Although we have Johns Hopkins in our own country, well equipped, and doing good work in university as well as collegiate lines, many prefer to go abroad and, in connection with their specialties, to gain broadened views of men and life and governments which only travel and life among foreign people can One great difference between the English and German universities, in favor of the latter, is that where the English spend vast sums in buildings, the Germans spend by far the greater sums in the employment of the most eminent specialists who shall give instruction in their various departments, buildings being a matter of secondary importance. In like manner Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore, has devoted a comparatively small part of its fund to building purposes. The German University has three distinc tive features described by the terms: Wis senschaft, Lehrfreiheit and Lernfreiheit. The first means knowledge in the highest sense, and deals with the theoretical only, leaving entirely aside the practical, which is delegated to the technical schools, which have no con- nection whatever with the universities. By Lehtfreihcit is meant the entire freedom of the professor to teach what he pleases, and as he pleases in his own department. By Lernfreiheit is meant the entire freedom of the student as to where and how and what he shall study, there being no restrictions as to recitations and no requirements as to courses. A student may pass from one university to another during his three or four years of uni versity life, without restriction, The ease with which this is done may be accounted for by the fact that the university system is the same in all cases and the student is not re quired to take his degree, if he takes one, after spending all his time at one institution. The object of the university system is to train thinkers, future professors, rather than to prepare men for life’s battles from a “ bread THE FREE LANCE. and butter” point of view, though men in all classes of society and business aim to obtain a university training. The Faculties are four in number—the ology, law, medicine and philosophy. The work of the medical is, to a considerable ex tent, an exception to the general statement as to the character of university instruction, as it is of necessity compelled to deal, to some extent, with the practical, as well as with the theoretical, in the training of physicians. The Faculties are made up of professors who are classified either as firivat-docent, who is a professor in embryo, ausserordentlicher, who may be called a junior professor, not an assistant, or ordcntlicher , a full professor. These being the successive stages in profes sorial rank. Instruction is, as far as possible, given by means of lectures, and students are expected not only to avail themselves of the lecture courses in their chosen line, but also to make use of every other accessible source of inform ation or, in other words, the student must investigate as his success depends on himself alone and the results of his own work. The government of all connected with the university is in the hands of the university authorities and is entirely distinct from the local government of the cities or towns 'in which the institutions may be located. It has its own court and officers who are usually the Rector, the University Judge and the beadles. All proceedings are strictly in ac cordance with similar legal proceedings else where. As to the students and the results of the university system of instruction, it has been suggested that the tendency is to stimulate private investigation and to produce thinkers. At the same time its looseness makes it that those who are inclined to neglect their work and to dissipation fall by the way and the testimony of some is to the effect that the greater number fall out for want of direction and supervision of their work,
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