Before the 1850’, the United State had a number of mall college, mot of them dating from colonial day. They were mall, church connected intitution whoe primary concern wa to hape the moral character of their tudent.
Throughout Europe, intitution of higher learning had developed, bearing the ancient name of univerity. In German univerity wa concerned primarily with creating and preading knowledge, not moral. Between mid-century and the end of the 1800’, more than nine thouand young American, diatified with their training at home, went to Germany for advanced tudy. Some of them return to become preident of venerable college-----Harvard, Yale, Columbia---and tranform them into modern univeritie. The new preident broke all tie with the churche and brought in a new kind of faculty. Profeor were hired for their knowledge of a ubject, not becaue they were of the proper faith and had a h2 arm for diciplining tudent. The new principle wa that a univerity wa to create knowledge a well a pa it on, and thi called for a faculty compoed of teacher-cholar. Drilling and learning by rote were replaced by the German method of lecturing, in which the profeor’ own reearch wa preented in cla. Graduate training leading to the Ph.D., an ancient German degree ignifying the highet level of advanced cholarly attainment, wa introduced. With the etablihment of the eminar ytem, graduate tudent learned to quetion, analyze, and conduct their own reearch.WWw.hAOZUowEN.com
At the ame time, the new univerity greatly expanded in ize and coure offering, breaking completely out of the old, contricted curriculum of mathematic, claic, rhetoric, and muic. The preident of Harvard pioneered the elective ytem, by which tudent were able to chooe their own coure of tudy. The notion of major field of tudy emerged. The new goal wa to make the univerity relevant to the real puruit of the world. Paying cloe heed to the practical need of ociety, the new univeritie trained men and women to work at it tak, with engineering tudent being the mot characteritic of the new regime. Student were alo trained a economit, architect, agriculturalit, ocial welfare worker, and teacher.