University, College, or Both?

Within the last few decades American universities have suffered intensely from growing pains; and controversy over the cause and cure of these has filled many columns of print. Out of this welter of criticism and self-analysis has emerged one clear-cut problem; that of reconciling the intellectual and physical resources of the large university with the educational and social advantages of the small college.

Harvard and Yale, by the adoption of the House or Quadrangle Plan, have been the first to attempt a comprehensive solution. Thanks to Mr. Harkness, they will be able to sub-divide their unwieldy undergraduate bodies into groups capable of functioning as social units. This implies a frank recognition of the value of that ephemeral something known as "college spirit"--and also a realization that increase in size has resulted long since in its practical extinction as a force unifying the whole student body. The same growth has killed its successor, "class spirit."

The new units will be small enough to permit a genuine esprit de corps, but large enough to permit the individual wide choice in his selection of friends and associates. Through the agency of resident masters and fellows, the undergraduate will be brought into social contact with faculty members, thereby lessening that breach between the two groups which is still widely decried by critics of our educational system. Contacts between upperclassmen and underclassmen will also be facilitated. Incidentally, the new system will make possible a shift of emphasis from intercollegiate athletics to intra-mural sport.

It is generally admitted that the reform is excellent in theory; criticism questions only its practicability. Doubt of its success rests mainly on the promise that "American students resent being told with whom they shall eat and sleep." This is undoubtedly true with regard to very small groups, but it is not applicable to societies of two hundred odd members. At Princeton the majority are content with liberty of choice in regard to a room-mate; they raise no formidable insurrections over arbitrary allotment to dormitories and Commons, or over a system of club elections by which their table companions are determined largely by factors beyond individual control.

If we are to believe the editorial printed below, however, Princeton is proceeding to a solution of the problem in her own manner, calmly, naturally, and without anything in the nature of an academic revolution. This panacea consists in sub-dividing the university architecturally, as at Harvard and Yale, but in making the units curricular rather than social. Witness McCormick Hall and the Mathematics Building. With the completion of Dickinson Hall, the reform will be complete; it will only be necessary for us to realize that the problem has been solved.

Advantageous as these departmental buildings, it is difficult to regard them as other than useful adjuncts to the University--as distinct from what Dean Gauss, in his telegram to the Yale News, terms as the College. Princeton must not let her excellent equipment and curriculum blind herself to her own social problems. The same evils which Harvard and Yale are taking drastic steps to eliminate exist here. We cannot adopt a similar remedy though it might be advisable to plan future dormitories with that eventuality in view--but we can at least learn valuable lessons from the experiments at Cambridge and New Haven when we come to build a University Center or give the various club regulations their annual overhauling.

The Princetonian joins with Dean Gauss in congratulating Mr. Harkness and rejoicing with Yale and Harvard; it feels that the plan is the most logical and courageous step yet taken to solve those problems of growth which have harassed American universities in the last three decades. Daily Princetonian.