Part 1 - The Institute Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

in dominating spirit znd interest they re minly colleges
still...As at Oxford and Cambridge, so at all our American
unive~siries, some advanced teaching and,,,uork are carried
on- fSut / nowhere have we assembled a homogeneous ficultp
of prod;etive scientists and scholars with a homogeneous
student body of zrzture, independent, and self-responsible
workers...The two conceptions -- college and -miversitg -
are at cross purposes. Science and scholarship suffer;
money is wasted; even undergrzduate training is, under
these conditions, less efficient than it might be,.,24
Would research institutes, relatively new in this cotmtsy,
meet the problem? He concluded they would not, though some scholars
and scientists -- mainly the latter -- were taking refuge fn them, He
continued:
But research institutions, valuable and necessary as Sky
are, cartnot alone remedy the difficulty -- first, because
relatively few men are most hppy 2nd effective if their
entire energies are concentrated solely upon research;
second, because the nmber of young men who can be tratned
in resesrch institutions is necessarily limited,..Researeh
institutions cannot...teke the place.of universitfes vhere
men receive higher training,.,
Having suggested alternatives, he concluded:
Decision,..is not important, or even desirableS at this
stage. It is, however, icrgortant,to realize the canfused,
not to say, chaotic condition of highex education in
Amrica, Curious as it may sound, thfs is an encouragfng,
not a discouraging, situation. We have, as a matter of fact,
made great progress; that is why we can accomplish scrmething
that neither Pres, Gilnran nor Pres, Harper thought feasfbke.
Our problem is one,,.tht arises out of progress; it Is not
... due to stzgnation or retrogression. It is..,a hopeful
phenwrenon that secondary and collegiate education are so
widely diffused, and eminent scholars and scientists so
numerous that the country is ready for the next forward step
--a university uhhh needs no feeding f;ndergraduate';l school
of its oun, because the country sbounds in ecllegea-by which
it will be fed.
ff a university so conceived were established, it would...
in all probability stimlate other institutions to reorganize.
Some of them in time might drop the college; others might
effect a cmiplete differentiation between college and g rab