Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/178

 150 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO view to service, survived in that wide development of it in the system of co-operation which existed between the University and several hundred high schools and academies. In connection with this system annual conferences were held at the University, the graduates of approved schools were admitted without examina- tion on certificates, their students came to the University for annual contests in public speaking, and scholarships were granted them for excellence in their preparatory studies. It must be said, then, that this feature of the plan comes under the second ques- tion proposed, viz.: What features underwent modification, but continued and promise to be of permanent value ? The second of the five Divisions of the University was the University Extension. At the beginning and for a dozen years the emphasis was on the lecture-study system. But this system proved expensive. The hearers of the lectures did not become students. It became increasingly difficult to find suitable lecturers, and, whether finally or only temporarily, this feature of University Extension gradually disappeared. The class-study feature devel- oped into University College, which continually increased in use- fulness. At the outset the correspondence-study feature was not conspicuous. Its work began feebly, but, at first gradually and then rapidly increased in volume and power. Under the manage- ment of its head, Secretary Hervey F. Mallory, it prospered exceedingly, until it enrolled annually above three thousand students, at work in more than three hundred and fifty courses, given by more than one hundred and twenty-five instructors. Every year it became increasingly evident that this department of Uni- versity Extension possessed very great capacities of expansion. There were also changes in the University Ruling Bodies. It came to be felt, as the years passed that a Senate composed of head professors only did not quite comport with the spirit of democracy, and that a larger and more fully representative body was needed to care for the interests of a great and growing institution; and its membership was enlarged to include "all professors of full rank in the University." It was also clothed with " general administrative and legislative power over all matters not specifically reserved to a Faculty."