for medical education is necessarily and increasingly expensive, and the School needs endowment in several respects. This is even more true of the Dental School, which has for years been unable to pay salaries to its clinical professors,--a condition unworthy of the University, and incompatible with the most efficient work. The practitioners in any branch of medicine cannot be properly trained unless the schools are adequately endowed; and of late years there has been a marked growth in public opinion about the relation of dentistry to public health. People have begun to understand that the care of the teeth is not a craft exercised for the comfort of the rich, but an important branch of preventive medicine.
Improvement in Business School.
The creation of a separate Faculty for the School of Business Administration has proved a great gain for the President; if for no one else, for it has enabled him to keep in far closer touch with the work, and the instructing staff, of the School. But it would seem to have been a gain also in giving the School a more distinctly professional character and reputation. The experimental period of the School has wholly passed. Its usefulness is recognized in the community: by industrial concerns which have adopted its methods of accounting and welcomed its instructors and students to inspect their plants; by other educational institutions which have followed its example and its name; and by students who have come to it this year in greater numbers than ever before. As yet only a part of them appreciate the value of remaining the second year and completing the course; but this is natural in a school of a novel kind which prepares for an occupation hardly regarded as a distinct profession, and not fully animated by a professional consciousness. This, however, will soon cure itself. The procedure of the Faculty is notable for the attention devoted by its members, not only individually but collectively, to the deficiency of each student, and for the rigor with which men whose work is not satisfactory are eliminated at all periods of the year.
The Dean of the Divinity School speaks in his report of the agreement with the Episcopal Theological School. The text of this is printed in the Appendix here to and it is even more important than the bare terms would imply. It is not a new departure, for it is in line with the earlier step taken by the arrangement with Andover Theological Seminary; yet it carries the policy then inaugurated a long way forward. The barriers between the different churches in this country have softened, but they have by no means disappeared, and it is still a far cry to the time when preparation for the ministry can be wholly conducted by universities on a purely undenominational basis. Although no little progress has been made by the non-sectarian divinity schools, like our own, the various churches will long maintain their separate schools for training recruits for their pulpits; nor are they likely to give them up while the ministry of each church is essentially a career by itself. Nevertheless, there are in a theological education many subjects of a purely scholarly nature into which the differing views and practice of the churches do not enter at all, or enter too little to be significant; and with the progress of knowledge this class of subjects tends to enlarge. In the case of such subjects an alliance between schools of theology renders possible a greater variety of instruction, and a saving of needless duplication of instructors. There are also many fields not of a professional nature, and not commonly taught in a divinity school, with which many men preparing themselves for the ministry want to be familiar. Such, for example, are philosophy, psychology, and, to an increasing extent at the present day, social ethics and economics. It is a distinct advantage for a theological school to be so connected with a university that courses of this kind are open to its students freely and without additional fees; while, on the other hand, there is a benefit to a university that maintains, like Harvard, a non-sectarian divinity school but does not expect to supplant denominational schools, in being the centre for a group of schools of this kind, with which it is closely connected in harmonious plans of work.
These aims are promoted by the agreement with the Episcopal Theological School. Each of the three schools will train young men for the ministry, having the resources of all three, and of the whole University, at its command. The Divinity School has no intention of diminishing this part of its work, and in the appointment of Rev. Henry W. Foote as Assistant Professor of Preaching and Parish Administration and Secretary of the School, that object was kept in view; but it undertakes also, with the aid of the professors in the other two schools, the duty of administering for all three the higher degrees in theology newly established by the University. These degrees do not certify the professional qualification to engage in the work of the ministry, and have no denominational character. They are degrees of an essentially scholarly character, and as such are appropriately administered and conferred by the University.
Both parties to the agreement feel that they have profited thereby, the Theological School because its students now take freely courses for which they formerly paid a fee, the Divinity School because its sphere of action has been enlarged. The change benefits the whole body of students in both Schools; and in fact, any other profit to either School is of secondary moment. An institution of learning is a trustee, and no trustee should make for himself a profit from a bargain. Any profit should be made, and in this case is made, by the cestuique trust, for the cestuis are the students and the public.
More About Tech. Agreement.
In the last annual report the agreement, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was described and discussed at some length. The text of the agreement itself was set forth in an appendix, and is printed again in the report of Dean Sabine published herewith. According to its terms it does not go into effect until the new buildings of the Institute, now in the progress of construction in Cambridge, shall be ready for use; but in the meanwhile the two institutions are cooperating so far as possible for instruction in the subjects covered by the plan, and members of the various departments concerned are working together cordially. They realize fully the benefits that will accrue, and that the practical problems involved can readily be solved. Some friends of the University, however, have grave doubts whether the agreement is in accord with the provisions of Gordon McKay's will. It is needless to say that, great as the gain to the public may be, neither the Corporation nor the Board of Overseers would have made the agreement if they had not believed, and been advised by their counsel, that they had full authority to do so. But, in view of the questions that have been raised, the Corporation is determined to seek the opinion of the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth in order to set all doubts at rest. Under these conditions it would be unbecoming to argue here the necessity, propriety and legality of combinations between educational institutions, or the nature of the particular provisions in the will of Gordon McKay.
People have asked what will be the relation of the undergraduate in Harvard College to the new combination. For some years technical courses in engineering and mining have not been open to undergraduates in the College. The Graduate School of Applied Science has been in reality a graduate school, and the non-technical courses denominated engineering have dealt almost entirely with mathematics, physics, mechanics, chemistry, drawing, and other subjects that lie at the foundation of engineering or mining, but are believed to be valuable to any man as a proper part of a general education. These courses remain in Harvard College, open to all undergraduates competent to pursue them. It may be observed, however, that the first two years in the Institute of Technology are devoted almost wholly to courses of this nature, together with others of a still more general character, such as English, history, and modern languages. Scientific courses of the same kind are offered in most colleges today, so that a graduate of any good, college who has taken them there, can enter the Institute with advanced standing, and, if he has sufficient capacity, complete the work for his degree in two years. When the new combination goes fully into effect, therefore, a man aiming at the Harvard and Technology degrees in engineering or mining can follow any one of three paths. He can enter the Institute at once and take these degrees in four years. He can enter Harvard College, spend a couple of years taking the preliminary sciences there, then leave the College and take up the technical work at the Institute, having the status of a professional student in the Institute and the University; and, if he has ability enough, obtain the degree in two more years. Or, lastly, he can continue in Harvard College, taking his degree there in three or four years, and then do the technical engineering work at the Institute in two years more. This last is the only way in which a student has been able of late to obtain an engineering degree at Harvard, the only difference being that hitherto his technical studies after leaving college have been pursued at the Graduate School of Applied Science, whereas by the new agreement they will be pursued at the Institute under the combined instruction. It will be observed that the position of the undergraduate in Harvard College is not directly affected by the combination, save that he is enabled to obtain an engineering degree from the University without completing his college course, if he so desires. This statement seems needed to correct misapprehensions that have arisen.
Changes in Applied Science.
The changes in the work of Applied Science due to co-operation with the Institute have involved a reorganization of those branches that are not included in the agreement. Among them are Architecture and Landscape Architecture, which, although retaining their distinct councils and their titles as separate schools, have been brought together in a single Faculty of Architecture, with Professor Herbert Langford Warren as Dean. It is a logical as well as a convenient arrangement, because these professions stand in a position by themselves, related to engineering, no doubt, on one side, but also touching the fine arts at least as closely on the other. The tendency at Harvard in the last few years has been in the direction of creating new faculties; and, like everything devised by man, this has both merits and defects. An attempt to split learning into blocks, sharply separated from one another, is futile, for it has been truly said that the object of every fresh thinker is to cut a new diagonal through the field of knowledge. Professors, therefore, cannot be arbitrarily confined, or their studies limited, by the boundaries of faculties; and, indeed, such an idea should be discouraged. But the existence of distinct professions does circumscribe and specialize instruction in a way that is conveniently expressed by separate faculties. These bodies are formed not because the subject-matter with which their members deal is the same, but because they are working for a common object. Hebrew syntax, for example, has little intellectual connection with the Nicene Creed or the practice of elocution, and if the first were studied as a branch of general philology, and the last with a view to argument before a law court, there would be no obvious reason for including them in one faculty; but if, on the other hand, all three are offered as parts of a curriculum for divinity students, there is clearly an advantage in having the persons who teach them meet together to discuss the conduct of the school in which they are all essential parts. The recent tendency at Harvard, therefore, to create a separate faculty for each school that trains men for a distinct profession, would seem to be a rational adaptation of means to ends. It ought not to imply any isolation of the several teaching staffs. On the contrary, a close personal intercourse among all the professors of a university is of vital importance, and for that reason the presence of the same professor in more than one faculty is often an advantage.
The danger to be apprehended is not the existence of too many faculties, but too little intercourse between the members of the different faculties, and still more a lack of cohesion within the faculties themselves. In American universities today there is a tendency for the collective action of the larger faculties to diminish, and for their authority to be transferred to the various departments, of which they are composed. To some extent this is unavoidable and salutary, but it can easily be carried too far and foster a habit of thinking about the interest of the department rather than that of the institution as a whole; about the teaching of a particular subject to the neglect of the full development of the student as a complex human being. Such a tendency should be carefully watched by the governing boards as well as by the instructing staff itself, and for that reason there should be in a large faculty,--alongside of an organization by departments,--a number of standing committees on matters of general concern, composed of members of different departments and reporting to the faculty at frequent intervals.
A striking example of the danger of single departments or schools striving to promote their separate interests rather than that of the University as a whole is furnished by the libraries. Separate collections of books in different places, conveniently near to the laboratories or working rooms, are an absolute necessity in a large institution with many scattered buildings; but it has sometimes happened that in order to enlarge its collections a department or school has purchased at considerable expense books rarely used, which the University already possessed on the shelves of some other library. To avoid duplication of that kind, to make the wisest use of the limited book funds of the University, and to distribute the collections so as to render the largest and most convenient service, requires a supervision conducted with the greatest tact and good judgment. It is gratifying to be able to report that a long step has been taken toward creating in the Medical School a central library in place of a number of departmental ones; and to refer to the work done by the Director of the University Library in persuading the various authorities in Cambridge to avoid duplication and to transfer books to the places where they are most appropriately kept.
To return to the reorganization of the branches of applied science not included in the agreement with the Institute of Technology, there are, beside Architecture and Landscape Architecture, two other subjects that demand consideration. The Bussey Institution deals with research and instruction in applied biology. Its province touches on one side the Zoology, botany and entomology included under the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and on the other some of the subjects within the scope of the Medical School. Its unavoidable situation at a distance from each of these, as well as the character of its work, renders its absorption by either of them unwise. It has, moreover, a natural affinity with the Arboretum, alongside of which it lies. The best solution of its problems would seem to lie, therefore, in the creation of a faculty of its own containing representatives of zoology and botany and of the Medical School.
The other department left unprovided for by the dissolution of the Faculty of Applied Science is that of Forestry. Schools for teaching this subject have multiplied rapidly in America of late years, much faster, indeed, than the demand for their graduates, because the Government forest service is now well filled, and there is little private employment of the kind. Hence it seemed wise to modify the work of the School, and adjust it better to the wants of the community, partly by giving more attention to research, and partly by establishing a course in lumbering, that is, the marketing of timber,--a subject for which there appeared to be no small need. A course in this subject, which involves the use of business methods as well as technical knowledge, is offered in the School of Business Administration; while the research and the other work of the Forestry staff is conducted in connection with the Bussey Institution.
Loan Funds Badly Off.
The condition of the loan funds belonging to the College and the Scientific School has recently attracted attention. These funds are not, like the regular scholarships, intended to be used as gifts, but lent to needy students to be repaid after a certain number of years with a low rate of interest, the sums repaid being lent again to other students. It has been urged that such a method of helping men to get an education has the special advantage that it serves its purpose over and over again. No attempt, of course, is made to collect these notes by legal process. They are virtually debts of honor; but it has been supposed that after a man has thus been enabled to enter upon a successful career he will gladly repay the money lent him and open the same door to some one else. It is disappointing, therefore, to learn how small a proportion of the recipients actually pay these debts. Taking the College loans that have fallen due, 295 men have paid in full, 259 have not paid at all, and 37 have paid in part. Only one half of these obligations, therefore, have been discharged; and of the amounts loaned, exclusive of interest, which have become due, $17,745.78 has been paid and $23,362.81 has not. The condition in the Scientific School is not much better: 232 mer have paid in full, 126 have not paid at all, and 24 have paid in part. This is more than half. On the other hand, the amounts paid are less than half, being $17,217.46 as against $19,932.71 unpaid.
When we consider the nature of these loans, the use to be made of the money when repaid, and the fact that they average about one hundred dollars apiece, we cannot help wondering whether one half of the recipients have really prospered so little that the repayment of sums of that amount is a serious burden to them; and, if so, whether they have profited by a college education. If the borrowers are able to repay, the failure to do so is certainly not creditable.
The year has again been notable for the amount of building done, although this has consisted for the most part of carrying forward work already begun. The Freshman Halls, the T. Jefferson Coolidge Junior Memorial Laboratory, the Music Building, the reconstruction of the Gray Herbarium, the alteration in the Fogg Museum of Art, and the addition to the Peabody Museum have been completed, while the foundations have been laid for the Germanic Museum, to be built by the generous gifts of the late Adolphus Busch and his widow. The Cruft high tension laboratory is nearing completion, and so is the great Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library. We are looking forward eagerly to moving the books into it during the summer.
Apart from the sums given for these buildings, the largest single gifts and bequests received during the past year have been as follows:--
Legacy from the estate of Morris Loeb, subject to life interests, $500,000.00.
Anonymous gift to found a Professorship of Latin-American History and Economics, $125,000.00.
Anonymous gift, to advance the interests of the University, $102,712.00.
From the Class of 1889 for the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Fund, $92,575.00.
Nathaniel H. Stone, in memory of Henry Baldwin Stone, $53,460.00.
Additional for legacy of Sarah A. Matchett $50,000.00.
Legacy of George H. Leatherbee for lectures on commercial business and finance, $44,489.00.
Additional from the legacy for the Barnard Law Fund, $34,670.00.
Legacy of Emily H. Moir, on account, $33,000.00.
Bequest of Caroline B. Allen, the income to be used for College purposes $30,105.00.
Anonymous gift for the use of the Library, $25,000.00.
Sarah P. Sears Legacy, to found the Philip H. Sears Scholarship in Philosophy, $16,013.62.
The most pressing needs of the University in buildings are the fourth Freshman Hall, already mentioned, and more chemical laboratories. The two new laboratories are as perfect as they could be made, but they provide for only a small part of the instruction and research in a subject that is growing rapidly in its importance to science and industry. Boylston Hall is very ill adapted for the laboratory work of the present day, and is far too small. There is urgent need of several buildings for elementary, organic and industrial chemistry. Other wants are for endowment. The warming, lighting and administration of the new Library will add a large expense. The University Press requires a fund for maintenance, and so does the Dental School. In fact, there is almost no branch of the University that is not straitened and hampered by lack of funds. These needs and the work that is being done, can best be appreciated by reading the reports of the Deans and Directors printed herewith.
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AGRICULTURALISTS MEET TONIGHT
