Part 10

Political clubs are, likewise, organized among the colleges to promote the success of their several parties and the triumph of their respective principles. At the time of national contests the clubs are especially active at mass meetings, in joint debates, and speeches, which set forth the merits of party principles and candidates. These experiences are both pleasant and instructive. The dignified participation of students in active political work tends to fire their patriotism and better equip them for the important social and civil duties of life. Political leagues are now organized in nearly all our colleges, with a view to strengthen the political party ties of the students in the several colleges and extend the party spirit and principle.

Glee clubs and other musical clubs, together with classical and scientific clubs, likewise afford ample opportunity for cultivating social life, and furnish pleasant entertainment.

Interest in athletic sports and outdoor amusements is often intense. Foot-ball and base-ball are the most popular games. Boat clubs are especially popular at Harvard and Yale. Bicycle clubs and lawn tennis clubs are made quite enjoyable to a large class of students.

College students also edit and publish college newspapers and journals. They are issued as daily, weekly, or monthly papers, and are supposed to voice the sentiment of the college and reflect its social, intellectual, and moral conditions. These journals help to keep the alumni and the undergraduate students in touch with the college and its work.

The religious life in college is very important. One of the primary purposes of the founders of American colleges was to promote such a religious life among students that they would go forth into all vocations as religious teachers and leaders of the people. This religious purpose has not been entirely thwarted. The general religious interest was never more marked and aggressive than at present. From one-half to five-sevenths of the students in American colleges make an open confession of Christ. In 1893, there were 70,419 young people in Protestant colleges. Of these, 38,327 were members of churches. Within the last few years the religious tone of our colleges has been elevated and improved. The average American student feels the need of educating the spiritual nature, and that there is no better way to attain this end than through a knowledge of the Bible and the soul touch of the Christ-life.

College authorities, recognizing the student's need of daily spiritual food, almost universally require once a day attendance at college prayers, which last from fifteen to thirty minutes. The students have frequent opportunities to meet the college pastor or one of the professors for conversation on personal religion.

Revivals are of frequent occurrence in many of our American colleges. These religious awakenings are strong and pervasive, and not only show the deep religious interest, but give a Christian tone to the body of students. The extent and intensity of these revivals in some colleges is so manifest that from three-fourths to nine-tenths of the graduates go out from their halls professing Christians.

The Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations are organized in nearly all the colleges, to secure growth in the Christian life and to encourage aggressive work among the students. They have either separate buildings on the college campus, or rooms fitted up in some of the college buildings, for their regular religious meetings. These associations are operated through standing committees, composed of one or more members from each college class. These societies have done much to awaken, increase, and intensify the interest of the students in religious matters, and by prayer and mutual sympathy have strengthened each other's Christian character and principles during the trying years of college life.

The morals of students should not be expected to rise much above the morals of the homes from which they come. The formative period of the student begins prior to college life. Parents who neglect this opportune time for training the moral life should not place this responsibility upon college professors and expect them to make up for parental neglect. It is a well-known fact, however, that only a very small per cent. of college students are known to be immoral. The prevalence of the drinking habit is decreasing. In one or two of the Eastern colleges a large per cent. of the students will take a social glass on public occasions and at inter-collegiate games, but in Western colleges this custom is rarely practiced. Money supplied by over-indulgent parents is the occasion of most of the immoralities. There is no general laxity of college law and sentiment in regard to the morals of the student. Most college authorities deal severely with known cases of drunkenness, theater going, and gambling.

The consensus of opinion among college authorities is that the morals of students are better than those of the same number of youth outside the college. "Our opinion is," says Noah Porter, "and we believe it will be confirmed by the most extended observation and the most accurate statistics, that there is no community in which the pre-eminently critical period of life can be spent with greater safety than it can in the college." President Timothy Dwight bears this testimony: "There is no community of the same number anywhere in the world which has a better spirit, or is more free from what is unworthy, than the community gathered within our university borders. The religious life of the community has been earnest and sincere. The proportion of Christian men in the university is very large, and the influence exerted by them is manifest in its results."

President Thwing says: "I do believe, and believe upon evidence, that the morals of the American college student are cleaner than the morals of the young man in the office, or behind the counter, or at the bench. His life and associations belong to the realm of the intellect, not to the realm of the appetite. His discipline is a training in that virtue the most comprehensive of all virtues--the virtue of self-control. He is able to trace more carefully than most the relations of cause and effect in the sphere of moral action. He recognizes the penalties of base indulgence. It is, therefore, my conviction that the college man is at once less tempted to the satisfaction of evil appetites, and less indulgent towards this satisfaction, than are most young men."

The expenses in college vary according to the means and dispositions of the students themselves. In making general estimates, it is impossible to be strictly accurate.

The average cost per year of an education at Harvard is estimated at about $900; at Yale and Columbia, $700; at Princeton, Boston, Cornell, and Amherst, $600; at Wellesley, Smith, and Vassar Colleges, $500 to $600. The average cost of an education in most Western colleges does not exceed $300 or $400. At Oberlin College, Wooster University, and the Ohio Wesleyan University the average yearly expenses are reduced to $200 or $250.

It is evident that higher education is more expensive in Eastern than in Western colleges. The difference arises from various causes. The tuition ranges from $100 to $150 in Eastern colleges, and from $30 to $50 in Western colleges. Again, the professors in most of the Western colleges receive smaller salaries than those in the Eastern colleges. In many of the smaller college towns the cost of living is low.

Then the student's personal and social habits play an important part in making up the general average. The large room rent and elaborate furnishings, expensive athletic sports, and costly fraternity life is much more manifest in the Eastern than in the Western colleges. The students are prone to follow the standards of home expenses, and fall in with the spirit of the wealthy social class, and indulge in elaborate living. Parents should discourage any display of wealth or extravagance in college if they wish their sons not to spend their time attending clubs, theaters, and questionable places of amusement, but to devote their attention to attaining true scholarship.

The student's manner of living varies according to location and circumstances. In Eastern colleges the students reside mostly in dormitories located on the college campus, or in fraternity chapter houses, and secure their board outside in clubs or restaurants. These rooms rent from $50 to $300 a year, and the price of board varies from $3 to $7 per week. The dormitory system does not prevail to any great extent among Western colleges. Students rent rooms in private residences, paying from 50 cents to $2 per week, and find board in families or clubs at a cost of $2 to $3 per week. The students boarding in clubs are comparatively free from restraints, and often fail to cultivate the social amenities and table manners which should characterize a cultivated gentleman. For this reason, boarding in private families, where a woman's presence usually lends grace and dignity to social life at the table, is better for the student. The college student cannot afford, for the sake of cheapness in club life, to become rude or coarse. The people look to the college-trained man for that inherent polish which reveals itself in good taste and refined manners. Success and usefulness in life often depend upon these small matters.

The students in American colleges are not measured by social and financial standards. The colleges sustain democratic ideals and methods by discouraging costly luxury, and encouraging simplicity of living without making life bare of all that is elevating and refining. They believe that "plain living and high thinking" is the way to call out the talent hedged about by financial difficulties, as well as to spur those gifted with fortune to higher aims and nobler efforts. The student who has the promise of a large inheritance has intimate social relations with those whose only capital is brain and heart. The true college test is thus expressed by President Thwing: "Brain is the only symbol of aristocracy, and the examination room the only field of honor; the intellectual, ethical, spiritual powers the only test of merit; a mighty individuality the only demand made of each, and a noble enlargement of a noble personality the only ideal." This is a healthful condition in college life, and tends to develop in the student self-respect and independence as an essential element in true citizenship.

Students of limited means are encouraged to secure an education. The young man of ability and perseverance, who commands the esteem of the college community, will receive encouragement and support to complete his course in college. There are many charitable foundations to help a needy young man in college. Harvard gives away annually to students nearly $100,000 in prizes, scholarships, and fellowships. Cornell has six hundred free scholarships, and other colleges deal generously with earnest and worthy students. The hesitating young man who desires an education would do well to follow Franklin's advice, "Young man, empty your purse in your head." If necessity requires that the student should go through college poorly dressed and with plain living, he can afford to face these apparent disadvantages when he is confident that within a few years, by force of application, he can win a position of honor and independence as the reward of true merit. It is a significant fact that the majority of the students in our American colleges come from homes of moderate means, and that fully one-third are earning their way through college.

VI.

THE PERSONAL FACTORS IN A COLLEGE EDUCATION.

One of the personal elements entering into a college education is the choice of a college to attend. This decision is a problem of the first importance, and should not be left to ignorance or caprice, but ought to be carefully considered, inasmuch as it largely involves the future type of character a student will have after the formative period of college life. The college puts a life-long stamp upon its graduates. It largely shapes their tastes, determines the company they keep, and greatly influences the serious work of their lives. There are a few principles by which we may test the excellence of a college without undue disparagement of any.

In the first place, a young man or woman should select a college where the standard of scholarship is high. The number and extent of studies in the college curriculum is not so important as the quality and tone of instruction. The world has come to require accuracy and thoroughness in instruction. What little a student knows he ought to know thoroughly, and then he can speak and act with assurance. A low intellectual tone or lack of critical work on the part of a college has a debilitating influence on the student. The professors should have a ripe scholarship, and be earnest and strong in their work, as well as inspire scholarly ambitions. Their bearing should be kind, courteous, and gentlemanly, in order that the students may come to possess more manly and womanly qualities of character as well as scholarship. Such teachers, in close personal contact with students, will awaken new powers, and help to discipline the mind to clear thinking, and impart noble impulses that will enrich manhood and womanhood.

Again, the college buildings, libraries, apparatus, and general equipment are important, but not as essential as the teaching force. President Gates says: "Harvard ranked as a small training college, and had no cabinets illustrative of science, when she trained Emerson and Holmes and Lowell, among all her gifted sons still her triple crown of glory. Bowdoin had no expensive buildings upon her modest campus when Hawthorne and Longfellow there drank at the celestial fount. Amherst, among her purple hills, boasted no wealth of appliances or endowment when she printed the roll of undergraduates rendered forever illustrious by the names of Richard S. Storrs, Henry Ward Beecher, and Roswell D. Hitchcock. Presidents Woolsey and Wayland, and Mark Hopkins and Martin B. Anderson, were trained for their noble and ennobling work in colleges which lacked rich appliances and thronging numbers." Such, however, has been the growth of the sciences and advancement in the methods of teaching, that in our modern schools for superior instruction the well-equipped college has a decided advantage over those with meager appliances.

Likewise, select a college where the life and esprit de corps is the very best. The college is not an exercising ground for the intellect alone, but a place for inspiring ideas and aims. These are the soul of college life. They are more important than college buildings, endowment or libraries.

The religious principle should have the ascendancy in the choice of a college, because religion demands the supreme place in life. The moral and religious character is by no means fixed when the student enters college, and he needs to come into a pure Christian atmosphere, where the heart, as well as the mind, is molded and stimulated.

Other things being equal, the student should favor a college of his own denomination, or the one that he thinks best represents the spirit and form of Christianity. His church affiliations should be strengthened. In advising this, we do so not from any sectarian bigotry. The probabilities are that if the student attends a college of another denomination, the impressions made may tend to produce indifference to the church of his fathers, or weaken his own Christian efficiency in it. The young should maintain personal loyalty to the church that has helped to build up their Christian character and to inspire in them a thirst for a broader culture.

It is claimed to be an advantage to the student living in the West to select a college in his own state, where he will form his friendships and associations, which afterward may be of value to him in his chosen profession. In such cases, it is thought advisable to take graduate work in the East, in some university which is pre-eminent for its special courses, libraries, laboratories, and appliances. On the other hand, it would often be an advantage for the Eastern student to take work in the best universities of the West.

We come now to speak of some of the personal hindrances and advantages in acquiring an education. Student life has its hindrances. All have not the same capacity to assimilate culture. It requires more effort for some to master a college course than for others. A thorough college training costs arduous labor. Many are not willing to pay the price, and to practice the self-denial necessary to acquire the power to think and master the great subjects of study. It demands all the force of a strong conviction and an earnest resolution to go through college and win a place among the thinkers of the world. One reason why so many students enter college and drop out before they complete their course of study, arises from the fact that they have not acquired the power of application. Their feeble wills and intellectual lethargy succumb before mental tasks requiring eight or ten hours of hard, earnest work a day. They should be encouraged with the words of Lord Bacon, who says: "There is no comparison between that which we may lose by not trying and not succeeding, since by not trying we throw away the chance of an immense good, and by not succeeding we only incur the loss of a little human labor."