hutchins spirit of univ. chicago 1930

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The Spirit of the University of Chicago

Author(s): Robert Maynard HutchinsSource: The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Jan., 1930), pp. 5-12Published by: Ohio State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1974835 .

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1 7 Journa1*of*igher

durationn**ANUARY, 1930 |

The Spirit of the University of ChicagoBy ROBERT MAYNARD HUTCHINS

In His Inaugural Address the New President Characterizes theUniversity's Past and Outlines Its Future

N s Do mancancometo the presi-dency of the University ofChicago without being awed

by the University and its past. Fromthe moment of its founding it took itsplace among the notable institutions

of the earth. Through four adminis-trations it has held its course, strivingto attain the ideals established at thebeginning and coming closer to itsgoal each year. Favored at the out-set by unprecedented generosity anda strategic location, it has made themost of what God and man havegiven it. Its present position it oweseven more to

the devotion and abilityof its faculty than it does to the ad-vantages, geographical and financial,with which it began. The guarantyof its future is the devotion and abilityof these men and women, who haveset their mark upon the University, sothat whatever changes in organizationmay come, its spirit will be the same.

That spirit has been characterized

by emphasis on productive scholar-ship, by emphasis on men beforeeverything else, on work with and forChicago, and on an experimental atti-tude. These four characteristicswill,

I think, be the insignia of the Uni-versity's spirit to the end. At a timewhen most educators were chiefly con-cerned with undergraduate teachingPresident Harper assembled in theMiddle West a community of schol-

ars. Resisting all suggestions that thesole obligation of education was thetraining of youth, he selected his fac-ulty for its eminence or promise inresearch. Thus the University estab-lished itself in a decade as a significantand distinctively American achieve-ment, giving new life to scientificinvestigation throughout the country,

stimulating support and encourage-ment to scholars everywhere, andbringing the research worker for themoment into his own.

At Chicago he came into his own inthe opportunities he received to prose-cute his investigations in his own way,without interference, with adequatecompensation, and with the sympathyof the administration. He did not so

quickly secure the buildings and equip-ment that would have saved hours oftoil and inconvenience. The Univer-sity, administration and faculty, tookthe view that men were the first con-

s



6 JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION

sideration, and that facilities for themmust sooner or later appear. Thesequadrangles are the justification of

that faith. But before one of themhad arisen the University had madeone of the great advances in the his-tory of American education: it hadestablished a maximum professorialsalary more than double that prevail-ing in the United States. This actiondemonstrated the University's empha-sis on men first of all; it announcedto the public that professors might be

worth more than a bare living wage;and it shocked the friends of otheruniversities into helping them to pro-vide their faculties with reasonableincomes. These salaries were not onlyhigher than any then paid in educa-tion, but they were also comparable tothose paid in business and the pro-fessions. They enabled the scholar of

that day to take his place in societywith confidence and self-respect. Thegroup that came together here underthese conditions has been the glory ofthe University for thirty-seven years.The presence of that group has drawnother men to it. During long periodsof necessary retrenchment their spirithas kept men here. They have trans-

mitted their spirit to their successors.

FROM the beginningthey hopedto make their work count beyond

the bordersof the University. Throughextension and home study they at-tempted to affect the life of the peo-ple, particularly in and about Chicago.To them they brought a consciousnessthat the University wished to be their

university, dedicated to the proposi-tion that all men are entitled to what-ever education they can effectivelyutilize. Through affiliation with

schools and colleges in the surround-ing territory, the University assistedin the improvement of education at

all levels. Although this contributionwas perhaps not epoch-making, it il-lustrated the University's attitudetoward its environment.

That attitude in this and all otherparticulars was experimental. When,for example, the program of affiliationlost its usefulness, it was abandoned.In education it is too often forgottenthat the essence of experimentation is

that final decision is reserved untilthe experiment is complete. Policiesadopted as experiments have a ten-dency to change into vested rights.At the University of Chicago, wherethe principal tradition has been thatof freedom, it was natural that thetrue experimental attitude shouldflower. No one has been so sure that

his work was perfect as to decline sug-gestions as to its improvement. Noone has been so convinced that hiswork was important as to refuse theco-operation of others. In co-opera-tion experiment after experiment hasgone forward. Where one has suc-ceeded the faculty has been gratifiedand sometimes surprised. Where one

has failed they have promptly triedsomething else.It is in this fashion that the Univer-

sity of Chicago has been most usefulto American education. The Univer-sity's value to the Middle West hasbeen in trying out ideas, in under-taking new ventures, in pioneering.Partly because of its geographical po-sition and partly because of the num-

ber of teachers it has distributed upand down the country, its pioneeringhas been remarkably influential. Insome cases the experience at Chicago



THE SPIRIT OF A UNIVERSITY 7

has shown other universities what notto do; in more it has opened newroads to better education and set new

standards for the West. That, I ven-ture to think, is the chief function ofthe University of Chicago, and is asimportant today as it was in i89i.

In considering the performance ofthat function today we think first ofthe work in which the University hasbeen most eminent, that of research.Here we find that one thing that hasbothered the layman about research,

particularly in the field with which Iam most familiar, that of social prob-lems, is its remoteness from reality.He has assumed that the scholar wastrying to understand the world abouthim; he could not observe that heoften went into it. It is true that theunfortunate circumstance that univer-sities were founded by people who

could read and were proud of it hastended to emphasize the importanceof that exercise and to make the li-brary the great center of scientificinquiry. In the law, for instance,scholars have for generations thoughtthat their only material was the re-ported opinions of courts of last resort.Students of the law of family relations

who could not regulate their ownwould often reachconclusions as to theproper rules governing those of otherpeople from an analysis of decisionshanded down by judges whose do-mestic situation frequently left muchto be desired. Today students of socialproblems have learned from studentsof the natural sciences that only bykeeping in touch with reality can reallife be understood. Students of gov-ernment are studying the people whodo the governing and those they gov-ern. Students of business are study-

ing it as it works instead of speculatingabout it; and legal scholars are exam-ining the actual operation and results

of the legal system instead of confin-ing themselves to the history ofphrases coined by judges and legis-lators long since dead.

I N this movementthe UniversityofChicago has played an important

part and must continue to do so.Naturally enough, its work has beencentered on this city and its surround-ings. Through the co-operation ofthe superintendent of schools of Chi-cago, the Department of Education isworking with teachers from three hun-dred public schools and is conductingstudies in seven of them. The Schoolof Commerce and Administration iscarrying on research in fifteen ortwenty local industries. The School

of Social Service Administration hasrevolutionized the treatment of theorphan in the city of Chicago. TheDepartment of Hygiene and Bacteri-ology works in co-operation with thecity health office. The Local Com-munity Research Committee, repre-senting the social-science departments,is directing fifty studies of the com-

munity. If the focus of research isthe world about us, the focus of re-search at this university should beprimarily that part of the world aboutus called Chicago and the Chicagoarea. Research so focused is bringingup to date and giving a somewhat newaccent to the University's traditionalinterest in its environment; it is going

far toward bringing scholarship intouch with life as it is being livedtoday; and it may eventually lead tosome slight advance in the life that isto be lived here tomorrow.




With research so focused, the ne-cessity of co-operation within the Uni-versity becomesincreasingly clear. We

are studying and proposing to studyproblems that do not fit readily intothe traditional departmental patternof a university. The rounded studyof such a question as the family, forinstance, would involve here the co-operation of eleven departments, fromart to zoology, and of seven profes-sional schools, from divinity to medi-cine. Indeed, so much has our atti-

tude changed since departmental lineswere laid down that a much narrowerphenomenon, like radio-activity, wouldrequire a scarcely less representativeattack. What co-operative researchwill mean to the organization of thisUniversity is not yet clear. Much hasbeen accomplished here by informalcommittees like that on local commu-

nity research; other universities haveestablished formal institutes with thesame aim. What is clear is that wemust proceed to give opportunities forco-operation to those who have feltthe need of them, without in any waycoercing the lone research worker intoco-operation. What is clear, too, isthat we must regard the University asa whole, and

consider the formulationof university programs rather thandepartmental or school policies. Weshall shortly make important appoint-ments in economics, education, psy-chiatry, home economics, pediatrics,law, and the graduate library school.If those appointments are made withreference only to the specific needs ofthe specific departments, we shall

doubtless secure a splendid series ofindividuals. If they canbe made withreference to university projects in thestudy of human problems, in which

all these departmentsare interested,we shall have a splendid group eachmemberof which will contributehis

specialabilitiesto the commonenter-prise. To such common enterprisesthe architecturalplan of the Univer-sity is admirablyadapted. Its organi-zation, with the Medical School onthe southside in the Ogden GraduateSchool of Scienceand the Departmentof Educationin the GraduateSchoolof Arts and Literature,avoids somedifficulties onfrontedelsewhere. Wehave thereforemany advantages,notthe least of whichis the temperof thefaculty as revealed in the admirableco-operative work now under way.We shouldmake the most of them bycareful and continuedattentionto thepossibilitiesof extendingthis type ofeffort into other fields.

N such developments the place ofthe professionalschools is impor-tant. They have a dualobligation, heobligation o experimentwith methodsof educating first-rate professionalmen, and the obligationto participatewith the rest of the University in re-search. At the present momentthereis nothing educational upon which

there is less unanimity hanthe meth-ods of professional training. Thedivinity schoolsare so disturbedthatthey are having a survey of them-selves conducted.The medicalschoolshavebeen in ferment for almosttwen-ty years. The law schools for half acentury have been subjected to thebitter criticismof the bar and of oneanother. The schools of education

are only now succeedingin makingtheir own universitiesacceptthem aseducationalexperts. The schools ofbusiness are in grave doubt as to




the effectiveness of their educationalscheme. In such a situation it is ob-vious that one function of the profes-

sional schools at the University ofChicago is to experiment with meth-ods of instruction which shall in allthese fields contribute to the establish-ment of standards of professionaltraining.

The graduate schools of arts, litera-ture, and science are, of course, inlarge part professional schools. Theyare producing teachers. A minority

of their students become researchworkers. Yet the training for the doc-torate in this country is almost uni-formly training in the acquisition of aresearch technique, terminating in thepreparation of a so-called original con-tribution to knowledge. Whether therigors of this process exhaust the stu-dent's creative powers, or whether the

teaching schedules in most collegesgive those powers no scope, or whethermost teachers are without them is un-certain. What is certain is that mostdoctors of philosophy become teachersand not productive scholars. Theirproductivity ends with the disserta-tion. Under these circumstances theUniversity of Chicago again has a dual

obligation: to devise the best methodsof preparing men for research andcreative scholarship and to devise thebest methods of preparing men forteaching.

Since the present work of graduatestudents is arranged in the hope thatthey will become investigators, littlemodification in it is necessary to trainthose who plan to become investiga-

tors. In the course of time it willdoubtless become less rigid and morecomprehensive, involving more inde-pendence and fewer courses. But the

mainproblem is a curriculum or thefuture teacher. No lowering of re-quirements hould be permitted. No

one should be allowed to be a candi-date for the Ph.D. degree who wouldnot now be enrolled. In fact, theselection of students in the graduateschools on some better basis thangraduation rom college seems to meone of the nextmatters he Universitymust discuss. But assumingthat thisis settled and assuming hat a studentwho plans to be a teacher has beengiven a sufficient hanceat research odetermine his interest in it, his train-ing should fit him as well as may befor his profession. This means, ofcourse, that he must know his fieldand its relation to the whole body ofknowledge. It means, too, that hemust be in touchwith the most recentandmostsuccessfulmovements n un-

dergraduateeducation, of which henow officially earns little or nothing.

lJftjOWhouldhelearnabout hesemovements? Not, in my opin-

ion, by doing practiceteachinguponthe helpless undergraduate. Ratherhe should learn about them throughseeing experimentscarriedon in un-

dergraduateworkby the membersofthe department n which he is study-ing with the advice of the Departmentof Education, which will shortly se-cure funds to study collegiate educa-tion. Upon the problems of under-graduate teaching his creative workshouldbe done. Sucha system placesa new responsibilityupon the depart-ments-that of developing ideas in

college education. But it is a respon-sibilitywhich I am sure they will ac-cept in view of the historyand posi-tion of the University of Chicago.




Such a system means, too, that differ-ent degrees will doubtless have to begiven to research workers, the Ph.D.

degree remaining what it chiefly istoday, a degree for college teachers.But however opinions may differ ondetails, I am convinced, as are thedeans of the graduate schools, thedeans of the colleges, and the chair-man of the Department of Education,that some program recognizing thedual objectives of graduate study-the education of teachers and the edu-

cation of research men-must be triedat the University of Chicago.

OME suchprogramwouldhelpJ to clarify the function of the un-

dergraduate colleges in this Univer-sity, which has remained uncertainthrough the years. The emphasis onproductive scholarship that has char-

acterized the University from the be-ginning and must characterize it to theend has naturally led to repeatedquestion as to the place and future ofour colleges. They could not be re-garded as training grounds for thegraduate schools, for less than twentyper cent of their students went on ingraduate work here. Nor did the

argument that we should contributegood citizens to the Middle Westmake much impression on distin-guished scholars anxious to get aheadwith their own researches. They wereglad to have somebody make this con-tribution but saw little reason whythey should be elected for the task.At times, therefore, members of thefaculty have urged that we withdrawfrom undergraduate work, or at leastfrom the first two years of it. But wedo not propose to abandon or dis-member the colleges.

This determination is not for sen-timental or financial reasons. If theUniversity's function is to attempt so-

lutions of difficult educational prob-lems, to try to illuminate dark anddubious fields, it cannot retreat fromthe field of undergraduate work, sodark and dubious today. Further-more, retreat would make impossiblethe development in graduate studythat I have just described. If the de-partments are to experiment with theeducation of teachers, they must work

out their ideas in the colleges here.Nor does this apply to the senior col-lege alone, for the whole question ofthe relation of the first two years ofcollege to the high school, on the onehand, and to the senior college, on theother, is one of the most baffling thatis before us. Instead of withdrawingfrom this field we should vigorously

carry forward experiments in it.In the colleges of the country stu-

dents are of two types in respect toany given subject: those who wish tospecialize in it and those who wishto know what it is about. It does notfollow that because a student takes oneattitude toward one field he must takethe same attitude toward all. Almost

every student is interested in something. In that he should carry on alarge amount of work "on his own,"free from restrictions, the routine ofthe classroom, and the retarding effectof his less able or less interested con-temporaries. In other areas of knowl-edge, with which he wishes to culti-vate a mere speaking acquaintance,there is no reason why he should not

be given what he wants, informationand stimulation-and the more im-portant of these is stimulation.

Certain subjects apart, there is no




evidence that this cannot best be donethrough large lecture courses. Infact, all the evidence is the other way.

The theory that the smaller the classthe better the result, irrespective ofthe ability of teacher or students, findsno support in experience in dealingwith classes where the chief aim is in-spiration. Their interests will doubt-less be best served by providing classeswith the most inspiring lecturers thatcan be found and letting the size ofthe group take care of itself. Any suchscheme of pass-and-honors workshould be kept so flexible that if astudent should by chance be stimu-lated to a major interest in a subject,he might transfer to "honors" in it.On this basis the plan might meet theneeds of the American undergraduate.Obviously it places our colleges defi-nitely in the scheme of things at

this University, for the program callsfor experiments by each departmentwith "pass') and "honors" work in itsown field, in the hope of devising thebest methods of dealing with bothtypes of students.

UT experimentsn educationpre-suppose men to carry them out.

It cannot be too often repeated that itis men and nothing but men that makeeducation. If the first faculty of theUniversity of Chicago had met in atent, this would still have been a greatuniversity. Since the time when thatfaculty gathered, student numbershave swollen to an unprecedented ex-tent; tremendous gifts have beenmade for special projects; and the re-wards in business and the professionshave mounted to heights never beforedreamed of. The increase in studentnumbers, coupled with the desire to

deal with them in small classes, hasinevitably led to the expansion of thefaculty. Gifts representing the special

interests of the donors have requiredadditional appointments. The Uni-versity has received $53,ooo,ooo incash or pledges since 19I9. But only$7,000,ooo of this sum was free to beused for general salary purposes, inspite of the noble efforts of my prede-cessors to carry on the University'straditional preference for giving first-rate rewards to first-rate men. Asa result the professorial maximum,which is more important than the pro-fessorial average, has increased $3,000

in thirty-seven years.Meanwhile more and more of our

best college graduates have been dis-suaded from a scholarly career by thecharacteristic American feeling thatthere must be some connection be-

tween compensation and ability. It ishopeless to try to combat that feeling.What we must do is to meet it by pay-ing salaries in education that will at-tract the best men in competition withbusiness and the professions. Com-parisons of salaries among universitiesare irrelevant and harmful. Thequestion is, Can we now get the kind

of men we want to go into education?Since no university can answer thisquestion in the affirmative, it can de-rive little satisfaction from the thoughtthat its salaries are as low as those ofneighboring institutions.

The expression of satisfaction, more-over, does positive damage in leadingthe public to think that this matter hasbeen settled. It will never be settleduntil America is willing to pay enoughto induce its best brains to go into theeducation of its offspring and staythere. It will never be settled until




professorial salaries are such as tomake scholarship respected in theUnited States. This object will not be

attained as long as professors mustcarry on outside work or teach everysummer to keep alive. Nor will it beattained if they must live in conditionsthat scarcely provide them with thedecencies of life. Nor shall we comemuch closer to it as long as our peoplefeel that the scholar receives a sub-stantial share of his compensation inthe permanence of his tenure. I do

not mean that salaries in educationmust be identical with those in busi-ness. Nor do I want men to go intoeducation to make money. But, onthe other hand, no man should bekept out of education by the certaintythat he will have to live in fear of hiscreditors all his days, or by the feel-ing that the profession is a refuge for

mediocrity. The only method bywhich we shall approachour goal is bypaying salaries that will enable theuniversities to compete with the busi-ness world for the best men. Thispolicy I believe the Board of Trusteeswill put into effect as rapidly as itsfunds permit.

It is a policy about which there isnothing revolutionary. It is simplywhat was done here in I 89I. To carry

it out we must husband our existingresources, making sure that we arespending them on first-rate men forfirst-rate work; we must perhaps askthe students in some schools to makea larger contribution toward the costof their education; and we must focusthe attention of the public upon thefact that only through general fundsfor salaries can a university hope to

retain its outstanding men and bringin others to join them. In this waywe may carry on the greatest traditionof the University of Chicago. In thisway, too, perhaps, we may givestrength to its other traditions of ex-periment and productive scholarship,centered upon the problems of ourcity. So may we make the future

worthy of the past. So may we con-tinue to pioneer and set new standardsfor the West. So may we justify thefaith of the Founder, the confidenceof the community, and the aspirationsof the men and women who havelabored here to build the greatness ofthis University.

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hutchins spirit of univ. chicago 1930

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