Education: Guggenheim Gift

• Share

Simon Guggenheim, financier and onetime (1907-1913) U. S. Senator from Colorado, last week gave $3,000,000 to establish a scholarship fund. The money, which Mr. Guggenheim referred to as "a preliminary gift", will provide from 40 to 50 fellowships to "both men and women of proved ability", giving them facilities for research and graduate work "anywhere in the world where they can work most profitably. This plan is broader than the famed Foundation,* organized 21 years ago by Cecil Rhodes (TIME, DEC. 22). It recognizes no age limit,† no restriction of subjects for research, specifying only that the fellows shall produce contributions to knowledge and that they shall make their contributions available to the public. The fund is to be a memorial to Mr. Guggenheim's son, John S. Guggenheim, who died three years ago when a student at Harvard.

Said Mr. Guggenheim:

"We all realize that some of the finest minds, some of the most constructive thinkers in the world, have been seriously hampered in turning their gifts to best advantage by the lack of adequate financial backing. I want to do my part to meet this need. . . . It will be a satisfaction to me to know that the income of the Foundation will be spent on men and not on materials."

At John Hopkins

"That, of course, is only my personal idea," Dr. Frank J. Goodnow, President of Johns Hopkins University, made the politic gesture of a man who realizes that a revolutionary plan does not always come into the world the more lustily for being mothered by a shout. He spoke at the 49th anniversary of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, telling the University that, in his opinion, all undergraduate courses should be dropped, that admission be limited to those prepared to do advanced work, that the university cease to grant the bachelor's degree, give only M.A.'s, Ph.D.'s. Said he:

"The instruction in the first two college years in the United States has probably always been in essence what is now known as secondary rather than advanced instruction. On that account, it has no proper place in a university as distinguished from a college. Under present conditions, where this kind of instruction is given to masses of somewhat immature minds in probably the largest school of the modern American university, the development of the best kind of advanced work is made difficult if not impossible."