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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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University Organizes 287 aspirations and the preparation of those who should attend/' 2 0 As a matter of fact in the infancy of the industrial university the great majority of the students were engaged in preparation work. No collegiate work whatever was done by the students of the university in the spring of 1868 but in the fall of that year there were some twelve students sufficiently prepared actually to enter upon work of a collegiate grade. The twelve students qualified for college work under the admission requirements contained in the first circular published in the spring of 1868. These requirements were considered too high and were therefore lowered—reluctantly by the regent—during the year 1868-1869 so that a number of students doing senior preparatory work were advanced to college rank. The committee was ardent in its recommendation of the manual labor system which was adopted. It was a mistake that Turner, for instance, would not have made.21 Required manual labor on the part of all students seems to be the surest means of forever condemning an educational institution to the status of a mere trade school.22 Henry M. Dunlap, son of M. L. Dunlap of the first board of trustees, who entered the university in 1868, says he has a lively recollection of daily trundling bricks from one part of the campus to the other; arid, after a lapse of years he can testify, that while neither he nor the bricks were seriously harmed, he, at least, was not helped. Though the question did not arise at this particular time it is well to note here that a policy was entered upon by the Illinois university at the beginning, different from the practice of the colleges and universities of the time, of granting certificates of scholarship merely, instead of diplomas and degrees, to those completing the regular four year courses. The first faculty and the board of trustees had no choice in the matter for the law of 1867, establishing the university, had provided that no degrees should be granted. The agriculturists, who had ^Illinois School Beport; 1881-1882, p. 3. "See Turner's own words as quoted by Bateman below, p. 299. ^This system was adopted because it was considered a success at the Michigan agricultural college though—as the committee said—it had been a complete failure in many places. Mr. Dunlap opposed it then, and one year later, on his motion, it was made a voluntary system.
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