ORGANIZATION

289

all supplies, for the auditing of all bills for labor and supplies, and for the employes of the University. He co-operates with the president in the oversight of all the business interests of the University.

The voting members of the faculty are the president, the deans, the professors and assistant professors. Instructors and assistants are nominated by the departments and appointed by the president. Through an arrangement instituted by President Hibben, nominations of professors and assistant professors are made by the president to the board of trustees after formal recommendation by the full professors of the departments most concerned. In cases of appointments outside of the existing departments nominations to the board are made by the president on the formal recommendation of a committee of full professors appointed by the president from departments most closely allied to the work of the proposed appointee. In case the president disapproves of a nomination his nomination is placed before the board with that of the committee.

The faculty has approach to the board through the president and also by means of a standing committee of conference which meets a standing committee of the board four times a year, that is, before each stated meeting of the board.

The business of the faculty is in the hands of fourteen standing committees, of which those on course of study, on entrance, on discipline, on examinations and standing, on graduate school, on outdoor sports, on nonathletic organizations are typical. The records of the faculty are kept by its clerk, who is elected by the faculty and serves during its pleasure.

The departments of the University are autonomous, although the so-called "head" or administrative chair

man of each department is appointed by the president. Each department arranges its own courses and apportions its work, but every new undergraduate course offered must be recommended by the faculty committee on course of study, and every graduate course must be recommended by the faculty committee on the graduate school.

The publications of the University are produced by the Princeton University Press, whose building and equipment were the gift of Mr. Charles Scribner (1875). In the language of its charter, obtained under the act providing for "associations not for pecuniary profit, the University Press is organized to maintain in the interests of the University a printing and publishing plant for the promotion of education and scholarship and to serve the University by manufacturing and distributing its publications. Besides the official documents of the University regularly printed here, the Press has already issued a number of volumes of general intellectual and scholarly interest, of which perhaps the annual Stafford Little Lectures may be taken as one type, and the Princeton Monographs in Art and Archæology as another.

VIII

HISTORY OF THE CURRICULUM AND

ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS

Entrance Requirements of 1748. Requirements of 1819. Curriculum Under President Burr. President Witherspoon's Improvements. Curriculum of 1802 and 1819. Modern Languages. Extra-curriculum Lectures. Curriculum Under President Maclean. President McCosh's Elective Plan. School of Science. Civil Engineering. The Course of Study and Entrance Requirements in 1887. Revision Under President Patton. New Course of Study Under President Wilson. Standardization of Requirements Under President Hibben. The Alternative Method of Entrance. The Final Special Honors Plan.

THE history of the Princeton curriculum and entrance requirements is a history of singleness of principle and unity of practice. On the whole it is the story of slow, steady progress toward one definite goal-the formation of a curriculum which shall contain the essentials of a balanced, coherent, and logical grouping of liberal studies. Though marked in the main by a strong conservative tendency, which in spite of criticism has refused to yield to the lure of ephemeral theories or utilitarian ends, this development has not ignored abiding values wrought out by experience elsewhere, nor has it been too timid to take forward and untried steps when these were sure of their ultimate direction. The latest expression of the Princeton theory is found in the inaugural address of President Hibben on the "Essentials of Liberal Education." 1

It may be well to state at the outset, and by way of summary, the three basal convictions that have emerged from the long process through which the Princeton cur

1 Princeton University Official Register, May, 1912.

riculum for the bachelor degrees has been evolved. These convictions are: first, that certain fundamental and disciplinary studies are essential to a liberal education, whether the degree in view be one in arts, one in science, or one in letters, and that these studies are Latin, mathematics, philosophy, physical science; second, that these studies being fundamental are to be required of all candidates for a bachelor's degree, and being disciplinary are to be pursued early in the college course, after which their continuance is optional with the student; third, that the integrity of the historic bachelor of arts degree, postulating the study of both Greek and Latin, is to be preserved. If there be no such thing as essentials in liberal education, then the Princeton theory falls to the ground. But whether one accepts or rejects the validity of the convictions named, at least their presence at the heart of the modern Princeton course of study renders impossible any ambiguity in the meaning of a Princeton bachelor degree.

The entrance requirements have followed the stability of the curriculum. Indeed, after they were once clearly established early in the nineteenth century they showed but little change until Dr. McCosh compelled a re-adjustment. The terms of admission to-day are practically those of yesterday in so far as they demand a knowledge of essentials, the contrast and advance lying in the method of administration and in the raising of the standard imposed. The history of the entrance requirements until Dr. McCosh's time is thus a matter of but few words.

Unless President Dickinson meant to admit to college anyone who, in the comfortable phrase of the day, was "hopefully pious," he must have had standards of one sort or another in his mind whereby to judge of the

EARLY REQUIREMENTS

293

qualifications of candidates under the charter of 1746; yet it is extremely doubtful that in his brief administration he ever formulated them. The announcement in the newspapers that the College of New Jersey would open at Elizabeth Town in May, 1747, contained the further statement that "all persons suitably qualified might at that time and place be "admitted to an academic education," a statement repeated a few months later in the detailed description of the charter, in which it is said that "all who are qualified for it may be immediately admitted to an academic education and to such class and station in the college as they are found upon examination to deserve." But no record of the requirements has been preserved. There can be little doubt, however, that the definite entrance requirements laid down in November, 1748, by President Burr in the "Laws and Customs" authorized by the board of trustees after the first commencement, differed but slightly, if at all, from those of President Dickinson. The first chapter of Burr's "Laws" is entitled "Of Admission" and reads:

"None may expect to be admitted into the College but such as being examined by the President and Tutors,1 shall be found able to render Virgil and Tully's

A

1 This oral method of entrance examination lasted until well past the middle of the nineteenth century, although college examinations were written. It consisted of a brief quiz by the president usually, assisted sometimes by his colleagues, the candidate in the latter case tracking these gentlemen to their homes. letter in the University library written in 1761 by President Finley to Dr. Eliezer Wheelock of Dartmouth shows the informality of the whole proceeding: "I examined your Son, & tho' he was less prepared than Ye Rest of his Class, yet Considering his Age, & Good Sense, I concluded he wou'd make a pretty Good Figure in it, after some Time, Shou'd God grant him Health to Study: & so admitted him. And I can honestly say yt his being your Son had no small Influence on me." Other letters show that not infrequently it happened in the eighteenth and early in the