The Effect of a University's Graduate Program on its Undergraduate Education: An Optimistic Analysis
RADUATE schools, despite their number and their high prestige, Gin are Johnny-come-latelys on the academic scene. They originated in the years I876 to Io-e , when American higher education was expanding at an extremely rapid rate and the introduction of new disciplines, especially the sciences, was bringing about revolutionary changes in the bases upon which it traditionally rested. In that era, discussions ran rampant, not only about the proper nature and content of higher education, but about the specific function of the new graduate schools. William Rainey Harper of Chicago, Daniel Coit Gilman of Johns Hopkins, and G. Stanley Hall of Clark believed strongly that separate graduate universities should be created, thereby keeping the graduate function clearly delineated. Several such experiments were tried, but they did not succeed because of the necessity of economy and because of the urgent need to supply one's own graduate students. Hence a German model of graduate work was rapidly grafted onto existing undergraduate programs whose heritage was British. This trend has continued to the present time. Except for a few institutions like Chicago and Columbia, the intermingling of undergraduate and graduate students has occurred at an accelerated pace. So also has the fusion of graduate and undergraduate faculties, the teaching and research functions being theoretically joined. This integration has never proved fully satisfactory. The graduate school came into being mainly under the pressure of the sciences, and this, in turn, meant the primacy of research. Indeed, from the beginning, research activity has been the raison d'etre of graduate study. To underscore this, both President Hall and President Harper introduced radically light teaching loads into their institutions even before the turn of the century, encouraged faculty research, and reserved the greatest rewards in the academic arena for those who published. The undergraduate operation, meanwhile, remained essentially dedicated to the teaching of basic content material. Its primary task was