PURPOSE OF THE COLLEGE WHAT IS A COLLEGE FOR?1 WOODROW WILSON [Woodrow Wilson (1856-) was, before becoming President of the United States in 1913, a prominent educator. He had held professorships in history and politics at Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan and Princeton, and from 1907 to 1912 was president of Princeton. The selection here given, although a part of what was published originally as a magazine article, gives substantially the same ideas regarding the aims of the college which were expressed toward the close of his career as a college president in several notable addresses on various academic occasions.] It may seem singular that at this time of day and in this confident century it should be necessary to ask, What is a college for? But it has become necessary. I take it for granted that there are few real doubts concerning the question in the minds of those who look at the college from the inside and have made themselves responsible for the realization of its serious purposes; but there are many divergent opinions held concerning it by those who, standing on the outside, have pondered the uses oí the college in the life of the country; and their many varieties of opinion may very well have created a confusion of counsel in the public mind. They are, of course, entirely entitled to their independent opinions and have a right to expect that full consideration will be given what they say by those who are in fact responsible. The college is for the use of the nation, not for the satisfaction of those who administer it or for the carrying out of their private views. They may speak as experts and with a very intimate knowledge, but they also speak as servants of the country and 1 Reprinted by permission of the author and of the publishers from Scribner's Magazine, Vol. 46, page 570 (November, 1909). must be challenged to give reasons for the convictions they spute entertain. Controversy, it may be, is not profitable in such matters, because it is so easy, in the face of opposition, to become a partisan of one's own views and exaggerate them in seeking to vindicate and establish them; but an explicit profession of faith cannot fail to clear the air, and to assist the thinking both of those who are responsible and of those who only look on and seek to make serviceable comment. Why, then, should a man send his son to college when school is finished; or why should he advise any youngster in whom he is interested to go to college? What does he expect and desire him to get there? The question might be carried back and asked with regard to the higher schools also to which lads resort for preparation for college. What are they meant to get there? But it will suffice to center the question on the college. What should a lad go to college for,-for work, for the realization of a definite aim, for discipline and a severe training of his faculties, or for relaxation, for the release and exercise of his social powers, for the broadening effects of life in a sort of miniature world in which study is only one among many interests? That is not the only alternative suggested by recent discussions. They also suggest a sharp alternative with regard to the character of the study the college student should undertake. Should he seek at college a general discipline of his faculties, a general awakening to the issues and interests of the modern world, or should he, rather, seek specially and definitely to prepare himself for the work he expects to do after he leaves college, for his support and advancement in the world? The two alternatives are very different. The one asks whether the lad does not get as good a preparation for modern life, by being manager of a football team with a complicated program of intercollegiate games and trips away from home as by becoming proficient in mathematics or in history and mastering the abstract tasks of the mind; the other asks whether he is not better prepared by being given the special skill and training of a particular calling or profession, an immediate drill in the work he is to do after he graduates, than by being made a master of his own mind in the more general fields of knowledge to which his subsequent calling will be related, in all probability, only as every undertaking is related to the general thought and experience of the world. "Learning" is not involved. No one has ever dreamed of imparting learning to undergraduates. It cannot be done in four years. To become a man of learning is the enterprise of a life time. The issue does not rise to that high ground. The question is merely this: do we wish college to be, first of all and chiefly, a place of mental discipline or only a school of general experience; and, if we wish it to be a place of mental discipline," "of what sort do we wish the discipline to be, a general awakening and release of the faculties, or a preliminary initiation: into the drill of a particular vocation? These are questions which go to the root of the matter. They admit of no simple and confident answer. Their roots spring out of life and all its varied sources. To reply to them, therefore, involves an examination of modern life and an assessment of the part an educated man ought to play in it,—an analysis which no man may attempt with perfect self-confidence. The life of our day is a very complex thing which no man can pretend to comprehend in its entirety. But some things are obvious enough concerning it. There is an uncommon challenge to effort in the modern world, and all the achievements to which it challenges are uncommonly difficult. Individuals are yoked together in me by a harness which is both new and inelast understands only some single process, some single piece of wo which he has been set to do, will never do anything else, a is apt to be deprived at almost any moment of the opportun the do even that, because processes change, industry underg rich nt revolutions. New inventions, fresh discoveries, alte the markets of the world throw accustomed meth easily sti serious puren who are accustomed to them out of date and: wits for these or pity. The man of special skill may be chang There was led laborer overnight. Moreover, it is a day ferred distincterprise stands alone or independent, but is relate |