can education and scholarship in
the mid-nineteenth century. Most of these men became associated with
American colleges in some capacity and had a profound influence upon
their ideals, organization, and methods of teaching. They came back
devoted advocates of wide and deep scholarship, of independent
research, and of the need of such scholastic tools as libraries and
laboratories. But especially did they give an impetus to the movement
in favor of freedom of choice (_Lernfreiheit_) in studies. Only by the
adoption of such a principle could the pronounced tastes or needs of
individual students be satisfied.

Some slight effort had been made in the first four decades of the
nineteenth century by a few of the colleges to conform to the desire
of students for further study in some chosen field, but the results
were negligible. In 1847 Yale established a "department of philosophy
and the arts for scientific and graduate study leading to the degree
of bachelor of philosophy." The first degree of doctor of philosophy
was bestowed in 1861, but a distinct graduate school was not organized
until 1872. Harvard announced in the same year the establishment of a
graduate department to which only holders of the bachelor's degree
would be admitted and in which the degrees of doctor of philosophy and
doctor of science would be conferred. The graduate department was not
made a separate school, however, until 1890.

The greatest impetus to the establishment of graduate schools in the
American universities was made by the establishment of Johns Hopkins
University in 1876. Upon its foundation the chief aim was announced to
be the development of instruction in the methods of scientific
research. The influence of this institution upon the development of
higher education in the United States has been incalculably great.
Johns Hopkins was not a transplanted German university. The unique
place of the college in American education was shown by the fact that
graduate schools have followed the lead of Johns Hopkins in building
upon the college. Even Clark University at Worcester, founded in 1889
upon a purely graduate basis, established an undergraduate college in
1902.

One of the most gratifying features of higher education in the United
States during the past quarter century has been the extension of
graduate schools to the strong state universities. Research work in
them usually began in the school of agriculture, where the intensive
study