mentally important sciences, and high technical skill in addition. Such a vocation is rightly considered a profession, and for its preparation may well be attempted under the direction of the university. On the other hand, pharmacy is a calling which demands elementary technical knowledge, with accuracy and faithfulness in following out the instructions of another. It does not call for the development of the sort of independent thinking that the profession of medicine demands. It is certainly a question whether or no such a calling is to be ranked among professions, and whether a university should undertake the supervision of the training of such students any more than it would undertake the training of students in any other technical vocation.

In general, it may be said that a profession not only rests upon higher educational qualities and more extended educational qualifications, but also that the individual practising a profession assumes also a public or a quasi-public responsibility. The practitioner of law, of medicine, of theology, of teaching, of engineering, clearly occupies some such position in the community. It is a question, certainly, for the universities to determine how far and for how many callings university supervision is necessary or desirable. In this respect some progress has been made within ten years, but the steps taken have not been many. The American university in but few cases has addressed itself to the question, For what callings are university supervision and training directly suited?

No consideration more closely touches the progress of education than the development of a sense of responsibility on the part of colleges and universities as to their ability to conduct professional schools. The history of the colleges and universities in the United States in this matter during the last ten years shows many marks of encouragement along with many reactionary steps. Until re cently colleges and universities have assumed a very small measure of responsibility for their professional schools, particularly for their schools of medicine and of law. Most universities have coveted the possession of these schools because of the desire for institutional completeness. In many cases universities have allowed groups of practitioners of law or of medicine to form professional schools under the university charters, the connection with the university being of the slightest possible sort, and in a very large proportion of these cases the colleges have furnished no support for the professional schools and have exercised but little scrutiny over them. Such schools have been willing in many cases to trade upon the ignorance of the public in the effort to appear of university rank.

VIII. STATE SUPERVISION OF DEGREE-CONFERRING INSTITUTIONS

[From Rogers, Henry Wade, in Proceedings National Education Association, 1897, pp. 701-708.]

Mr. Freeman, the English historian and Oxford professor, publishing his "Impressions of the United States," declared that one of the first things that impressed the stranger was the amazing number of universities and colleges existing here. After stating "We can hardly be wrong in inferring that the degrees granted by some of these institutions cannot be worth very much," he goes on to say, "Now, my feelings make me most loath to say a word in any federal country against the powers of the several states, but it is surely not unreasonable to hint that the right of granting degrees should be assumed only by authority of the federal power. For a degree is surely a national thing, or, rather, it is something more than a national thing. It ought to be I do not say whether it anywhere is something like knighthood in old times, a badge of scholarship which should enable a man to take his place among scholars in any land to which he may come." Mr. Freeman seems to have been led to make these observations by the fact, to which he directs attention, that in the one state of Ohio there were thirtytwo institutions with authority to grant degrees. It is easy to imagine that his feelings on this subject would have been not a little intensified, and his convictions very considerably strengthened, had he known that in the single state of Pennsylvania, which has not generally been regarded as sinning in these matters, one hundred and twenty institutions have authority to confer degrees. How many institutions there are in the country as a whole which have like authority I have not ascertained. The number is certainly large enough to afford good and sufficient reasons for reflections of a serious character.

In the first place, we must concede that there is no disposition on the part of the American people to transfer to the national government any part of the powers now vested in the state governments. In the second place, there appears to be no adequate reason for supposing that, if the federal government were possessed of the power advocated by Mr. Freeman, the educational standards of the country would be any higher than they are under existing conditions. It cannot even be said with any degree of certainty that there would be a uniform law, under which institutions of learning would be incorporated, unless the constitution should be

so amended as expressly to require it. Whatever reform is to be accomplished will have to be wrought out by the individual action of the states.

The difficulty under which we labor in this country is not due to the fact that the states, rather than the United States, are in control of the subject of education. In Germany control over the universities is not in the empire, but, as in this country, is in the several states. The only difference is that in Germany the states exercise their rights of supervision, while in the United States, as a rule, they do not.

In this country it is usual to provide in the state constitutions that the legislatures shall pass no special act conferring corporate powers, but shall provide by general laws for the organization of corporations. The practice is, therefore, to enact a general law which commonly provides that any three or five persons may be incorporated as a college or university on filing in the proper office a certificate stating the name, object, number of trustees, and place of location of the institution, and that it shall have power to grant such literary honors and degrees as are usually conferred by such institutions. In some states the degree power is granted without any restrictions, while in a few instances, as in Michigan and Minnesota, it is given, provided "the course of study to be pursued in such institution is in all respects as thorough and comprehensive as is usually pursued in similar institutions of the United States." This last provision is well in theory, but in practice does not always afford that protection against abuses which it was intended to secure.

The cause of professional as well as academic education suffers from the want of adequate state supervision. Professional schools have been established, generally in the large cities, which are governed by purely commercial standards. We have in this country schools of law, medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy that appear to be organized and conducted for the purpose of making money. They are stock corporations, the stock being generally held by the members of the teaching force, the teachers being chosen, not for their fitness for any particular chair, but because of their willingness and ability to put up the money that is needed. The shorter the course of study, the cheaper the class of teachers; the less expended for books and apparatus, and the easier it is made to be admitted and graduated, the greater the number of students becomes and the larger the amount of dividends paid. Men who make merchandise of professional education have low professional and scholastic ideals. They are inclined to receive

all students who apply for admission, without much regard to their previous preparation or their moral character. They allow the students thus admitted to continue in their school without being concerned greatly as to the manner in which they apply themselves to study. They graduate them after an attendance for the allotted period, without scrutinizing too closely the extent of their ignorance, and confer upon them a degree which in theory is supposed to stand for high attainments. This sort of thing, impossible in Europe, should be made impossible in America. Such a condition of affairs is demoralizing beyond question. The tendency of it is all in the direction of low standards. It destroys the value of degrees. It imposes on the public a class of educational charlatans, and works injury to the students it falsely pretends to educate. It multiplies the difficulties in the way of those institutions that are endeavoring to do their work according to the highest standards. A faculty of law, or medicine, or dentistry, or pharmacy that is conducting a school on any such basis as that described ought not to have authority to confer degrees. There should be no hesitancy in declaring that the interests of education, and, therefore, the interests of the public, require that, when the state does not exercise a power of supervision and does not establish a minimum standard of admission and graduation, it should withhold from every stock company the power of conferring degrees. I do not desire to be understood as intimating an opinion that no school can be worthy of public confidence which is conducted by a stock corporation paying dividends to its members, but only that the danger from schools of this class is so great that it is not wise, in the absence of state supervision, to intrust them with the degreeconferring power. While here and there a dividend-paying school may exist with high standards and be worthy of confidence, the influence of the great majority of schools conducted for the purposes of revenue is so bad, from an educational point of view, that the state would be justified in withholding from them all degreeconferring power.

In America we are too easy-going about many things, and we have much to learn from a study of European methods and the legislation of foreign states. American degrees are discredited in Europe because of the want of supervision of the degree-conferring power. The constitutional provisions against special laws and making it necessary to incorporate under general statutes do not prevent the state from establishing all needed restrictions for the safeguarding of degrees.

There should be established in each state a council of education which shall be intrusted with powers similar to those vested in the Regents of the University of New York, and it should be composed of the most eminent men in the state, without any reference to political considerations. No degree-conferring institution should be incorporated without the approval of the council of education, which should be indorsed upon or filed with the certificate of incorporation. That council should have the right to fix the minimum standard of requirements for admission and graduation, and the conditions under which degrees may be conferred, and the degree-conferring power should be withheld from all institutions not complying with the regulations established. Such legislation should be made applicable to all institutions thereafter incorporated, as well as to those already incorporated, when the state has reserved the power to modify the powers conferred. It could not be made to apply to institutions already incorporated in cases where the state has not reserved power to do so.

There appears to be no good reason for doubting the constitutionality of the proposed legislation. No constitutional provision is violated by creating a commission or council, and giving it the power to decide the questions which otherwise would be left to each institution to decide for itself. The principle that legislative power cannot be delegated is not involved. On determining the questions submitted to it, the council is no more engaged in acts of legislation than would be the institutions themselves or the individual incorporators. "Cannot the legislature," asks the New York court of appeals, "confer upon a commission the power, upon the application of individuals, to make the same determination for the individuals which they could make for themselves?" The court answered the question in the affirmative, and so, I believe, would the courts of the country generally.

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May we not hope that, in the several states, legislation may be obtained which shall protect the universities of the country from the evils which exist from the failure to exercise a supervision deemed essential by European states? We Americans need to rid ourselves of the notion that a go-as-you-please" policy is good enough for us. The time has come when institutions doing only preparatory work should not be permitted to confer university degrees, and when professional schools established as moneymaking manufactories should be deprived of the right to sell degrees.