the public service, or one of the learned professions.
The first set of columns in the following table gives
the extreme and the average price of the annual rent
of rooms in twenty-five American colleges ; the
second, the extreme and the average price of board ;
the third, the tuition ; and the fourth gives the ex-
3 6 AMERICAN COLLEGES.
treme and average amounts of the total annual ex-
penses :
College.
Room-rent.
Annual.
Board,
Weekly.
Amherst $18 125 45 $3.00 6.00 4.00 $100
Beloit 10 20 15 1.50 3.50 2.50 36
Boston University 60 120 80 3.00 8.00 4.00 ioo
Bowdoin 9025 2.754.003.00 75
Brown 20 155 50 3.00 5-003.75 ioo
Un. of California 30 ioo 50 4.00 9.00 5.00 o
Columbia 300 450* 200
Cornell, about 45 2.506.00 4 oo 75
Dartmouth 20 50 30 2.50 4.00 90
Hamilton 6 36 20 3.00 5.00 4.00 Co
Harvard 22 300 125 4.00 8.00 6.00 150
Haverford (Friends') 4.50
Illinois ....". 14 5 28 2.504.00 3.50 36
Michigan Un 30 80 40 1.50 5.00 3.00 o
North-western Un 10 50 20 1.80 6.00 2.50
Oberlin 9 36 1.75 4.00 3.00
Princeton 27 86 50 3.25 7.00 5.00
Trinity 40 ioo 54 3.00 6.00 5.00
Tufts 15 ioo 50 3.50
Union i2ot 3.00 5.00
Un. of Virginia 15 30 2.25 4.50 3.00
Wesleyan Un 12 36 24 2.75 5.00 3.50
Williams 15 60 30 3.00 6.00 4.00
Yale 25 140 50 4.00 8.00 6.00
45
9
120
QO
Vassar Room and Board, $300
75
75
90
140
zoo
Total Ex-
penses,
Annual.
$3501,000500
200 500 300
3001,000500
300 800 500
3501,000 500
250 1,200 500
600 3,000 800
300 i , ioo 500
300 900 500
350 800450
4503,000800
425
2OO 500 300
175 7 37
250 600 350
250 750350
35O I,2CO 6OO
300 1,000 500
3501,000550
300 800 500
300 900 500
300-^ i ,000 500
3001 ,000 500
400 3,000 800
500 1,000 600
* Board and room.
t Room-rent and tuition.
The most important induction which this table
affords is, that at the large majority of our colleges an
annual expenditure of $500 is sufficient to allow the
EXPENSES AND PECUNIARY AID. 37
student to avail himself of the full advantages of the
education which they afford. At Columbia, Yale,
Harvard, $700 or $800 are required ; but at Princeton,
Williams, Amherst, Dartmouth, and the large majority
of the best eastern colleges $500 supports the
student with comfort and respectability. At the best
of the western colleges $300 or $350 is equivalent to
$500, as expended in the best of the Eastern, with per-
haps the exception of Harvard and Yale.
The pecuniary aid that is given to students in many
of the colleges is considerable, and its amount, except-
ing the present financial depression, increases each
year. In the case of a few of the following colleges,
several of their scholarships are not at present avail-
able, as at Harvard and Amherst ; but in the case of
others, the amount of the pecuniary aid is slightly
larger than is indicated. For this amount annually
varies with the liberality of the friends of the college
and with the income of the college funds.
AMOUNT OF AID FOR STUDENTS.
Amherst. 63 scholarships of $86 ; income of $80,000
to candidates for ministry.
Beloit. Tuition free to candidates for ministry, and
to a few others ; several scholarships.
Boston University. 65 scholarships of $100.
38 AMERICAN COLLEGES.
Bowdoin. 27 scholarships, average $60; also, a bene-
ficiary fund of $550.
Brown. 100 scholarships average $80; income of
$8 ; ooo ; and deduction on tuition fee.
University of California. No aid, but tuition is free
to State students.
Columbia. 40 scholarships, and tuition free to needy
students.
Cornell. 128 scholarships, and opportunities for self
support.
Dartmouth. 100 scholarships average $70.
Hamilton. 27 scholarships average $80 ; also, $3,000.
Harvard. 118 scholarships average $23 5; also, $4, 500.
Haverford (Friends'). "Several" scholarships of
$225.
Illinois. 7 scholarships of $36.
Michigan University has neither scholarships nor
beneficiary funds.
North-western. Small amounts loaned to candidates
for ministry.
Oberlin. 102 scholarships each usually equal to the
tuition ; income of $7,000.
Princeton." Limited " number scholarships of $75 ;
to candidates for Presbyterian ministry, $30.
Trinity. Scholarships amounting to about $4,000.
Tufts. 27 scholarships average $75 ; tuition free to
ten students ; also, gratuities.
EXPENSES AND PECUNIARY AID. 39
Union. Numerous scholarships averaging $100.
University of Virginia. Tuition free to candidates
for ministry and to very needy students.
Wesleyan University. A " limited " number of
scholarships of $75. 41 scholarships of about $i 50.
Williams. $9,000 is divided among needy students.
Yale. 32 scholarships of $60; $15,000, for candi-
dates for ministry especially.
Vassar. Income of at Least $100,000; 4 scholar-
ships.
40 AMERICAN COLLEGES.
CHAPTER III.
MORALS.
As the custom of drinking intoxicating liquors is
less prevalent in the community to-day than a century
or a half century ago, so among college men the popu-
larity of tippling habits has steadily decreased in the
course of the last hundred years. During the
eighteenth century, at Yale College, the evils of in-
temperance were a constant source of anxiety to its
officers, and numerous were the resolves of its Cor-
poration intended to effect their decrease. In 1737
the Corporation observed that on " Commencement oc-
casions there is a great expense in spirituous distilled
liquors in college which is justly offensive," and
adopted measures to lessen the consumption of the
costly- beverages. Nine years later it passed a law,
whose prohibitory character may have nursed a col-
lege rebellion, that " the Butler shall not keep or sell in
MORALS. 4I
the Buttery more than twelve barrells of strong beer in
one year." The members of the graduating class at
the Commencement season, however, were allowed
exceptional privileges. Each was permitted to buy
" one quart of wine and one pint of rum," though it
is expressly stated he can have no other " kind of
strong drink " in his " chamber." * At the same
period of 1760 and 1761, a similar laxity of college
law and sentiment prevailed at Harvard regarding
the use of liquor. At Bowdoin, too, at the beginning
of the present century " in each college room there
was a sideboard sparkling with wines and stronger
stimulants." And on Commencement days its gradu-
ates, as those of other colleges, entertained their
friends with " rum, gin, brandy, wine," etc.f
But the college-drinking customs of fifty and a
hundred years ago are now thoroughly changed.
Yale College no longer buys each year " twelve barrels
of strong beer " for the use of its students. The
Plarvard student entertains his friends with punch only
in the face of impending suspension. And the Bow-
doin man, like all the dwellers in the Maine-law
State, is compelled to buy his brandy at the " town
* Professor Fisher's Centennial Discourse on the History
of the Church of Christ in Yale College. Appendix.
f Prof. E. C. Smyth's Three Discourses upon the Religious
History of Bowdoin College, p. 8, and Appendix.
42 AMERICA COLLEGES.
agency," and under this limitation can secure it
only for medicinal purposes. A similar elevation of
custom and sentiment regarding intemperance has,
taken place in all the older colleges, as it has in the
general community.
The number of the students in New England col-
leges who are addicted to the use of intoxicating
liquors to a greater or less degree varies, it is esti-
mated from carefully prepared statistics, from about
one-eighth to about three-fifths. It is usually acknowl-
edged that intemperance is more prevalent at large
than at small colleges ; and that among eastern col-
leges as small a proportion of Amherst and Williams
men are addicted to drink as at any New England
college. At certain western colleges, however, a case
of drunkenness is seldom known to occur. This is
true with regard to Oberlin, one of whose rules is, as
it is also the rule of other colleges both east and
west, summarily to expel the student guilty of intox-
ication. At the University of Michigan, with five
hundred students in the college, and double this num-
ber in the university, " cases of drunkenness," one of
its professors writes me, " are exceedingly rare."
College opinion regarding the immorality of in-
temperance varies to as great a degree as the propor-
tion of men in different institutions who are addicted
to the habit. In most country colleges of the east,
MORALS.
43
where the temptations to indulgence are the fewest,
intemperance is reprobated as a vice and a crime. In-
flammation of the eyes, except as occasioned by the
midnight study of Greek, is regarded as a " scarlet
letter " of disgrace. The intemperate student is not
only shunned by his classmates, but if, " while the fit
is on him," he chance to reel before a professor's
eyes, he is at once compelled to drink the hemlock of
summary dismission. In western colleges the case
is similar. Though among western students mere
drinking is not so harshly frowned upon as in some of
the Puritan colleges of the east, yet drunkenness is
as severely anathematized in the University of Wiscon-
sin as in the University of Vermont. But among the
students of our largest and in many respects best col-
leges of the east, there is a tendency, which exists in
spite of all the efforts of the governing boards to
crush it out, to look upon drunkenness as a rather
necessary escapade of hot-blooded youth. It is seldom
that in these colleges indulgences in liquor costs the
tippler the loss of either a friend or an acquaintance.
The college officers, however, are inclined to deal
severely with him, and either the disgrace of a repri-
mand or a temporary suspension is the penalty he
usually pays for his offense.
In regard to that vice from which the college, as
well as the community, suffers irreparable injury, it is
44 AMERICAN COLLEGES.
impossible to write with a high degree of definiteness.
It is very gratifying to say that a much smaller pro-
portion of college men are addicted to it than to
drunkenness ; but it is very humiliating to be obliged
to confess that, as far as can be judged, its prevalence
has vastly increased within the last score of years. A
condemnation, on the part of the students, is meted
out against the former vice similar to that which is
felt regarding intemperance, but as a rule far more
severe and more just. College faculties, also, mani-
fest much greater rigor in dealing with it than with
drunkenness.
The causes of the difference in the moral condi-
tion of the students of most large colleges, the .majority
of which are located in or near cities, and that of the
students of small colleges situated in the country, are
numerous and diverse. They are found to exist both
in the pre-college training of the students, and in the
character and surroundings of the colleges.
The chief consideration relating to the pre-college
influence of the students at large city colleges, is the
fact that the vast majority of them were brought up
and reside in cities. About one-half of the Harvard
men, for example, reside in Boston (within a radius
of eight miles of Beacon Hill), New York city and
Brooklyn. The homes of a large part of the other
half are in cities of the size of Cleveland or Worcester,
MORALS. 45
Only a small proportion of the whole number, there-
fore, reside in country towns. Nearly one-half of the
Yale students, also, live in cities of at least fifty
thousand population ; and one-fifth have homes in
New York city and Brooklyn. But in country col-
leges the large majority of the students were born,
bred, and live " sub tegmine fagi " under the vine
and fig-tree. Three-fifths of the Bowdoin men reside
in the country towns of Maine. Williams, seldom has
more than three or four Boston or New York men in
a class. Illinois college, according to a recent cata-
logue, has not a single student from Chicago. At
Michigan University, three-fifths of the students re-
side in the State, and the State contains only one
large city. Dartmouth, Amherst, Middlebury, Be-
loit, in fact all country colleges, draw the majority of
their students from the country.
The fact that so large a proportion of the students
at certain of our colleges are city-bred, affects the
question of their morality in various ways. Not a few
of these students are immoral on their entering col-
lege. The pre-college influences, outside of their own
homes, have for many of them been excellent prepar-
atory schools for Sophomoric dissipation. Even the
home influences, in not a few cases, have failed to out-
weigh the evil attractions of the gambling table and its
accessories. At one of our large colleges, it is esti-
46 AMERICAN COLLEGES.
mated that six-sevenths of the immoral men reside in
cities of at least twenty-five thousand inhabitants.
But it is seldom, though sometimes the case, that a
student from the country, when he enters a country
college, is immoral. The vicious class in the country
towns is not the student class. Not only the purity
of the student's home but the associations of his coun-
try life have been elevating. Vice in its various forms
is to his eyes " a painted ship on a painted ocean."
The Freshman, therefore, at large city colleges, is
usually more disposed to dissoluteness than his brother
at small country colleges.
The students at large colleges in the city are
wealthier. As the city is wealthier than the country,
so the average student at large city colleges receives
a larger income than the average student at the coun-
try college. It is needless to say that money is not
only the sine qua non to indulgence in Sophomoric
peccadillos, but it is also the immediate occasion of
dissipation. A wealthy student with an annual allow-
ance of $2,000 is an excellent Faust for some Mephis-
topheles. But a poor student, stinted to $300 annu-
ally, cannot " afford " to be immoral.
" Gold were as good as twenty orators,
And will, no doubt, tempt him to anything."
There are, it must be acknowledged, vices that are
as cheap as dirt, and that can be enjoyed in the coun-
' MORALS. 47
ti y, as well as in the city, college for the merest pit-
tance. But, as a rule, cheap vices are not attractive
to the college man of dissolute proclivities ; and, there-
fore, the poor student is not so subject to their temp-
tations as is his wealthy classmate.
Our large colleges are, moreover, from the fact
that they are large, subject to vices from which the
small colleges are inherently free. In classes of one
hundred and fifty or of two hundred men, immoral-
ities do not stand forth in so bold relief as in classes
of twenty or fifty. A single black sheep in a flock of
twenty is a more prominent object than are ten in a
flock of two hundred. The notoriety, therefore, sure
to follow his dissipation, may debar a student at a
small college from vice ; but its comparative absence
in a large college may urge the student into dissolute
habits.
In a large college, once more, the esprit de corps is
strong. The immoral men are sufficiently numerous
to form a ring for mutual " aid and comfort," and they
buckle themselves to each other by common habits
and purposes. But the two or three men of evil pro-
pensities in a small class feel nothing of that assur-
ance which numbers give. In their loneliness they
are more inclined to find cheer in their Plato than in
drinking 'from the flowing bowl of punch.
The situation of colleges in and near large cities
48 AMERICAN COLLEGES.
presents numerous opportunities for vicious indul-
gences. If Yale were located at Williamstown, Harvard
at Hanover, Columbia at Ithaca, the moral character
of their students would be elevated in as great a de-
gree as the natural scenery of their localities would be
increased in beauty. Small towns like Brunswick,
Hanover, Williamstown, Amherst and Ann Arbor,
offer few opportunities for either the formation or in-
dulgence of evil habits.
But a consideration of far greater importance than
either the moral condition of our colleges or the causes
that influence college men into dissolute courses is
the methods by which this moral condition may be
elevated and purified. All the various means which
tend to promote moral reformations in the community
tend thereby to produce corresponding results among
college students. There are, however, certain methods
whose observance would especially tend to root out
college immoralities. Most of the methods which I
venture to suggest are followed to a greater or less
extent in the large majority of the colleges, but a
stricter enforcement of certain of them could not, in
any college, fail to be of the highest service both to
the college and the community.
First. The inquiry regarding the morals of those
applying for admission should be more critical. It is
a requirement at most, if not all, colleges that the ap-
MORALS.
49
plicant present a certificate, signed by his teacher or
some other " responsible person," of his " good moral
character." But this certificate, for the purpose for
which it is designed, may not be worth the paper on
which it is written ; for of its signers the college often
knows nothing. A student, therefore, of the most
depraved tendencies has no difficulty in making his
character appear to his college examiners as white as
he chooses. I know a case in which a graduate of
one of the Phillips academies, of most dissolute habits,
presented himself for admission at a New England
college with a certificate signed by a classmate whose
character probably was hardly superior to his own.
To insure, therefore, the certainty of excluding im-
moral men, the college should require that the certifi-
cate of. the applicant be signed only by those
of whose right to sign it is, either directly or in-
directly, cognizant. At the same time also, many
of the preparatory schools and individuals, as pri-
vate tutors and clergymen, should exercise much
greater strictness in their bestowal of certificates of
moral character. The college and the school can
thus work together in elevating the moral tone of
their students.
Second. The college officers should exercise more
strict supervision over students of evil tendencies. A
college officer should not only have a room in each
4
50 AMERICAN COLLEGES.
college dormitory, as is now the custom, but he should
be especially alert for detecting any disorderly prac-
tices committed by the men under his care.
Third. Whenever what is judged to be sufficient
evidence is offered that a student is guilty of heinous
offences, he should be summarily expelled. By re-
maining in college he usually takes to himself seven
others worse than himself, and his last end, including
that of his companions, is worse than his first. The
summary expulsion of half a dozen men from cer-
tain of our colleges for habitual tippling and other
vices, would to a large degree wipe out these evils.
Fourth. Students should be, as any citizen, amen-
able to the civil law. From this law in petty offences
custom makes them substantially free. It is only a
short time since that a police officer in a college town
endeavored to obtain entrance to a room in which he
knew disorderly practices were being committed.
Defied by the students, he was obliged to appeal to a
college professor. The students at one of our colleges
flatter themselves with the pleasant fiction that a
police officer has no right to venture on to the college
campus to arrest a law-breaking student. There is
no reason why the municipal law should not touch
the disorderly collegian as well as any disorderly
citizen. The proper relation of the college student to
the government of the city in which he abides is well
MORALS. 51
stated in the position assumed by the University of
Michigan. This University holds, that its " students
are temporary residents of the city, and, like all other
residents, are amenable to the laws. Whenever guilty
of disorder or crime, they are liable to arrest, fine,
and imprisonment, and can claim no peculiar exemp-
tion from public disgrace and legal penalties."
Fifth. The moral condition of most colleges would
be greatly elevated by more intimate association of
the professors and the students. The intimacy of
this association is far more easily gained in a small
than a large college. But the moral influences with
which every college, large as well as small, desires to
surround her men, would be vastly augmented by
means of the personal association of instructors and
students. The precise methods that may be adopted
for accomplishing this purpose differ in different in-
stitutions, but some method should and can be em-
ployed in every college by which the professor can
directly influence the moral as well as the intellectual
character of his students.
Sixth. It should hardly be necessary to suggest
that the moral character of college officers ought
to be worthy of the highest respect of the men
under their charge. But in certain of our colleges,
students are willing to acknowledge that the moral
character of some of their professors neither commands
52 A M ERIC AN COLLEGES.
nor deserves their esteem. A college whose professors
are known, with a reasonable degree of certainty, to
be immoral cannot demand moral purity of its Fresh-
man. The upright character of the professor is the
first condition for demanding upright character in the
student.
Seventh. The seventh and last method that I beg
to suggest for promoting the morality of college life
is the refusal of his degree to any student of thoroughly
dissipated habits. If it is true, as is currently reported,
that Harvard, at her Commencement in 1877, refused
to bestow degrees upon certain men on the ground of
their notorious dissoluteness, the example may be fol-
lowed with profit by other colleges. The liability to
lose that bit of parchment, for gaining which he is
spending four years, acts as a fitting restraint upon
the immoral inclinations of any undergraduate.
There are, however, not a few considerations in
regard to the moral welfare of our colleges which
lighten up this picture that may appear in certain
points lamentably dark.
The age of the men on entering college is now,
and has been during the century, steadily increasing.
With age comes that self-control and that conscious-
ness of responsibility which are the best barriers to
dissoluteness. At Harvard the average age of admis-
sion is now about eighteen and a half years, and during
MORALS. 53
the last score of years the average has risen six
months. (President Eliot's Report for 1874-75). To
the increased maturity of the undergraduates may be
attributed in part the disfavor with which hazing is
coming to be regarded by students. In several colleges
this puerile and inhuman custom is obsolete, and in
most obsolescent.
There was probably, moreover, never a time in the
history of American colleges when their standard of
scholarship was so high as it is at present. Students
are now obliged to work with that carefulness and
thoroughness which tend to wean them from dissolute
courses. In many colleges they can find no time to
be immoral ; but in other colleges an increase of the
amount of the work would be of use in restraining
from vicious indulgences.
The moral condition of American colleges is, so
far as the writer's knowledge extends, far superior to
the condition of the English University of Cambridge,
and, judged by Cambridge, of Oxford, also. In his
" Five Years in an English University," Mr. Bristed
says (Revised Edition of 1874, pp. 413, 414) : "The
reading [hard-working] men are obliged to be toler-
ably temperate, but among the rowing men there is a
great deal of absolute drunkenness at dinner and sup-
per parties. . . . The American graduate is ut-
terly confounded at the amount of open profligacy
54 AMERICAN COLLEGES.
going on all around him at an English university ; a
profligacy not confined to the rowing set, but includ-
ing many of the reading men and not altogether spar-
ing those in authority."
Into a condition of such moral depravity American
colleges have never fallen ; and there is no valid
reason to believe they ever will fall into it.
RELIGION.
55
CHAPTER IV.
RELIGION.
RELIGION was the corner-stone in the foundation of
our older colleges. Harvard, founded in 1636, sprang
from the " dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to
the churches/' and bears the name of a Congregational