The College Comes of Age
D ESPITE the fact that the college was borrowed from an alien culture it early began to break its ancestral ties and to adapt itself to the new world. The effects of diverse nationalities in the population of the new world, the new requirements of the frontier, the development of science, the inaccessability of the continent of Europe, and the weaning of second and third generations from the traditions of the mother country were bound to have an effect upon the educational institutions of the new world. It is significant that in I790 French was allowed in substitution for Hebrew at Harvard. Chemistry and physics first passed from the outer courts to the inner sanctuary of canonized disciplines at Pennsylvania and Harvard in i820. German made its debut at Harvard in i830. William and Mary took history into the family in I822. With the growth of democracy and the diffusion of the population to the West other changes in collegiate education developed. The Morrill Act gave birth to forty-five new institutions designed to meet the needs of the agricultural and mechanical frontier. The rapid urbanization and industrialization of the United States led to the widespread development of technical training. Business ascendancy introduced commercial courses into the secondary school and prostituted many collegiate departments of political economy to the get-rich-quick utility courses of the market place. This trend which too often substituted new license for old virtue led many liberal colleges into the far country. They saw the glitter of the immediate return to be had in catering to the new and novel. The name "liberal" was betrayed. Instead of developing a new life on the basis of the family tradition, the disciplines of home were cast aside.