Modern American Universities

　　Before the 1850's, the United States had a number of small colleges,

　　most of them dating from colonial days. They were small, church connected

　　institutions whose primary concern was to shape the moral character of

　　their students.

　　Throughout Europe, institutions of higher learning had developed, bearing

　　the ancient name of university. In Germany a different kind of university

　　had developed. The German university was concerned primarily with

　　creating and spreading knowledge, not morals. Between midcentury

　　and the end of the 1800's, more than nine thousand young Americans,

　　dissatisfied with their training at home, went to Germany for advanced

　　study. Some of them returned to become presidents of venerable colleges --

　　Harvard, Yale, Columbia -- and transform them into modern universities. The

　　new presidents broke all ties with the churches and brought in a new kind

　　of faculty. Professors were hired for their knowledge of a subject, not

　　because they were of the proper faith and had a strong arm for

　　disciplining students. The new principle was that a university was to

　　create knowledge as well as pass it on, and this called for a faculty

　　composed of teacher-scholars. Drilling and learning by rote were

　　replaced by the German method of lecturing, in which the professor's

　　own research was presented in class. Graduate training leading to the

　　Ph.D., an ancient German degree signifying the highest level of

　　advanced scholarly attainment, was introduced. With the establishment of

　　the seminar system, graduate students learned to question, analyze, and

　　conduct their own research.

　　At the same time, the new university greatly expanded in size and course

　　offerings, breaking completely out of the old, constricted curriculum of

　　mathematics, classics, rhetoric, and music. The president of Harvard

　　pioneered the elective system, by which students were able to choose their

　　own courses of study. The notion of major fields of study emerged. The new

　　goal was to make the university relevant to the real pursuits of the world.

　　Paying close heed to the practical needs of society, the new

　　universities trained men and women to work at its tasks, with

　　engineering students being the most characteristic of the new regime.

　　Students were also trained as economists, architects, agriculturalists,

　　social welfare workers, and teachers.