University Administration Author:Charles W. Eliot Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: VI SOCIAL ORGANIZATION —THE PRESIDENT—GENERAL ADMINISTRATION The American colleges and universities, with a few exceptions in peculiar communities, contain... more » representatives of all grades of American society, namely, some small number of rich men's sons, a much larger number of young men whose families can help but little, or not at all, towards their education, and a strong majority of students whose families are neither rich nor poor. In any college or university the rich class will be represented to a higher percentage than in society at large; because most men who succeed greatly in business, or in the professions, endeavor to get their sons into college, knowing that the only way to maintain through several generations a good family position once won is through superior education. In the large proportion of poor young men in any college there will be a consid- THE COLLEGE A SOCIAL MIXTURE 215 erable number of youths who have distanced the mass of their contemporaries and associates because of some unusual mental gift, or of some bodily excellence which has enabled them to bear an unusual amount of work, as, for example, the work of earning their living while pursuing strenuous studies. There will naturally be a larger percentage of idlers among the rich students than in either of the other groups, because the rich lack the motive of impending need; but nevertheless, many of the richer students will be found in the upper quarter of their respective classes. In Harvard College, for example, there are both honorary and stipend scholarships, an honorary scholarship being conferred on every student, having no need of pecuniary aid, who stands as high as, or higher than, the lowest scholar in his class who receives a stipend scholarship. Now, in almost all the classes in ...« less