truction that is regarded as less so, the
fact is that all these are simply different kinds of attempt to meet a
new condition which is the natural result of intellectual and economic
changes. Just now the college is in a state of transition. It is not
at all clear precisely what its status will be a generation hence, or
how far present tendencies may continue to increase, or how far they
may be counteracted by a swing of the pendulum in the opposite
direction. Therefore this is a time to describe rather than to
dogmatize, and it is description which is the characteristic mark of
the important series of papers which constitute the several chapters
in the present volume.

A careful reading of these papers is commended not only to the great
army of college teachers and college students, but to that still
greater army of those who, whether as alumni or as parents or as
citizens, are deeply concerned with the preservation of the influence
and character of the American college for its effect upon our
national standards of thought and action.

American colleges are of two distinct types, and it may be that the
future has in store a different position for each type. The true
distinction between colleges is according as they are separate or are
incorporated in a university system, and not at all as to whether they
are large or small. A separate college, such as Amherst or Beloit or
Grinnell or Pomona, has its own peculiar problems of support and
administration. The university college, on the other hand, such as
Columbia or Harvard or Chicago or the college of any state university,
has quite different problems of support and of administration. It is
not unlikely that the distinction between these two types of college
will become more sharply marked as years go by, and that eventually
they will appear to be two distinct institutions rather than two types
of one and the same institution.

Meanwhile, we have to deal with the college as it is, in all its
varied forms, but characteristically American whatever its form. The
American college has little or no resemblance to the English Public
School or to the French Lycee or to the German Gymnasium. It is
something more than any one of these, and at the same time something
less. It differs from them all very much as the conditions of American
life differ from those of English or of French or of German life. The
college may or may not involve residence, but when it does involve
resid