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ffi 125618 UNIVERSITIES AMERICAN ENGLISH GKRMAN BY ABRAHAM FLEXNER OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS NKW YORK. LONDON * TORONTO 1930 COPYRIGHT, 1930 BY OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK, INC. Printed in the United Staffs ttj America THIS VOLUME IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED TO MY WIFE ANNE CRAWFORD FLEXNER AND MY ELDEST BROTHER DR. J, A. FLEXNER CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE vii PART I : THE IDEA OF A MODERN UNIVERSITY 3 PART II : AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 39 PART III: ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES * 221 PART IV: GERMAN UNIVERSITIES .... 305 PREFACE volume is an expansion of three lectures on THISUniversities given at Oxford in May 1928 on the invitation of the Rhodes Trust. The invitation stipu- lates that the lecturer reside at Oxford during the en- tire term in which the lectures are given a provision that may be unreservedly commended, first, because the lecturer is thus enabled to feel something of Ox- ford's charm, secondly, because quite unconsciously he gains rather more than he is likely to impart. This is true of one Rhodes lecturer, at least. From the autumn of 1928 to the summer of 1929, I visited the universities of Germany and England for the purpose of obtaining a fresh view of their situa- tion, problems, and efforts. The whole of the next year, 1929-1930, was devoted to gathering additional data and to rewriting. In May 1930 the Oxford Uni- versity Press printed and bound the original proof sheets in page form, and I was thus enabled to submit the text to about thirty men, professors and adminis- trators in America and Europe, who read it with care and commented on it freely and helpfully. During the summer of 1930 I revised the book. I state these facts in order that the reader may know that, though the ultimate responsibility is wholly mine, I have spared no effort to obtain the facts and to submit my views in advance to competent criticism, I am quite sure that the result will completely satisfy no one: but I shall have achieved iny purpose if I have opened for dis- [viij PREFACE cussion a few fundamental questions respecting the function of the university in modern life, The reader will observe that my discussion of exist- ing universities is unsymmetrical. I have not tried to pour universities into one mould, to view them from a single point of view, or to ask the same questions about all of them. Rather, having in mind the " idea of a modern university," I have approached the universities of America, England, and Germany from the standpoint of their individual characteristics. I have asked myself: where, with this ideal before us, do they now satisfy? Where do they now fall short? Of their history I have mentioned only the salient points essential to an understanding of the answers to these questions- And I have given rather more space to the latter question than to the former, because I feel sure that, if errors and abuses are once corrected, the ideal will almost of its own force assert itself differently, in different countries, of course, but to the same ultimate purpose. At first sight it may seem that I have devoted a disproportionately large amount of space to American universities. Such is, I think, not the case. American universities require more space be- so I cause they do many more things ; and could not possibly expect my readers foreign or American to understand them, if I did not quote and discuss a sufficient number of concrete instances. I am under so many obligations that it is Impossible for me to specify any one in particular* 1 should have indeed to go back more than forty years, for the present volume represents not merely the work of the last few years but the net result of an experience with universities in this country and abroad that be-* gan when my eldest brother sent me to the Johns Hop* Mns in 1884, From that day to this, I have been for- [Vifij PREFACE tunate enough to have been enabled in one way or another to keep in almost constant contact with university life. Quite obviously, a book of this kind is not but as original ; just obviously the author himself cannot know whom to thank, or, if he has erred, whom beside himself to blame. I may not, however, omit to thank by name the Rhodes Trustees, Philip Kerr, Esq., now the Mar- quess of Lothian, Secretary of the Rhodes Trust, Sir Francis J. Wylie, the Oxford Secretary of the Trust, and the Warden and Fellows of All Souls College, of which I was made a member during my residence in Oxford, for courtesy, kindness, and hospitality which I cannot adequately describe. I am also once more bound to express appreciation of the untiring efforts of my Secretary, Mrs. Esther S, Bailey, who has as- sisted me in the collection of illustrative data, has checked statements of fact, and practically put the volume through the press. ABRAHAM FLEXNER NEW YORK, Oct. i, 1930. PREFATORY NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION I am enabled by the second edition to correct sev- eral slight misprints and errors. Since the printing of the book the admirable Life of President Eliot by Mr. Henry James has been issued. Mr. James shows that I have underrated rather than exaggerated the boldness and novelty of the work which President Gilman accomplished in Baltimore and that the gradu- ate developments at Harvard could hardly have taken place then but for the courageous leadership of Mr* Oilman. If I were writing the book now, I should omit PREFACE " the line on page 86, Largely in consequence of Mr. Eliot's wise counsel/* These two great men were enor- mously helpful to one another, but in the realm of university work Mr. Oilman was the daring pioneer. Professor Albert Guerard has raised a question as to the omission of the French universities. He is quite right. In a book on modern universities the French universities should not be omitted. My course was de- termined by two considerations : (i) I had to keep the volume within definite limits; (2) my object will not be accomplished by a single discussion. I have from the beginning looked forward to the time when I might prepare a separate volume on French universities, in which I could continue and reinforce the argument made in the present volume. A.F. DECEMBER i, 1930. PART I THE IDEA OF A MODERN UNIVERSITY years ago, an eminent Oxonian, SEVENTY-FIVECardinal Newman, published a book entitled The Idea of a University. I have adopted in a modi- fied form the title of that volume. I am undertaking in this chapter to discuss the idea of a modern uni- " " versity. In inserting the word modern I am en- deavouring to indicate in the most explicit fashion that a university, like all other human institutions like the church, like governments, like philanthropic or- ganizations is not outside, but inside the general social fabric of a given era. It is not something apart, something historic, something that yields as little as possible to forces and influences that are more or less new. It is, on the contrary so I shall asssume an expression of the age, as well as an influence operating upon both present and future. I propose to elaborate this point of view and, as I proceed, to ask myself to what extent and in what ways universities in America, in England, and in Germany have made themselves part of the modern world, where they have failed to do so, where they have made hurt- ful concessions, and where they are wholesome and creative influences in shaping society towards rational ends* Quite obviously I am assuming that to some extent, however slight, we are masters of our fate* The modern world Is developing under the pressure of forces that reason cannot readily control Pitted against [3] THE IDEA OF these forces, our abilities may for the moment seem feeble and ineffectual. But the existence of universities implies there is something, perhaps much, in the past for which it is worth while to fight, to which it that there is is worth while to cling ; and something no one knows how much which we may ourselves do to mould to our liking the civilization of the future. Man, as Professor Woodbridge has admirably " said, is not content to take nature as he finds her. 1 He insists on making her over." But the modern world no matter how new we think it to be is rooted in a past, which is the soil out of which we grow, a past during which poets and scientists and thinkers and peoples have accumulated treasures of truth, beauty, and knowledge, experience, social, political, and other, which only a wastrel would ignore. On the other hand, science, democracy, and other forces steadily increasing in intensity are creating a different world of which universities must take account. Universities differ in different countries as Lord " ; if, Haldane says, it is in universities that . the soul of a people mirrors itself,"* then it would be absurd to expect them to conform to a single pattern* More- over,, as a matter of history, they have changed pro- foundly and commonly in the direction of the social evolution of which they are part. The Paris of 1900 has little in common with the Paris of 1700; the Oxford of the twentieth century, externally so largely the same, is nevertheless a very different thing 1 Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, Contract in Eduwtiw (New York, 1929), p.

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