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 372]

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350

UNIVERSITY PROGRESSIVENESS

the architect was ordered to plan for a total registration of ten thousand in the near future, when the librarian was asked to plan for millions of volumes, when President James has spoken of making Urbana the intellectual center of the Middle West, when he has offered the opinion that in two decades the School of Commerce might well have 2,000 students, it meant simply that the University was at once expressing a hope and making ready for a possibility. It has tried to rouse the commonwealth to the vision of a university which will give a college education not to the fortunate few but to the huge numbers of the genuinely ambitious and capable; and it has never been able to get the State to make provision more rapidly than the occasion demanded. The two great crimes which a university can commit in its zeal for size are against the high schools whose pupils it accepts with insufficient preparation, and against men attracted by advertisements of courses which.it gives in inadequate fashion. Since its first years it has urged the secondary schools of Illinois towards higher standards as fast as circumstances would permit. It was once guilty of the second fault in connection with its medical college, but it paid for its error, and in no other department has it failed to redeem its promises. The accusation that the State University takes itself too seriously as a leader must be countered at an institution like Illinois by the assertion that to do so is impossible—that its natural function is that of leader, and it cannot too thoroughly fulfill it. The difference in the point of view of most young and most old institutions in this matter is natural, and it is unnecessary to condemn either. A long-established, endowed university builds with the greatest care; it develops its depart-