Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/172

 144 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Students were to be admitted to the Colleges of the University only after successfully passing an examination. Certificates ad- mitted no one. Whether this requirement of an examination should be regarded as a part of the plan may be questioned. It certainly was not in any way essential to it. In the unfinished and unpub- lished Report quoted above the President said: This policy has been adopted because no greater service to the cause of education in the great country west of the Alleghanies could be rendered than a determined and persistent effort to raise the standard of admission to college The chief reason, however, is that we may better prepare students for the graduate work which we wish to develop. The student who comes [as a graduate] from nine out of ten institutions is in no sense fitted for graduate work. In the majority of cases he is able only to enter with profit the University College. If we are to have graduate students able to do the highest work they must come to us in the Academic College with a preliminary education of an accurate and thorough character. It was a corollary of the plan that it made a great change in the matter of the graduation of students. On this subject President Harper had this to say: The whole custom of the annual graduation will, without doubt, gradually disappear. Many of the features of the old commencement day have already been given up. It is only a rigid arrangement, which treats alike all students of whatever capacity, which can secure an annual graduation day. The fact is that each individual student should be treated separately, and when his course of study is completed he should be given his diploma. From this point of view, students will be graduated from the University every quarter. The student will receive his diploma, not because a certain number of years have passed and a certain day in June has arrived, but because his work is finished. Whether earlier or later than the ordinary period of college education, it does not matter. The college should not be a machine. Each year of a man's life is important. If he can finish his work in a period of time shorter than that usually given by six months or a year, let him have the satisfaction of entering upon his life work so much sooner. If it requires six months or a year longer to finish the required amount of work, let him not be hurried through and the work, though incomplete and unsatisfactory, be called finished. But it has been said that such a plan will destroy entirely the class spirit. There is a certain kind of class spirit which ought to be destroyed. A class spirit which rises superior to the college spirit and to the spirit of scholarship deserves no existence. This plan will develop a spirit of scholarship and will in no way interfere with college companionship. By other means that most valuable of all student acquisitions strong friendships will be cultivated.