Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/181

THE EDUCATIONAL PLAN 153 It was inevitable that with the broadening and expanding of the life of the University there should be changes in the curricu- lum. With changing conditions and the advance of knowledge these will continue in all universities to the end of time. It is believed that the above comprise all the modifications of any significance in the educational plan. The reader cannot fail to note how little they affected its real substance. There were modifying changes, but the underlying principles were not changed. This will appear more clearly when the last of the three questions suggested has been considered. That question was: What features of the educational plan remained, and at the end of the first quarter-century gave every promise of continuing to remain, unchanged? The first of these, and, of course, the most important of all, was the University proper, which changed only as the institution as a whole grew, developed, and expanded. This first Division of the University received, in the course of this expansion, a better name: " The Schools and Colleges "; and this seemed likely to be a permanent designation. It is possible that the second general Division, the University Extension, should be placed here also. The only changes in it were the unforeseen development of the class work into University Col- lege, and the transfer of emphasis from lecture-study to correspond- ence work. University Extension itself remained and promised to continue a permanent Division of the University. This also is to be said of the third Division, the University Libraries, Laboratories, and Museums. Libraries increased in number as departments increased. The tendency of the depart- ments to add laboratories and museums to their equipment also increased. The germ of these special laboratories and museums was doubtless the departmental library. This unusual feature, giving to every department or intimately related group of departments its own separate collection of books, housed in rooms immediately con- nected with the classrooms, while expensive in administration and in the duplication of books, possessed such advantages that it not only survived, but gave such assurance of permanence as to enter into the construction plans of all the later buildings.