Part 1 - The Institute Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

groups of subjects to warrant recognition. 16
President Daniel Coit Gilman of the kpkins had first estab
lished depsrtnents by disciplines, so that each might be autonomous
and free f rm. interference from r k others. But there was no-graduate -
and undergraduate divisions; the s?.rne faculty taught throughout. Nor
was there a dean of the grzduate school. Reserch thrived, becoming
ever narrower and deeper in the interests of advancing discovery. At
the sam rim teaching, which even in the colleges had not succeeded
in establishing itself ss a profession before the Civil War, but was
regarded generally as a stop-gap toward mre lucrative and worthwhile
endeavor, ws becoming professionalized, and as it did, the "rapidly
won distinctionm of creditable researches became the touchstone to
success in getting a teaching berth in the colleges. The result was
further fragmentation of knowledge, the burgeoning of electives which .
enhanced the tendency toward it, and the failure of the colleges to
preserve their function as places of general education to prepare the.
citizen for leadership, the aspirant for a profession for graduate
study, and t h young ~ scholar for advanced study and researches in the
arts and sciences. Moreover, disciplines. representing arbitrary di-
visions in howledge. were being taught sothat natural relatiom b
tween t b were obscured, as were the means by which they buttrean
each other.
The position which Flexner got an his return £ram Europe
was quite different from his eqectations, He called on Dr. Henry
S. Pritchett, President of the Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of
Teaching, and was asked to undertake a survey of medical education in