Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/165

 THE EDUCATIONAL PLAN 137 university extension he contemplated. It was because he believed so fully in its value and its permanency that in his educational plan he made it one of the five great divisions of the University. The basic principle on which he would build a university was service service not merely to the students within its walls, but also to the public, to mankind. This was the end he had in view in all the three new and novel divisions of the organization. He was a profound believer in the power of the printed page. Through the Press he believed the usefulness of the University would be immensely enlarged and carried to the ends of the earth. It was on this account that his heart was set on building the University Press into the system, making it not an incident, an attachment, but one of the great divisions of the University, an organic part of the institution. The same thing was true as to Affiliation. President Harper did not wish to found a university that would through its rivalry weaken and injure the smaller institutions of the Middle West. He conceived the plan of entering into relations of affiliation with them, not primarily to increase the power of Chicago, but rather to assist them in raising their standards, to add to their prestige, and in every way to strengthen and upbuild them. This principle of large and wide service was, indeed, the fundamental principle of the educational plan of the University. Among the foregoing five divisions the President was naturally the immediate head of the first, the University proper. Over the others Directors responsible to the President were appointed: as, the Director of the University Extension, the Director of the University Press. These five general divisions may perhaps be regarded as the foundation upon which the University was to be built. The most important element of the superstructure would, of course, be the students, and the institution was to be coeducational. Men and women were to be admitted to all its privileges on equal terms. This had been decided before the educational plan had been con- sidered. The first public presentation of the plan was made by President Harper before the American Baptist Education Society