A、Yale. B、Harvard. C、Columbia. D、None of the above. B

Good morning, folks. Today’s lecture is about the development of higher education in the United States. First, a brief introduction.
    Before the 1850’s, the United States had a number of small colleges, most of them dating from colonial days. They were small, church connected institutions whose primary concern was to shape the moral character of their students. Memorization, submission and authority were all emphasized in the instruction and the curriculum.
    Throughout Europe, institutions of higher learning had developed, bearing the ancient name of university. In Germany a university was concerned primarily with creating and spreading knowledge, not morals. Between mid-century and the end of the 1800’s, more than nine thousand young Americans, dissatisfied with their training at home, went to Germany for advanced study. Some of them returned to become presidents of venerable colleges—Harvard, Yale, Columbia—and transform them into modern universities. The new presidents broke all ties with the churches and brought in a new kind of faculty. Professors were hired for their knowledge of a subject, not because they were of the proper faith and had a strong arm for disciplining students. The new principle was that a university was to create knowledge as well as pass it on, and this called for a faculty composed of teacher-scholars. Drilling and learning by rote were replaced by the German method of lecturing, in which the professor’s own research was presented in class. Graduate training leading to the Ph. D., originally an ancient German degree signifying the highest level of advanced scholarly attainment, was introduced. With the establishment of the seminar system, graduate students learned to question, analyze, and conduct their own research.
    At the same time, the new university greatly expanded in size and course offerings, breaking completely out of the old, constricted curriculum of mathematics, classics, rhetoric, and music. The president of Harvard pioneered and introduced the elective system, so that university students were able to choose their own course of study. The notion of major fields of study emerged. The new goal of modern universities was to make the university relevant to the real pursuits of the world. They were paying close heed to the practical needs of society as well as training men and women to work at its tasks. For instance, our students were taught how to fix a faucet, mend a broken furnace and dissemble a gasoline engine to pieces. Although engineering students became the most characteristic of the new regime, university students were also trained as economists, architects, agriculturalists, social welfare workers, and teachers. In a word, modern universities in America were more closely connected with our community, our society and our people’s lives. They were institutions that provided a more utilitarian education, and at the same time transmitted for average American citizens the culture that our society required for entrance into the middle class.

Question No. 16  What was the major concern of small colleges in the United States before the 1850’s?
Question No. 17  Why did young Americans go to Germany for study at the end of the 1800’s?
Question No. 18  Which of the following was brought about by the university’s seminar system?
Question No. 19  Which university first put forward the elective system?
Question No. 20  Which of the following is NOT true about the new goal of modern universities?