Excerpt from True and False Standards of Graduate Work

Let us turn at once to the graduate work and con fine our attention to the other section of the field of liberal studies. Professional and technical studies may in a sense he depended on to take care of them selves. They will always flourish so long as men are seeking to be educated in order to make a profitable living. But graduate work in liberal studies cannot be maintained on this basis, because the end aimed at is different. For if the pursuit of wealth or station is the end aimed at by a man who thinks he is giving himself to the life of a scholar, he is not aiming at a scholarly end. Consequently, in order to maintain its own standards, a true graduate school in the lib eral arts and sciences must depend on something else to sustain it. The moment it becomes an employ ment bureau or an agency for finding places, a sordid motive enters, and it is in danger of ceasing to be a school devoted to the cause of truth and knowl edge. Unless, therefore, the life of the scholar is to appeal to men not primarily as a means of livelihood, but because they cannot help following the scholar's life, we have no sufficient basis for justifying the maintenance of this all-important school. And if this school perishes or becomes degraded, you may be very sure that sooner or later every valuable func tion of the university will be injured.

I suppose we can all accept heartily the state ment that the chief business of a university is tomaintain standards, - to determine, inspect, and certify the intellectual and moral weights and measures. I do not doubt we can go farther and agree in asserting that this maintenance of intellectual and moral stand ards is acutely needed in our own nation at this time when its material interests are becoming so vast and complex. And this, more than all else, is the pecul iar and pressing duty of every graduate school in liberal studies. Here the higher teachers of the na tion are being trained. Here the influences which make for truth and reason are or, at least, ought to be most pure and uncontaminated. The service to be rendered is priceless, the need is urgent, and the fact that our graduate schools in liberal studies, pro perly planned and guided, are specially fitted to render this service is the fact which justifies their existence.

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