Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1870 [PAGE 54]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

38

of the April, May and June meetings are already published in the Second Annual Report. The minutes of the other meetings will be communicated herewith.

THE ATTENDANCE AND I3TSTKUCTION.

There have been in actual attendance during the year,' since your last meeting, one hundred and ninety-six students. Of the students now here, fifty-one reported themselves as candidates for the Agricultural Course, forty-three for Mechanical and other Industrial Courses, and eighteen for Military Course. The others entered without fully deciding on their course. These are generally the younger students, who have not yet decided upon their aims or pursuit for life, but whose friends generally express the choice for some practical course. There were present in the Spring Term one hundred and ten students, in the Fall Term one hundred and thirty-two, and in the current Winter Term one hundred and fifty-seven, showing a steady increase in the attendance. The requirements for admission have been simply those prescribed by law— the ability to pass, satisfactorily, an examination in the branches ordinarily taught in the common schools. This low grade of qualifications compels many of the students to spend a year mostly in preparatory studies; and thus it happens that many who are truly in the industrial courses, do not appear at once in the special industrial classes. But much general instruction, by lectures and practical exercises, can be given to all, in the fields of industrial knowledge; and all have in this way been enabled, it is hoped, to gain much useful information. It has been the constant aim of the Regent and Faculty, in obedience both to the laws and to the wishes of the Trustees, to give the University the bent and direction indicated in its name, and in the grant by which it was endowed. Without refusing instruction in other scientific and classical studies to such students as required it, all have taken some of the branches of learning related to Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts ; and the record of our classes shows conclusively that the tide of sentiment in the University sets strongly towards the great Industrial pursuits. It is a significant fact that, while no instance is known of any student of the Industrial courses being diverted to the professions, several marked cases have occurred in which candidates for the law have been attracted, by the general influence prevalent here, to relinquish their plans and enter the Agricultural course. I mention these facts with great satisfaction, not in reply to the senseless charges so often made against us, and which I have learned to disregard as nearly harmless ebullitions of a toothless malice or pitiable delusion, but as evidence of the success of our plans and of the brightening future before us. If already, while only in our second year, and with our farms, gardens and shops only half developed, and our classes still mainly in the preparatory and elementary studies, so much attraction can be given to the Industrial courses, how surely will these courses hold their predominating position as "the chief object" of the University when all our forces shall be brought into full power and play?