Should Students Study?/Chapter II

by William Trufant Foster

There are differences among the colleges, to be sure. let us admit that before we go further, so that any one may feel free to make such exceptions as his knowledge or his loyalty seems to warrant. The idea that College Life in "caps" should be the text, with studies as a foot-note, has not gripped all institutions with the same force. In some the idea seems to be a settled conviction; in others, little more than a suspicion.

I have visited a hundred or more colleges, from the University of Maine in the Northeast to the University of Redlands in the Southwest. I have learned what I would from the oldest university at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and from the youngest at Houston, Texas. Along twenty-five thousand miles of travel, I have tried to determine, from what students say and do, to what extent they deem study worth the effort. Their estimates vary.

Colleges cannot be readily classified on the basis of earnestness of purpose with which the students greet the curriculum. It does not appear that State universities stand higher or lower in this regard that privately supported institutions. Nor are there class distinctions of this kind between small and large colleges, between sectarian and non-sectarian colleges, or even between universities with millions of endowment and those endowed with poverty and hopes. There appears to be a difference between schools of the East and schools of the West; but other generalizations, though frequently made by overzealous friends of particular schools, appear to be based on too few cases.

I am speaking, always, of the central tendencies of groups—of the mode, as sociologists would say, and not of the few extreme cases in the surface of distribution. Nearly every college has its distinctive feature, which balks classification. One might conclude, from the studiousness of the boys at the College of the City of New York, that large, free, urban universities are the usual resorts of serious-minded youth. Such a conclusion would ignore the racial factor, more important in this instance than any other. The intellectual achievements of older graduates of Williams and Bowdoin and Amherst appear to make out a strong case for the small, sectarian, New England country college. But a generation or two ago there were no large, free, urban institutions. Evidence is not available sufficient to prove that the recent graduates of the small country colleges have finer intellectual enthusiasms than the recent graduates of any other group of colleges. Conclusions based on the spirit of a generation ago are usually misleading as present-day guides. Such conclusions may or may not be misleading in this case. American colleges changed vitally during the past generation, and a few are changing rapidly to-day.

With these qualifications I venture one generalization: students of the younger Western colleges are more worthy of the name than those of the older Eastern colleges. They come through greater sacrifices and with more serious purposes. This is what history tells us to expect of the frontier. It is, moreover, the usual report of those who have taught in the East and in the West. Eagerness for knowledge is one manifestation of the enthusiasm of youth in a young country. In many of the older seats of learning, responsiveness to the efforts of instructors is in bad form. To do more than the assigned lesson, or to tarry after the lecture for more help, is to risk one's reputation. "Harvard indifference" is not Harvard indifference; it is the attitude toward studies of young men anywhere who go to college as a matter of course, with no dominant purpose beyond the desire to enjoy College Life. They find that there is little in it; even their interest in intercollegiate athletics has to be coaxes by rallies and organized into cheers. They did find out that a man who has nothing to do but amuse himself has a hard job. Spontaneous delight over anything is not to be expected. To increase in years and resources and yet retain the splendid enthusiasm of poverty and youth appears to be as difficult for institutions as for men and women.

Yet so rapidly are colleges changing that conditions seem to pass away under our very scrutiny. The West of to-day is a new West. Even the far West is already a long generation beyond frontier days. The colleges are keeping pace with the country, not only in material prosperity, but in spirit and ideals. A larger proportion of the families are well-to-do, and a larger proportion of boys and girls resort to higher schools. Growth begets the desire to grow. Numbers seem necessary for winning games and impressing legislatures. College expenses grow, too. Easier communication with Eastern universities leads to further imitation. Thus sturdy Western institutions of pioneer days tend to lose their individuality. They reveal signs of what they call progress. They not only standardize their units of admission, but also their ideals. They tend to become intellectual democracies and social aristocracies; in the beginning they were quite the reverse. The change has not gone so far in the West—certainly not in the private colleges of the West—but the direction is unmistakable.

Again, let me say, I speak in terms of group tendencies; exceptions leap to mind with every statement.