UIHistories Project: A History of the University of Illinois by Kalev Leetaru
N A V I G A T I O N D I G I T A L L I B R A R Y
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Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Nevins) [PAGE 335]

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314

STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE

these various "circus rings'l prevent the undergraduates from doing the general reading, or from engaging in the intellectual discussion and debate, which would greatly profit large numbers. The atmosphere of the State University is fundamentally rather unfavorable to eager, speculative minds. The earnestness of those who value knowledge as a means of getting on is not encouraging to the disinterested spirits who value it for its own sake. The trend is to the practical consideration of questions of forge and market place, not to the speculative consideration of political, social, ethical, or philosophical topics. While the curriculum as a whole must always keep the emphasis upon the utilitarian, there might well be more extra-curricular agencies to divert the mind of the student to the purely cultural. It may be of little moment that the student managing the IUini might have got his lessons a little better had he been free, but of a great deal of moment that the drain on his time estops him from reading the latest book of history, sociology, or poetry. A Senate committee on standards of scholarship reported in 1916 that nearly one-half of the faculty members questioned thought such standards lower at Illinois than at one or more institutions with which they had been connected, though others thought them highef and still others thought them equal or superior as measured by the performance of the average man, but inferior as regarded the work of the best students. Comparisons unfavorable to Illinois were most frequently made by the departments once grouped in the college of literature and arts. The committee's conclusion was that the University's requirements did not differ materially from those of the State universities which are its natural competitors. It found, however, that the authori-