Collectivism

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

a word of quite recent origin, intended to express the central idea in the economic theory of socialism, that industry should be carried on with a collective capital. It means that capital should not be owned and controlled by individuals, but by groups of associated workers; the joint property of the community. COLLEGES. Three forms of the institutions of the higher education are easily distinguished. The earliest was the private, or ecclesiastical. By this method a few citizens, usually members of a church, associated themselves for the purpose of securing a charter from the government of the State in which it was desired to establish a college. Under either a special act of the legislature, or under the general law, was the actual corporation secured. The college thus established was usually of a denominational or sectarian type. A second form is found in a method which is still personal, but without special religious Leland Stanford University, California, affiliation. is an example. The third form is what is known as the State university, an institution established in the individual expelled the Tarquin family from Rome, commonwealth and as a crown to its puband established the consular government. lic school system. It is supported out of COLISEUM AT ROME the public funds raised by taxation. Its government is vested in a board of regents or trustees, either appointed by the governor or elected by the people. At least 40 such universities are found in the United States. In the government of each college or university are usually associated two bodies, the one called trustees, or directors, or overseers, or regents, or fellows, who represent the legal side of the corporation. The other is called the faculty, which is the body of instruction. These two bodies work in co-operation in carrying on the essential service of the institution. To the college, or to the undergraduate department of the university, students are admitted from the high school or the academy. The average age is 18, The preparation consists in ptudies embodying English literature and language, mathematics, solid geometry, either Latin or French or German and occasionally Greek, pursued for four years; history, either ancient or modern, and an elementary knowledge of chemistry and physics. The students of the age of 18 enter college usually, though not always, with a direct purpose. To prepare themselves for a profession was formerly a primary purpose. It is now not the only purpose. The preparation sent happy and, in many relations, proffor business, for engineering, for jouritable forms of undergraduate activity. nalism, for farming, has, however, in re- AMERICAN COLLEGES. - The history of cent years become an aim not unusual. American colleges may be divided into three periods the colonial college, the The studies which are pursued on entering the four years' course are easily old American college, and the new Amerdivided into the old humanities, the new ican college. The colonial college ended humanities, and the sciences. The old with the American Revolution; the new humanities were primarily Latin and American college begins about the year 1870 and is still in process of evolution. Greek. These have in recent decades, es- Before the Revolutionary War there pecially Greek, become largely eliminated for modern linguistic studies. French had been a continuous development of or Spanish have been substituted. Forhigher education in the colonies for 150 years. The point of beginning was the merly German held a large place. The new humanities include the English laninstitutional life already familiar in the guage and literature, history, economics, home beyond the seas. Harvard College, political science, sociology, philosophy, established by a bequest from John Harvard in 1638, was a combination of an and psychology. The rise of the sciences English public school and Emmanuel Colin the last 70 years has been constantly lege. It was founded as the "schoole and reflected in the college curriculum. They colledge at Newton." Yale in 1701 was have now assumed an important place as founded as a "collegiate s educational instruments. The chief subjects in this field studied in addition to Dartmouth grew out of Dr. Wheelock's School for the Indians. Altogether 11 mathematics are physics, chemistry, biolinstitutions of higher learning were ogy, and geology. The principle on which these studies, founded before the Revolution. These were all very poor. Yale's annual budgin part prescribed and in part elective, et after 25 years of labor was 315 are, first, are arranged for the student pounds, no part of which sum came from to promote the power of thinking, and, secondly, to develop the character of the endowment. After a century individual. In the interpretation of the of history Harvard's total purposes of the higher education such less than 17,000 pounds. phrases as "Education is self-unfolding," Mary was the richest of our early col- "Education seeks to train leaders in de leges. Its main building was a handsome brick edifice, 136 feet in length, mocracy," "Education endeavors to form the character as well as to discipline the whose architect was Sir Christopher Wren. mind," "Education is aimed to secure The avowed purpose of these earliest rational living," "Education is to help one to enjoy one's self," "Education is a colleges was the training of leaders for preventive of evil and a promotion of the the Christian ministry. One-half the graduates of Harvard for the first 100 good," "Education is designed to develop the individual and to incorporate this inyears entered the ministry. After the dividual into the whole community," Revolutionary War the field of their edu- "Education is a process of laying up capcational service altered materially. Their task was to train leaders, not for the ital, both intellectual and ethical," are church alone, but for a new state, for a constantly used. commercial life beginning to express it- In addition to the scholastic feature of self in new callings, for a period of piothe college and the university, is found a neer development sweeping across the very vital undergraduate life. This life continent. The old is composed of manifold associations. strengthened and a number of new ones First among them is the system of frafounded. The States began to assume ternities-brotherhoods, organized for soa direct responsibility in this work. The cial purposes not a few of which are University of North Carolina was charintercollegiate. Houses, either owned or tered in 1795, Vermont in 1800, Georgia in 1801, and South Carolina in 1805. leased, are the homes of these organiza- Still progress was slow. Dexter estitions. Next to them the highest place mates that in 1800 all existing colleges is occupied by athletic sports, including in the country had less than 2,000 stufootball, baseball, basketball, hockey, tendents, hardly more than 100 professors, nis, and many other sports. Dramatic and $1,000,000 worth of property. associations, musical societies, debating During the period now under discusclubs, literary organizations, civic clubs, Young Men's Christian Associations, and sion all American colleges developed Young Women's Christian Associations, along similar lines. The course of study daily and weekly papers, monthly magawas rigidly prescribed, based on Latin zines, parliamentary associations, repre- and Greek as fundamentals schoole," and and a half funds were William and colleges were , to which oric, mathematics, logic and philosophy, with a little history. After four years of work the degree of A. B. was given. Between 1800 and 1870 8 new subjects were introduced into the admission requirements, viz., English grammar, English composition, algebra, geometry, geography, ancient history, United States his tory, and physical geography. Within the last 50 years the American college has developed greatly along many lines. Some problems it has solved, many are still in process of solution. Its present status may be discussed under separate heads: 1. Material Resources: It is not easy to fix a definite standard of wealth as an essential condition of college organization. The Association of American Colleges has published a suggestive bulletin on "The Efficient College." The conclusion is that "an efficient college of 400 students should have a faculty of 40 teachers, total assets of about $3,000,000 and an annual income of about $125,000." At present this standard is ideal. A few of our best colleges reach it, but they have usually more than 400 students. The North Central College Association requires an endowment of $200,000 and this has been generally accepted by standardizing agencies as a minimum. But the enforcement of even this moderate provision would forfeit the charters of a large proportion of the institutions calling themselves colleges. But it should be said that these feeble institutions with little or no endowment or source of income other than student fees are not examples of the modern American college. They are left-over examples of the old-fashioned or even of the colonial college. No modern college can escape the financial burden involved in providing cientific laboratories, and a well-filled library From the standpoint of material resources we may recognize several distinct types of colleges. First, there is the small college with a faculty of 8 or 10, a student body of less than 200, and a limited election of work. Then there is the large college, still detached, with larger resources of every kind. Then there is the university college-a college still the center of a university that offers professional work of the most varied character. Apparently the student trend is toward these large institutions. 2. General Purpose: Long ago the college ceased to be vocational, as were the earliest institutions in America. The next rallying point was the call for intellectual discipline. This end and aim of the college course was elaborately dewere added English literature and rhet- fended in 1827 in a report made by the Yale faculty. With this argument every college defended its rigid technical course of study. With the expansion of the curriculum, made necessary through the expansion of knowledge and made possible through the expansion of material resources, the college relaxed its claims for the supremacy of mental discipline and abandoned its rigid curriculum for securing the same. For discipline it substituted "culture," returning to the humanitarian ideas of the renais sance. This ideal of culture has been weakened by attacks from two sides. A report of the Harvard faculty in 1904 says: "The easiest way to induce students to take a subject for culture is to make it not too difficult." There has also been a demand that the college course relate itself to the life purposes of the students. This has been heeded, eeded, especially by colleges attached to large universities, so that the college course is again becoming vocational. 3. The Curriculum: Perhaps the greatest academic struggle of the past generation has been carried on over the college curriculum, the introduction of new subjects, the adherence to old requirements, the adoption of a system of free electives or parallel courses, the length of the course and the degrees that should crown it. The whole question is older than 1870. It was brought distinctly to the front in the founding of the University of Virginia in 1825. Harvard, under the leadership of President Eliot, was the center of the liberal influence. Out of the confusion and strife there are some broad conclusions that may be stated: (a) The rigid college course is gone and will not be restored. (b) New subjects and new courses are introduced by every college to the extent of its financial ability, ability, and beyond. Limitations are financial alone, not of educational theory. (c) Free election is making little progress at present. A corrective is applied by some form of parallel courses or group studies or requirement of majors and minors. (d) Admission requirements become constantly more liberal with the ultimate goal that no student is to be rejected at least by the larger State universities-who has finished an acceptable high school course. (e) The typical course is to occupy four years, but some students will accomplish it in three and most professional students will have their first year credited as part of their college course. (f) The degree of A. B. will be the usual degree for any course. Some institutions will continue to give B. S., but other degrees, as B. L., or Ph. B., will be abandoned. COLLÈGE DE FRANCE 4. Extra Curriculum Activities: These cannot be omitted in any account of the present American college. There has been a tremendous and not altogether desirable growth of non-scholastic interests in college life. These interests attract students more than scholarship. As yet they have not been properly organized and vitalized with the spirit of culture. Athletics, fraternities, and social life are now ahead of any study in the curriculum. From the foregoing it appears that no definition of the term "college" has yet secured general acceptance. At the same time influences are working from many quarters looking to the establishment of certain minimum attainments, financial, and educational, that every college must possess. These are an endowment of at least $200,000, or an annual income from taxes of $40,000, not less than eight departments, eac each having at least one fulltime professor, regular appropriations for laboratories and library, and satisfactory salaries. Some States limit the granting of charters by some such provisions and educational societies have urged such limitation as a universal requirement. The future of the American college has been much discussed. The college is threatened by the high school and junior college on the one side and by the university and professional schools on the other. None the less the American college even the detached cultural college -survives to-day and is being strength ened. It has no counterpart either in England or on the Continent of Europe. It has inherited respect and affection accumulated through hundreds of years and in spite of many changes still remains in some respects our most typical American educational institution. COLLÈGE DE FRANCE, a celebrated institution founded by Francis I., in 1530, originally a Collège de Trois ois Langues educational merely institution, is now a very important , giving instruction over a very wide field of literature, history, and science. It is independent of the University of France, is directly under the Minister of Public Instruction, and is supported by the government. As in the Sorbonne, the lectures are gratuitous. The College comprises two faculties, one literary, one scientific; each has about 20 professors.