education not distinctly prepared for or even foreshadowed in either the public high school or the private academy of that day, and not at all contemplated in the plans or the courses of the collegiate institutions then in existence here. The leading and controlling motive, without the efficient operation of which the founding of the State universities would at least have been long postponed, was a desire for an industrial education of collegiate grade founded essentially on the physical, natural, and mathematical sciences and leading to the practice and teaching of industrial arts and employments as a calling or a career.

The State university movement was not more notable, however, for the novelty of its ends than for the generous breadth of its intentions. While first making sure, very naturally, that there should be no possible failure or miscarriage of this primary purpose, a way was made in the beginning for expansion in due time of the work of these new institutions over the whole field of liberal learning and even of scholastic study, at that time already occupied more or less efficiently, partly by endowed colleges and partly by colleges which were not even endowed.

Now, these preexisting private and sectarian colleges, the private academies, and the public high schools had grown up and gone along together, influenced in some measure by the same educational ideals and controlled to a great extent by the same classes of men, and hence what adjustment there was of high-school work to collegiate study was an adjustment of it to the work of what we now call, for short, the old-fashioned college. The high-school graduate, if he went to college at all, went of course to a college of the old school; the high-school teacher and principal, if college men at all, came from such purely literary colleges, and the high school itself, if it prepared for college at all, prepared for such a college of literature, as we should call it now. The education of the whole people, including that of the teaching class, was thus narrow and one-sided, and the new State universities found themselves largely in the air, with no stable foundation for preparatory work beneath them. Here was a foundation story, the public school, slowly and carefully built up, the work of experienced builders, and here was a house and lean-to over it, but the lean-to was on the foundation, and the main building was on stilts.

Two things were evidently necessary to the symmetry of this rather ridiculous educational edifice, one to be done immediately by the university and the other immediately by the public school, but each really requiring the intelligent and earnest cooperative effort of both; first, the building up and building out of the collegiate literary lean-to until it should form a strong, equal, and harmonious part of the whole educational structure; and, second, the enlargement of the public school foundation to take the place of the temporary braces and piles on which the scientific, engineering, and agricultural departments of the university were propped up in mid-air.

Fortunately, the natural tendency of the times has been favorable to both these constructive educational movements, and notable progress has been made in both. It is now some years since the University of Illinois ceased to be essentially an industrial institution; and its college of literature and arts has pushed rapidly outward and upward, strengthening its walls to support the added weight, and sending upward also a graceful and imposing tower whose aspiring apex sometimes seems to swing suspended in the upper air. And the public school has appreciably strengthened its work and enriched its courses in the scientific lines, and is beginning to afford in chemistry, physics, and biology some hopeful approximation, in its preparation for the corresponding college courses, to that which it now rightly affords in literature and in Latin, for example. But this adjustment of high school and university is of course, as yet, incomplete, especially here in Illinois, where, for various reasons, some of them obvious and oth

ers occult, the task of coordination has been unusually difficult. It is because the faculty of the University of Illinois has made, during the past year and a half, a strong, persistent, and, as we think, highly successful effort to improve this adjustment materially in very important matters that I have been charged with the duty of explaining our recent action with respect to the university entrance requirements.

As you will readily see from the way in which I have approached my subject, I have not supposed it sufficient that I should give you a bare mechanical explanation of the meaning and application of our new requirements, but have thought it better that I should try to show what we have had principally in mind as the general ends to be met and as the controlling conditions present to limit and direct our action, and that I should then show you how these ends have actually been approached, if not altogether accomplished, and where and how these limiting conditions have affected our course.

Since this is the university of the State, and of the whole of the State, we have undertaken to come into immediate, vital, and helpful relations of some sort to every high school in Illinois, whatever its kind or grade, and have further deemed it our duty not to lose sight even of those parts of the State in which there are no true high schools. For our purpose the county is the educational unit of maximum size, this unit being in advanced and prosperous counties much subdivided into units of smaller size, but in some cases remaining substantially without division. We are looking in each such county for the best public school, for the highest firm educational standing ground, and from that foundation corner we intend shall start, some day, something by which the competent and aspiring student may climb into the university of his State. Paved pathway, carpeted stair, naked ladder or knotted rope-something should stand or swing within the reach of every fairly fortunate boy or girl in the State who has done the best he can in his county, by the aid of which he may make his way upward as far as the most favored child from any part of Illinois. Paraphrasing a striking remark of Professor Huxley, I would say that before our educational system can be fully worthy of the name there must be in every Illinois cornfield and country town the foot of a ladder, the upper end of which shall reach to the top of the State University. We have also endeavored to keep clearly in mind the fact that university and high school and the whole educational system generally are not ends in themselves or immediately subordinate in any way to each other, but that all are subordinate, as a whole and in every part, to the general end of the public welfare in the broadest and highest sense of that term, and that the educational welfare of no part of the public should be sacrificed to that of any other part. The interests of the pupil who can not go beyond the primary school, beyond the grammar school, beyond the high school, should be just as carefully studied, just as fully taken into account in every part of the organization, its exactions and requirements, as if he were to go through the full course of undergraduate and graduate study provided at the university itself.

Especially we have endeavored to give full weight to the fact that the public high school does not exist for the university, was not organized primarily to prepare its pupils for college, and could not long be maintained in the average Illinois community of the present time if it permitted anything to take precedence of its main present object, that of preparing its graduates to enter immediately and to a certain advantage upon the business of life. We have, I think, fully realized, and have endeavored to reflect in our exactions and adjustments, the highly composite character of the people of this State, the great differences in the educational ideals of communities in different parts of it, and the great and necessary diversity, in the smaller schools especially, with respect to courses of high-school study-diversities due to differences of local sentiment and control, to

variations in the preparation and ability of the corps of instruction in such smaller schools, and to variations in the stage of development of one school as compared with another of its grade or class.

While the university should, of course, exercise a strengthening and elevating influence on the high school, it must not force an over-rapid and unhealthy growth into unstable conditions; it must not force an artificial differentiation or specialization within the high school; it must not force anything on or into or out of the high school or the high-school community, but should take all good work which the high school offers at its real value as a preparation for college, enabling the student from any such a school to move on readily at the university from any point at which his high-school teachers leave him.

It must not stimulate and reward unequally equally valuable elements of highschool work; it must not use its influence, and especially it must not exercise its power, to distort or to deform high-school courses or to perpetuate such distortion or deformation by laying special stress upon or attaching special value to subjects which happen to be for the time being best or most conveniently taught. It must assist rather to rectify wavering lines of growth, to strengthen weak places, to check excess; it must have, in short, as said before, a constant eye to the ultimate educational welfare of the whole public which it exists only to serve. Hence it must not adhere stupidly or obstinately to traditions established in former times or under different conditions from those present, but must move with the progress of civilization, flexibly adapting itself to present conditions and present needs, anticipating indeed for its students, so far as possible, the future conditions under which they must live and work as men and women. It must look forward, and not merely back.

It must not be content merely to imitate anything or anybody; but must study carefully its own conditions, and shape its organization and its work intelligently to its legitimate ends as determined by its own situation and responsibilities.

If one takes a bird's-eye view of the public school system of this State, as he would look over the landscape from a balloon, he finds that its upper surface, formed by its leading city and county schools, may be described as a greatly diversified inclined plane, with its highest levels to the northeast. Thence it slopes irregularly westward and especially southward, with here and there a broadly based mound or hill whose top rises nearly or quite to the highest plane, and here and there a slender peak towering ambitiously upward, with no breadth of base to speak of, and its apex mostly Latin. The reasons for this slope and for the irregularity of it are partly geographical, partly ethnological, partly industrial, partly historical, partly personal, etc.; but whatever the causes, there are few States in America in which the term high school must be made to do duty over so wide a range of meaning, and it is to this picturesque but perplexing surface that the State university must adjust itself.

Our principal means of adjustment are four: First, our University Preparatory School, which is intended primarily to make good the deficiency of the public high schools in some places and their entire lack in others; second, our recently revised system of accrediting schools; third, our just-established policy of giving university credit for such accepted work of the highest secondary schools as laps over upon any of our college courses; and fourth, the revised system of entrance requirements which it is my special object to discuss here to-day.

The Preparatory School serves at least to conceal, if it does not now wholly level up, the inequalities of our foundation which I have already referred to. It seems now the firm intention of the University authorities to make this no longer a mere substitute for a good high school, but a really excellent high school itself, to the end that the student compelled to resort to it for his college preparation shall find himself at no disadvantage here in anything as compared to the one who gets his preparation at home.

By giving credit on our entrance conditions for all good high-school work, whether it covers the full admission requirement or much less than that, we establish vital relations with the lower and imperfectly developed high schools, and enable the student from such a school to know in advance just what he must do in our own preparatory school to fit himself for matriculation. We also, beyond doubt, by crediting the work of such schools in some departments only must stir the emulation of instructors in departments of the school not so credited, and thus, by recognizing the best, help to bring the poorer work up to the higher level.

By crediting students from the best high schools with work done there not needed for entrance here but substantially equivalent to elementary courses which the University still finds itself obliged to teach, we enable such students to enter upon a college course where their preliminary work ceases, and to continue in it without duplication of studies or loss of time.

By establishing our new entrance requirements we have virtually offered to accept, with certain important limitations which I will presently specify, any and all good high-school work as a preparation for any and all college courses, thus laying increased emphasis on training, and removing it in great measure from specific kinds of knowledge. We have practically said, "Send us capable pupils, well trained, with minds well stored with something, and we will not inquire too closely what that something is." We have begun to say, "Prepare your pupils carefully, conscientiously, thoroughly for active life, as best you can in your communities and in your conditions, and that preparation, if the work is well done, we will accept for college also; and so far as it is not so accepted the real defect is not in the high-school offering but in the college course." We have introduced, in short, the elective system in our entrance conditions, not as fully perhaps as we may do later, but still somewhat extensively, as I now proceed to explain to you by the aid of the accompanying tables of our requirements, old and new.

To make my discussion intelligible I shall have to say that by the term highschool credit, which I shall need to use repeatedly, we mean a full credit for one term's work in one subject, on the supposition that the school year of thirty-six weeks is divided into three terms, and that the subject credited is taken in daily class exercises of forty minutes each. More explicitly, a high-school credit in any subject represents a total of forty hours' work of sixty minutes each in the class-room, or equivalent work in laboratories and the like, a laboratory period being commonly twice as long as a recitation period. A full year's work in one subject would thus cover one hundred and twenty sixty-minute class-room hours, and a full year of high-school work on four subjects for a single pupil would cover four hundred and eighty such sixty-minute hours.

I must also explain what I mean by restricted and free electives, respectively, as used in Table I. A restricted elective study is one chosen within certain specific limits. We expect, for example, that every candidate for admission shall offer three credits in physical or biological science and six in foreign language, these elections being thus restricted by a specification of the general subjects from which they must be made. The free electives, on the other hand, may be chosen anywhere from the entire list of high-school electives shown by Table III.

You will be surprised, perhaps, after what I have said about our proposed elective system of requirements, to see by my Table I that 19 or 20 of the 36 highschool credits necessary to entrance here must be made from subjects unconditionally required, leaving only 16 or 17 credits to be earned from subjects elective in any degree. These required subjects are, however, all, or nearly all, those which are always expected, and almost always taught, in every good high school. The credits required are 9 in English (including both literature and composition), 3 in history, and 7 or 8 in algebra and geometry.