214 History of Universities
a privileged corporation, a state within a state. If a corpora-
tion, its members are subject to the same laws as other
citizens; and in many instances the modern university
is a mere organ or department of the State. Oxford and
Cambridge are the only universities that are still governed
by their teaching faculties, instead of by governing boards
in the appointment of which the teachers have no share.
The relation of college and university has completely
changed since medieval times. In Europe, and in Latin
America, the university is older than the college: colleges
grew up inside universities in the later middle ages to pro-
vide board and lodging for their “fellows,” a group of
limited scholars, corresponding to the graduate or research
students of today. The university as such was entirely
absorbed in teaching; the colleges existed to enable poor
scholars to continue their studies beyond the Arts course, and
do original research in Theology, Law, or Medicine. In the
United States, on the contrary, the college is older than the
university. We had colleges for one hundred and fifty years
before any of them could properly claim university status ;—
indeed Abraham Flexner claims we haven’t yet a real univer-
sity in the United States. And in America it is the college
that is exclusively concerned with teaching; the university
that supports the research function. This reversal of the
historic relationship came about because the first institution
of higher learning in the English colonies—Harvard—was
founded at a time when the colleges of the University of
Cambridge had absorbed the teaching function, and because
the first need of a new country was for teaching, and the
transmission of culture, not for research. So the New
Englanders founded a college, not a university; other col-
onies followed suit, and the American university in most cases
has grown out of the college.