American Colonial Colleges 247
and graduate schools has overshadowed the liberal arts col-
leges ; yet the arts college is still the core of higher education
in America as in England; the four-year course for the B. A.
is still the goal of the great majority of Americans who go
beyond high school. And despite numerous efforts of educa-
tional reformers to abolish it, and repeated, logical demon-
stration that the four-year arts course is an anomalous thing,
having no place in a rational scheme of education, it is still
with us, and intends to stay. If it had not filled a real want
in American life, or repeatedly demonstrated its value, we
should long ago have eliminated the liberal arts college, or
consigned its curriculum to the secondary schools, as Conti-
nental Europe has done with the old Arts course.
All but one of the colonial colleges—Philadelphia, which
became the University of Pennsylvania—were either founded
by religious bodies, or placed under some sort of religious
control and supervision. One of their primary functions was
the training of a learned American clergy to serve the colo-
nial churches and people. Yet none of them were narrowly
sectarian in the sense that students of other creeds were ex-
cluded or even unwelcome; and all attempted as best they
could, with the scanty means at their disposal, to provide
a liberal education in the accepted Renaissance sense of the
word—an education that would introduce youth to the best
thought and literature of the past, sharpen his mind to a keen
instrument for the acquisition of knowledge, discipline his
intellect and form his character so that he would be both able
and ready to play a prominent part in the affairs of men. We
have lately heard so much of “leadership” in connection with
college graduates, that the word has become a bit stale; yet
it does represent the humanist idea of a college education,
including rather than replacing the medieval motive of pro-
fessional preparation that dominated earlier European uni-
versities.