The University and the State

P ERHAPS I should attempt to qualify as one entitled to have an opinion on the subject, The University and the State. I must admit I cannot claim firsthand acquaintance with the work of a state university, but I do know something of university problems, and it is part of my fundamental thesis that there is no essential difference between our tax-supported institutions and those which derive their income from endowment, gifts, and tuition fees. In fact, historically the university of which I am the chief executive officer was in origin as much a state university as any in the country. One hundred fifty years ago, after the Revolution, when universities were being established in many states, the president of Harvard would probably not have recognized any difference between the college over which he presided and those being founded in other sections of the country. In short, I should like to deny at the outset the validity of any antithesis that may be set up between state-supported and privately endowed universities. We are all different and yet all alike. One of the great advantages of our American way of life is its diversity and flexibility-a diversity and flexibility, I must admit, that sometimes seems to border on chaos, but a diversity which, in education as in many other matters, allows for fruitful experimentation. We do not have a unified system of education centered in a capital city as in France, or in a few major cities as it was in Germany in the late nineteenth century; nor do we have a hierarchy of institutions as in England, relatively few in number and graded as to standing. Instead of that, we find here in the United States a variety of institutions, each serving a more or less special need, some more concerned with a particular state than others, but all serving the nation in one way or another. Now, it is my

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