THE EXPANSION OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN ILLINOIS ANNUAL ADDRESS Before the ILLINOIS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY BY. KENDRIC C. BABCOCK, PH. D., LL. D., Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I count it a privilege to be called back, as it were, to the old-time task of talking about history. When a man has been out of the harness of the historian for an even dozen of years there is something more than a mild satisfaction in being again called by the excellent name of historian, so far at least as to be asked to sit in among those who know history and are helping to make it. In the presentation of an educational topic to a group of historians no apology is necessary, because in the making of a state the process of education from the bottom to the top is exceedingly important, and the shaping of higher education in a commonwealth is of vital importance. I recall the Governor of a Southwestern state with which I was once connected as president of a pocket edition of a state university, saying to me over and over again with a peculiar emphasis that was his, for he was a pompous old chap: "I tell you, Dr. Babcock, there is nothing like having your hand on a state in the making, and having it at the top." In discussing this feature of the development of the history of this state, I would like to have you consider that I am speaking of a phase of its history which deals with the state thinking its best thought regarding the purposes of its citizens, not its only thought, not necessarily its finest thought, but after all its best thought. And how slowly do most men individually, and how slowly do most organizations, arrive at the point where their really best thought shapes the community and the history of the years! There is a phrase in Emerson which is as true of states, at least in certain stages, as it is of individuals: "Our faith comes in moments, but our doubt is habitual." In the survey to which this occasion is devoted I want to trace rather briefly and sketchily, without too many figures or footnotes, the difference between those days in 1865 when the bearded young veterans of the Civil War came back to the peaceful ways of the prairie and attempted to pick up the fluttering threads of the shattered fabric of their education, and to piece together somehow the fundamentals of a career; and those other days when the young veterans of the Great War with unsettling and distressing memories of Chateau Thierry and the Argonne came back over the same trails and found conditions vastly different. The things to which these easily swung doors of the higher educational institutions of 1919, 1920 and 1921 opened, the opportunities that were behind them, were not merely quantitatively, but qualitatively and altitudinally different from the best treasures of 1865. Between Appomattox and the signing of the Armistice in 1918 stretched two generations, in which the higher education of a great commonwealth was transformed, rebuilt like some of the ancient cathedrals of Europe not according to the original specifications, but according to changing and enlarging plans. In the cathedrals one may trace in the foundation stones the ideals of the original builders of an early century; in the second story is the work of the twelfth century; while the marvelous choir is the contribution of the fourteenth century. So in some of these educational institutions there are stones that speak of the medieval period of education in the State of Illinois. Now and then one comes upon an institution like the University of Chicago, which stands out like that marvel of Gothic perfection set in its great and glorious stretch of green in the old town of Salisbury in England that cathedral which was the work of a single generation, not of long decades and different centuries. In 1865 there was no state university unless the feebly supported Illinois State Normal University may be characterized as a state institution. The state had not taken advantage of the Land Grant Act of 1862, and altogether there was a lack of interest in public higher education that was to handicap the growth of the state for half of the period under discussion. Illinois, in fact, was the last state in the old Northwest, and one of the very last in the Middle West, to establish a state university. The possibilities bound up in the idea of a state-supported university for the people of the '60's were somewhat like the present physicist's ideas of the possibilities bound up in the atom. If he could only release those whirling startling potentialities of the atom, what mighty things could be accomplished! So with the small schools which had sprung up in the West by 1865; they were rich in possibilities, far from being realized. Higher education then was in the pioneering, traditional, missionary stage. It grew only slowly out of that stage, and the institutions which existed in 1865 show how far Illinois as a state had lagged behind its sisters of the old Northwest. It was miles behind Michigan in the status of its higher education and in the fine quality of leadership furnished by the University of Michigan, although Illinois entered the Union eighteen years before the sister state came in. Illinois, however, did not lack men who had vision of the future of higher education in the state. Among these men was the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Newton Bateman. With a mingling of regret, if not of remorse, and with a certain feeling of prophecy, he wrote in his report of December 15, 1866, having in mind the Congressional Land Grant of 1862 for the promotion of agricultural and the mechanic arts, this striking paragraph: "We feel that this is the long-waited-for and golden opportunity to lay the foundations of an institution which shall round out and perfect the free school system of Illinois; for the terms of the act of Congress are as comprehensive and liberal as the conception which it embodies is grand and national. While agriculture and the mechanic arts are the interests to be especially promoted, no other departments of learning are excluded. The institution founded by, or receiving, this splendid donation is surely destined to become the great State University of Illinois, and the acknowledged head of her system of popular education. By a law of inevitable affinity and gravitation, other educational departments and interests will be attracted to and cluster around this grand central institution. Power and influence and treasure will flow towards it, until its original endowment and status, magnificent as is to be the one, and commanding the other, will be but the small beginnings of the princely resources and glorious destiny which are to crown its future." While his primary interest and enthusiasm was for the public elementary schools, Mr. Bateman was not lacking in appreciation of the colleges of the state, which he characterized as "institutions representing the best culture in the country and whose faculties are the peers of those in any other state, man for man, and are doing their work every whit as well and successfully." He maintained that: "High schools are the legitimate and more valuable part of every good public school system and if there are any colleges, not to say universities, that find themselves unable to compete with such public high schools, let them perish by the competition; because neither learning nor truth nor honesty will suffer by the catastrophe. Such so-called colleges are pretentious cheats. The curriculums of all public high schools should end, and those of nearly all do end, substantially where the true college course begins. It is not colleges, therefore, but second rate high schools, preposterously called colleges, that cry out against the monopoly of the higher departments of the public school system." The report of Superintendent Bateman for the two years, 1866-1868, gives a statistical abstract of universities, colleges, etc., and devotes more than 40 per cent. of its 341 pages to the history and statistical summaries of the institutions listed. It was a departure from the usual form of the report, in the endeavor "to exhibit in full the higher forces, intellectual, educational and moral, which are in active operation in the state at this time." In the lists are universities, colleges, seminaries, academies, theological schools and the like. Twenty colleges are listed, not counting those supported by the state. This report formally introduces a new-comer in the ranks of the institutions of the state, the Illinois Industrial University, in these words: "During the past year this new comer has taken its place among the beautiful sisterhood of state institutions which dispense the charities and mark the civilization of the state." The first biennial appropriation was $60,000. This survey of the status of these institutions shows them to be very diverse in their organization and standards, a mixture of high school and academy, of college and vocational school. Every one of them, except perhaps the old University of Chicago, was lacking in almost every characteristic of a real university. McKendree College, founded in 1828, reported the whole number of graduates since the organization of the institution as 161, the number of pupils pursuing a full course as 61, the value of buildings, furnishings and grounds, $55,000, and the endowment, $27,500. Illinois College reported 55 students in classics, science and English literature, an endowment of $100,000, and 8,500 books in the library. Knox College, formerly called Prairie College, and later Knox Manual Labor College, had 46 college students and an endowment of $24,300. The University of Chicago, founded in 1856, had 78 full-course and 83 partial-course students, with buildings valued at $300,000, and an endowment of $100,000. Such were the typical colleges to which these young men of the Civil War Army came back. The stirring of demands for practical instruction bordering on the vocational had by 1870 produced various experiments in these institutions, experiments which were to lead later into a positive and significant differentiation of institutions of strictly higher educational grade and to the marvelous development of instruction in science, commerce, engineering, agriculture, and education itself. Even before the state committed itself to the upbuilding of the Illinois Industrial University with the aid of the Federal land grant of 1862, the Illinois Agricultural College was founded in 1861, a private corporation "for the purpose of giving instruction in practical and scientific agriculture and the mechanic arts." The president, who describes himself as "professor of mental and moral science and practical agriculture,' proposed to associate with himself professors of law, ancient languages, mathematics, natural sciences, military tactics, horticulture and commercial courses. The University of Chicago in its fifth annual catalog (186364), in addition to special courses in civil engineering, astronomy and law, announced an agricultural department, in order that it might not "overlook the almost universal demand for what is known as 'a practical education'". It provided for a two-years curriculum, for admission to which "an acquaintance with the leading branches of a good English education will be required." The curriculum was essentially that of a vocational high school, including algebra, arithmetic, bookkeeping, chemistry, botany, root and stock grafting, astronomy, minerology, geology, veterin ary practice, and laws relating to contracts, collections, highways and fences. The Illinois Wesleyan University announced in 1867 a chair of agriculture-one of its six chairs, which was known as the Isaac Funk Professorship of Agriculture. In this list of 1867 appears the new but short-lived Illinois Soldiers' College for the free education of soldiers and soldiers' children of the state. The figures in the long list of so-called colleges, seminaries and the like are very interesting for three things: The confusion as to what constituted higher education; the apparent inability to grade the students who came in; and the uncertain conception of what constituted adequate support for a collegiate enterprise. The total income of many of these institutions did not run to $10,000 per year, and very few of them registered more than 100 collegiate students, or, as they were called in the report, "full-course" students. In most of them the preparatory course far outran the regular courses open to college students. The total figures, for example, in all these twenty institutions were 7,358, of whom "full-course" students were 2,441; partial course students, 1,618; and preparatory students, 3,299. The library of Illinois College had 8,500 volumes, the largest in the state. The estimate value of all college buildings was $2,758,000. The endowment totalled $2,335,000. By 1925 twenty new colleges at least, excluding junior colleges, were added to the list of 1867. This does not include those which were chartered for one purpose or another but did not operate long enough really to be called colleges. The chartering of so-called colleges in the State of Illinois in more recent years at any rate has been lax. More fake institutions have been chartered in the State and have done something akin to "practicing their professions" than in almost any other State in the Union. The solidity of the general expansion of higher education in the State is attested by the surprising totals of the forty-six universities, colleges and professional schools (including thirteen independent professional institutions) reported by the United States Bureau of Education in 1922 in terms comparable with the figures just given for 1867. The students numbered 53,281, of whom only 5,551 or about ten per cent. were in preparatory departments in contrast to nearly forty-five per cent. in 1867; 34,709 were in collegiate and graduate departments. The grounds, buildings and apparatus were estimated at $52,300,000 and the endowments at $50,300,000. The volumes in the libraries passed 2,100,000. Verily the best thought of the State was finding tangible, generous, and permanent expression. In the first twenty-five years after 1865, there was little. change in the general organization of higher institutions save for the Illinois Industrial University which started on a new track and after many struggles with adverse winds and tides reached a |