University of Oregon - Oregana Yearbook (Eugene, OR)

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IN THE FUTURE COLIN DYMENT HERE is too much of measurement of American universities by acres and numbers; and so. as the writer tries to look into the future of the Uni- versity of Oregon, he does not Visualize it as having so many thousand students. Rather he sees it as an academic establishment achieving a certain type of intellectual purpose, and achieving it las is the responsibility of a state supported institutionl at as reasonable a cost as hard work and thoughtful organization without selfishness make possible. It is true that the University is attracting from both this state and neighboring states numbers of students to a far greater extent than has ever been true; and that, accordingly, unless somehow these numbers are checked, the University will become far larger than most persons expect, and that by the same token it will have to expand over much land. Never- theless, my answer to the Oregana,s question is restricted to a statement re- garding the Universityls intellectual idealism, as I now see it taking form and make conjecture as to the form it will have in days to come. The University,s success will be gauged by the quality of graduates. If these men and women think primarily of themselves, then the University will have been a failure. If they think primarily in terms of society, but are incapable of influencing their communities through their ideas, then too, in whatever degree they are so incapable, the University will have failed. But if primarily their thinking is socialized, and if they are able to help toward realization those principles of good that make for general happiness, then the University will have succeeded, and thereby will have justified its establishment and maintenance. Those who do so succeed must be exceedingly well-trained and well- disciplined. They must have the fervor, even the evangelization, to utilize their training and their discipline to ethical ends. It is a long hard road for both the University and the individuals to achieve that goal. The writer would accordingly say that the University of the future, as he conceives it, is a University the purpose of which is to have trained its graduating classes in social idealism, and so to have developed their intel- lectual capacity, that they can make science, literature, the arts, commerce, the traditional professions, and any phase of activity in which they may be engaged, produce their respective contributions toward the sum of human knowledge, which is truth; and through them hasten'that day of world- wide well-being, concerning which the philosophers have written so much and Which, mythical though it may seem at times, must, because of its place in the worlds thinking from the beginning, be an achievable thing. Trwcnty-llzrec

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