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YALE ALUMNI WHEEKLY
CORNELL'S B.A.
Declared to be No Counterfeit or De-
gradation, or Bit of Commercial-
ism, but a Step Forward.
(Being President Scburman’s reply to President
Stryker in the recent debate before the teachers
at Rochester.)
I have felt in the course of the de-
bate that if the action taken by Cornell
University were properly understood by
the members of this association, it
would in all probability receive an
overwhelming if not a unanimous en-
dorsement. But it seems almost im-
possible to get the educators of the
state to understand what we have
done. : ? |
One of the speakers here to-day said
that at Cornell University we now pro-
pose to give the degree of B. A. to any
man who studies four years, whether
he takes agriculture, mechanical engin-
eering or law. Now, let me say that
this is a rank delusion. Cornell Uni-
versity consists of a Graduate Depart-
ment, which gives the Degrees of Mas-
ter and Doctor; of an Academic De-
partment, or as some of you might
perhaps call it, a Collegiate Depart-
ment, which gives the B. A. degree;
and thirdly, of a number of profession-
al colleges, Law, Civil Engineering, Me-
chanical Engineering, Architecture and
Veterinary Science, every one of which
has its own professional degree. A
man, for example, who studies four
years in architecture gets the degree of
Bachelor of Architecture, and the man
who studies four years in mechanical
engineering gets the degree of M. E.
The course in each of these profes-
sional colleges is prescribed and any
one can tell exactly what the degree
means. In this discussion we are deal-
ing solely with what we call the Acad-
emic Department or the Department of
Arts and Sciences—that division of the
University which corresponds to what
has been called here the old-fashioned
college. The question before us is this:
Whether in the Academic Department,
or the Department of Arts and
Sciences, we should have one degree or
more? Now Cornell has declared that
there should be but one degree, and
that it should be B. A.
Weare told by President Stryker,
and by other speakers here, that this
is a counterfeit of the trade-mark, a
degradation of the standard, a kind of
58-cent dollar. Gentlemen, I have some
part in the recent campaign and I
know something of what can be said
for and against the 53-cent dollar; but
I say most deliberately, and with an
intensity of conviction, that any one
who describes what we have done at
Cornell University by these terms is,
of course, unwittingly, but all the same
preposterously and egregiously, mis-
leading the public and deceiving him-
self. On the contrary, the change which
we have made at Cornell University
grows out of the fact that we have
been raising the standards for some
years past. Formerly, students could
enter the Academic Department ofCor-
nell University in the B. L., S. S., or
Ph. B. courses with one, or two, or
three years of preparatory study in the
high school, and then after four years ~
of work receive their degree. But we
have now raised all the entrance re-
quirements to the level of those for the
B. A. course. Every student who en-
ters our Academic Department must
be at: least a graduate of the high
school, and consequently there is here
no debasement of standards. There is
no counterfeiting of the trade-mark;
we have raised instead of lowered our
standards.
Then we are told that the degree has
2 traditional, or, as some one has said,
an historic meaning, and we at Cor-
nell, in the arrogance and presumption
of youth, have undertaken to change
that meaning and attach to the degree
an arbitrary connotation of our own.
THE TIMES HAVE CHANGED.
What simplicity! The times have
changed. Will the gentleman who has
taken his seat recall what he and I
studied when we went to the old-fash-
joned college a generation ago? For
myself, I had a four-year course in
Greek and Latin and mathematics. A
generation ago, or two generations ago,
the degree of B. A. did mean something
definite. It meant four years of Greek
and Latin and mathematics, following
upon a thorough preparatory course in
the classical academy. But to-day there
is no college which maintains such a
curriculum. The oldest college in the
country, Harvard, gives the degree of
B. A. on four years of elective work
(without either Latin or Greek) and
even for entrance, Greek is not pre-
scribed. Williams College, which has
just celebrated its centennial, requires
only one ancient language for the B. A
degree; and in this state the same is
true of Columbia.
I myself graduated at British uni-
versities; having my Bachelor’s and
Master’s degree from one and my Doc-
tor’s from another. When I was a
student there, Latin and Greek were
prescribed. To-day in one of the great
English universities, and all four of the
Scottish universities, only one ancient
language is prescribed. And the oldest
university in the English-speaking
world, that venerable institution in the
city of groves and towers and mina-
rets, that fons et origo of classical cul-
ture—Oxford University, I say, grants
the degree of B. A. on requirement of
which, as one of your own members
has said in an article he has just now
handed me which he contributed to the
December, 1892, number of the Educa-
tional Review: ‘‘No one can form the
slightest a priori idea of what a young
man actually studied for an Oxford B.
A. degree. It was, perhaps, law or
theology, or Sanskrit or mathematics
or morphology.’”’
Where does your historic and tradi-
tional trade-mark exist, sir? Only in
your imagination! The Zeit-Geist is
stirring with new life. We recognize
this movement at Cornell and have
placed ourselves deliberately, and after
a most careful investigation of the
practice of the universities in this
country and other countries, at its head
and front. The stream of tendency is
behind us though. And others are fol-
lowing in. our wake. Indeed, it may
be said that we have only gone one
step farther than the oldest and most
venerable institution—I mean Harvard.
If you ask me why we have taken that
step, I will answer that we have taken
it deliberately in the interests, first of
all, of secondary education. Over 80
per cent. of the students who enter
Cornell University come from the pub-
lic high schools. In those institutions
the course is shaped, as I explained in
the public address I had the honor of
giving last night, in accordance with
the needs of the community and the
ideals of their educators.
‘¢mHE LIBERAL CULTURE OF THE MODERN
WORLD.”
President Stryker has talked as
though we at Cornell are infected with
the spirit of commercialism. To pre-
‘pare men for the professions was in-
deed the original object for which uni-
versities were founded. But while we
believe in professional training, we also
believe, thank God, in liberal culture.
And we are doing the utmost that in
us lies for the promotion of liberal
culture. And no appropriations by the
Trustees of Cornell for any division of
the University, have been within the
last few years so liberal and so munifi-
cent as the appropriations we have
made for Greek and Latin and history
and philosophy and the humanities in
general.
culture and endeavor to promote it, our
aim is to minister to the liberal culture
of the modern world, and that is a
world in which along with our own
language and literature, we have to
reckon not only Greek and Latin, but
with French and German and Italian,
with the historical and philosophical
disciplines, and with mathematics and
with all the sciences. We aim to pro-
vide a liberal culture through these va-
rious avenues, by means of these dif-
ferent instrumentalities, and the man
who says we are lowering the stand-
ards because, for example, we permit
students to take Latin and one mod-
ern language, is misreporting the
movement and misinterpreting our
aims.
You principals know well enoughthat
your constituents, the taxpayers, are
willing to pay you to teach one an-
cient language, but when it comes to
a second foreign language they want a
modern language, and in my opinion
that demand is philosophically and
pedagogically sound. I believe, not in
two ancient languages as a universal
prescription for the high schools, but
in either two ancient languages, or in
one ancient language and one modern,
or, in certain cases, in two modern lan-
guages. If the high schools train up
their boys and girls in that way, and
if those boys want a liberal culture,
we throw open the doors to them at
Cornell University and welcome them
to the Academic Department. How do
you propose to deal with them?
Throw them out? ‘That surely is
(Continued on sixth page.)
NEW YORK LAW SCHOOL,
New YORK CITY,
“Dwight Method” of instruction. Day
School, 120 Broadway. Evening School, Cooper
Union (for students who cannot attend day sessions).
Summer School, 120 Broadway (June—August).
LL.B. after two years’ course. Graduate course,
one year. Number of students for the past year,
617, of whom 248 were college graduates. The
location of the Law School, in the midst of the courts
and lawyers’ offices, affords an invaluable opportunity
to learn legal practice and the conduct of affairs.
GEORGE CHASE, DEAN, 120 Broadway.
But while we insist on liberal
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John I. Waterbury, President.
John dan a5 Ase Peed See Sree
. H. Smith, Sec’y. - Pierson Hamilton, Treas.
os 45 Thomas L. Greene, Auditor. "
DIRECTORS, 1896:
t Belmont. John Kean, Jr.
fueT Cannon. John Howard Latham.
A.J. Cassatt. John G. Moore.
R. J. Cross. . E. D. Randolph.
Rudulph Ellis. James O. Sheldon.
Amos i rench, Samuel Thomas,
John N. A. Griswold. Edward Tuck.
W. Pierson Hamilton. John I. Waterbury.
H. L.° Higginson. R. T. Wilson.
HOME
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EUCENE A. CALLAHAN,
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STATE OF CONNECTICUT.
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The Yale preparatory school of New York.
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Henry L. Rupert, M.A., Registrar.
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