Part 1 - The Institute Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

No longer would he have held that graduate work u2s entitled only to
the surplus "if nny there bew of the colleges, But he was still a
severe critic of the colleges and the seconckry schools, which he now
classed tagether as "secondary" in the task of preparing students for
real work at the graduate level, He joined Dean Gale of the University
of Chicago in hfs lzment that teaching responsibilities and mperentall'
care of graduate students laid an inrolerzble burden on the graduate
faculty, which threatened to drive the productive ran from the univer-
sities, where they belonged, ta research institutes, where they could
spend all their time in research,
S o impressed did Flexner b eem that in 1922 he proposed that
the General Education Board establish z real American university, since
none existed in the United States because the Ropkins and the University
a£ Chicago had yielded to the pressures of undergraduate education to
an exzent which stultified the graduate scho~l.~~ Such an institution,
Flexner said, mEght be created de novo, with only a medical school in
7
. the pro-fe~sors, at a cost of some $50 million, which wouLd give it a
plant and serve for its Initial endowrent. (See p, 12) Or the instl-
tutian might be created by wsuppressingH the undergraduate division of
one of the two great universities created primrfly for graduate work --
the University of Chicago or the Hopkins. Though he conceded it would
cost more to convert the Hopkins because of its smller endmnt, he
favored it, since It had not succumbed to the diversfa of undergradu-
ate life to such an extent as had Chicago. He dimdosed the pussibil5ty
of converting any af the universities which had superirposed the gradu-
ate school on the old college, on the ground that:
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