enues of
promotion to the highest offices, the highest honors, open to the
humblest and most obscure lad who has the natural gifts, at the same
time that it aids in the improvement of the masses.

Nothing in our educational history is more striking than the steady
pressure of democracy upon its universities to adapt them to the
requirements of all the people. From the State Universities of the
Middle West, shaped under pioneer ideals, have come the fuller
recognition of scientific studies, and especially those of applied
science devoted to the conquest of nature; the breaking down of the
traditional required curriculum; the union of vocational and college
work in the same institution; the development of agricultural and
engineering colleges and business courses; the training of lawyers,
administrators, public men, and journalists--all under the ideal of
service to democracy rather than of individual advancement alone. Other
universities do the same thing; but the head springs and the main
current of this great stream of tendency come from the land of the
pioneers, the democratic states of the Middle West. And the people
themselves, through their boards of trustees and the legislature, are in
the last resort the court of appeal as to the directions and conditions
of growth, as well as have the fountain of income from which these
universities derive their existence.

The State University has thus both a peculiar power in the directness of
its influence upon the whole people and a peculiar limitation in its
dependence upon the people. The ideals of the people constitute the
atmosphere in which it moves, though it can itself affect this
atmosphere. Herein is the source of its strength and the direction of
its difficulties. For to fulfil its mission of uplifting the state to
continuously higher levels the University must, in the words of Mr.
Bryce, "serve the time without yielding to it;" it must recognize new
needs without becoming subordinate to the immediately practical, to the
short-sightedly expedient. It must not sacrifice the higher efficiency
for the more obvious but lower efficiency. It must have the wisdom to
make expenditures for results which pay manifold in the enrichment of
civilization, but which are not immediate and palpable.

In the transitional condition of American democracy which I have tried
to indicate, the mission of the university is most important. The times
call for educated leaders. General exp