The Latin language, both because it enters so largely into our own and other modern languages, and because it is to such an extent the language of science, will demand a place in the course. As an instrument of linguistic culture, it greatly surpasses modern languages, and its literature is of perennial value. When well taught, no study more richly rewards the student. The Greek should be afforded, at least as an optional study, to all who desire to pursue it. It will never lose its value in the eyes of the highest grade of scholars.

Mental and Moral Philosophy, Logic, History, Political Economy, Civil Polity, and Constitutional Law, will all properly enter into the course as philosophical and speculative studies, and because of their high practical values.

A course, composed of these studies, reaching through four years, will fully equal, in its disciplinary power, the ordinary college course, and be of much more value to the student of the industrial arts.

It seems almost idle to say, we admit, many of these studies are not necessary to the mere practical farmer. Latin will not help a man to hold the plow, nor will mental philosophy teach how to fatten hogs. But, we reiterate, the Industrial Uni versity is not needed and was not founded for the common education of men, farmers or others. "The liberal and practical education" proposed by Congress will require all the amplitude of study here described.

It is not insisted that all students shall take this general course, though it is strongly recommended. Students may take up special courses without stopping to complete this, just as they may take a medical or law course at any other University, without first graduating from the college course.

The special courses in agriculture and the arts will comprehend many of the studies belonging to the general course, and they may be so arranged that a diligent student, of good abilities, while pursuing the regular University course, may also take up and carry forward one of the special technical courses. The studies of the University course being the minimum of study required to entitle the student to regular standing, it will be found that many students can perform, successfully, more than this minimum.

By further arranging the special courses so as to connect them with the last three years of the University course, and by bringing them, as far a practicable, into the fall and winter session, we may comply with the provision of the law, and also allow students of Agriculture or Horticulture, alone, to complete their special studies in a three years' course.

OPTIONAL AND SELECT COURSES.

The opinion gathers currency that students of mature age and experience should be permitted to enter our universities and colleges, and select for themselves such studies as they may need, and as they are qualified to pursue successfully with the regular classes in those studies. It may sometimes also occur that persons will desire to enter the university simply to attend some course of lectures, or to attain an insight into some agricultural or other industrial process, as the budding, grafting or pruning of trees, the management of a grapery, etc. Such students should be furnished with all the facilities consistent with the good order of the institution.

QUALIFICATIONS FOR ADMISSION.

The question of the qualifications required for admission to the University is one demanding careful consideration. These requirements should not be so high as to virtually exclude those who might successfully pursue the course of studies, nor so low as to permit those who are unprepared to profit by a residence at the Institution, and whose time would be uselessly wasted in the attempt to grasp studies beyond their comprehension.

The law prescribes that "no student shall be admitted to instruction in any of the departments of the University, who shall not have attained to the age of fifteen years, and who shall not previously undergo a satisfactory examination in each of the branches ordinarily taught in the common schools of the State." The committee understand this language, not as fixing definitely the qualifications for admission, but only as determining their lowest limit. The Trustees may require both a maturer age and a higher grade of scholarship, whenever, in their estimation, the interests of the State and of the University require it. It would certainly be better if students never entered college under eighteen years of age; but the average age of those applying for admission will doubtless be above this, without any special rule requiring it. Experience shows that students who enter college at a less age than that here indicated, are often injured by being thrown so early into the indiscriminate associations and powerful stimulation of college life. The University is the place for men rather than for mere boys.

It seems requisite that two different sets of qualifications shall be prescribed: the one for students who wish to pursue simply the studies of some select or partial course, and the other for candidates for the regular University courses.

1. QUALIFICATIONS FOR ADMISSION TO SELECT COURSES.

Students may properly be admitted to take some select course, on passing a thorough examination in the common school branches of reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and grammar, and on evidence of sufficient maturity and intelligence to pursue successfully the studies selected by them.

2. ADMISSION TO REGULAR UNIVERSITY COURSES.

While the Committee would wish to open the University as widely as possible to the youth of the State, they can not forget that its real utility will depend on establishing and maintaining a high standard of scholarship. As it can not legally do common school work, so neither ought it to undertake to do the work already provided for in the public high schools. It would prove a most sorry blunder if in our too eager desire to popularize the Institution, and under pretence of bringing its advantages within the easy reach of all, we should create a gigantic and expensive high school, and, having thus consumed our means, should fail to make any University at all. It is absolutely essential, if the University is to do the higher and scientific work required of it, that it shall leave the preparatory work mainly, if not entirely, to the public high schools and academies of the State; else it may fritter away its funds and its teaching forces, on the mere elementary work already sufficiently provided for, and leave undone all the great work which we ask at its hands for scientific agriculture and industrial arts.

The reasonable construction of the statute is, that while the University shall not comprehend the ordinary common school studies, it shall so arrange its terms of admission that the public schools may be able to meet them, and that there be left no unbridged chasm between the body of the State school system and the University at its head.

In the better class of public schools there are now taught, not only Grammar, Geography and Arithmetic, but also Algebra, Geometry, Natural Philosophy, History of the United States, and Human Physiology, and in very many of them the Latin language. All these may properly be prescribed, therefore, as preparatory studies for the University. They are all so elementary in character as to come within the easy comprehension of students under fifteen years of age; they all need to be studied as preparations for mastering the University course; and they may all be successfully taught in public high schools. In the Latin, the quality of the scholarship attained, rather than the quantity of the reading, may wisely be made the test, and the student should be admitted who can construe readily any passage in Cicero's Select Orations, or Virgil's Georgics and Æneid.

The preparatory course above indicated, differs from that ordinarily prescribed for admission to colleges, in the omission of the Greek language, and in the extension of the requirements in mathematics and other studies. It is believed that this variation will not only better adapt the preparation to the peculiar character of the University, but will adjust the University much more nearly to the ordinary course of studies now generally taught in our public high schools. These schools universally teach Geometry and Algebra; but only in a few cases teach Greek to any great extent. The grade of scholarship required for admission will thus be made as high as that required at other Universities, though made up of different elements. To make the work of the Industrial University thorough and complete, demands that the preparation for it shall be also full and sufficient.

The argument for an elevated standard of qualifications for admission gains great force from the fact, that until the student has made as much progress as this preparatory course requires, he has not usually formed his purpose and tested his strength and ability to pursue a course of liberal or scientific study. The history of preparatory schools is full of proof that many of those who set out for a College course stop short of the College doors. Science, like scripture, has its “stony ground hearers, who at first receive the word with joy, but who, when the hot sun of hard study is up, wither away. If our doors must be held open to every half-taught youth who is seized with a sudden ambition to " go to the University," our halls will be flooded annually with fresh hosts of mere tyros, who will stay only long enough to manifest their unfitness for the place, and then go forth to shame the Institution whose students they will claim to have been; thus ruining its reputation, after helping to destroy or impair its usefulness.

Among this host of short-lived "students of the Industrial University" the State will look in vain for that long line of graduates-the ripe and scholarly leaders in her agriculture and her great industries—which she has hoped to see proceed annually from the University halls.

The Committee are confident that no person who properly considers the amount of more important work which the University has to accomplish, will wish to see its forces diverted to the teaching of these elementary branches which the high schools may properly claim as their own ground; and certainly no one who desires the success of the University, as a great scientific and industrial college, will wish to see students entering its classes with less preparation than is here prescribed.

It needs to be repeated that this does not forbid students of suitable maturity and experience to come to the University to take a few select studies, without passing an examination in Latin and the higher mathematics named.

HONORARY SCHOLARSHIPS.

The law for the organization of the University provides that "each county in the State shall be entitled to one honorary scholarship in the University, for the benefit of the descendants of soldiers and seamen who served in the armies and navies of the United States during the late rebellion; preference being given to the children of such soldiers and seamen as are deceased or disabled; and the Board of Trustees may, from time to time, add to the number of honorary scholarships, when, in their judgment, such additions will not embarrass the finances of the University; nor need these additions be confined to the descendents of soldiers or seamen. Such scholarships to be filled by transfer from the common schools of said county, of such pupils as shall, upon public examination, to be conducted as the Board of Trustees of the University may determine, be decided to have attained the greatest proficiency in the branches of learning usually taught in the common schools, and who shall be of good moral character and not less than fifteen years of age." These scholarships entitle the incumbents to free tuition for three years.

The Committee recommend that the Regent, in connection with the Superintendent of Public Instruction, prepare examination papers, and transmit the same to the County Superintendent of Schools in each county, who, with other examiners, appointed by the Regent and Superintendent, will see that the examinations are properly conducted, and will return the papers, with the written answers of the several candidates and with such testimonials as they may present, to the Regent, who shall determine on the papers and notify the successful candidates of their appointment.

A competitive examination, thus uniform in character and thus fairly conducted, can not but react with a most healthful stimulation upon the public school interests of the State; and this stimulation will be increased by a publication of the names of the schools in which the successful candidates were prepared, and the teachers by whom they were taught. In case any counties shall neglect to send students on their scholarships, the Regent may be authorized to award such scholarships, for the year, to suitable candidates from other counties.

CHARGES FOR tuition, and OTHER EXPENSES.

The Committee would rejoice if the condition of our funds and the provisions of the law would permit the University to be made free to all citizens of the State, and they cordially recommend that its tuition be made thus free at the earliest practicable moment; and that from the outset the charges be made as light as is consistent with justice to the Institution itself.

The charges in American Colleges range from a few dollars per annum to several hundreds. In Yale College the annual fees amount to $85. The annual fees at Harvard are $133. At the Michigan University each student pays a matriculation fee of $10, and an annual fee of $5. At the Michigan Agricultural College the tuition is free for citizens of the State. Students from other States pay $20 per annum. All students pay a matriculation fee of $5. The proposed fees for the Cornell University are $20 a year for tuition; matriculation fee $15.

The Committee recommend that the Academic year be divided into two semiannual sessions, as nearly equal as may be, and that the tuition and other fees for each session be fixed at the following rates:

$20 per annum.

For tuition to students from other States, $10 per term.......

For incidentals, care and warming of public rooms, etc., $5 per term

For room rent, $6 per term....

They recommend, also, that a matriculation fee of $10 be charged to each student on first entering the Institution. This fee is never charged a second time, but, once paid, entitles the student to all the privileges of membership at any time thereafter. Students on the "honorary scholarships" will pay the matriculation fee and charges for room rent and incidentals, but will be charged nothing for tuition,

BOARDING DEPARTMENT.

The building is provided with the necessary rooms for a boarding department. It is believed that in a short time we may wholly dispense with this department, even if it must be opened at the outset. Suitable boarding houses will doubtless soon spring up in the neighborhood, and the rooms in the University building may be appropriated to more public and proper uses.

STUDENTS' ROOMS.

There are in the University buildings sixty-six rooms designed for students' dormitories, each dormitory being calculated to accommodate two students. These rooms are without furniture. It is customary to leave students to provide their own furniture, as they will ordinarily take better care of their own property than they will of that belonging to a public Institution.

MANUAL LABOR SYSTEM.

One of the most important and difficult questions concerning the organization of the University, is that of the introduction of the manual labor system. It is true that the attempt to connect manual labor with schools has, in many instances, failed; but the nature and extent of this failure have not been generally understood. It has not failed because the students were unwilling to work, nor because the work was injurious either to their health or culture. It has simply failed to pay. The labor of students was found unprofitable.

The high success and utility of the labor system, as practiced at the Michigan Agricultural College, has, in the minds of your committee, fully demonstrated its feasibility and value; and they would heartily recommend its adoption here, provided similar conditions can be secured. There, each student is required by law to work three hours a day, unless excused on account of sickness. The professors accompany the students to the garden or field, and participate in and direct the work, which is made to illustrate the principles taught in the lecture rooms. Wages, according to the value of the work done, not exceeding seven and a half cents an hour, are allowed the student, and he is thus enabled to pay a considerable part of the expense of his schooling by his labor. Even there the work has never yet proved remunerative to the institution, though it annually approaches nearer this result.

It should be added that the manual labor system, as practiced at the above named institution, has been carefully inspected by gentlemen sent from several of the Eastern States, and has been warmly commended, in their published reports, as eminently satisfactory and successful.

The chief advantages of the labor system are these:

1. It promotes the physical health and development of the student.