Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/176

 148 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Did they deserve this commendation? Was the general and warm approval, with which the educational plan was received, merited? While a good plan on paper, did it break down under the strain of operation? President Harper, at the end of the first year, said that it had apparently stood the test. It had for one year at least worked successfully. At the same time the President said that the question whether it "shall continue to shape the growth of the institution, can be better answered ten or twenty years hence." What must the answer be at the end of a quarter of a century ? Happily this is not at all a question of opinion, but of fact. And the facts are so plain, and, to those familiar with the work of the University, so well known, that there can be only one answer to the question. What that answer must be will be made clear if the questions suggested on a preceding page are taken up and considered in the light of twenty-five years of history. Those questions were: 1. What features of the plan were found, on being tested in the crucible of experience, to be without value and discarded ? 2. What features underwent more or less modification, but in their underlying essential principles were so indispensable as to assure their permanent continuance ? 3. What features remained and gave every promise of con- tinuing to remain unchanged? The writer was never a teacher in the University. As he felt that men who had, not only, like himself, been closely related to the administrative work, but had been actively engaged in teaching throughout the first twenty-five years, were the only men who could intelligently answer these questions, the assistance of a number of them, especially of President Judson, has been sought and cheerfully given. In answering the first question as to what features of the educa- tional plan had been found to be without value and had been dis- carded, these eight scholars could discover but three. All of these, however, on examination, were found to come under the second question, as will appear later. It is a remarkable fact, therefore, that during the first twenty- five years of the University's history not a single feature of the